Section 5: Burning Sweetgrass + Epilogue

Summary

This final section begins with “Windigo Footprints,” which introduces the folkloric monster known as the Windigo. In the Anishinaabe tradition, Kimmerer says, the Windigo is born out of cannibalism and is cursed with a ravenous hunger that leads it to devour human flesh. Kimmerer argues that in the modern market economy, Windigo-like consumer appetites are pushing further and further exploitation of dwindling natural resources. 

“The Sacred and the Superfund” is a longer essay on the ecological fate of Onondaga Lake. Kimmerer first sketches the lake’s significance to the lore and history of the Onondaga Nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, then tells how its shores came to host heavy industrial activity. The chemical plants and mines polluted the lake severely and created a huge artificial lakeshore of chalky mineral waste. Kimmerer describes the Onondaga Nation’s battle to claim title to the lands and begin remediating them, along with the chemical companies’ half-hearted efforts to fix the worst of the pollution. On her own visit to the lakeshore, Kimmerer stumbles upon props from a haunted hayride and is initially terrified when she mistakes a mannequin for a human corpse. Laughing off her panic, she adapts the haunted-hayride metaphor to explain the stages of remediation the lake is now going through, from “Land as Capital” all the way to (someday) “Land as Home.” 

In “People of Corn, People of Light,” Kimmerer tells one version of the Mayan creation myth in which the gods fashion humans from different materials—mud, wood, light—before finally settling on a people made of corn. She suggests that science has provided its own origin story of life in the form of the coupled biochemical processes of photosynthesis and respiration. Here, Kimmerer distinguishes between the practice of scientific inquiry and what she calls “the scientific worldview.” The former, she says, can cultivate a sense of wonder, humility, creativity, and even spiritual connectedness to the natural phenomena being studied. The latter is the “reductionist, materialist” attitude in which scientific findings are used to create an “illusion of dominance and control.” Kimmerer calls for a new culture in which scientific knowledge is placed in service of a humbler and more reverent worldview. 

“Collateral Damage” narrates an expedition to save salamanders during their annual spring journey back to their pools. With her daughter and a group of herpetology students, Kimmerer carries salamanders across the road to protect them from motor traffic. On this same night, the invasion of Baghdad is beginning, and newscasters’ mention of “collateral damage” seems, to Kimmerer, to describe both the civilian toll of the war and the fate of the salamanders. 

“Shkitagen: People of the Seventh Fire” begins with Kimmerer’s recollections of her childhood experiences learning to build a fire and of her father teaching fire-building skills to youth campers. From here, Kimmerer turns to an Anishinaabe prophecy concerning the different “fires” (eras) of the nation and of humanity at large. She notes that in the prophecy’s chronology, the present day is the era of the Seventh Fire, in which humanity faces a choice of life and peace versus death and strife. In making the choice, Kimmerer says, people must look to those who, like the tinder fungus called shkitagen, preserve the values and traditions necessary to rekindle the fire. 

The last full chapter of the book is “Defeating Windigo.” Much of this short chapter takes the form of a short story in which Kimmerer faces down the Windigo and defeats him by using the gifts of the different herbs and flowering plants. She gives the Windigo an emetic brew of blackthorn and then, when he has been purged of all he has swallowed, a healing tonic of numerous herbs and flowers. Interwoven with this vivid tale is a reflection on the “Windigo” mentality fostered by modern consumerism. 

A brief epilogue entitled “Returning the Gift” describes a gift-giving ceremony and dance at the Potawatomi Gathering of Nations. Kimmerer expresses her hope that all people will come to feel—and express—their gratitude for the many gifts of the earth. 

Analysis

This section of Braiding Sweetgrass is distinctly darker in tone than most of the preceding chapters. Although Kimmerer has raised topics such as the ruination of natural ecosystems in past chapters, the closing section brings these topics sharply into focus. In “The Sacred and the Superfund,” Kimmerer holds up an example of the extent to which a place can be transformed—for the worse—by unchecked and unprincipled human intervention. The two chapters on the Windigo (“Windigo Footprints” and “Defeating Windigo”) introduce a monstrous figure from Indigenous lore to explain the grotesque, disturbing, and dangerous consequences of untrammeled greed. Even the salamanders in “Collateral Damage” are described in largely tragic terms, despite the efforts of local ecologists to save them. Global climate change, which has been relatively little discussed given the book’s focus on ecology, is candidly assessed in “Shkitagen: People of the Seventh Fire” as a threat to human and nonhuman life around the world. 

Nonetheless, it is clear that Kimmerer does not consider the planet’s fate to be sealed—at least not yet. She points out that many people are waking up to the harm caused by thoughtless exploitation of the natural world. Their efforts are most visible in local actions, such as the remediation of Onondaga Lake (“The Sacred and the Superfund”) and the work of the conservationists in “Collateral Damage.” Despite her fears, Kimmerer does symbolically defeat the Windigo stalking her in the final chapter, suggesting that it remains possible for society at large to do the same. It is gratitude, not despair, that has the final say in Kimmerer’s epilogue.