Tag: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Replied to Reading by Tracy DurnellTracy Durnell (tracydurnell.com)

Braiding Sweetgrass
by Robin Kimmerer
(non-fiction, philosophy)
Started July 2022
32% – stuck on a boring chapter

Seeing that you’ve stalled on Braiding Sweetgrass (one of my favorites), if you’ll allow me, I’ll make a recommendation that worked out incredibly well for me when I read it.

I came to it at a time when I was doing a lot of reading on Indigenous ways of knowing and the idea of orality. As a result, in addition to buying a physical copy, I got an audiobook version from the library. My first reading was actually a listening. There was something more intriguing, poetic, and authentic about hearing it. Listening also give more power to her voice as a storyteller. Once I’d finished, I revisited some of my favorite parts to re-read and make some notes.

The book also has some benefit in that while it is somewhat linear, the chapters could be read out of order or even skipped without destroying the whole. 

I hope you ultimately find it as beautiful as I did. 

 

Watched Look up! There's an emu in the sky | Duane Hamacher at TEDxNorthernSydneyInstitute by Dr. Duane Hamacher from TEDx Talks | YouTube

A trained astrophysicist, Dr Duane Hamacher is a lecturer in the Nura Gili Indigenous Centre at the University of New South Wales. After studying planets orbiting other stars for two years, his interest in the crossroads of science and culture was too great and he decided to complete a PhD in Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University. He researches in how navigating the boundaries between Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science can show how these ways of understanding the natural world are beneficial to both.

For those who appreciated Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and want to delve further into Indigenous science, I’m recommending Duane Hamacher and co-authors’ book The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars (Allen & Unwin, 2022). This video seems to be a pretty solid, short primer of what to expect.

I’m personally interested in reading/learning about these areas above and beyond the primary education levels which are presented here.