SAL/On Air Podcast

Robin Wall Kimmerer

In our hectically paced media landscape, the tale of Robin Wall Kimmerer and her beloved book Braiding Sweetgrass is a story of human miracle. First published in 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass joined the best seller list in 2020, having risen into its readers hands person by person, gift by gift, whisper by yell. The book’s subtitle “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants” struck a chord with our society in 2020 as we re-examined how we want to relate and began to seek knowledge the way roots break through concrete.

Kimmerer joined SAL in 2024 to celebrate the publication of The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World and to share the mindset of what Kimmerer calls “gift thinking” with you. “To name the world as gift,” she writes in the book, “is to feel your membership in the web of reciprocity. It makes you happy—and it makes you accountable.” Or, a gift creates not only gratefulness but the desire, the need, to continuing the giving.