Lessons From Nature For A New Politics Of Reciprocity
There is a powerful way of political reform to be drawn from the world around us ... if we will only pause to open our hearts
Photo by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
One of the most powerful – and beautiful – books I have read in the last decade is “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Wisdom of Plants” by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
A member of the Citizens Potawatomi Nation, in Oklahoma. Her tribe was indigenous to northeast Wisconsin, but during the genocide the nation was relentlessly forced westward three times to its present land in Oklahoma.
Kimmerer came to Wisconsin to earn a Masters and PdD in biology at the UW-Madison campus.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings together indigenous environmental insight and wisdom with western science in a way I have never seen before. As a poet, she braids the words to bridge the two worlds in a way as understandable as it is profound.
A word that rings like a chapel bell throughout the book is “reciprocity”. She uses it to bring awareness to the many subtle ways wildlife, plants and ecosystems stay in balance and mutual abundance. But it is also a warning to we humans to find balance and reciprocity with the natural world we depend upon.
For me, Kimmerer’s theme of reciprocity also rings true with what we need politically if we are to preserve – regain – our freedom as well as create greater accommodation with the natural world we lean upon for our very existence. Like the flower and the bee, we need a politics of mutual reciprocal relationship where, as progressive writer Jim Hightower notes: “We all do better, when we all do better.”
Recently, Kimmerer was interviewed on the New Yorker Radio Hour (8/25/23). It is a powerful and enlightening conversation. The interview begins at the 17-minute mark:
