I was watching JEOPARDY Masters for Tuesday, May 27, probably on the following day, because I don’t watch television in real time. The clue above pops up as a $600 clue. This hit me because, on May 27, I attended a book review at the Albany Public Library of Braiding Sweetgrass, that very book by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Moreover, it was reviewed by Elaine Garrett, who had appeared on JEOPARDY in 2011. I had met her, likely at a Capital District JEOPARDY gathering.
Robin’s father, Robert Wall, was from the Potawatomi tribe in the Midwest. But he was shipped to the infamous Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School, which “opened in 1879 and operated for nearly 30 years with a mission to ‘kill the Indian’ to ‘save the Man.’ This philosophy meant administrators forced students to speak English, wear Anglo-American clothing, and act according to U.S. values and culture.”
He eventually moved to the Syracuse, NY, area and married Patricia. That’s where Robin was born in 1953. Robin attended the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, where she received a bachelor’s degree in botany in 1975. She later attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning her master’s degree in botany there in 1979, followed by her PhD in plant ecology in 1983.
Science or spirituality?
But Robin got some pushback. She was told to pick a lane, either science or natural methods, essentially. But she opted for both/and. As Jane Goodall wrote about Braiding Sweetgrass: “Robin Wall Kimmerer has written an extraordinary book, showing how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people. It is the way she captures beauty that I love the most—the images of giant cedars and wild strawberries, a forest in the rain, and the meadow of fragrant sweetgrass will stay with you long after you read the last page.”
One of Elaine Garrett’s slides described The Sacred and the Superfund about Nanabozho’s twin, who is “committed to imbalance. He had learned the interplay of creation and destruction and rocked it like a boat on a choppy sea to keep people out of balance. He found the arrogance of power could be used to unleash unlimited growth, an unrestrained cancerous sort of creation that would lead to destruction.” The sacred Onondaga Lake is one of nine polluted Superfund sites in the Syracuse area.
Elaine said reading the book changed her tremendously, emotionally and spiritually. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote of the book: “Robin Wall Kimmerer is a writer of rare grace. She writes about the natural world from a place of such abundant passion that one can never quite see the world in the same way after having seen it through Kimmerer’s eyes. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she takes us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise. She is a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.”
I need to add it to my never-ending pile of books.