yannai book club #2: braiding sweetgrass

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a book that explores the significance of plants and botany in both Indigenous and Western traditions. Kimmerer's stories about reuniting with her people's cultural traditions and experiences with plants inspire a new perspective on the natural world. The book discusses the reciprocal relationships between people and the environment and the interconnectedness of all living things. Braiding Sweetgrass is an incredibly moving and thought-provoking book that will stay with you long after reading it. Kimmerer's writing is both poetic and powerful, and her message is one that everyone needs to hear. Below we have added our favourite passages from the book that will help us navigate the business world as Yannai:

• "What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts."

• "Cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or not, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream's gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human's education is to know those duties and how to perform them."

• "An economy that grants person-hood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings: this is a Windigo Economy."

• "Plants were here first and have had a long time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground and hold the earth in place. Plants know how to make food from light and water. Not only do they feed themselves, but they make enough to sustain the lives of all the rest of us. Plants are providers for the rest of the community and exemplify the virtue of generosity, always offering food. What if Western Scientists saw plants as their teachers rather than their subjects? What if they told stories with that lens?"

• "The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others. Being among the sisters provides a visible manifestation of what a community can become when its members understand and share their gifts."

• "Properly managed, the commons approach maintains abundance, not scarcity. These contemporary economic alternatives strongly echo the Indigenous worldview in which the earth exists not as private property, but as a commons, to be tended with respect and reciprocity for the benefit of all."

• "Yet while city folks may be separated from the sources of what they consume, they can exercise reciprocity through how they spend their money. While the digging of the leeks and the digging of the coal may be too far removed to see, we consumers have a potent tool of reciprocity right in our pockets. We can use our dollars as the indirect currency of reciprocity."

We highly recommend reading Braiding Sweetgrass and allowing yourself to view the world around you with a different perspective and have a deeper understanding of your place in it.

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