NCW Libraries

"Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer's best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass is adapted for a young adult audience by children's author Monique Gray Smith, bringing Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation"--

Discusses Lakota ceremonies and prayers that we all share in Creation of people, birds, animals, plants, trees, rocks, and rivers.

Illustrated quotations on the time-honored values of The People: the balance of the forces of nature; stewardship of the land; the nature of change; a responsibility to future generations; more.

"This book accurately depicts Native American approaches to land and spirituality through an interdisciplinary examination of Indian philosophy, history, and literature. When white Europeans first encountered Native American cultures, they often regarded Indian ideas about the earth and the spiritual world as evidence of their ignorance and primitive society. Now, traditional Indian wisdom that emphasizes the importance of maintaining balance within...

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, the author has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to the Americas, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. In this book, she brings these two lenses of knowing together to reveal what it means to see humans...

"The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all 'home.' Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler...