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Robin Wall Kimmerer
Skywoman is an important figure in the Haudenosaunee creation myth, and Braiding Sweetgrass opens with her story. In this tale, Skywoman falls from her home the Skyworld to earth, where she is caught by a flock of geese and then helped by the other animals, who work with her to create a new land known as Turtle Island (as it is first created on the back of a turtle). There Skywoman dances the land into being, plants seeds and creates a garden, and later gives birth to a daughter. Kimmerer uses Skywoman’s story to illustrate how a culture’s mythology can shape their relationship to the land itself. She compares Skywoman to Eve from Judeo-Christian mythology: Skywoman is welcomed by the animals and plants a garden to be a home for her future children, while Eve is exiled from her own garden and told to subdue the harsh world beyond Eden. In contrast to Eve’s story, then, the myth of Skywoman suggests that human beings belong to this land and should celebrate its gifts while also treating it with respect, gratitude, and humility.
Skywoman Quotes in Braiding Sweetgrass
The Braiding Sweetgrass quotes below are all either spoken by Skywoman or refer to Skywoman . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.
And then they met—the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve—and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Braiding Sweetgrass LitChart as a printable PDF.
Skywoman Quotes in Braiding Sweetgrass
The Braiding Sweetgrass quotes below are all either spoken by Skywoman or refer to Skywoman . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.
And then they met—the offspring of Skywoman and the children of Eve—and the land around us bears the scars of that meeting, the echoes of our stories.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
