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notes on Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants"

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℣ DOMESTIC COZY, 👀 redefining Human, reading oyster , earthly autonomy, softspot, ☼ nature-of-nature, Sustainable Futures, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me, braiding the future , i've come back to earth full of desires, new commons class, and ecologies / aloha 'āina
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"Indigenous architecture tends to the small and round, though, following the model of nests and dens and burrows and redds and eggs and wombs—as if there were some universal pattern for home."

Robin Wall Kimmerer

"We put our minds together and gives thanks to our oldest Grandmother, the Moon, who lights the nighttime sky. She is the leader of women all over the world and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. Let us gather our thanks for Grandmother Moon together in a pile, layer upon layer of gratitude, and then joyfully fling that pile of thanks high into the night sky that she will know. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon."

Robin Wall Kimmerer

“Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow's edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.”

-Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer

"Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us."

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer

The stories we choose to shape our behaviors have adaptive consequeces...The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another...One of these stories sustains the living systems on which we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the world. One of these stories asks us to bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our kinship with the world. We can choose.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

The lichen, in a single body, unites the two great pathways of life: the so-called grazing food chain based on the building up of beings, and the detrital food chain based on taking them apart. Producers and decomposers, the light and the darkness, the givers and receivers wrapped in each other’s arms, the warp and the weft of the same blanket so closely woven that it’s impossible to discern the giving from the taking. Some of earth’s oldest beings, lichens are born from reciprocity. Our elders share the teachings that these rocks, the glacial erratics, are the oldest of grandfathers, the carriers of prophecy, and our teachers.

Robin Kimmerer. “Braiding Sweetgrass”.

In weaving well-being for land and people, we need to pay attention to the lessons of the three rows. Ecological well-being and the laws of nature are always the first row. Without them, there is no basket of plenty. Only if that first circle is in place can we weave the second. The second reveals material welfare, the subsistence of human needs. Economy built upon ecology. But with only two rows in place, the basket is still in jeopardy of pulling apart. It's only when the third row comes that the first two can hold together. Here is where ecology, economics, and spirit are woven together. By using materials as if they were a gift, and returning the gift through worthy use, we find balance. I think that third row goes by many names: Respect. Reciprocity. All Our Relations. I think of it as the spirit row. Whatever the name, the three rows represent recognition that our lives depend on one another, human needs being only one row in the basket that must hold us all. In relationship, the separate splints become a whole basket, sturdy and resilient enough to carry us into the future.

⚘ Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (152-153)

Responsibility to the tree makes everyone pause before beginning. Sometimes I have that same sense when I face a blank sheet of paper. For me, writing is an act of reciprocity with the world; it is what I can give back in return for everything that has been given to me. And now there's another layer of responsibility, writing on a thin sheet of tree and hoping the words are worth it. Such a thought could make a person set down her pen.

Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (152)

"The work of being a human is finding balance,"

John Pigeon, Braiding Sweetgrass (146)

Traditional harvesters recognize the individuality of each tree as a person, a nonhuman forest person. Trees are not taken, but requested. Respectfully, the cutter explains his purpose and the tree is asked per mission for harvest. Sometimes the answer is no. It might be a cue in the surroundings - a vireo nest in the branches, or the bark's adamant resistance to the questioning knife - that suggests a tree is not willing, or it might be the ineffable knowing that turns him away. If consent is granted, a prayer is made and tobacco is left as a reciprocating gift. The tree is felled with great care so as not to damage it or others in the fall. Sometimes a cutter will make a bed of spruce boughs to cushion the landing of the tree. When they finish, John and his son hoist the log to their shoulders and begin the long walk home.

Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (144)
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