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sethdmichaels.bsky.social · @sethdmichaels.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants 10/10

A really lovely book of essays on the relationship between humans and plants, between organisms in ecosystems, between traditional and indigenous ways of knowledge and the scientific method. It's full of fun facts and smart big ideas about plants but it's also very lyrical, earnest and absorbing - so earnest that it takes a little work to get over my reflexive cynicism as I read. I particularly like her anti-doomy worldview. It's so easy for a book like this to take the humans-are-the-meteorite, humans-are-a-bad-species viewpoint and that's a viewpoint that is as reductive and falsely-separating-humans-from-nature as the imperialism it's meant to criticize. Kimmerer instead places humans, correctly, as one species among many in their environment, distinguished primarily by the fact of their potential self-awareness and flexibility of choice about their role in that environment. Highly recommended.

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Published 2026-08-18 14:45 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere