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

“He never grew a relationship with the land, choosing instead the splendid isolation of tech. He was like one of those little withered seeds you find in the bottom of the seed packet, the one who never touched the earth.”

‘My car,’ he said. ‘In my car. It provides me with everything I need, in just the way I like it. My favorite music. Seat position fully adjustable. Automatic mirrors. Two cup holders. I’m safe. And it always takes me where I want to go.’ Years later, he tried to kill himself. In his car.

“Nanabozho made certain that the work would never be too easy. His teachings remind us that one half of the truth is that the earth endows us with great gifts, the other half is that the gift is not enough. The responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness.” Page 69.

“But the maples carried the people through, provided food just when they needed it most. They had to trust that Mother Earth would find a way to feed them even in the depths of winter. But mothers are like that. In return, ceremonies of thanksgiving are held at the start of the sap run.” Page 68.

“Imagine walking through a richly inhabited world of Birch people, Bear people, Rock people, beings we think of and therefore speak of as persons worthy of our respect, of inclusion in a peopled world...Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us.” Page 58.

“Andy countered, ‘But just because we don’t think of them [trees and plants and animals] as humans doesn’t mean they aren’t beings. Isn’t it even more disrespectful to assume that we’re the only species that counts as ‘persons’?’” Page 57.

“Saying it makes a living land into ‘natural resources.’ If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.” Page 57.

“Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and identification and compassion—until we teach them not to. We quickly refrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation.” Page 57.

“One young man, Andy, splashing his feet in the clear water, asked the big question. ‘Wait a second,’ he said as he wrapped his mind around this linguistic distinction, “doesn’t this mean that speaking English, thinking in English, somehow gives us permission to disrespect nature? By denying everyone else the right to be persons? Wouldn’t things be different if nothing was an it?’” Page 57

“…we understand a thing only when we understand it all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit.” Page 47.