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Sweetgrass Stories: Listening for Animate Land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2018

Warren Cariou
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Abstract

This article examines Indigenous stories that reveal how the land communicates to humans through medicinal plants. The intention is to address a blind spot in new materialist theory, which Zoe Todd has criticized for its lack of attention to Indigenous forms and practices of relational materialism. The main focus of this essay is Indigenous narratives about the sacred plant sweetgrass (known as (wihkaskwa in Cree; wiingaashk in Anishinaabemowin). Reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s meditation Braiding Sweetgrass and Drew Hayden Taylor’s novel Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, and watching Jessie Short’s 2016 film Sweet Night, I argue that these artists portray sweetgrass as an intermediary between humans and the land, strengthening Indigenous cultural sovereignty and deepening human relationships by reminding people of their shared embodiment and their shared spiritual-territorial connection. The plant is revealed in these works as a teacher, operating through its scent, texture, and literal rootedness to teach humans about their own connectedness to particular living places.

By working at the level of sensation rather than linguistic signification, the sweetgrass is also shown to have an immediate and embodied effect upon the characters in these works. In particular, it offers itself as a gift, and as a conduit of love. I argue that the repeated image of the sweetgrass braid in these works is not exactly a metaphor, but is instead a profound conjoining of the earth and the human body, both submitted to the care of human hands. To braid the earth’s fragrant hair is to treat it in the most intimate way, as a family member or a beloved. It is this human activity of braiding that clarifies the kinship aspect of sweetgrass, showing us that it is not a thing, but a relation. The reciprocity of this relationship shows an Indigenous ethic of engagement with the living material world.

Keywords

Indigenousmedicineplantcommunicationmaterialitykinshiprelationalityecologyceremony
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 338 - 352
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 In my discussion of new materialist inquiry here, I am thinking in particular of the work of Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, Mel Y. Chen, and Timothy Morton, all of whom have engaged with questions of animacy and agency in relation to the natural world. I have been influenced by these thinkers, but I have also been frustrated by their lack of attention to Indigenous philosophies that are deeply relevant to the issues they are examining.

2 Todd, Zoe, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take on the Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word for Colonialism,” Journal of Historical Sociology 29.1 (2015): 4–22 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 8.

4 Ibid., 18.

5 One example of contemporary Indigenous scholarship that begins with this starting point is Kim Tallbear’s work on the material and spiritual significance of pipestone, the stone that is traditionally used in the creation of ceremonial pipes in Dakota and Lakota cultures. Tallbear states that pipestone is “sometimes spoken of as a relative.” See Tallbear, Kim, “An Indigenous Reflection on Working between the Human/Not Human,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21. 2–3 (2015): 233 Google Scholar. Todd also lists numerous other Indigenous scholars whose work addresses or builds from this understanding of the land as animate and even as kin to humans, including Dwayne Donald, John Borrows, Audra Simpson, Glen Coulthard, Leanne Simpson, and Eve Tuck.

6 Armstrong, Jeannette, “Land Speaking, ” Speaking for the Generations, ed. Simon Ortiz (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 175 Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 175–76.

8 Geniusz, Mary Siisip, Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask, ed. Wendy Makoons Geniusz (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

9 Young, David, Rogers, Robert, and Willier, Russell, A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle: Revelations of Indigenous Wisdom—Healing Plants, Practices, and Stories (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 2018), 48 Google Scholar.

10 Wall Kimmerer, Robin, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed, 2015)Google Scholar.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 4.

13 Ibid., 5.

14 Ibid., 5.

15 Ibid., 5.

16 Ibid., 9.

17 Ibid., 156.

18 Ibid., 19.

19 Ibid., 19.

20 She may also be addressing her own earlier attitudes, thinking back to the time when she was “an enthusiastic young PhD, colonized by the arrogance of science” (ibid., 222).

21 Ibid., 24.

22 Ibid., 23.

23 Ibid., 26.

24 Georges Bataille’s distinction between restricted and general economies in The Accursed Share, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1991) is relevant here. Bataille’s interest in Potlatch, and indeed the general fascination with Indigenous gift-cultures in Western anthropology and theory, is one important area where there has been productive interchange between the two distinct worldviews. The basis of this congruency is bound in a common search for alternatives to capitalist modes of relation, as Kimmerer’s work also shows.

25 Ibid., 27.

26 Ibid., 27.

27 Ibid., 158.

28 Ibid., 159.

29 Ibid., 162.

30 Ibid., 5.

31 “Sweet Night,” director Jessie Short, video [duration 6:53] (Winnipeg Film Group, 2016).

32 Hayden Taylor, Drew, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass (Toronto, Canada: Vintage, 2010)Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., 74.

34 Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 21.

35 Hayden Taylor, Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, 76.

36 Ibid., 76. As is the case with the anglicized names of many Indigenous cultures, there are several spellings of Anishinaabe. I have preserved Hayden Taylor’s original spelling here.

37 Ibid., 337.

38 Ibid., 337.

39 Ibid., 76.

40 Ibid., 212. Kimmerer’s characterization of sweetgrass offering “healing for all who need it” is also especially relevant for Indigenous people suffering from the traumas of colonization. There is much more to be said about the healing value of deeply sensing the land, especially within Indigenous communities where the violence of colonization is still an ongoing process and where there is an urgent need for decolonial forms of healing. Such work is beyond the scope of this article, but I hope that Indigenous health research and health programming can benefit from the teachings and the stories I have begun to engage with here.