As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans as "the younger brothers of creation." As she explores these themes she circles toward a central argument: the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the world. Once we begin to listen for the languages of other beings, we can begin to understand the innumerable life-giving gifts the world provides us and learn to offer our thanks, our care, and our own gifts in return--From back cover.

Planting Sweetgrass. Skywoman falling -- The council of pecans -- The gift of strawberries -- An offering -- Asters and goldenrod -- Learning the grammar of animacy -- Tending Sweetgrass. Maple sugar moon -- Witch hazel -- A mother's work -- The consolation of water lilies -- Allegiance to gratitude -- Picking Sweetgrass. Epiphany in the beans -- The three sisters -- Wisgaak Gokpenagen : a black ash basket -- Mishkos Kenomagwen : the teachings of grass -- Maple nation : a citizenship guide -- The honorable harvest -- Braiding Sweetgrass. In the footsteps of Nanabozho : becoming indigenous to place -- The sound of silverbells -- Sitting in a circle -- Burning cascade head -- Putting down roots -- Umbilicaria : the belly button of the world -- Old-growth children -- Witness to the rain -- Burning Sweetgrass. Windigo footprints -- The sacred and the superfund -- People of corn, people of light -- Collateral damage -- Shkitagen : People of the seventh fire -- Defeating Windigo -- Epilogue: Returning the gift.