On Friday, April 12th, 2024 from 4:30- 5:30 pm in Corey Union’s function room, I went to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s lecture on her book “Braiding Sweetgrass”. I really enjoyed her lecture, and learned a lot about her background and where her ideas for the book came from. I liked how she started off with an introduction on herself, speaking in a different language at first was a very interesting and fun way of starting off her lecture. I think by her sharing her own background, she added a personal touch to her lecture, and made it seem like less of a lecture and more of her just talking to us. She then talked about the Nagaan ge bezhig emkwaan flag (meaning the dish with one spoon treaty belt), which was an agreement between the two confederacies that shared the same homeland, agreeing to keep the “bowl” clean and full without suffering. This idea of keeping the same “bowl” clean and full was a way of sharing and bringing the community together, focusing on keeping their shared homeland clean and respected. Instead of constantly taking from the Earth, they were being asked to protect and care for it, which was a main focal point of Robin Kimmerer’s lecture. This was one of my favorite parts of the lecture because it was a way to connect and bring everyone together, even if they were different in other aspects of their life, they all shared one thing in common, their homeland.
Kimmerer then went on to speak about her actual book, “Braiding Sweetgrass”. She talked about the connection between braiding sweetgrass and a girl’s mother braiding her daughter’s hair. In each of these the person braiding is caring for the other person. For example, the mother is caring for her daughter by braiding her hair, so by us braiding the Earth, we are showing how we care and can protect the Earth. Which is why her book is titled this, because of how she learned and was taught to care for the Earth, and because she wanted to show everyone else how they could too protect and care for Earth. She then went on to explain her college life, taking us through her disappointment with her advisor meeting after learning she didn’t feel like she quite fit into her major. Kimmerer talked of being a botanist, which means she cared for plants, and spoke about her confliction within learning about this in her major. She asked us three questions that she had been thinking about when she tried describing her love of plants; why is this world so beautiful? Why plants make medicine? And why plants bend for baskets? And although I do not know the answer to these questions, I found them very fascinating. Lastly, I would like to end with a quote that Robin Wall Kimmerer shared with us that has stuck with me since her lecture, “it is not land that is broken, but our relationship to land”.
Great event review, April! I was also really struck by that quote you included at the end. Also, I hadn’t thought about this until reading your review, but there might actually be an interesting parallel between Kimmerer’s experience in school–especially the fact that the botany curriculum didn’t include indigenous ways of knowing or knowledge about plants–and Langston Hughes’ poem “Theme for English B” in which he describes the discrepancy between the vibrant art and music of the Harlem Renaissance and his predominantly-white curriculum at Columbia. Fascinating!