Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Gestures of Gratitude”

After reading Kimmerer’s ideas about gratitude in Braiding Sweetgrass, students demonstrate their understanding by creating a presentation applying Kimmerer’s ideas to a specific natural resource.

Choose a natural resource that is central to your own way of life: water, fossil fuels, rare earth elements, etc. Conduct research and take notes about the many uses to which humans put this resource and what the implications would be should this resource become scarce or disappear. Then, create a presentation that shows how Kimmerer’s ideas about gratitude might be applied to people’s use of this resource. What would it look like if we were all genuinely mindful of what a gift this resource is? How might our behavior change?

Research and Reflect

• Choose a natural resource to focus on, and research the uses of this resource and what it contributes to people’s comfort, safety, entertainment, and so on.
• Make a list of the ways human life would change if this resource became scarce or disappeared.
• Review the points made in Braiding Sweetgrass and make a list of Kimmerer’s ideas about how people can show gratitude for nature’s gifts.