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  • Writer's pictureHardcover Hotties
    • Dec 9, 2022
    • 3 min read

November BOTM Meeting Recap

Discussion topics, relevant themes & media recommendations to wrap up (or kickstart) your reading of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass!

We are thankful to our Mother the Earth, for she gives us everything that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she still continues to care for us, just as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send thanksgiving, love, and respect. Now our minds are one. (Allegiance to Gratitude, 108)

Thank you to everyone who attended this month’s meeting in-person and online, to those of you who read along with us remotely and to the knowledgeable folks of Ohio State’s Student Farm for providing a fun seeding activity and a beautiful space for discussion. Robin Wall Kimmerer and her words in Braiding Sweetgrass are a gift – melding conventional Western sciences with Indigenous wisdom, offering important perspectives on our philosophies of naturalism and social ecology, and forcing its readers to reflect on their own relationship to the environment, indigeneity and advocacy.


Feel free to use this meeting recap if you wanted a refresher on some of the exciting things that we discusses, or if you are planning on starting to read Braiding Sweetgrass. You'll find below a summary of the discussion topics and relevant themes that were brought up during discussion, as well as relevant media recommendations.

 

Discussion Topics & Relevant Themes

Gift Economies

  • In shifting away from the transactional nature of relationships, how can we cultivate Gift Economies?

  • What does it mean to receive gratefully?

  • The Potawatomi language does not have a word for “please.”

  • Gratitude as a gift

  • What responsibilities come with gift-giving & gift-receiving?

  • “A gift comes to you through no action of your own, free, having moved toward you without your beckoning. It is not a reward; you cannot earn it, or call it to you, or even deserve it. And yet it appears. Your only role is to be open-eyed and present. Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery -- as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.” (The Gift of Strawberries, 23-24)

The Grammar of Animacy
Challenging Heuristics for Environmentalism & Environmental Activism

  • The healing power of nature should be accessible and welcoming.

  • What are the widely accessible ways that one can experience the natural world?

  • The commodification of environmentalism

  • Classism & racism in climate justice communities

  • Where do many of our environmental practices come from? In what ways have indigenous practices been co-opted?

  • Think, too, of indigenous practices in Latin America

  • Horror as reflections of guilt and fear

In Communion with the Land

  • There are many benefits to eating produce that is in-season: reduces the need for out-of-season and outsourced produce, encourages support of local growers and cultivates an intentional relationship with the food we buy and consume.

  • Here is a guide to eating in-season

  • What does the environment teach us about the power of community?

  • Book connection: Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

  • Can we consider humans a part of nature?

  • In many ways, humans are nature. Our natural world creates life, sustains it and absorbs its lasting particles for a never-ending cycle of birth and rebirth.

  • Corpse farms

  • What would it be like to be in a state of mutual taming with the land?

  • Book connection: The Little Prince by Saint-Exupèry


Media Recommendations

Podcasts
TV & Film
Further Reading
Community Resources
 

Did we miss anything?

This is not an exhaustive list -- don't hesitate to reach out via email at hardcoverhotties@gmail.com or via Instagram @hardcoverhotties if you have any ideas.❣❣❣

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