Braiding Sweetgrass: Personification 2 key examples

Kimmerer makes it clear that while it is possible and even delightful to sit in a garden and listen to and imagine the sounds plants make as they grow, these sounds are not their language. Instead, they speak by producing food. Through the food, she claims, they teach us their wisdom.

Kimmerer does not mean that the food comes alive and makes words. Rather, she means that humans can learn about reciprocity, communalism, gratitude, responsibility, and the value of a person by harvesting the food plants produce and following the planting practices that produce the best crops. Corn, beans, and squash together can be a kind of super crop, providing complete nutrition. Indigenous women in North America have been planting these crops together for thousands of years to feed their communities. It is well-established wisdom that not only do the crops complement each other nutritionally, but also that they grow the healthiest and most sustainable food supply when they are planted together. They help each other to get the resources they each need to grow, and they protect one another from insects. Indigenous communities have been open to these lessons from the Three Sisters. Whereas the monocultures that now dominate the food industry are highly vulnerable to all kinds of environmental factors, gardens where the Three Sisters grow together tend to be hearty and reliable as sources of food.

By paying attention to the ways the Three Sisters produce the most and the best food, Kimmerer argues, humans can learn that cooperation allows us all to let our own strengths shine the brightest they can. Plants can be our teachers, and they can also be our collaborators if we let them speak to us.

Historically, this region was where salmon would come to spawn in droves. Indigenous communities harvested salmon, but they always took care to leave plenty behind so that the ecosystem could remain in balance. Over the years, colonization disrupted this balance. It was not only over-fishing that disrupted the salmon habitat. Colonists also failed to see the importance of salt marshes. Thinking that these marshes were "wasted" land, they dammed up the water to create more grazing pastures for their livestock. While the dams may have been good for the cows, they threatened many other species that were important to the ecosystem. Salmon and many other species suffered the consequences of the colonists' oversight.

It is difficult for humans to know how to reestablish an entire damaged ecosystem. After all, we are only one of many, many species involved in any ecosystem. Kimmerer describes ecologists' hope that simply removing the dams and dikes would set things right. She uses personification to capture the kind of "Hail Mary" attitude her fellow scientists had toward this intervention. Would the land, water, and insects really "remember" how they used to act? Science usually reserves this sort of self-consciousness for humans and other highly intelligent beings. Land, water, and insects don't usually fall under this umbrella, and the scientists weren't sure it would work.

To the scientists' surprise and delight, the land, water, and insects do remember how to act when the dikes and dams are removed. Kimmerer seems less surprised. While she, too, is a scientist, she also knows from her Indigenous background that nature is smarter than scientists often give it credit for. For Kimmerer, personification is less a literary device and more a way of acknowledging the real personhood of nature. When we treat nature with the kind of care and respect we reserve for those we consider "people," it responds in kind.