BOOK CLUB: Part 5 - Burning Sweetgrass (Patreon)

[Pictured: Spotted Salamander crossing the road.]

This is the fifth and final discussion thread for Braiding Sweetgrass. Sweet!

You're getting Ellen's write up today because CJ is busy making YouTube video. Video specific video foreshadowing watch out. There's a lot of screaming going into The Process; let's not ask.

My (Ellen's! But we won't do third person) overall feeling about Braiding Sweetgrass, as a book, is exasperated. I feel its been ill served by its editing process, a lot of things that should be one essay were split into several, and major themes were mis-heavy-hand-led. Obviously there was similar messaging across every section, but the rhythm and pace of each section was also unfortunately monotone. Critiquing the book for being repetitive is to miss the nuance of each plant and individual life that Kimmer holds to the sun so carefully, but the momentum of those precise, specific, examples, ultimately led to what felt like the same beats again and again.

However!

There are quite a few things I've loved. Kimmer will throw out the occasional offhanded line that makes me breathless, and want to reread the last paragraph to approach it properly again. Her immersive reverence for her topic truly never lets up, and if you read slowly and indulge in the sensory detail, Braiding Sweetgrass truly can become a 4D book. Her attention is ruthlessly inclusively kind.

Even the parts I mentioned disliking above, the sameness I felt, is turned into a virtue when you realise that what keeps cycling back into the work is Kimmer's urgency and adoration. There's never too much of that in art.

Last post CJ mentioned that the reading-by-chunk format we're bound to isn't presenting this book in its best light, and I agree with that too. I've recently reread some of my favourite essays (Learning the Grammar of Animacy, A Mother's Work, Witness to the Rain) just on their own because I recalled liking them, and making the active choice to submerse yourself in Kimmer's compassion, focus, and teachings, is definitely the way to do it. Circle back to your favourites. They're waiting for you.

Our town hall meeting will be on June 7th at 4pm EST. It's a Wednesday it's three days from now it'll be a Zoom meeting moderated like the last one it's going to be very fun. Block roughly two/three hours for it.

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Windigo Footprints

This was a good opener, but I did find it unmemorable. Some of the coolest parts of this book are when Kimmer is talking about Anishinaabe culture. I wished for more specificity than we got, but what details about the Windigo we got (such as originating at the time of the fur trade and reinforcing the taboo against cannibalism during winter famines), I enjoyed.

"[The Hunger Moon is] the time when an elder leaves to hunt and never returns. When sucking a bone is not enough, the infants follow. After too many days, desperation is the only soup." (304) Goes hard goes crazy.

"Our hotel was on a dirt street where dead dogs and prostitutes shared the corners under a perpetually orange sky lit by the flaring stacks." (306-7) This was such an abrupt departure from Kimmer's usual descriptions ahaha? Big change from flowing breathlessness about flower fields. Fun.

"In the old times, individuals who endangered the community by taking too much for themselves were first counseled, then ostracized, and if the greed continued, they were eventually banished." (307) Doesn't seem like such a bad system. The ostracization step seems to me the notable one.

The Sacred and the Superfund

Easily my favourite of today's bunch, especially the parts that read like a true crime article. The first half went crazy and I think the second half should have been culled at five paragraphs, but again, the first half went crazy.

CJ described this essay as "absolutely unacceptable," so, audiences are divided.

H E L P was excellent. Stormin' Norman name reveal was too.

Page 324 managed to get me with a rare written jumpscare, as I was absolutely prepared to interpret "From the lowest branch hung a human body. Next to it an empty noose swayed in the wind." as an actual suicide and its purpose in the essay as Kimmer's Aren't You Tired Of Being Nice? Don't You Want To Radically Escalate The Stakes Of Your Anecdote? moment.

"Philosopher Joanna Macy writes of the oblivion we manufacture for ourselves to keep from looking environmental problems straight in the eye." (326) This book was published in 2013, which I know because the public conversation about climate disaster has changed so radically that the portion of the essay which touched on it is already dated. It was a little heartbreaking to read actually.

"The new terrain is old land that has been pulverized, extracted, and poured out the end of a pipe. It is known as Solvay waste, after the Solvay Process Company that left it behind." (313) Old land that's been pulverized is one of those phrases that gave me shivers.

"The smooth shelf [of Solvay waste] is punctuated by cobble-sized rocks, ghostly beneath the water, unlike any rock you know." (315) Ghost story of a description. Love it.

Kimmer mentions open-put mines in a couple places, and although this is tangential to her point, it reminded me of this fascinating Charlie Macquarie article for Hypocrite Reader. Lots of pictures of open-pit mines inside. Also strong feelings about the Nevada punk scene.

People of Corn, People of Light

I did not enjoy Kimmer's editorial on the people of mud/wood/light/corn, but I liked the story. There were some fun phrases: "misused members of Creation," and "They were fed on corn liquor and oh those were good people.," both from page 342, standing out especially.

Her point that scientists and academic language, and the collegiate institutional way of publishing findings, exists to the detriment of the general public's involvement in high concept issues is completely valid. I'm of the position that sometimes you do really need to study something for multiple years and use complex technical language to examine it properly, but even though I feel this way I agree with Kimmer that current methodology skews too exclusive and even becomes gatekeepy in places. Balancing non-expert, casual interest information, with nuanced focused study not everyone can follow, has been an academic problem for decades if not longer.

"Plants are providers for the rest of the community and exemplify the virtue of generosity, always offering food. What if Western scientists saw plants as their teachers rather than their subjects? What if they told stories with that lens?" (347) Jesus sorry just (347) seeing that (347) why is this thought still happening to me on page three hundred and forty seven (347)!!!!!!!!

"But in many Indigenous ways of knowing, time is not a river, but a lake in which the past, the present, and the future exist. Creation, then, is an ongoing process and the story is not history alone-it is also prophecy." (343) Completely fantastic philosophical summary, presented soooo elegantly. This is highlighted in my book.

Collateral Damange

These salamanders are so cute. I will officially go on the record as pro-protecting cute salamanders from being blasted by cars going 150km a hour. Apart from that, not much to say about this one honestly!

I had to look up "fecund," and I present to you now: the capability of producing offspring or vegetation/characterized by or suggestive of fertility. Level this word at whomever you fancy. Use judiciously. 

"Gibbs confesses that sometimes, on rainy nights when he knows the salamanders are moving-and dying-he can't sleep. He puts on a raincoat and goes out to carry them across." (357) I love people.

Shkitagen: People of the Seventh Fire

It's also a point of pride in my family that we can light single match fires. I remember my mom teaching it to my sister and my dad at the same time, because she grew up back country camping and being in the wild when my dad didn't. The way that Kimmer talks about the hope of flame and the pride of putting firewood for later campers really spoke to me.

How many matches it took you to light a fire was also an easy way to establish hierarchy in the Girl Guides.

"The people of the Seventh Fire do not yet walk forward; rather, they are told to turn around and retrace the steps of the ones who brought us here." (367) This concept is timely to the internet era. During [MODERN DAY] I feel a lot of people are rediscovering the value of archival work, both preserving materials and ideas to be passed down, and wanting to track concepts to their original source. Again with Braiding Sweetgrass being published in 2013, Kimmer's point that young activists and climatologists are tracing the chain of harm back to where it started has only gotten more potent with time.

"[The Seventh Fire prophecy says] They must make a choice in their path to the future. One of the roads is soft and green with new grass. You could walk barefoot there. The other is scorched black, hard; the cinders would cut your feet." (368) The infamous Frost dilemma.

"[In making a handmade fire] So much depends on the body, each joint at the right angle, left arm wrapped around knee and braced at the shin, left leg bent, back stretched, shoulders locked, left forearm bearing down, right arm pushes and pulls in one smooth draw without breaking the plane of the upright shin. So much depends on the architecture, stability in three dimensions and fluidity in the fourth." (372) Lovely pretty paragraph. Kimmer so rarely focuses in on the human body that the exacting positionality of the line was exciting to me.

Defeating Windigo

This departure from form and dip into italicized prose was fun. Kimmer's writing style is similar but still different enough from when she's writing in her standard essay form that the story did actually feel like it had been passed down from someone who wasn't Kimmer, weighted by the other voices that told it first, even though it is original to her.

"'Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world's wealthiest peoples.' The shortage is due not to how much material wealth there actually is, but to the way in which it is exchanged or circulated." (276) Hell yes comrade.

"You can't know reciprocity until you know the gift. He is helpless before their power." (379) These bars are great alone, but they shone after the context of that vile paragraph about "The carrion stench of his breath [mixing] with the reek of shit..." and so on. Traditional medicine brings high highs and low lows.

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Epilogue: Returning the Gift

It's good and right this book ends on a party.

The levity and joy imbued into the description of the minidewak is a great note to end on. I also enjoyed the glimpse into the practicality of organizing it: mentioning Walmart items on a tarp enhanced the romance of the ceremony for me, rather than killing it.

I'm also quite interested whenever we get some Potawatomi linguistic philosophy, such as "min" from gift/berries, and emingoyak VS English's "natural resources." Page 385-6 has a beautiful Note on the Treatment of Indigenous Languages that I liked more than some of these essays. ("With respect for speakers and teachers with these different perspectives, I have tried to use the words in a way that they were originally given to me.")

"We dance in a circle, not a line." (381) We Patreon comment section in a circle too I know it looks like a line but you're imagining it.

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Once again the town hall is on June 7th at 4pm EST. CJ will be there this time but don't get used to it.

Book Club will of course continue. Our machinations spin into being ever more perfect tools and all that. If you're curious about what's coming next then you should join our town hall :3 hehe...

Thanks everyone for reading along with us! Please feel free to put your reflections on the whole book in addition to Burning Sweetgrass specifically, and as always, the threads never close the discussion never ends.

Get out there and grow grass!!!!