Braiding Sweetgrass: Logos 1 key example

This chapter focuses on the story of Franz Dolp, who dedicated much of his life to restoring the old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest. These forests, presided over by huge cedar trees, supported diverse life forms; all of these life forms were part of a balanced ecosystem in which every organism gave back as much as it took. By the time Franz was living in the area, the cedar trees had been largely cleared by the logging industry and to make way for land development. The result was an ecosystem that was dying. Franz set about to plant cedar trees and bring back balance to the land.

Kimmerer uses a simile to compare old-growth forests to "old-growth cultures." She means Indigenous cultures that thrived on the land before settler colonial culture. There is an American fantasy that settlers like Lewis and Clark were the first people to set foot on the wild western landscape and introduce the very idea of human culture to the place. This fantasy is simply not true. As Kimmerer insists in this passage, aboriginal people not only lived on the West Coast for centuries and centuries before European-American colonists arrived, but they also had highly developed cultures of their own. By comparing these cultures to the old-growth forests she has been describing, Kimmerer emphasizes that these cultures too were strong and self-sustaining. Like the old forests, they were built on a foundation of reciprocity: everyone gave back to their community as much as they took.

Kimmerer's comparison between human cultures and forests may seem poetic, but it is more than symbolic. Capitalism was the driving force behind the felling of cedar trees that wrought such havoc on the old-growth forests. The destruction of the old-growth forests directly impacted old-growth cultures as well by introducing scarcity of resources where once there was abundance. Reciprocity became far less sustainable once colonists forced old-growth cultures into competition for resources.

Kimmerer uses logos to argue that we should strive for more reciprocity, both with one another and with the land. Capitalism makes it seem as though we have no choice but to use every resource within our grasp and to compete with our neighbors for survival. Old-growth cultures are proof that there is a better way. These more sustainable cultures emphasized giving over taking, and they flourished with a kind of wealth that is not even possible under the brutal system of capitalism. Capitalism dictates that most people must lose so others can win, but Kimmerer asks us to look to older systems to imagine a world where we all win.