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Reviews tagging 'Racism'
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
48 reviews
aguattery's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Animal death, Colonisation, and Genocide
Moderate: Forced institutionalization and Racism
Minor: Cannibalism
melancholymegs's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Colonisation, Animal death, Death, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, and Racism
Moderate: Grief
Minor: Suicide attempt and Excrement
readandfindout's review against another edition
4.25
Themes: 4 stars
Perspective: 5 stars
Graphic: Colonisation
Moderate: Racism, Grief, Genocide, Death, Forced institutionalization, Cannibalism, Animal death, Kidnapping, and Religious bigotry
elisanisly's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Animal death, Colonisation, and Death
Moderate: Racism and War
Minor: Abandonment
cammiem8's review against another edition
2.75
Graphic: Colonisation and Racism
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Cannibalism
Many of the injustices against Native Americans are described in this book. It does have a hopeful tone despite some dark subject matter. One essay depicts the legend of the Wendigo, which involves non-graphic depictions of cannibalism.jayisreading's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Colonisation
Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Death, Genocide, and Racism
Minor: Suicide attempt and Grief
catapocalypse's review against another edition
5.0
Braiding Sweetgrass is a number of things: it's partly a memoir of various experiences of Dr. Kimmerer's life, partly a comparison and contrast of the Western scientific approach to botany and the accumulated wisdom within indigenous oral traditions, partly fascinating information about various North American plants, and partly philosophy behind a more sustainable way of living in balance with the natural world.
Ultimately, Dr. Kimmerer seeks to shift our way of thinking about nature, not as a commodity but as the crucial, life-sustaining home that it is. She emphasizes approaching it with gratitude and reciprocity, rather than greed and exploitation. These teachings come from her own heritage as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi nation. They encourage healing of the self, of our relationships with other humans, and of our relationship with the natural world around us.
The book resonated strongly with me, especially as I've formed a more animistic personal spirituality over the years. I found a lot of the information about the various plants and ecosystems fascinating as well!
Moderate: Racism, Genocide, and Colonisation
caseythereader's review against another edition
5.0
- I know I will be thinking about several of these stories for a long time (particularly the chapters about the lake and the grad student's experiment) and will likely revisit this book often in the future in order to try and integrate it into my life.
Graphic: Genocide, Grief, Racism, and Colonisation
fiveredhens's review against another edition
3.75
The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one. 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. If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in
motion, how wealthy we become.
"I want to vote with my dollar," she says. I can make choices because
have the disposable income to choose "green" over less-expensive goods, and I hope that will drive the market in the right direction. In the
food deserts of the South Side there
is no such choice, and the dishonor in that inequity runs far deeper than the food supply.
something tender in them, and open, as if they are emerging from the embrace of arms they did not know were there. Through them I get to remember what it is to open to the world as gift, to be flooded with the knowledge that the earth will take care of you, everything you need right there.
Microbes in industrial waste can destroy mercury. Aren't these stories we should all know? Who is it who holds them? In long-ago times, it was the elders who carried them. In the twenty-first century, it is often scientists who first hear them. The stories of buffalo and salamanders belong to the land, but scientists are one of their translators and carry a large responsibility for conveying
their stories to the world. And yet scientists mostly convey these stories in a language that excludes readers. Conventions for efficiency and precision make scientific papers very difficult for the rest of the world, and if the truth be known, for us as well. This has serious consequences for public dialogue about the environment and therefore for real democracy, especially the democracy of all species. For what good is knowing, unless it is coupled with caring?
In return for the privilege of breath.
i think most ppl should read this book but i had some ?? moments
the chapter on language emphasized linguistic relativity almost to the point of linguistic determinism which seemed really out of place, especially given how often that theory has been used to dehumanize indigenous people in the americas specifically
i felt like i didn't get a good handle on her ideas around colonizers becoming indigenous to place. it seemed a little too open-ended for me there
also the beginning of the book listed sponsors or something and one of them was Wells Fargo ? idk what was goin on there
Moderate: Ableism, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Colonisation, Excrement, Forced institutionalization, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Sexism, Suicide attempt, War, and Xenophobia
Minor: Car accident, Child death, Fatphobia, Genocide, Grief, Hate crime, Racism, Religious bigotry, and Vomit
betweentheshelves's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Death, Racism, and Genocide