2022/10/23

Silver Wattle Quaker Centre | “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Silver Wattle Quaker Centre group | Facebook

For those who have not read “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer can I recommend you who haven’t, give it a read. Robin is a Potawatomi woman from the Great Lakes area of the United States. The book deals with our relationship with nature and how so very much apart of nature we are. I personally have had a great love for nature from the earliest age as I’m sure many of you have. She points out that European culture has often neglected this relationship we have with nature, at least in the past 300 years or so. Our relationship with nature is built on what we can get out of the land, such as ownership or benefit from its assets in what ever form it takes. Instead of being caretakers we are often only interested in sucking the very life out of the earth which gives us all we need to live. I feel the indigenous world view is often the best way to see the earth if we really want to understand it on a personal level. In my family we were adopted into a Lakota and Apache family a number of decades back and within my own dna I have Ojibwa (Chippewa) ancestors, even though it is a fair way back. So the indigenous world view has been dear to my spirit since I was young. The book is a wonderful read, not “preachy” in any way and very much a thought provoking read. I often feel that within scripture, in Genesis where it says we have “dominion” over the earth, it was an unfortunate translation of what I personally feel could have been better rendered as “caretakers” of the earth. In truth it may not translate as that but it certainly would have been a whole lot better if it did! Dominion certainly has opened the flood gates to give us free reign to use it how we want, giving little thought to the consequences. I hope you all may have the chance to read this book.



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Catherine Heywood, Peri Coleman and 8 others
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