Braiding Sweetgrass: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Robin is now on the West Coast, a part of the country where she has never been before. Feeling lonely in this unfamiliar place, she thinks about the story of Skywoman, remembering that Skywoman was herself an immigrant to Turtle Island. Further considering the Creation story, Robin remembers that humans were the last beings to be created, after all other life; this is why they’re called the youngest siblings of creation. Nanabozho, the first man to be created, was part human, part spirit, and is an important teaching figure in Anishinaabe culture.

Kimmerer imagines how Nanabozho felt upon first arriving in his new home of Turtle Island. She herself felt strange here in this new environment of the West Coast, and for comfort she sought out her “Sitka Spruce grandmother.” Robin makes an offering and sits down among her roots, waiting for the tree to introduce her to the “neighbors” and make her feel welcomed and at home. The story then returns to Nanabozho: like Skywoman, Nanabozho was an immigrant, recognizing that his new home wasn’t the “new world,” but something already old and existing in balance long before his arrival.

When Nanabozho was created, the Creator gave him the Original Instructions as rules to live by. One of the first of these instructions was to walk through the world in a way so “that each step is a greeting to Mother Earth.” While the Original Instructions were given in ancient times, many Indigenous cultures see time as circular rather than linear, so Nanabozho’s story is both ancient history and a prophecy of what’s to come. Just as Nanabozho tried to become indigenous to his new home, so we, “Second Man,” should still try to walk in his footsteps towards the same goal.

Kimmerer briefly comments on how many Native elders are still puzzled by the European colonizers, even centuries after their arrival, and try to diagnose what is wrong with them as a culture. She wonders if Americans can learn to treat their country as a real home, a place to stay in and love, rather than a temporary conquest.

Having been instructed to walk across the earth, Nanabozho first goes East, towards the rising sun and in the traditional direction of knowledge. There he learns to use tobacco and receives the knowledge that “Mother Earth is our wisest teacher.” Next the Creator instructs Nanabozho to learn the names of all other beings. Observing and listening to his neighbors on earth, Nanabozho is able to discern their true names, and he doesn’t feel lonely anymore.

Returning to her exploration of her own new West Coast environment, Robin tries to turn off her “science mind” and turn on her “Nanabozho mind,” greeting the unfamiliar species around her with a beginner’s eye and trying to find their true names rather than their Latin names. Kimmerer imagines the “species loneliness” of not knowing the names or language of one’s neighbors, and says that this is what has been happening to human beings on earth—we have lost our connection to and relationship with the rest of Creation.

Kimmerer imagines Nanabozho walking across the land alongside Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised our current scientific system for naming organisms. In her imagination Linnaeus and Nanabozho talk together about a common language shared by all beings, with Linnaeus lamenting that such a language has been lost for his people, so that he has to translate everything into Latin instead. The two men share their own unique gifts with each other and find companionship together.

Nanabozho then goes South to the land of birth and growth. There he learns from cedar, the sacred plant of the South, as well as from his other older siblings, the animals and plants. The lessons that Nanabozho learns during this time about gathering food, paying respect to the earth, and constructing tools become the “mythic roots of Native science, medicine, architecture, agriculture, and ecological knowledge.” Returning to the cyclical nature of time, Kimmerer says that in many ways our modern technology is only now circling back to catch up with Native wisdom, particular in “looking to nature for models of design.”

Nanabozho continues wandering the earth in all four directions, observing the plants and animals and learning to be quiet and respectful, to ask permission before entering another’s territory, and to be grateful for the gifts that other beings offer to him. He also learns that “to carry a gift is also to carry a responsibility.”

Robin now stands on a cliff by the sea, observing the landscape and imagining how things would be different if America’s colonizers had learned the same lessons that Nanabozho did—the land might still be plentiful, and she might be speaking the Potawatomi language. It’s too heartbreaking for her to think about this too much, however. Against such a history of tragedy it feels unfair to invite “settler society” to become Indigenous, she thinks, as they will likely just “take what little is left.” At the same time, Kimmerer remembers that the settlers have much to grieve for in today’s world as well—“they can’t drink the water either.”

Nanabozho goes North to learn about medicine, and there he receives a healing braid of sweetgrass which he carries with him afterward. To the West he sees great fires and is frightened, but the Firekeeper teaches Nanabozho about the element’s internal balance, how it both destroys and nurtures. Recognizing this duality, Nanabozho realizes that he himself has a twin who is dedicated to causing imbalance. Because of this, he has the responsibility to be humble and wise in order to offset his twin’s pride.

Sitting again under the Sitka Spruce “grandmother,” Robin recognizes that she is a stranger here on the West Coast, but she also feels welcomed by the tree. She continues to think about if immigrants can ever become Indigenous, and she decides that they cannot. But, she asks herself and the reader, how will they ever enter into a relationship of reciprocity with the land if they don’t feel native to it? Robin continues listening to the sounds of the trees around her, and then gets up and starts to walk.

As she walks along a trail, Robin notices a familiar plant: the common plantain, also known as White Man’s Footstep. This plant was first brought over with the first European colonizers, so Native people didn’t trust it at first. Over time, however, they recognized and accepted its gifts and even incorporated it into their medicine. The plant is still not indigenous to Turtle Island, Kimmerer says, but it has been a good neighbor for 500 years and is now a true member of the plant community here. In contrast, there are many foreign plant species that are invasive and destructive, like kudzu or cheat grass. Kimmerer repeats that Plantain is not Indigenous, but she says that it has become “naturalized”: the same legal term used for foreign-born people who become U.S. citizens.

Kimmerer believes that the task of settler society, of Second Man, is to follow the example of Plantain rather than Kudzu: to become naturalized and learn to treat this land as our home, a place of gifts and responsibilities, a place to live as if our lives depend on it. Returning to the image of time as a circle, Kimmerer imagines White Man’s Footstep following in Nanabozho’s footsteps, lining a path along which we could walk so “that each step is a greeting to Mother Earth.”