Una trenza de hierba sagrada: Sabiduria indigena, conocimiento cientifico y la ensenanza de las plantas (Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants)

Escrito por Robin Wall Kimmerer

Narrado por Marco Lubián

Como botánico, Robin Wall Kimmerer ha sido entrenado para hacer preguntas de la naturaleza con las herramientas de la ciencia. Como miembro de la Nación Ciudadana Potawatomi, abraza la idea de que las plantas y los animales son nuestros maestros más antiguos. En Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer reúne estas dos lentes de conocimiento para llevarnos a "un viaje tan mítico como científico, tan sagrado como histórico, tan inteligente como sabio" (Elizabeth Gilbert).


Basándose en su vida como científica indígena, y como mujer, Kimmerer muestra cómo otros seres vivos —asters y goldenrod, fresas y calabazas, salamandras, algas y dulces— nos ofrecen regalos y lecciones, incluso si hemos olvidado cómo escuchar sus voces. En reflexiones que van desde la creación de Turtle Island hasta las fuerzas que amenazan su florecimiento hoy en día, gira hacia un argumento central: que el despertar de la conciencia ecológica requiere el reconocimiento y la celebración de nuestra relación recíproca con el resto del mundo vivo. Porque sólo cuando podamos escuchar los idiomas de otros seres seremos capaces de entender la generosidad de la tierra, y aprender a dar nuestros propios dones a cambio.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: BookaVivo
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 13 jul 2021
• ISBN: 9781638110729

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants as well as Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Kimmerer is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and was named to the Time list of the100 Most Influential People of 2025. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. --- Robin Wall Kimmerer es madre, científica, escritora, profesora condecorada, miembro de la Nación Potawatomi. Es autora del bestseller del New York Times Una trenza de hierba sagrada, así como de Reserva de musgo: una historia natural y cultural. Kimmerer es becaria MacArthur Fellow de 2022. Vive en Syracuse, Nueva York, donde es Profesora Distinguida de Biología Ambiental en SUNY y fundadora y directora del Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

Comentarios para Una trenza de hierba sagrada

[Familia Lectora · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Es uno de esos libros que te cambia la vida. Es largo y hay que ser paciente, pero vale mucho la pena.

[chris.wolak · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Amazing audiobook. I'm captivated by the way Wall Kimmerer weaves her own experiences with Native American teaching & traditions with academic botany. I've also dipped into the written book but prefer the audio because her voice is so warm and intimate.

[pmtracy · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I read a lot and I have eclectic tastes. This is now, hands down, my favorite book of all time across the board. Solid science next to truly beautiful story telling.

[kakadoo202 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Beautiful and thoughtful book

[ladycato · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A beautiful, meditative, and introspective read. I'm glad I finally had the chance to read it.

[cecilturtle · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I very much enjoyed this series of essays, and wished I had treated them as such, instead of trying to read the book cover to cover like a novel.
Wall Kimmerer shares her teachings, world vision and personal experiences, comparing and contrasting her Indigenous upbringing with her Western education and professional life. Although there are times where it can seem preachy, I did find that she struck a good balance between the assets of a Western education with the philosophy of her Indigenous roots, showing how the two enhance each other. As such I see this book as an invitation, rather than a reprimand. Certainly, it has taught me much about Indigenous culture and beliefs while showing me the beauty and plenty of the lands on which I walk.
A delightful and instructive read.

[thegalaxygirl · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Beautiful. Part memoir, part naturalist essay, part history, part ecological plea, Braiding Sweetgrass is a love song to the planet, the plants, and yes, the people who inhabit the Earth, who are yet so busy tearing down the house. I learned things, I felt things, and was carried away by the prose.

[tlcooper_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer dropped me gently but intensely into a deeper understanding of how plants and humans interact with one another. There were moments that surprisingly reminded me of my dad in ways that felt comforting. Kimmerer weaves science, culture, and history into an engrossing story of humans and nature that feels like coming home while also feeling like a lesson in living in cooperation with the planet as well as each other. Kimmerer creates an immersive environment whether in forests, marshes, gardens, ponds, or a home. Braiding Sweetgrass braids memoir, history, and modernity into a story that travels through time and place creating a sense of being oriented, then disoriented, and then oriented in a whole new way.

[froxgirl · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This renowned book, part biology text and part Native American lore and beliefs, succeeds on both levels. Deserving of all praise.

[spounds_3 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Such a good book. Living in reciprocity

[laphenix · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Such a beautiful perspective. I love the spiritualism, poetry, and science side-by-side, and would cherish the opportunity to spend time engaging with nature like this.

[catherine.cox · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I learned a lot from this book but... I don't always find her interpretation of the effects of migrations on people as true. Humans have been migrating for millennia. Our deep connections are with the earth not any small area.

[capewood · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

2024 book #20. 2013. The author is an indigenous woman and a college-level biology teacher. She interweaves stories from her culture about the natural world and her training as a scientist and how she tries to be respectful to nature as her culture has taught her. Good read. Read for my book club.

[treebeard_404 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This is a set of pieces that Kimmerer seems to have written over a period of 15-20 years. Individually they range from heart-tugging, to enraging, to wonder-inspiring, to thought-provoking. Collectively, they are all exceptionally well written. Once I re-read this (as I almost certainly will), I will change the rating to 5 stars.
[Audiobook note: Kimmerer, herself, narrates the book. This was an excellent decision on the part of the producers. Her delivery is every bit as good as her writing.]
(Second-reading note: still great. Maybe even better.)

[griffin_reads · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Braiding Sweetgrass is a beautiful and ever-important book on our duty as humans to take care of the Earth. Oscillating between non-fiction, memoir, and indigenous spirituality, Kimmerer shows the importance of gratitude to what nature gives us and our responsibility to take care of it.

Using sweetgrass as a metaphor for how the Earth used to be, how it is now, and where it can go from here helped show how we have a choice to make in how we treat the world around us and how this choice will affect the world we live in. I loved the incorporation of stories of her personal life and indigenous mythology, as it really seemed to bring it all together by making it more personal and real in how it read.

There are times when this book does seem to drag on a bit, but it feels intentional since she is writing primarily to an audience that doesn't often show down and appreciate, this book in a way forces you to do that. Additionally, it is filled with such gorgeous prose that it was still easy for me to be brought into what she was showing. There is a lot that can be learned from this book, and it is definitely one I will revisit again.

[zeborah · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Yes, as wonderful as I'd expected from reputation and from reading another of her books. Very hard to distill but the concept of responding to the gifts we've received from the world by giving it gifts in return is going to sit with me for a while as... not a new concept but the way she tells her stories is a new lens on the idea and how to make it relevant in daily life.

[mojomomma_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Kimmerer shows us a little bit about how indigenous people see the world and the plants around them.

[fancypengy · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

INCREDIBLE would recommend to anyone. second half was slightly less interesting to me but maybe that's bc i ended up rushing a little so i can return it to the library on time. i might pick it up again and read it a second time in the future :-) fantastic, informative, speaks to the heart and mind.

[itheodore-183884 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I love the voice behind this book. From the very beginning where Robin laments the sense of loss and helplessness in her graduate students as they face the human destruction of natural ecosystems, I immediately understood her purpose: to re-establish a nurturing relationship between people and land. Her words are lyrical, her science is solid, and her heart is both broken and pure. I felt so moved by the reverence of the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation (which she quotes in full) that we incorporated it into the harvest festival at our elementary school. The intersection of indigenous culture and environmental restoration is a profound lesson of the time in which we live, and Robin is its herald.

[kalliegrace · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

What an incredible book, so informative and reflective, and so important. Our relationship with our natural world is broken. But we are a part of it. There is so much to learn from indigenous people, but they need their land and resources to keep practicing their traditions. This is one I might actually recommend to everyone.

[library_lin · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Where to start with a book like this? Robin Wall Kimmerer has created a mesmerizing blend of folktale, indigenous spirituality, her love for the natural world, and the wonder of plants. As I’ve noted elsewhere, along with others, this book is undoubtedly not just an informative read. It’s an experience.

Kimmerer puts you in her shoes, helping you see the marvels and the gifts that nature offers us at every turn. And when you begin to understand the gratitude you owe the natural world, she points out the damage our pompous attitudes and actions have inflicted on it.

She doesn’t offer a list of things we can do to make things right. After trying for years to give back as much or more than she takes, she admits living in the modern world makes it challenging to walk lightly. But she offers inspiring examples of giving back through our conscious attention and gratitude.

If you’re looking for lists of plants and recipes for medicines and tonics, you’ll be disappointed in this book. While Kimmerer talks about using plants for many things, this book is much deeper than that. We are being stalked by a monster of our own creation, which she equates with her people’s stories of the Wendigo. And while this may sound quaint, it’s not. The Wendigo is real, and it may do us in yet.

I give this book five stars. Like all good books, it gets under your skin. After reading it, you can’t see the world the same way again. This book is a gift. But it’s also a warning. If only everyone could see the world through her eyes for a while. In reading this book, you can.

[gypsysmom_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This was my book club's choice for April of 2023. And really I can't think of a more appropriate book to read as spring finally comes to the Northern Hemisphere. Of course, I don't think there could be a bad time to read this book. In any season the lessons that Dr. Kimmerer passed on would be useful.

Robin Wall Kimmerer has a Ph. D. in botany and teaches at Syracuse University where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is also a mother and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She brings all these facets to her writing in this book and thus her book is imbued with spirituality and wisdom and passion. Plants have been important in Kimmerer's life since she was a young girl picking wild strawberries in the field next to her family home. She uses Sweetgrass, that tall native grass that is picked and dried and braided to be used in ceremonies, as a metaphor for how humans should interact with the natural world. But there are other plants that are important enough to rate a chapter: pecans, maple trees, witch hazel, corn, beans and squash (known collectively as the Three Sisters), lichens. Along the way she tells us native stories and prophecies so that settlers such as myself can understand Indigenous beliefs. One of the most moving chapters for me was the one called Allegiance to Gratitude. Unlike most schoolchildren in the US, children in the Onondaga school near where Kimmerer lives recite the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. It speaks of all the natural world and sends greetings and thanks to them. In the Indigenous beliefs animals and plants and even non-animate beings are people as important as humans. If you view them this way then surely you would take care of them.

This book was borrowed from my public library but I am going to buy my own copy because I can see this will be a book to read again and again. And if I'm talking to people about books I know this will be one I will mention. It will certainly be on my top reads list for 2023

[bangerlm · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The audio version of this book is read by the author and it is fabulous. This book is a little of everything: ecology, history, anthropology, economics, botany, memoir, etc and full of so many thought provoking ideas. I especially liked her premise that humans aren't inherently bad for the natural world and we too can act in positive symbiosis with nature to feed and clothe ourselves. I will probably come back to this one again in the future.

[streamsong_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

When author Robin Wall Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, began her University studies in botany, she found something missing. There were no mentions of the beauty of plants or of the obligations that we owe to them as they give their lives and gifts to us. Instead of strictly following the scientific knowledge of her professors, she blended scientific facts with her traditional views and in the words of one reviewer “captures the true reverence between Native Americans and the earth, the relationship we need to survive.”

Your eyes will be opened to the beauty of the plant nations around us as well as their everlasting giving to humans and what the humans are privileged to give back to them.

Now I see facebooks posts of baskets of harvested morel mushrooms and huckleberries and can’t but object silently within: Did you leave the first and the last? Did you take them all?

[steve02476 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

There’s some good writing here, but it’s just not a book for the likes of me. Native American religious beliefs may be a welcome change to those that have grown up (and are disenchanted with) with religions from the Middle East and Europe - but either way, I guess I’m not convinced. Good to respect traditional religions and learn about them, but I’m just not a spiritual person.

The author clearly knows science and she talks about it a little bit, but her heart is clearly much more aligned with religious traditions. That’s fine, but it’s not my cup of tea.

[bodagirl · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

Part memoir, part nature writing, this book was very meditative. The pace was slow and the essays were easy to put down and pick back up. I loved learning about Native traditions and view of nature. There are definitely some lessons to incorporate into my life.

[wiserwisegirl · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I recommend the audio book. Robin Wall Kimmerer uses her soothing voice to share her Pottawatomie and Scientific wisdom. I did not know what I did not know about my plant sisters. I have learned to listen for their language and have begun receiving great gifts of blessing from my older sisters and brothers of creation.

[elenchus_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

We must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. [55, quoting Thomas Berry]

This initial reading I was deliberately sensitive to affinities for Batesonian cybernetics: there were multiple points of resonance, and though RWK never mentioned Bateson by name, I would be surprised were she not familiar with his ideas. Certainly her blending of science and sacred knowledge is sympathetic; as is her appreciation of metaphor as epistemological project. See the essay "Asters and Goldenrod", and RWK's stated intent: "I wanted to learn about why aster and goldenrod looked so beautiful together", asking "what is the source of this pattern?" [37-39]. Nevertheless a second reading could benefit from shifting my focus, allowing me to pick up other points of emphasis, different angles of insight.

It is an odd dichotomy we have set for ourselves, between loving people and loving land. We know that loving a person has agency and power -- we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart. [241]

RWK raises the principles of Original Instructions, an indigenous understanding of how living things should live on Earth; of the Onandaga Thanksgiving Address [101]; of the gardening style "Three Sisters" [124]; of the Honorable Harvest [170]; of Old Growth Cultures, living alongside old growth forests [270].

Braiding Sweetgrass turns out to be one of those books I take months to read, but never give up on, and really never "tune out" from. I did not anticipate this, given what I knew of it before reading, but my unhurried passage through the various essays fits both the substance and the outlook.

I fear that a world made of gifts cannot coexist with a world made of commodities. [364]

//

A handsome Milkweed Edition: hardbound, with a muted design both in palette and selected line drawings.

[jennybeast · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Really spectacular— I appreciated the melding of traditional beliefs and current botany. It really illustrates for me how the two complement each other, and I am grateful that Kimmerer is willing to share her thoughts. I also really deeply appreciated that the book is so hopeful — it shows a way forward into healing for both culture and planet, if only we are willing to listen and act. I also adore the perspective that humans are a necessary part of the ecosystem and that we can give back to plants. Lots to think on in here.

[plancultivatecreate · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

A beautifully written account of ecology, economy, and heart braided and interweaving the macro and micro. Listened to the author reading the book, and truly enjoyed the experience.