Class 16 - Braiding Sweetgrass, Council of Pecans
Checking in
In this session, we’re going to discuss Braiding Sweetgrass, and the chapter on the Council of Pecans and Three Sisters.
Before we start, we’re going to check in for five minutes. Just say hello to your fellow students, talk about how the course is going, and if there are any questions that you are facing.
This Week’s Reading
In the first reading, we’ll be looking at two chapters of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book: the Council of Pecans and the Three Sisters. If we haven’t done so already, we’ll also be doing a brief feedback exercise on the issues that you are currently facing in your studies.
Council of Pecans
Kimmerer tells the story of her grandfather gathering pecan nuts. The story also takes us into the late 19th and early 20th century history of North America, and the removal of indigenous peoples from their homelands. And it explores the mysterious phenomenon of “mast fruiting.”
- Kimmerer writes, “All flourishing is mutual.” What does she mean by this? And is she right?
- What is mast fruiting? What does it say about the natural world?
- What does Kimmerer learn from the pecans? And how? What does it mean to learn not just about but also from the natural world?
If you are interested in mast fruiting, this article on the history of the term is fascinating.
Three Sisters
In this justly famous passage, Kimmerer talks about what is known as intercropping, or companion planting, the planting of multiple crops in the same area. This was a common farming strategy in indigenous american communities. So in this passage, Kimmerer talks about the “three sisters” — the three staple crops of American indigenous societies — corn (maize), beans, and squash.
You can find out more about intercropping an the three sisters here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwGxJe4bVs
There are a lot of interesting questions that this section raises. The first, of course, is whether intercropping works. And if so, how and in what ways does it work? There’s been a lot of scientific research on this. One recent paper, about an experiment in which scientists worked with indigenous communities, can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-022-10336-z
Here are some questions to think about:
- Is intercropping used in traditional agriculture in your home region?
- Does your own culture have any equivalent myths about reciprocity between different plants?
- Returning to the quesion of different ways of knowing, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes “I envision a time when the intellectual monoculture of science will be replaced with a polyculture of complementary knowledges?” What would such a polyculture look like? And is it desirable?
Homework
For your homework, you’re going to be reading the final section from Braiding Sweetgrass (Reading 11). Have fun!