The Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge is located between the cities of Buffalo and Rochester New York. Established in 1958 as a nesting, resting, feeding, and staging area for waterfowl, the Refuge also provides high-quality freshwater wetlands and maintains an orchard. The land was originally inhabited by the Haudenosaunee Nation of Indigenous people, which include the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora tribes.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Potawatomi Nation and grew up learning from her ancestors and has a deep appreciation of nature. Living on the Refuge, once Onondaga land, she knew early on that she wanted to study plants. She is a professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Whew! That is a long name). She is also the Director of Centers for Native Peoples and Environment.
I just finished reading Braiding Sweetgrass For Young Adults: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Kimmerer.
The opening chapter introduces the reader to think about all species on the earth as being equal to us, “not a domination of one.” The Potawatomi peoples refer to all living beings as bimaadizi aki, Earth life, and Earth Beings. “We use words to address the living world, just as we use for our family.”
She devotes a chapter to being a student of the Honorable Harvest which has some new concepts that I have never thought about. She points out that “The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down or even consistently spoken of as a whole–they are reinforced in small acts of daily life.”
Right before Covid, we remodeled our backyard and added three raised box gardens. The garden has been so rewarding for us and our grandkids. Having this garden for the last three years, I soaked up a lot of her ideas. I gravitate to Native American books and teachings as my great great grandmother Tatqua was Shuswap from British Columbia.
The book has so much to think about, but here are some of the ideas from the Honorable Harvest chapter.
Know The Ones Who Care For You, So You Might Care For Them.
She writes about a trapper, fisherman named Lionel who freezes fish guts from the fish he catches, and then in the winter, puts them out for martens. Martens only raise as many young as their food supply allows. Lionel says, “If you put them where nothing else can get them, those mothers will have some extra-good meals. That will help them to nurse their babies so more will survive, especially if we get a lot of snow or something.”
Never Take The First, Never Take the Last. Take Only What You Need.
“Cautionary stories of the consequences of taking too much are abundant in Native cultures, but it’s hard to recall a single one in English. Perhaps this helps to explain why we seem to be caught in a trap of overconsumption, which is as destructive to ourselves as to those we consume.”
Take Only That Which Is Given
“When you regard those nonhuman persons as kin, another set of harvesting regulations extends beyond bag limits and legal seasons.”
“Imagine a developer, eying open land for a shopping mall, had to ask the goldenrod, the meadowlands, and the monarch butterflies for permission to take their homeland. What if they had to respect the answer?”
“The dishonorable harvest has become a way of life…we take what doesn’t belong to us and destroy it beyond repair–Onondaga Lake, the Alberta tar sands, the rain forests of Malaysia, the list is endless.”
Before Robin picks something from her garden, she asks permission from the plant, and she thanks the plant.
Never Take More Than Half. Leave Some For Others. Harvest In A Way That Minimizes Harm.
“It’s not a list of don’ts as a list of do’s. Do eat food that is honorably harvested and celebrate every mouthful. Do use technologies that minimize harm; do take what is given.”
“Taking coal buried deep in the earth, for which we must inflict irreparable damage, violates every precept of the code. By no stretch of the imagination is coal ‘given’ to us. We have to wound the land and water to gouge it from Mother Earth. What if a coal company planning mountaintop removal in the ancient folds of the Appalachians were compelled by law to take only that which is given.”
What is one thing Robin would recommend to restore a relationship between land and people, her answer is “plant a garden.”
At the end of each chapter, she ends with a question, or like a call to action.
“What homemade ceremony or honoring could you create in your family, school, or workplace that cultivates a sense of respect and gratitude for the land and water where you live?”
“Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own.”
I am going to spend more time feeling gratitude for our earth and all species, trees, flowers, and bugs. How can I preserve and protect all life? Take less, recycle more, buy second hand. Keep raising a garden.
“Each of us comes from people who were once Indigenous. We can reclaim our connection to the cultures of gratitude that formed our old relationships with the living earth…gratitude plants the seed for abundance.”
What will you take away from this?
Happy gardening!
Leave a Reply