48 pages • 1 hour read
Robin Wall KimmererBraiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
Nonfiction | Book | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Tending Sweetgrass”
Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary: “Maple Sugar Moon”
According to Anishinaabe legend, maple sap was made thin and watery by Nanabozho, the Original Man. One day Nanabozho found a village where the people had become lazy. Instead of harvesting and storing the Earth’s gifts, they sat under the maple trees with their mouths open, drinking the thick syrup the maples provided. Nanabozho poured river water into the trees, turning the syrup into thin, watery sap to remind the people of their responsibility. Today, 40 gallons of sap are needed to make one gallon of maple syrup.
Maples begin to produce sap in late winter when light-measuring sensors on the tree’s sprouting buds signal the first thaw. After collection, the sap becomes syrup through a long process of boiling. In the past, Indigenous people created syrup by collecting sap into long troughs made from tree trunks. The liquid froze overnight, and in the morning the people would remove the layer of ice from a more concentrated sugar solution. After several rounds, only syrup remained. Tradition holds that the people learned this method from squirrels, who chew bark to release sap, then eat the sweet crust that remains after the sap ices over.
The sugars that become maple sap originate in the roots of the tree. During sap production, these sugars travel through a complex tissue called the xylem. This is the only time of the year sugars move through the xylem, and the increase in sugars causes buds to grow into branches and leaves. In the summer, the leaves return the favor by sending energy back into the roots, where it is stored for winter.
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary: “Witch Hazel”
This chapter is told from the perspective of Kimmerer’s daughter, Larkin. Larkin first met her neighbor Hazel Barnett when she was five years old. She remembers Hazel being the oldest woman she had ever seen. At the time, Larkin had never met anyone named Hazel but was familiar with the plant witch hazel. She wondered if this Hazel was the witch the plant was named after.
Hazel was an avid gardener, and she quickly struck up a friendship with Larkin’s mother. Hazel had come to live with her disabled son Sam when he had a heart attack on Christmas Eve and had never left. One Sunday, Larkin and her mother drove Hazel back to her home, which she had never been able to return to. When they entered the house, it was exactly as it had been on Christmas Eve when they got the call from the hospital, dinner still on the table. A wild witch hazel bush was growing in the backyard. Hazel described how she used to make medicine from the bush for all her neighbors. She said the woods have medicine for every kind of hurt.
Larkin and her mother drove Hazel back to her home many times throughout their friendship. One Christmas, they cleaned out Hazel’s home and arranged a surprise Christmas party for Hazel’s family and their friends. When Larkin’s family moved a few years later, Hazel gifted them some antique ornaments from her tree. Larkin and her mother remember Hazel fondly as a kind of medicine, whose friendship was healing for their souls.
Part 3, Chapter 10 Summary: “Allegiance to Gratitude”
Kimmerer compares the American Pledge of Allegiance to the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. Across the country, many students begin their day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in class. At the Onondaga Nation School, near Kimmerer’s home in Syracuse, students recite the Thanksgiving Address, also known as the Words That Come Before All Else. The Thanksgiving Address calls for people to come together in thanks for the Earth and all its gifts: waters filled with aquatic life, plants and animals of all kinds, the sun, moon, and stars. The Thanksgiving Address often contains a call-and-response section, where listeners affirm their collective thanks for the gifts being described.
Kimmerer argues that the recitation of the Thanksgiving Address at the Onondaga Nation School is an act of political and cultural sovereignty. Because the school is on sovereign Onondaga territory, it lies outside of the jurisdiction of the United States government. Rather than enforcing loyalty to a nation that does not serve them, the school encourages students to pledge their gratitude towards the Earth and its many gifts.
Because it highlights the individual gifts and responsibilities of all beings on Earth, the Thanksgiving Address also acts as a lesson in Indigenous ecology. Kimmerer argues that naming and devoting attention to individuals within the Earth’s ecosystem can be a meditative process, reconnecting listeners to their relationship with the Earth. The call-and-response nature of the Address unites the listener and speaker, bringing a sense of unity that carries into the conversations that follow. Kimmerer challenges readers to use the Thanksgiving Address to bring this sense of gratitude and unity to their own communities.
Part 3 Analysis
As its title suggests, the third section of Braiding Sweetgrass describes the importance of intentionally devoting time and attention to relationships with other living beings. For Kimmerer, gratitude is at the center of this relationship maintenance: gratitude for the gifts of others, for our unique circumstances, and for life itself. The first two chapters of this section describe Kimmerer’s attempts to collaborate and build community with her neighbors, plants, and humans alike. The final chapter offers a close reading of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, a formal statement of The Interconnectedness of Life on Earth. The chapters in this section highlight the importance of tending to relationships with other beings and expressing gratitude for those relationships.
“Maple Sugar Moon” once again demonstrates The Importance of Storytelling in Indigenous Communities by setting up its argument about reframing our relationship with the plants we rely on for sustenance through a traditional Anishinaabe story. The Original Man Nanabozho finds a village full of “people lying beneath maple trees with their mouths wide open, catching the thick, sweet syrup of the trees” (67). Angered that the people of this village “became lazy and took for granted the gifts of the Creator” (67), Nanabozho filled the maple trees with water, transforming the thick syrup into a thin liquid. Kimmerer describes this transformation as a reminder “both of possibility and responsibility” (67): the sap can only become syrup again through the sustained work of humans. In the pages that follow, Kimmerer details her own efforts to transform sap from the trees near her home into syrup. She describes the process as a collaboration between humans and maples: “we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness” (74). This chapter frames the transformation from sap to syrup as a sacred act of intentional collaboration, rather than the mere production of a commodity. This framing refocuses the reader’s attention away from the resource itself (syrup) toward the ongoing relationship between Kimmerer and the maple grove in which she lives. Using the story of Nanabozho to introduce this concept helps persuade the reader to accept Kimmerer’s framing, but also allows Kimmerer to weave together Indigenous and individual ways of knowing the world.
The second chapter in this section, “Witch Hazel,” describes Kimmerer’s relationship with her neighbor Hazel Barnett through the eyes of Kimmerer’s daughter, Larkin. Although Hazel and her disabled son Sam often struggled to support themselves, they were generous neighbors, bringing gifts of catfish and wild blackberries. Sam and Hazel’s generosity is a reflection of a worldview shaped by gratitude. As Sam tells Kimmerer, “the Lord done made these things for us to share” (76). Hazel and Sam’s generosity is an example of the attention to community and relationships Kimmerer advocates earlier in the book, as well as another example of the interconnectedness of life on Earth. In the spirit of reciprocity, Larkin and Kimmerer care for Hazel by driving her to her home, which she has not returned to since coming to care for Sam. This act of care reenergizes Hazel, whose “face gleamed like a candle when she stepped into her ‘home sweet home’” (81). Larkin describes her mother’s relationship with Hazel as “a balm for loneliness and a strengthening tea for the pain of longing” (82). The story of Hazel and Kimmerer’s friendship is presented as an example of the kind of intentional relationships that build healthy communities.
