When we were kids, my sisters and I would dash around the yard, riding bareback on our ponies, pretending to be Indians.
I always chose to be the squaw (so I didn’t have to take my shirt off and could pick wild raspberries). My younger sister, a bit of a tomboy, didn’t mind being the shirtless brave on her white steed, Nicky.
That, however, is the closest I came to thinking about Native Americans. I was Polish on my mom’s side, Italian on my dad’s—American. That is what mattered, what defined me.
Then, on the far side of 60, I started reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In one way it was so unfamiliar to me—the names of the tribes, the stories, the atrocities—yet in another, there was a stirring in my soul, a familiarity perhaps transported from my fingers digging in the soil all these years.
There are books I’m glad I’ve read. Books I wish I had written. Books I want to buy and keep in my library. But this is the only book I wish I could memorize, recite from heart, and share with everyone I know now or will ever meet.
Until I opened Braiding Sweetgrass, I had never heard of the Potawatomi and many other indigenous groups. I somehow missed discovering the horrors of the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle even though it is in the same state I’ve spent most of my life. And, although I casually wondered how man (and woman) learned to eat certain plants or use others medicinally, I never truly thought about or researched it.
Then came the teachings of Dr. Kimmerer, a professor of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York and founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. With those credentials and an inbred passion for nature, she weaves science, indigenous culture, and spirituality through each essay in her book. Add to that her recollections of teachable moments and her poetic descriptions and you will float from page to page.
Dr. Kimmerer introduced me to the traditions of reciprocity and gratitude rooted in Native American ways. She explains how the squirrel showed indigenous peoples how to make maple syrup; the beaver, how to craft an ax; the spider, how to weave a fishnet.
The storytelling tradition she treasures and brings to the printed page made me recall stories in my past, not from Native Americans, but others who made imprints on my life.
Throughout the book, I learned about sweetgrass, puzzled that it is a plant I know so little about. Its botanical name, Hierochloe odorata, was not familiar. I later read Hierochloe literally translates from Greek as sacred (hieros) and grass (chloë), and the odorata speaks to its vanilla scent. The Native Americans call it wiingaashk, and the repeating vowels remind me of Flemish.
Wiingaashk is the sweet smelling hair of Mother Earth—the first plant to grow on Earth, a sweet memory of Skywoman. It is still used ceremonially through burning the dried and braided grass stems for an incense or smudge—fragrant smoke used for purification and to carry prayers to the Great Spirit. To give a plait of sweetgrass is to show kindness and gratitude; to weave sweetgrass into a basket melds the loving care of the earth’s bounty with human ingenuity.
As I read about Native American sweetgrass baskets, I was pulled into the 1970s when I lived in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Detail of Sweetgrass Basket
Stands filled with sweetgrass baskets, made by Gullah artisans, line Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant on the way to Charleston. They are woven with sweetgrass, palmetto leaves, pine needles, and bulrush. They moved from a 300-year-old Lowcounty craft to a national treasure when Mary A. Jackson’s baskets were added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The baskets are still sold at the Charleston City Market as well as the Four Corners of Law, the intersection of Broad and Meeting, a block or so from my first apartment on King Street. These traditional baskets are tied to West Africa via the transatlantic slave trade yet at the same time sweetgrass baskets are also a Native American art form.
“Sweetgrass, as the hair of Mother Earth, is traditionally braided to show loving care for her well-being.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
Then there was my German neighbor in Coplay, where we started our family. As my infants became toddlers, I was creating my first garden. Mrs. Sacks watched over the white picket fence, gave advice, and shared cuttings and divisions of her plants. I’d thank her for the starts and I remember her admonishing me. She insisted it was bad luck to thank a person for a plant. That philosophy always puzzled me until reading Braiding Sweetgrass. The reason is simple—the gratitude should not go to the human but to the plant, for sharing its beauty, its wonder, its value.
“Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then give it away.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
As I read Braiding Sweetrgrass, I took to heart what Dr. Kimmerer calls the guidelines of the Honorable Harvest.
–Asking permission, to show respect for the personhood of the plant.
–Knowing the ways of the plants that take care of you so you can take care of them.
–Taking only what you need, leaving some for others.
–Harvesting in a way that minimizes harm and shows gratitude.
The forests that shared their bounty with our indigenous peoples and it was an honorable harvest. Immediately I thought of Settimio, my father’s Italian cousin who the kids and I visited in Treviso several years ago.
His eyes sparkled as he told us about gathering fungi for delicious meals with his family. But, he hastened to add, he only collected fungi in a loosely woven basket so that the mushroom spores could drop to the forest floor and spread their goodness as he made his way home.
“The land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes, with roasting ears and blackberries and birdsongs. By a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons. She provides for us and teaches us to provide for ourselves. That’s what good mothers do.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
Through the poetry of her prose Dr. Kimmerer again looks to botany and the science of plant communities and reassures readers with hope and practicality. Native plants are defined as those plants found in North America before European settlement. The same is said for Native Americans. We can’t all be indigenous. But, she explains, as non-native plants can become naturalized, so can humans.
“To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
Please, read Braiding Sweetgrass for yourself. Mother Earth is calling you. Laurie Lynch
Trying Times: It seems the pandemic has sparked YouTube videos on everything from how to clean your blues harmonica (and get control of your life) to a skit with Belgian hospital workers singing and dancing the Dutch Handpalm Tegen Handpalm (hand-washing song) to the music of Baby Shark.
Well, I will spare you a Laurie Lynch YouTube video but here is an easy Daikon Radish Salad that is good for what ails you, will put a nice crunch on your plate, and smile on your face.
1 lb. daikon radishes
1 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. Japanese Seven Spice*
1 tsp. salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ c. chopped onions
2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
Peel the radishes and slice into thin half- or quarter-moons. Place in bowl and drizzle with honey, add spices, salt, garlic and chopped onions. Stir well and sprinkle with rice vinegar. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
* Japanese Seven Spice is also known as Shichimi Togarashi. I found it at Wegman’s. It is a mixture of red and Sichuan pepper, ginger, white and black sesame seed, orange peel and nori flakes (seaweed).
Fleur-de-Blog 