An Overview:
What is sweetgrass – Hierochloe odorata – wiingaashk? Robin Wall Kimmerer, “a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation,” eloquently and beautifully uses the indigenous cultures’ sacred plant, sweetgrass, as a poetic metaphor to explain the origins of plant, animal, and human life on Mother Earth, their intertwined respectful and reciprocal relationships with each other, the loss of this reciprocity, and the hope of ecological restoration to return the gifts of Mother Earth and the balance that once was. Robin Wall Kimmerer provides the reader with the definition and explanation of the significance of sweetgrass’s scientific name, Hierochloe odorata -- “the fragrant, holy grass.” In her language, “it is called wiingaashk – the sweet-smelling hair of Mother Earth. Breathe it in and you start to remember things you didn’t know you’d forgotten.” (Preface) Dr. Kimmerer presents this book as a gift of braided stories “meant to heal our relationship with the world” by weaving together the three strands of “indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.” That is, the necessity for humankind to be rejoined with its relationships to nature, and to understand the implications of the Earth’s gifts and our responsibility to return these gifts. Although Dr. Kimmerer recounts specific examples of our loss of respectful relationships with nature and the resultant destruction and devastation, she does provide a hopeful challenge to humankind to “…honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken. …Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world.” (p. 384)
from The Longwood Gardens Library and Archives staff
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