I’m not sure where I first heard of Robin Wall Kimmerer. The acclaimed author of Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss has a remarkable ability to combine science with indigenous wisdom. I read both books before we moved from South Dakota and found them inspirational. I shared my copy of Braiding Sweetgrass with others and like a few other books that I have read, re-read, and shared with others somehow I ended up with more than one copy for a while. Now that we are settled in our home in Birch Bay, I finally have my bookshelves organized well enough to be able to put my hands on a copy of the book once again.

I’ve been thinking about the book recently as I have been helping to expand the collection of books about environmental justice in our church library. I’ve enjoyed being part of the group that is paying attention to the library and being intentional about growing our library in ways that encourage the circulation of books in our congregation. It is meaningful to me to look back at books that have had an impact on my understanding of the world as part of the process. One of the things we want to do in our church library is to collect books that have lasting value. A church library is a specialty library. It does not replace nor does it need to compete with a community library that is a great place to go for the latest trends and most popular authors. The church library rather collects books that inform about spirituality and meaning. Kimmerer’s book fits that bill even though its perspective is not from a Christian theological perspective.

I remember an interview that Krista Tippet had with Robin Wall Kimmerer on her show, “On Being.” That interview was replayed recently on the show. In the interview Tippet comments that Kimmerer introduces herself as being from Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Tippet grew up in Potawatomi County in Oklahoma and reported to Kimmerer that having grown up in that place she did not know or learn anything about what the word meant or about the people and culture to which it refers. Kimmerer responds to Tippet by talking about how culture and language become invisible.

The conversation struck me and sticks with me because I grew up on Sweetgrass County, Montana and I don’t remember learning anything about the meaning of sweetgrass or its uses in indigenous religious ceremonies in my growing up years. After I became and adult and developed relationships with Dakota and Lakota tribal members, I learned about using sweetgrass and sage for smudging and made friends who offered sweetgrass braids as gifts. Fresh sweetgrass is braided and dried and used for tea and medicine as well as for religious ceremonies.

Growing up in Sweetgrass County, Montana, I was taught that the county began in 1895, formed from parts of Park, Meager, and Yellowstone Counties and that between 1910 and 1920 part of Sweet Grass County were taken to form Stillwater, Wheatland, and Golden Valley Counties, leaving behind the distinctive shape of the county that is rather narrow from east to west but longer from north to south. The southern tip of the county ends deep in the Gallatin National Forest, but before the border with Yellowstone National Park.

I was never taught about how Sweetgrass County was part of the territory occupied for centuries before the arrival of European settlers. We knew a few people who were Crow and we attended Crow Fair from time to time, but our county was no longer part of the reservation when I was a child. The Crow people call themselves Apsáalooke, which is also spelled Absaroka. The town of Absarokee, Montana is about 50 miles from my home town and was part of the sports district in which our high school played, but I didn’t know the connection between the name of the town and the Crow people until I had grown up and moved away from that place.

When it comes to indigenous people, culture, languages, and wisdom, I learned nothing from my 1960’s public school education even though I lived in a place that was part of traditional Apsáalooke hunting territory and the valley of the river that ran by our place was considered to be sacred and the mountains south of town were a place for vision quests and other religious ceremonies.

I learned from decades of living in the western Dakotas that the indigenous tribes of North America have a lot of wisdom to offer, especially when it comes to the care of the natural world. As I have become more involved in confronting the issues of climate change and have studied biblical teachings about the care of creation, I have met and learned a great deal from indigenous elders and leaders.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass introduced more of that wisdom to me and, more importantly, introduced that wisdom to a much wider circle of people because of her skill as a storyteller and teacher. Like Krista Tippet, in her interview with Kimmerer, many of us have much to learn about the people who came before us and how they learned to survive and thrive on the prairies and in the mountains of this continent. Now that I have moved to a new place, I am trying to form relationships and learn more about the Coast Salish people who were stewards of this land before the arrival of settlers. To speak of the history of our area as being settled in 1856 when the U.S. Boundary Survey Commission surveyed the 49th parallel, followed two years later by the Fraser Gold Rush is to ignore most of the history of this place and the culture and languages of the people who had lived here for many generations before those dates. Our history is much deeper that we have been taught and there is much more wisdom to be shared from that history than is being shared in our schools.

The more I learn, the more I realize how little we really know.