Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Updated with a new introduction by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of Milkweed Editions' fortieth anniversary, celebrates the book as an object of significance that will endure for ages. Beautifully bound with a new cover featuring an engraving by Tony Drehfal, this edition includes a ribbon bookmark and five brilliantly colored illustrations by artist Nate Christopherson. In increasingly dark times, we honor the experience that more than 350,000 readers in North America have cherished about the book—sweet, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred—and offer an edition that will inspire readers to give it away again and again, spreading the word about scientific knowledge, indigenous wisdom, and plant teachings.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer was trained to ask questions about nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the idea that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings together these two lenses of knowledge to take us on a journey that is as mythical as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as intelligent as it is wise (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an Indigenous scientist and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living things—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sugar grass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we have forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she turns to a central argument: that awakening ecological consciousness requires recognizing and celebrating our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be able to understand the bounty of the earth and learn to give our own gifts in return.