PLANTS | ROBIN WALL KIMMERER | LIVING IN COMMUNITY
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Young and Indigenous Podcast is an outlet for people to know about Indigenous knowledge, storytelling, and history. Through our youthful journeys as Indigenous people, young people, and elders share their experiences with us. Without them, we wouldn't be able to do this. Come listen to Plants, a podcast series featuring many different plant knowledge keepers with diverse perspectives and plant philosophies.

A series brought to you by Children of the Setting Sun Productions and Cultural Survival Youth Fellow Opportunities. My name is Free Boise. My traditional name is Tz'akvilum. I am a member of the Lummi Nation, otherwise known as the Lak'emish people.

And we are here today recording the Plants Podcast, which is a podcast series brought to you by Cultural Survival, a fellowship opportunity from them, and Children of the Setting Sun Productions. We're joined here with Anna Cook. I'll let Anna introduce herself.

Hi Robin, it's such an honor to meet you virtually and share the space with you. My ancestral names are Adolphe San Celestialot, Eswatabshad, I'm Swinomish and I am really looking forward to having this conversation with you about some topics that we think are pertinent to young Indigenous people as well as the larger audience and now at this time we'd like to give you some space to do an introduction of yourself as well as places that you call home.

Miigwech, thank you to both of you. It is an honor to be able to talk with you and I can tell right away we have a shared interest in plants and our knowledge, so I'm looking forward to this. I would also begin in my language and say, Ani, bonjour, Shab-a-dash-ki-kish-ko-kwe, nidesh-na-kas, budwe-wat-mi-kwe-en-da, merese-do-tem-mi-nwa, kod-do-tem.

I'm Robin Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a member of the Bear Clan, also the Eagles, and I'm really glad to be with you. I'm speaking to you today from Haudenosaunee territory.

I live in the northeast, in the southern Great Lakes, under the maples, and with my Haudenosaunee neighbors. I live very close to and indeed on ancestral and contemporary territories of the Onondaga Nation.

And so this has been my home for a really long time. As Potawatomi woman, it's interesting to be living in the territory of my Haudenosaunee relatives because this is really quite close to where our, just to the west, our Potawatomi homeland in the Great Lakes.

were prior to forced removal. And so I'm grateful to be here with my plant relatives and my native neighbors as well. And when you asked me to share a little bit of where I'm from, right, and where I live, my

relations here. As a Potawatomi person, I didn't grow up on a reservation in Oklahoma, which was the lands to which we were moved. My grandfather lived there, grew up there, but then didn't have a lot of time to grow up there because he was taken away to the Carlisle Indian School. And we know that

Sad story. Tragic story. And, you know, he tried to go back home to Oklahoma. He did go back home. He couldn't live there anymore. This is a story for so many of our ancestors. And so he came to these beautiful maple green hills of upstate New York and began his family here. So I, too, have grown up here among my relatives.

Thank you for sharing that and giving our audience that insight on your life and your grandfather's life. We often hear the phrase "walking in two worlds" with one foot in indigenous worldview while the other is in western world. Could you tell us a bit about your journey navigating your path with these two seemingly different perspectives and philosophies pulling at each foot?

Yeah, you speak so truthfully about our reality that when you're thinking Indigenous and guided by our knowledge and values and teaching in the Indigenous worldview, which are so often indirect,

contrast to the Western ways of being, it can be pretty disorienting, right? And we all have experience to that in education, in our careers, etc. And so a lot of my work has really been out of that lived experience of seeing the world through these different lenses, if you will. A lot of

My work as a scientist, as a writer, as a teacher has been dedicated to understanding more fully the viewpoint.

that each of those perspectives provides, I don't think we can reconcile those viewpoints, nor should we bring them together, but to see them clearly. And the work of our Center for Native Peoples and the Environment is to have both of those perspectives represented in how we care for one another and how we care

for the earth. It's a kind of a matter of knowing the power and the insights of those ways of seeing and being able to use them as tools for land caretaking and for cultural caretaking.

And so that has really been my work of thinking about how do we grow almost a knowledge garden so that we have indigenous knowledge as the intellectual scaffolding to guide

to guide the tools of Western science. These two important sovereign knowledges, how do we protect them and use them to come into a good balance has really been my work. Well, thank you for that. Again, thank you for the work that you do.

I actually have a follow-up question about that. So I was recently having a conversation with a non-Indigenous friend of mine and we were kind of having some differing views when it came to understanding either perspective, because it is kind of a hard concept to be able to intertwine them as beautifully as you do in, for example, your book "Grading Sweetgrass."

But I was wondering if you had any advice with regards to having conversations with people who don't come from an Indigenous background and trying to help explain to them the teachings that our people have and hold so deeply when it comes to learning about Western sciences. Yeah, I really appreciate that question, Anna. And that's why, for me, I really try to focus on really understanding the

assumptions that lie beneath both of those ways of knowing because a lot of folks from, say, mainstream society don't even know that there's another way to look at the world. And so it's really hard for them to imagine their way into a completely different set of values and orientations.

And one of the places that I like to start is with just the notion of object and subject. And how in most Western education, Western science, Western governance, all those Western things, the notion of the natural world as object, right, as a thing, is so prevalent.

so prevalent even in the language, right, that we call trees "its" and birds "its" because in Western ways of thinking they're an object whereas in, at least in Potawatomi ways of thinking, though all those other beings, trees and birds and rivers and berries are people, they are relatives, they're subject, they're not

object. And from that flows everything else. Once you start to see the world as made up of your relatives, all the other notions that are associated with the indigenous and the Western worldview kind of fall into place. So that's a way that I've often found people to be able to grasp the difference between our ways of living the world as objects

for the world as our relatives and our teachers. - Thank you for that. That's a great way to explain it and just create that relationship and strengthen the kinship there. - And thank you for sharing the perspective of your people. And I imagine a lot of indigenous people alike have a similar perspective. What is plant sovereignty? What does it mean for indigenous people to be sovereign with the plants?

When I think about plant sovereignty, there are a lot of different ways to think about this, so let's take it step by step. When I think about sovereignty, I think about self-determination. I think about plants as sovereign beings because they have their own purpose.

They have their own teaching, they have their own responsibilities, right? That are different from ours as human people, or different from, you know, the fish people, right? So sovereign knowledge to me means self-determination, that you have your own

A plant has its own way of being that we need to respect and uphold. And the concept of sovereignty and self-determination

for plants to me translates to concepts similar to those being put forward around rights of nature. That plants have the same rights to exist, to be whole and healthy and continue to give their gifts as human people.

as any being does. And so that notion of non-interference, of a plant as a sovereign being, being able to live out the gifts that it was given without our interrupting that is to me the notion of plant sovereignty.

But of course, plants are part of what we think of in terms of food sovereignty, too. Is that the realm that you're thinking of? Or are you thinking primarily about the sovereignty of the plants themselves or knowledge sovereignty? There is so much there, isn't there? Yes, yes, definitely. Yeah, and I didn't even consider, you know, that perspective of plants being

being sovereign in their own light and in their own right, you know, and actually living out those gifts. I mean, it is something that is there, but like it's not something, the way you said it sparked something new. But yeah, in light of food sovereignty, medicine sovereignty, seed sovereignty,

And yeah, I just like what you shared as well. If you have any more to add to that within those fields. Awesome. Yeah, thank you for that. Because it's all kind of the same idea, isn't it, of self-determination. And plants are, I think, our partners in Indigenous food sovereignty. This ability of Native peoples to be able to

eat the foods that are culturally appropriate, that our ancestors gave to us, that the land provides for us, that we should eat.

to have that choice, right? To eat our traditional diet. That's what we choose to do. And not to have our plant's genome modified without their permission or our permission. To be sure that the soils from which our food grow are uncontaminated. All of that self-determination of the plant world in terms of those plants becoming the ones that

that nourish us, that sustain our bodies. And so I am so excited and encouraging of the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Movement because of what it means for nutritional sovereignty, for celebrating and growing from our cultural foods, but it also really preserves the integrity of the plants themselves, doesn't it? When we protect those seeds.

and we protect the knowledge of those plants and share it in a good way that protects that knowledge and respect that knowledge as well. So all those kinds of sovereignty we've been talking about, I think are all related and kind of mutually reinforce each other.

Definitely. I kind of feel like you're a leading catalyst for being a food sovereignty advocate. And so I'm just curious, what part of your book and how big of a role did that play in your journey of being able to help ignite this movement? Well, that is a really good question, Anna. You know, in Breeding Sweetgrass itself, I don't know that I should know this. Like every page, no, it's really

really not about food sovereignty it's it's about intellectual sovereignty plant sovereignty and the way that we've been talking about it but um since then i've written a bit about corn about service berries about a number of plants who really take care of us how we might

take care of them. So those same principles of things like the honorable harvest, for example, that I write a lot about in Braiding Sweetgrass, is foundational to Indigenous food sovereignty, right? In the way that we care for our relatives and encourage them to care for us. So the food sovereignty

I am a big supporter of the food sovereignty movement, but I wouldn't say that breeding sweetgrass directly addresses those questions. Rather, it creates kind of a philosophical framework in which food sovereignty lives and is expanding from in terms of all of the brilliant work of food sovereignty activists and practitioners. I have such admiration for everyone doing that work.

And yeah, actually that is one of my favorite chapters because I think ethical harvesting is like such an important aspect to being on a plant journey. And so I think we might be skipping a question, but I'm just curious about this, because I think when you talk about ethical harvesting practices, there's a lot of different facets to it and a lot of different reasons for having the conversation around it.

but it can be difficult in some circumstances. Like when you think about specific communities and you're encouraging others to go out and harvest, but at the same time, as exciting as it might be, it's really hard to like abide by all of the guidelines and morals that, you know, you probably should be following. So do you have any advice for how to have these difficult conversations with folks in your community, like even elders at some points who might not be harvesting, um,

in the most respectful way and they may be over harvesting or harvesting to sell for the wrong reasons or whatever the case may be.

Oh, I know. And it is a double-edged sword, isn't it, of encouraging people to know the gifts of the land and our foods and our medicines. You want people to re-engage with those plant teachers and those plant healers, but without the ethical guidelines that can quickly spin out of control, right? And then we're

then our plant relatives are going to take themselves away. And in many cases, they are, as we push them, push them farther and farther. So one of the ways that I sometimes talk to people about this is that I try very hard in any of my classes or talks to not

the gifts of the plant, the knowledge of the gifts of the plant before sharing the knowledge of the responsibility for those plants. And, you

You know, I'm told anyway in our traditional modes of education, that was always the way, that you had to demonstrate that you would be responsible for the knowledge before the knowledge was shared with you. And, you know, in Western science, knowledge for knowledge's sake is okay. In fact, it's even held up as an ideal of knowledge disconnected from values. I'm sorry, that makes no sense to me. To me, the knowledge is always coupled to values.

and respect and honor for those plants. So one of the things that I will sometimes have to say to my students as they get very excited, oh, we could eat this. Oh, we could make a basket from this. Let's get going and start picking is wait, wait, wait, where did we start? We started

with asking permission. We started with the honorable harvest. And there are times when you just have to remind people, it's not all about you. This is not all about filling your basket. It's all about keeping the basket that the earth has built for us. And that usually stops people for a moment to just remember that, you know,

it doesn't belong to us they belong to themselves as sovereign beings so i don't know i think we just keep reminding each other right because those all those pressures to

take, to take as much as we can, as fast as we can, are there. Especially when we start treating the plants, or the fish, or the birds, or any of our relatives like commodities. You know, oh I could sell this. Would you sell your relatives something?

Yeah, that's beautiful. I'm so excited to share that with my community and I hope that resonates with others as well. Yeah, thank you. Where do you foresee Indigenous peoples in 10 to 20 years in relation to our native plants? What I've experienced is that there is such a longing for people reconnecting with plants

both in our gardens, in our farms, and in gathering, I feel that there will be a growing research that there already is for connecting loving plants. But that also comes, as we were just saying, with the cost of the jeopardy that that can put our plants in if we're taking too much.

So I rely on the Honorable Harvest to guide us in that way. But because your question is future oriented, Anna, I have to, of course, as we all do, think about the effect of climate change on our plant relatives.

And so the ways in which our plants are going to need us more and more to protect them and to move them around to safe places, I think that that's going to become a growing element of our relationships with plants. And I think a lot about some of the stories that have been shared about how our ancestors always moved the plants.

And that was part of the reciprocity with the plants in return for them caring for us. We carry a cutting of them to a new place or scatter their seeds in a new place, right? And because of the acceleration of climate change, we're going to have to do that again.

They simply can't move and walk fast enough to get to new safe places. And we can. So that seems to me to be a very appropriate reciprocal gift that we people can give back to the plant people is to move them around.

But to do that, we need to know them. We need to know them really well, right? Because if you're going to help a plant move, you need to know where it wants to go, right? So really playing close

close attention to the ecological needs of our plants and then in our territory thing well where as the climate warms where can these beings be moved to where will they be safe and protected and um that that notion of

people stepping in to help plants move to the places they need to be in a time of climate change is I think this emerging role for Native people because we have such intimacy with our homelands and knowledge of our plants and relationships with those plants. So we have to share the plant knowledge and move the plant knowledge as well as moving the plants.

When I think about moving plants and then potentially cultivating them, I'm curious, do you think Indigenous communities should create their own farming for sustainability? Should we be doing that now? What could that look like? Gosh, yeah, that's part of the resurgence of Indigenous food sovereignty, right? To, yes, to be growing our own food, caring for our own soils, and for those...

plant foods and medicines that are not agricultural, but tending the land for them. You know, using our teachings about how to care for berry patches, how to use cultural burnings, how to use coppicing, all of those tools that our ancestors had to stimulate the growth of plants are going to be

even more important. So yes, you know, to answer your question, absolutely. We should be engaged in the regeneration of our agriculture, of our land tending, and again, of knowledge of how to use the gifts of the plants in medicine. Medicine, broadly speaking, as food, as medicine, as jewelry, as medicine, as plants, as

This conversation kind of sparks a chapter that really resonated with me in Braiding Sweetgrass called In the Footsteps of Nanabozo, Becoming Indigenous to Place. Could you share with the audience what it means to become indigenous to place?

Yeah, I'm really glad for an opportunity to talk about that because you see me in that chapter wrestle with the language around that, right? Of what I'm trying to encourage people

in an altered relationship with the living world is again not to think about the land as this warehouse of commodities that we can take but really land and home

And when it's your home, you care for it in a much more fierce way, in a more tender way, because your life depends on it, because your children's life depends on it. That's really the call that I am trying to make, is start thinking about land as your home.

as if your ancestors must have been there, as if you as an ancestor will be an ancestor of that land. And it's a call to the non-native population to live as if you were going to live here forever. And that's problematic territory, no?

this and that's why you see me wrestle with this call to say yes live on this land as if it was going to support your life and the life of your children as if it was your family but colonizers are not indigenous right can we

actually become the indigenous by the very definition of that word, no. You have to be of that place, right? So the question then becomes, how do we become native to place? And again, you see me struggle with the native plant example in that chapter. And where I eventually land is this idea of culinary becoming naturalized.

to place. Just like with our plants. We talk about our native plants and our non-native plants, but then there are these plants that have been here for such a long time

who are in balance with the environment, who don't out-compete all the others, who have many gifts that they share, not only with human people, but with bird people and wildlife people, so much so that they belong here, that they've made a home here. And what do we call them? We call them naturalized. And so I think that's really the best language, the best call is to become naturalized.

to place because the language of becoming indigenous to place is not

if the nuances of that meaning are not really well understood, I think it can be a challenge. So thinking about becoming naturalized, live in good balance with your neighbors as if you were going to live here forever, as if your children were going to depend on the land. That's what I mean by living as if it were your home, becoming naturalized or native to place.

when you're not indigenous. I love what you say, you have to live with both feet here. You can't have one on the ship and one on the land ready to go. That's one of the most memorable parts of that chapter.

Yeah, those are the words of my teacher, a real wonderful mentor, Henry Lickers, who shares that story. And I'm grateful to you for bringing his words to life in this conversation.

So when my mom and I, we like, when we host plant workshops for the community or when we go to plant workshops hosted by other communities, afterwards we feel really emotionally drained. And so I'm just really curious about your experience with that, if you have anything to share about like how emotional it can be and why it's emotional or what kind of feelings it stirs up knowing that our ancestors

have had this knowledge for millennia and it's been lost for a small, it's been asleep for, you know, numerous generations and now it's on the rise again. And so I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on, on this conversation about that rekindling of the relationship with plants. Oh, it is so emotional. And I,

We're all going to have different reactions to it, but for me, when I come to be among plant knowledge holders and sharing knowledge, for me, the chief emotion is joy and gratitude. I feel like, oh,

oh, this is what we were meant to do. It feels to me like the plants are really happy when we recognize them and can again receive their gifts and care for them. So that's how it strikes me. But you're so right. It's deeply emotional because it's as if

We have been lonely for the plants and the plants have been lonely for us. And at those gatherings, we're combating that loneliness on both sides. And that's why I think it can both feel joyful because we are coming together again. And also for me, in some cases, really, really sad because of how much knowledge we have gained

yet to learn, to recover, and for all of those times when plants and the people were hungry for each other. And that's sad, that's really sad. But this upswing in the love and respect for our plants is for me really joyful.

And so like if you were to talk to yourself or give yourself advice from when you were younger or starting your journey, what would be some of the biggest teachings that you'd want to share? Well, especially talking to both of you as young Indigenous people carrying this story, raising your voices,

I wish that what I would say to that, to my far younger self, is to be more like you, to be raising your voices. You know, when I was training to be a young scientist, I was the only Native person in my entire university. And so instead of raising my voice, I got real quiet.

because I felt like the way that I thought about things, no one would understand that. And so I didn't speak up as a youngster. And the power of collective young Indigenous voices where you can amplify each other's voices and share this knowledge and share in that sense of

what do I want to call it, like a shared resurgence in our knowledge because none of us know, we only know a tiny fraction of our cultural knowledge, but you know a piece and you know a piece and you know a piece. And when you all come together, it's so powerful. And that, I wish that I had had that as a young person because it would have helped me raise

my voice much sooner. So I celebrate

You all, and I think of my native students here at my university and all the young people that I've encountered who are raising their voices and working to combat the erasure of our knowledge and to celebrate the gifts that Indigenous people and our knowledge have for the way forward is to me just exhilarating to see this.

Yeah, thank you, Robin. That really does mean a lot. It can be really difficult to raise your voice. And so it's such an honor, again, to be able to be sharing space in this way and to have these conversations more openly. Like, I think this is part of

the healing process that our current Native generation is kind of going through with like the resurgence of being able to like talk about our Native languages in our schools and be able to go out and harvest plants and be able to make medicines and to share this knowledge with one another. So I'm really excited to be in this space and to be able to be part of this conversation and to have this conversation more openly. So I'm looking forward to what it'll look like for the next generation and beyond that.

and in our collective voices to know that we are all part of this cultural

resurgence, right? I remember very clearly a time when I thought, well, I have no voice here because I can't speak my language or I don't know this part about my culture or I don't know that. How could I possibly speak up because I don't know? And then a very wonderful elder said to me, well, then that's our work, isn't it? None of us know. We each have to pick up

what we can and give it to each other. And that kind of permission was just a turning point in my life of somebody saying to me, no, we're all part of this. We all have our pieces to bring to it. And that was medicine for me.

In your journey being indigenous and growing up in indigenous knowledge systems, could you talk about some of the benefits of having developed in indigenous knowledge systems while pursuing a career in western science?

Yeah, but I can only talk about that now from a distance because while I was doing it, especially when I was a young student, it felt like it was so hard. It was so hard to have at one point growing up in a family where we valued land for being our relatives and being our caretakers and then to go into a college of natural resources where the worldview is completely different.

different that was really really hard but I think what what the world is starting to wake up to is that

indigenous notions of kinship, interdependence, sovereignty of all beings, all of this reciprocity, all of this teaching which our ancestors held on to and passed on to us are the very things that we need on the road ahead through climate change and biodiversity.

the notion of land as object, land as commodity and human people as just takers, you know, that's where consumers, right? That's what's gotten us into this mess. And the notion of treating the world

as your relative. Treating the world with honor is exactly what the world needs right now. So to me, it is the value of Indigenous knowledge that can be a real guide towards

a greener future if you will. But at the same time, we have to really protect our knowledge from exploitation, from misuse, and that line of what

knowledge is to be shared so that we can all heal from the trauma that we've inflicted on the earth and on ourselves and what is to be protected knowledge. And that's where it takes a lot of good minds together, right? To think about how to both share and protect our knowledge at the same time. I can only imagine how difficult it was navigating, you know,

especially trying to utilize indigenous knowledge systems when they were so undervalued and discredited. And I do appreciate that we are in a time where indigenous knowledge systems are starting to be held up in regard with the same respect to Western knowledge systems, which they always should have been.

Yeah, and I'm so glad that you lift up the way that things have really changed. I think about the Biden administration's federal policy on elevation of traditional knowledge in all land management decision-making. I'm still pitching myself that that could be a reality today. But things really do change because people like you are lifting up

your voices and pointing the way that the federal government comes up with this policy which

honors the work that so many have been doing for so long to elevate traditional knowledge. And it's so important to point to those successes because it's easy to be discouraged, isn't it? And to think that these messages will not get out, that they won't make a difference. But in this particular example, we see what a powerful difference it is.

it makes, particularly under the leadership of an indigenous secretary of the interior. Absolutely. It's kind of, we were like kind of having this conversation earlier about like what it would look like to have an indigenous future and like what that could look like for our plants and kind of like continue on this path of

just raising our voices and having conversations about it is a great start. So the next step, I guess, is putting these things into action and creating these farms, creating food, like clam gardens and other examples like that that will help us kind of promote these native indigenous technologies.

Glam Garden is a wonderful example. Thanks for that. Yeah. Yes, one of us actually. I'm so proud of our community for being able to put one in our

in our waterways again and so it's really exciting to know that it's possible and it was definitely an uphill battle but um like looking forward to see what that could blossom into is really exciting i mean it won't be um viable for like maybe like 20 years or something so like that kind of goes to the conversation of like what will our community look like by that point

Yeah. And to remember that these, this incredible science of our ancestors and developing things like clam gardens, cultural burning, berry gardens, et cetera, all the science and the forethought that went into that. And to be able to pick that up again as a tool for contemporary climate adaptation, as sea levels change, what could be more important than figuring out how to make...

have a habitat for all of those intertidal beings, right? So that's a brilliant idea. This conversation here kind of reminds me of a chapter in the book where you talked about, where you wrote about teaching in the Bible Belt and how you were, you had to work extra hard to get your science class out in the field, essentially.

and you brought them out and just had them observe and journal. Could you talk more to that, the power of observation in Indigenous science and Indigenous knowledge systems and how you utilize that in your profession? You're really speaking my language now. You know, there's hardly anything I...

treasure more in the world than just going out and looking at stuff. Paying attention, right? Being observant. You know, when we learn, you know, the scientific method, it begins with observation. They say, yeah, yeah, this seems like such a formality. But to immerse yourself in observation and really humbly look at the world and say, tell me about yourself. What are you doing here? How

How are you living? What are your relationships? As you know, I've spent my lifetime doing that and it just doesn't ever stop being amazing. That's where it starts. And I think that is the heart of Indigenous science is respectfully paying attention to intelligences other than our own.

You know, we've been kind of sold this notion that human beings are the authorities. We're the ones with knowledge. And when you approach the living world with the humility of saying, oh, man, I don't know anything. Show me. It's such a delight. And I think that is at the heart of it.

our knowledge system, paying attention to the world, understanding the world as our teacher. And in order to learn from that good teacher, you have to show up to class, right? You have to be present and attentive. So taking, I was going to say students, taking everybody outside and helping people learn to see is to me the...

some of the most important work that we can do. Because once you see the beauty, the brilliance of the ways that natural communities are organized, it changes you. You'll never unsee that. And it changes you in a way that feels so deeply resonant with our ancestors.

So it feels like that's part of our work in reclaiming our knowledge is not only reclaiming the knowledge that has already been generated by our people, but by learning to learn from the land again. And that's Indigenous science, of learning how to pay attention and draw conclusions from the intelligence of the land.

Yeah, I think it's indigenous science and I remember in another one of your talks that I listened to also love and I think that you explained so beautifully what a relationship can look like in the sense that in order to foster a relationship in a good way is to just be present and in order to foster love is to pay attention to what they're trying to tell you and have your heart open to that as well.

Yes. And you know, Anna, don't you think another piece of that is slowing down? Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I feel like I hear that a lot. Slow down. Yeah. Yeah. In order to do just as you say, to have full attention and open your heart, you have to have time to look at, you know, just a quick look.

glance doesn't do it, you have to, just as you said, be present and pay attention. And we are all, well, I shouldn't say we are all, I am usually in such a hurry to do this, to do that, that it really takes mindfulness, let all of that go, sort of empty yourself of busyness so that the voice of other beings

have a chance of being heard. Definitely. And I also kind of believe that they listen to us as well. And so like being able to have that reciprocation of sharing with the plants, your knowledge too, in your own way, whatever that may look like, whether that's like verbally talking to them or even just like sharing them some gifts or offerings that you have.

Absolutely, absolutely. And that mediates that loneliness, right? To remember that it goes both ways. They want to know us just as we want to know them. You have to give yourself to them. What advice do you have for young and Indigenous people today? I'm very taken with what feels like kind of an equation that is part of

traditional values, I guess I would say. And that is this notion, the equation being the exchange of gifts and responsibilities. In Nishnaabe's original instructions, we're told that in return for the gift of life here on Turtle Island, we were all given a gift that we were supposed to be bringing here.

And that it is our responsibility to give back. And that's really what it means to be an educated person, right? Is to know what your gift is and how to give it. And I...

i feel like that is a call to what feels like a purpose-driven life right to know what your gift is and to develop yourself grow yourself and your community to into the place where you can freely give that gift and others can receive it and i focus on that as

I suppose a piece of advice, I don't usually like to give advice, but you ask. But that's that advice of give your gift. Really know what your gift is and don't hold it back.

Because if there was ever a time when we needed everybody's gifts and their responsibilities, it's now. Indigenous peoples have so much to offer and the world is listening. We are in a moment, aren't we? When people are really starting to listen. And so the gift of you as an artist, scientist, as a parent, as a

gardener, as a designer, whatever your gift is, bring it because the world needs it.

I appreciate you so much and this time to be together. It is, from my side, really inspiring to listen to you, to see you doing this podcast and sharing these plants' ideas more widely. And I really look forward to listening to your future podcasts.

That means so much to me. I'm like a huge fan and I know Anna is and really like everybody in the office knows just like, I mean everybody, a lot of people here at Children of the Siding Sun Productions have actually read Braiding Sweetgrass and have listened to other interviews that you've done and I mean you're a hero to all of us here and

So that means so much to me. And it's an honor to be here with you in conversation with you and to be able to take this knowledge, you know, firsthand and not only share it, but also like take it with me on my journey and with plants and just in relation to life and to move forward with that. So I thank you. I'm glad we're on the same path, friends.

Well, we thank you again for joining us here and we wish you well and all the best. Oh, I'd love that. Wonderful. Good. Well, let's stay connected, friends. And until next time. Hey, what up, y'all? Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Plant Series. This episode has been produced by Roy Alexander, Free Borsi, Cyrus James, and Ellie Smith. Original soundtrack by Roy Alexander, Mark Nichols, and Free Borsi.

Huge thank you to our funders, the Inatai Foundation, the Cultural Survival Fellowship, the Paul Allen Foundation, and the Whatcom Community Foundation. Young and Indigenous is a part of Children of the Setting Sun Productions. We are an Indigenous nonprofit set in the homelands of the Lummi and Nooksack people. Hachika for listening. Later, y'all.