audrey’s Reviews > Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants > Status Update

Look at the legacy of poor Eve's exile from Eden: the land shows the bruises of an abusive relationship. It's not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land…our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them?

Can they, can we all, understand the Skywoman story not as an artifact from the past but as instructions for the future? Can a nation of immigrants once again follow her example to become native, to make a home?

The landscape has changed, but the story remains.

In their time, Skywoman's first people lived by their understanding of the Original Instructions…Those measures for caring might not seem to fit in today's urban world, where "green" means an advertising slogan, not a meadow. The buffalo are gone and the world has moved on. I can't return salmon to the river, and my neighbors would raise the alarm if I set fire to my yard to produce pasture for elk.

Our elders say that ceremonies are the way we "remember to remember,"

“Breathe it in and you start to remember things you didn’t know you forgotten.”