Quotes from Robin Wall Kimmerer

The trees in a forest are often interconnected by subterranean networks of mycorrhizae, fungal strands that inhabit tree roots. The mycorrhizal symbiosis enables the fungi to forage for mineral nutrients in the soil and deliver them to the tree in exchange for carbohydrates. The mycorrhizae may form fungal bridges between individual trees, so that all the trees in a forest are connected. These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree.

I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

I think you cannot own a thing and love it at the same time.

The very last adler leans away from the thread of the trail, as if to set me free.

This is the way the world works," he says, "in reciprocity.

I heard in their raised voices the same outpouring of love and gratitude for the Creation that Skywoman first sang on the back of Turtle Island. In their caress of that old hymn I came to know that it wasn't naming the source of wonder that mattered, it was wonder itself.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 9: 35 a.m., I am usually in a lecture hall at the university, expounding about botany and ecology— trying, in short, to explain to my students how Skywoman's gardens, known by some as "global ecosystems," function.

Paying attention, being prepared and patient, and doing it right the first time: the skill and the values were so closely entwined that fire making became for us an emblem of a certain kind of virtue.

It is said that the people were instructed to stand and offer these words whenever they gathered, no matter how many or how few, before anything else was done. In this ritual, their teachers remind them that every day, "beginning with where our feet first touch the earth, we send greetings and thanks to all members of the natural world.

Losing their names is a step in losing respect. Knowing their names is the first step in regaining our connection.

Wealth meant having enough to give away, social status elevated by generosity.

If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.

To me, an experiment is a kind of conversation with plants: I have a question for them, but since we don't speak the same language, I can't ask them directly and they won't answer verbally. But plants can be eloquent in their physical responses and behaviors. Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask.

The Wisdom of the Elders

despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us

He found that the arrogance of power could be used to unleash unlimited growth--an unrestrained, cancerous sort of creation that would lead to destruction.

Getting scientists to consider the validity of Indigenous knowledge is like swimming upstream in cold, cold water. They've been so conditioned to be skeptical of even the hardest of hard data that bending their minds toward theories that are verified without the expected graphs or equations is tough. Couple that with the unblinking assumption that science has cornered the market on truth and there's not much room for discussion.

For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place nears living as if your children's future mattered

What will happen to a joke when no one can hear it anymore? How lonely those words will be, when their power is gone. Where will they go? Off to join the stories that can never be told again." So now my house is spangled with Post-it notes in another language, as if I were studying for a trip abroad. But I'm not going away, I'm coming home.

We are all products of our worldviews - even scientists who claim objectivity.

humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn - we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance

Through reciprocity the gift is replenished. All of our flourishing is mutual.

All flourishing is mutual

Yawe—the animate to be. I am, you are, s/he is. To speak of those possessed with life and spirit we must say yawe. By what linguistic confluence do Yahweh of the Old Testament and yawe of the New World both fall from the mouths of the reverent?