Community Read 2025-2026: Braiding Sweetgrass

An Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn't working--and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors.

Allen draws on various Indian traditions to tell the stories of female spiritual figures--"the Great Goddess in a variety of guises." The 21 tales come not only from her own Laguna Pueblo and Lakota peoples, but also from the Aztec, Ojibwa, Maya, Lummi/Nootsac, and Dine. "Stories connect us to the universe of medicine--of paranormal or sacred power," Allen explains. Hers "tell how the cosmos was formed and the ways of magic" and work as "ritual maps or guides" for those who want to walk the path between the mundane and the spirit worlds. Allen acknowledges great differences among Indian communities in North America but stresses the "similarities in world view and spiritual understanding." Given Allen's reputation as poet, storyteller, and scholar and renewed, continuing interest in matrifocal traditions, this book will be a must-read for many people.

The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath-- known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwígara-- has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by native cultures. Salmón, an ethnobotanist, builds on this concept of connection and highlights plants revered by North America's indigenous peoples. He teaches us the ways plants are used as food and medicine, the details of their identification and harvest, their important health benefits, plus their role in traditional stories and myths. From ash to yucca, you'll discover how the timeless wisdom of iwígara can enhance your own kinship with the natural world.

Anishinaabe refers, collectively, to the Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Algonquin peoples, who share the Algonquian language family and a locale, the North American Great Lakes region. Here, Mary Siisip Geniusz recounts the teachings she received from her mentor, Keewaydinoquay, an Anishinaabe/Ojibwa medicine woman, an ethnobotanist, and an instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The text exemplifies the Biskaabiiyang approach to research, which takes into account "how colonization has negatively impacted our opinions of our people, our knowledge and ourselves."