Books

Some people buy shoes, some purses, some fancy cars.  I am a book acquirer.  At the beginning of the pandemic I did some sorting and downsizing but over the course of the last couple of years of more amazon than previous, virtual conferences so easy to attend and connecting with inspiring people over social media and coaching, I have found my bookshelves more full than they used to be, with many books that I would like to read and just haven’t gotten around to yet.

Part of it is that I get a little sidetracked with applying the ideas from the non-fiction books in my real life.  As a clinician offering real world advice to people on a wide variety of topics, I think it is important that I try things out before recommending them.  At first, I mostly used the library, but for a time in the pandemic, our local libraries were not permitting book loans, and I switched to amazon.  Eventually, it became clear that I needed some more guidelines.

So when I wanted books, I would look them up and put them in my save for later portion of my Amazon cart.  Every couple of weeks, I have a look at what’s in there and if I have a credible space in my schedule to actually read and enjoy the book, I may order it.  It’s a delightful exercise in delayed gratification although it does confuse me a little as these books “feel” like they are on a shelf in my home and I am not ashamed to say that I have ransacked my house looking for particular books.

Deciding which books to keep of the ones I want is an exercise for another day – no doubt the languishing books about having a minimalist lifestyle or home organization will help me out when I get to that point.

Braiding Sweetgrass

This book has been floating around in my awareness for some time.  It was not the first or second time I heard of it that I popped it into my electronic save for later cart, but it soon found its way there.  I never gave it the push to order though; something seeming higher priority always seemed more important at the time.

I was recently at Hollyhock Retreat Centre on beautiful Cortes Island, BC and was browsing the books available for sale in their gift shop.  My eye was drawn to a cream coloured cover with braided sweetgrass across the front.  I picked it up and read the Preface – an utterly enchanting and compelling invitation to join Dr. Kimmerer as she braids three stories together – “Indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together.”

These stories are in service of healing our broken relationship with the earth and her aim is to create a new story of a different relationship where people and land are good medicine for each other.

Braiding Sweetgrass was written by Robin Wall Kimmerer and published in 2013.  Go ahead, buy a copy.  I’ll wait here.

Truth and Reconciliation

If you are Canadian, you are familiar with the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee which was active from 2008 to 2015.  As with many settler children of the 70s raised in Alberta, I had only the vaguest idea about residential schools and the atrocities visited on indigenous children.  I was also training in medicine from 2009 to 2014 and often had patients whose trauma in being asked to report truthfully on what the Canadian people, government and churches had done and and allowed to be done to them was obvious to me.  As a learner and very unfamiliar with these issue, I tried to acknowledge the obvious racism and ongoing genocide occurring today in Canada while not asking people to give of themselves even more to teach me.

I had grown up pretty free range in the aspen poplar parkland of Alberta, roaming through the creek and river ravines, picking wild strawberries, saskatoons and raspberries in season, sledding down icy deer trails in the spring and waiting eagerly for the first poplar fluff, spruce tips and pussy willows of spring.  Suddenly, the weight of living on stolen land oppressed me.  I looked around the beautiful green, gold and earth places and tasted ashes in my mouth.  My free joy as a child was taken over the bodies of other children who were stolen from their families, abused, died in outrageous numbers from disease, neglect and abuse, and had their language and culture forcibly wrested from them.

The truth is that I have no home I can return to.  I could go live on other stolen land, I suppose, but the stolen land of Alberta will do as well as any other.  I find the truth hard to face, but I remind myself that there can be no reconciliation without truth.   And the truth is that I have a connection with the land around me as well, as every human should have.

New Stories

Robin Wall Kimmerer deftly weaves her own personal story and work as a mother, a botanist and a writer with indigenous ways of knowing and scientific knowledge.  She is deeply inspiring on a personal level.  Often, when thinking about big problems, like climate change, the aftermath of the residential school system, capitalism, we feel helpless in the face of such enormous problems.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

I don’t want to spoil the book for you, but Kimmerer’s dogged persistence both personally and scientifically and her work on projects large and small is inspiring in my own life.  She really does succeed in telling a new story, which allows us to a world in which humans and the natural world live a mutually beneficial life.  After all, we are part of that world and it is uniquely human hubris to see ourselves as apart.  The forces we have set in motion are indeed mighty, but just as climate change may be human caused, climate restoration can also be.  Everything has a balance and we are able to intentionally influence that balance.

Each one of us can move towards a healthier balance.  Whether it is the small daily choices, the work of advocacy, the persistence on personal projects, we can make a difference towards thinking of the world and human connections in a more mutually beneficial and nurturing way.

TL;DR

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer presents a new story which allows us to imagine humans and nature living mutually beneficial lives.  Read it as soon as possible and start participating in this new story.