Robin Wall Kimmerer

I encourage you to read the plethora of research on the positive effects of cultivating gratitude.

Back in April, my wife Allie gifted me a small book, The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

She grabbed it in part because she knew that I had a soft spot for the cedar waxwing, the handsome bird which is perched on the cover.

You know that great feeling when someone hands you a book and it touches your soul before you even open it? Talk about feeling completely seen.

Do you have any other good stories you want to tell?

More of a plug because I cannot begin to tell Robin Wall Kimmerer's own story.

but if you have a copy of breeding sweetgrass, the chapter, the council of pecans, I believe tells a similar story about her grandfather, which is right at the beginning.

Yes.

None of that is true.

And so I would, you know, there's a tremendous amount of agency and worldliness and sophistication in a lot of the indigenous people that in terms of of taking you know people talk about braided knowledge that's a Robin Wall Kimmerer term that of realizing that they're going to take whatever western science has that's useful it's a very sophisticated way of meeting the world and that's a story I would like to to kind of push back against some of the more romantic mythology

I love the sound of it.

But in the end, it is your challenge.

Yeah

... there's a lovely example in Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, Braiding Sweetgrass, where she's able to prove that sweetgrass grows more abundantly in the areas where it is harvested and used for basket weaving, and it's that sort of, that reciprocity that, that when we're in good relationship with nature...

And I lo- I love the idea of a literal relationship because if two human...

You know, if a human was treating another human the way we're treating nature, [laughs] that relationship would be over, I hope.

It's just so incredible.

I recently read the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer.

She's written a book called Braiding Sweetgrass and I highly recommend it for any listeners.

She's a First Nations person of North America and is a botanist and has written this amazing book about ethnobotany and all about the connection between the North American First Nations people.

I mean, if you look at Jane Goodall, and her work evolving over time, she is such a beacon of positivity and of hope and of Really encouraging people to get down in the dirt to see the beauty of the things that we sort of take for granted.

I'm finishing up Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

I mean, these are titans in this space who... are really pursuing, I believe, some of the best ways that we can engage in the natural world and understand what the natural world can give us and what we can give them in this partnership.

So, I mean, those are just, like I say, a handful of, you were saying, Mark, of the 300, close to 300 guests that we've had on and what they've sort of taught over time as we co-evolve and go forward on this blue rock journey You know, going through the universe.

Okay

... um, Ari, um, "Robin Wall Kimmerer and Indigenous knowledge."

Right, yes.

So, uh, Robin wrote Braiding Sweetgrass, which is a book that we mentioned on the podcast recently.