Braiding Sweetgrass

Like many Native Americans, the author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, has experienced a clash of cultures. Modern America and her family’s tribe were – and, to a certain extent, continue to be – at utter odds.

Kimmerer is Potawatomi, which, like many other Native American tribes during the nineteenth century, suffered through terrible conditions and harmful government policies as the United States expanded. Many tribe members suffered tragic deaths as they were forced on deadly marches to relocate to new lands.

Kimmerer’s grandmother was one of the Potawatomi who was given citizenship and legal protections as a landowner in the state of Oklahoma.

Kimmerer spent a good deal of time with her grandmother, and she even attended Potawatomi gatherings. But, for the majority of her childhood, she lived in upstate New York. As she grew up, the cultural differences between the Potawatomi and modern American society became very clear.

One significant difference was how people treated nature, especially the food it provides. Often Kimmerer would go out to a nearby field and pick wild strawberries after school. The author sees these kinds of offerings as the world’s gift economy – things that are given to us without the expectation of any payment in return.

But it is part of Potawatomi culture to show gratitude for gifts like this by offering reciprocation.

For strawberries, this means going back to the fields after berry season ends to find seedlings and prepare new plots of land to plant for more to grow.

With this form of reciprocation, humans form a mutually beneficial relationship with nature that’s not unlike a bond between two people: They take care of each other not because they have to but out of love.

However, she found out first-hand that modern America doesn’t practice the gift economy.

Growing up, Kimmerer had a small job picking strawberries at a local farm where the owner strictly prohibited the eating of any strawberries without paying for them. So if she wanted to enjoy any of the farm’s fresh strawberries she would have to return most of her money right back to where it came from.