🍓Braiding Sweetgrass Part I: Indigenous Science, Relational Law & the Return to Meaning

Welcome to Braiding Sweetgrass: Why This Book Now? Hello everybody, Welcome back to the Midnight Scholars Society with our book club, Book of the Month, which is Braiding Sweetgrass. We are starting Braiding Sweet Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmer. Dr. Kimmer is a botanist, biologist, I believe. You know, I think there's a lot of titles that go with Kim and Murray. At least I can only imagine because I've only been in the first part so far. Breeding sweetgrass. That's where we're what we're going over. And already I'm like, wow, this woman really knows what she's talking about. So I'm really excited for this book. Beyond Western Science: Embracing Art, STEAM, and Circularity And I want to give everybody a brief kind of idea of why I picked this book, especially during the time of year that I did. We're in season 2 over at the Midnight Scholars Society of it's kind of like emerging, you know, putting into practice all of the practical magic in a way that kind of centers you in more indigenous practices or centers you in a more community based way of living, which is 1 in which you are fully self empowered and sovereign. And so when you're an alchemist, you live in community that you were living in community with the universe. So therefore also all of the universe's creatures. And so that's the Indigenous way of living and any indigenous community that you find generally lives in this type of way because it is the way like, you know, we're getting into it. I have so many, so many things to say, but we're going to get into it. There's an idea in Western science that Western science or Western thinking is a different way of thinking, and it's not. It is oftentimes a more like limited. It's a limited way of thinking. So for instance, science is science. Western science is parsing through sciences as if only one field exists. For the most part, it's a very slow and limited way of thinking because it only takes into consideration some forms of information, whereas science takes into consideration all forms of information. And then steam is all forms of information as expressed out in the world. We study the world, and the world informs science, science informs our study and how we see the world, et cetera, et cetera. So Steam is, you know, science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. So it's the left and the right brain working in tandem. It's it's the mind body soul and mind body soul. But yeah, that's the three body, but it's the spiritual, physical, emotional and mental bodies all being used at once to understand or to take in information, process it and then create from there or do art, whatever it is you're going to do. That could be a response in a conversation. You're always performing some art. Some performances are genuine, right? And some are scripted. That's a false performance. And then, you know, I don't want to say false in like, you know, I don't mean that towards theater, but theater knows it's false. You know, that's the whole point of it is to is to to mimic in that way or to tell the story of and we're not trying to tell the story of when we are acting in authenticity. We're just trying to tell our story. We're in our story. We're not even trying. We're just telling our story. So art really is, is a response and a response can be verbal, it can be a painting, it can be an dance, it could be literally anything. It could be what you make, right, a crystal that you know, it was a rock and now you've carved it into a geometric shape and it means something to you. That's art. So that is science takes all that into account and and science would be like what astrology was before it became what it is in the Western mind. Astrology was all the sciences being used to understand art. That's it. And like, you know, I laugh because it's so simple, but also I can understand how in life we've gotten so far off track. But essentially braiding Sweetgrass is I for me, it is an amazing organization of all of what we've talked about. But put into practicality, you can actually feel the stories of the people who we get to. Well, I want to say the people we are introduced to. We don't really get to know them, but we're at least introduced to them. We hear their story. And you now know that another way of life is another way of life exists. There is another way, you know, the current ideas of like capitalism and, and all we have, you know, the Western way of thinking is to think that we've gotten to where we are today via a straight line and that is not the case. Everything that has happened in the past was not accumulating to this particular moment in time. Everything that happened in the past is happening and will happen. We are. It is circular. You know what I mean? We are constantly doing the same thing over and over and over again, slightly changing and altering things and then exceeding what happens when that when we do. But we're always like living in the same circular pattern. That's why history repeats itself. Everyone thinks it's because we didn't learn. And it's like, no, only the people who are experiencing negative aspects of it in some way, shape or form as perpetrators didn't learn. Or they did and they're excited to suffer again. You know what I'm saying? Only people who were walking in very blindly and also ignorantly did not learn. Everyone else is learning and is moving along that pace and different spiritualities and stuff that's represented. How do people who had, who didn't finish learning their lessons, how did that, how did that energy or what did that soul go on to do? You know, that's a totally different topic. But Braiding Sweetgrass is right on time for us over the Midnight Solar Society because not only did we pair it right after planetary intelligence, you get all this information, these tools, energy, how it's moving, and now you can really see how to integrate all of those tools or how they are integrated, why they matter, why it's important to know the flow of the universe because it is always speaking. We're going to get into it when we get to the Council of the Pecans. But I want to start us off here and I also want to mention to everybody listening, I am still working on getting the discussion recorded. For those of you who are in the Scholar Society and can't make the live discussions, getting the sound and everything like that is taking me a little bit more than I initially anticipated. So perhaps next session you will also get the discussions that were that were had. But due to the software and stuff like that, Zoom and Google meets, it's very limited on time. And usually it takes us a little, we take a full hour or so to kind of talk. So we'll see, we'll see. But anyways, let's get into bringing sweet grass. The Skywoman Origin Story: Our Cosmic Connection and Genetic Communication I'm going to start with the origin story and go through the different 25 parts and justice let you all know a few key points that I think are really important to take a look at. Ay, attention to draw it back towards some of the stuff that we've already been doing, and then we're going to get into the discussion. So #1 the origin story of the sky women falling, some of the things, the core messages that I kind of wanted to pull out from here was we are clearly not from here, OK. The sky women falling, That's not the first time I've heard this creation story or a version of it. In fact, this version of creation story is so similar in so many other places and spaces that I think it needs to be said that, you know, perhaps the people who were on the Annunaki, we come from aliens Bend are not so wrong. I do think that perhaps we as a human species probably came here via terraforming. Otherwise, the woman who came down on feathers and a goose line feather, a ship of some sort or clouds, plumes and stuff like that, collecting soil. The different animals that went right to help to, to to, to find the soil could have literally just been different. And, and also by aliens. We have to understand that we could have, this could be the story of soul, right from energetic form into the first incarnation of what we know as human existence, right? Or consciousness first coming into human existence. We don't really know. All we know the story of is that it was a woman, someone who is in creating life, and she brought life from somewhere, all these seeds with her and planted it, and then she was the steward of life. She knew that there's a genetic communication that happens. Living intelligence is a section. I'm going to hop into that very quickly because I think a lot of that stuff is extremely important. But what we want to take away from the origin story is 1. We came here from the stars. So that doesn't mean your physical human body did, but your consciousness definitely did. OK. I was on a podcast the other day and the Hostess mentioned that they felt that they came from the stars. And I was like, of course you did. We all did. That's why astrology is our science. The one constant is the cosmos with something that we cannot manipulate. You cannot control the cosmos. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you shift into a Pluto frequency, Babes, it's hitting you after the fact. You can't shift Pluto, You know what I mean? Even with all of your mind, Mike, you can't get Pluto to move. You're always talking to Pluto after it's already been sending out these vibrations. You know what I'm saying? So we hear about a speck on the frame of it all. So these are things that are constant, and in science, the one important thing that you need is a constant. And so the fact that these planets spin at a certain rate at a certain time, the fact that gravity pushes down at us in a certain way. I mentioned to everyone, I shared a video in the Discord about how the atmosphere is fluid. It is not liquid. It is fluid because you know, water is in three different states, gaseous and etcetera, etcetera. But that fluid atmosphere means that we are walking through a fishbowl of sorts. It's just the kind of water that we don't see as dense enough to be liquid. So we are constantly walking through water. We're always walking through water. 14.4 lbs of it to be specific. That's atmospheric pressure apparently on the human body applying applied. So then you have to imagine, and I said this before I started the recording, how much and like if energy moves through water, if water is the element that represents energy and it's in its energized form, right? Fire is it's in its conception, you know, the spark, two things hitting. But once it's energized, once an energy is kind of whole and moving and you know, so it's moving somewhere that's force. It's that's represented by water. And so you have to imagine emotions travel via water and our atmosphere is water. So I had made this statement. I was like, I'm starting to think that depression may be the act of carrying the emotions that are unprocessed, whether those be projected. And if it's being projected and it's not real, it cannot sit, it cannot rest with you. It has to match energy. You know what I'm saying? Which is why when you are like no longer in content, no longer want anything to do with the situation or an environment or person, it's important to give your absence to it and allow time so your energetic resonance can change. The more time you are away from that person, the less information they know about you, generally speaking, the less they know who you are anymore because information changes you. That's just what happens. So the less they know when they're thinking about you, they could be thinking about a version of you that was 3, three years ago. And you know, just five years ago you were probably a totally different person. You know what I mean? Just naturally without too much, you know, change going on, you, you, you change. But like with all the change that's happening recently, you change drastically. So with all that being said, we come from the stars, OK? And we are made of consciousness and we are impacted by the emotions, we're impacted by the body, the feel, the weight of it. We're impacted by the information that is, that is like genetically encoded in the emotions that we're experiencing, right? So we clearly aren't from here. What I love about Indigenous story is sometimes I can't tell if the animal is representative of of a person or of an actual animal because often times they're one in the same. And you know, that's another conversation for another time, which I'll probably get into as I get into more Indigenous mythology and stuff around here. But like when you listen to Indigenous mythology, actually when you hear like the wolf went after like rooster, things like that, start thinking about clans. There's no like think in the terms of the person who's telling the story. If everyone knows who they're talking about when they say wolf, a certain group of people or a type of person or a specific type of energy, the listener is going to know whether they mean a person, a place, a thing, and environment and energy. Because that's context, OK, When you tell the story of Sky Woman, context says, you know, you can honestly, you could tell this as the birth story of just about anything because it's a creation story. But context tells us whether those animals were actually animals, whether those animals were certain people that are now like very much associated with the type of animal or astronauts. And by astronauts, I don't mean people in suits. I just mean people who came from a ship somewhere or some, somewhere out there down here. So you know, many different fields. Astral travel is the concept of how a lot of consciousness travels when it's not in a body, a matter body. But anyways, I wanted to hit these few things that genetic communication is the primal language, man. When we talk about genetic communication, what does that mean? Your DNA, your blood, right, Your blood, iron, sucrose, magnesium, all of those are needed to process emotions. Did you know that? I didn't until one day I was having. So I felt so emotionally just like on the Fritz. And then I bit into a burger and I was like, hold a minute. I was like, does iron? I was like, is blood got something to do with emotions? Yes, yes, blood helps you process your emotions. You well, I should say all of those things that you get from iron and that your blood carries are also things that help you process emotions. I'm not going to get too deep into the science of that because I can't explain it myself yet, you know, so I don't feel confident going that deep. But for the most part, we know that our biological functions and our blood is important. We know that when you are stressed, your sugar levels can can spike or people sometimes eat sugar when they're really stressed to help to alleviate. We know that caffeine, all sorts of stuff. So iron, right? I had a burger and I was feeling better. So genetic, genetic, genetic genetic codes don't necessarily, I don't know, I shouldn't say that genetic information is so much more than your phenotype and what types of body parts you have. OK, Genetic coding is how you integrate information. Children cannot integrate certain information until their genes come online. Puberty. And then what's the late adulthood? The late adulthood has some genes that kick online as well. But it's just like there's certain things that it does not matter. Does not matter up, down, left, right or center what you say or try to explain to them. They will not understand. They cannot be processed until they experience it. And the even if they experience it, unless the gene markers are on, they're not going to experience it fully. There's going to stay as unprocessed information. That's why it's important never to take children outside of Chlorophyll and homoglobin are so similar. The difference is the center iron and magnesium. I didn't know that see, I love biology and I got to get back into it because Oh my goodness, iron comes from the stars. Yes, see, see, see. So the beauty and all of that. Jeez, you guys have got me so excited to look into this. But the beauty of it, right, is that genetic information or information is is processed through our genetics. So when you get hit with emotion, which carries information inside of it, your genetics are going to talk are going to be a big marker in how you interact with this. And genetics aren't always just EPI, what you've been passed down. They are what you are currently changing, shifting and moving. And see, not all, sometimes people think that's impossible. Your genetics are going to stay the same. No, they don't. Obviously your phenotype ones aren't going to be shifting and changing very much. You know what I'm saying? But there is so much in DNA that people don't even understand or know what's going on, what it is and all that kind of stuff. And so I think it's just best to probably figure that there's a lot going on energetically and electrically, right? That like we're not accounting for all of that because we just Western science specifically doesn't account for it yet because it hasn't figured out a way to quantify it or make it real so that they can then study it. However, in Chinese medicine and you know, I'm, I think there's a lot there possibly I haven't looked myself just yet, but I've heard some things. And then story is our method of terraforming story. So terraforming is going somewhere and planting seeds right and chain and making the terrain habitable for you. Story is our method of going out, getting awareness and making this step that we're taking inhabitable for us. In other words, when you hear a story or you read story or you take end story organized information, it gives you buckets. The first time you, you hear something, that's that's when your buckets are made. And these buckets are made to capture information when you experience it. If you experience something without ever hearing, without having no awareness, this is awareness or buckets are awareness. When you don't have any awareness and you're just, you're just experiencing something new. It's like information is hitting you and you feel like it's spilling over. You don't know what's going on this, that and the other until your buckets are formed. So if you've ever experienced college as an undergraduate, like when you were young, this is that experience where you really have no idea what's going on. All this information seems like everybody else knows what's going on and you just kind of sticking into it until you you can figure it out. Unless you're doing something you really enjoy and and already have buckets for. But they're always going to be those classes that you didn't have any buckets for and you just felt like you were just in over your head, right? And then immersion, you sit there long enough and all the sudden stuff starts making sense. That's because your body is literally building. Story is a method of terraforming. You got to terraform that body. You got to get it ready. You got to get it ready. Just like Sky Woman, she had to get the soil ready or the land ready to take the seeds, right? So this is a it's just huge. I love, I love that that the origin story because it speaks so much beyond where are you from? But what are you here to do and how do you do it? So it's beautiful. Honestly, man, I wish I could just talk all day about like each one of these. Let me see if there's anything that I had and highlighted before we move on because, you know, I felt really she came here with nothing but a handful of seeds and the slimmest of instructions to use your gifts and dreams for good and man. It my own ancestral hit me, hit ancestral history hit me because I remember that black woman came to America with seeds and I, you know, I wondered what instructions did they have? You know, I can see, you know, culturally there is a lot of good that was done over bad because, you know, I survived, right? I am, I am the evidence that good was done because not only did I survive, but I was able to survive beyond the entrapment of white settler colonialism and slavery and all of that, right? So there's some good there. There was just that beautifulness. And then the thing I want to settle on here for all sorts of reasons is that because of this story, and this was trying to look for it, but because of this story, it is considered that all people are immigrants. She was the first immigrant. So the job of us all, when we go to a land, I don't care what land it is, is to be native to it, to practice the consciousness and stewardship to take care of that land. To be native to it means to love it, to understand it, to become part of it. There's such a better obviously quote. If anybody else had written it down and wanted to share it, you know, I'd be happy to hear it because I can't find it. I'm in the council of the pecans. That's why for all of us, becoming indigenous, for all of us becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children's future mattered, to take care of the land, as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depend on it. That. So I just want to say this first section, absolutely beautiful. Oh, my God, I can't wait to hear everybody else's thoughts on it. The Council of Pecans: Hearing Nature's Wisdom and Squirrelly Advice I'm going to move on to the second one, Living intelligence. OK, so this is the Council of the Pecans, and this is where we really get into living intelligence. This is where we really understand that the earth is already talking. The question is, can you still hear it? I'm telling you all, you all know I have a squirrel friend, Raja, who's outside in the tree, which by the way, after this emotional two days I've had, I mean, the weather's been horrific. Oh my God, the curmudgeon came through and I'm like, what is that like? ANYWAYS, Rodger was in the tree with another squirrel. They were fighting. I don't know who was who, which made me feel some kind of way because it's like, how do I not know my own squirrel, right? Anyways, so just to say all that, you all know, I have a squirrel friend. We have drama. I was sitting outside. I can't remember what day it was Saturday, maybe because I was just, yeah, maybe it was Saturday, maybe it was before then or something, but I was sitting outside and yeah, yeah, yeah, Saturday, because I was just starting to get into this. OK. I was very late to reading personally. So, you know, I'm in the first half. I usually do read half of whatever is assigned and then the other half at some other point. But I hadn't gotten to the pecan, the council, the pecans yet. I just want to make that clear. I'm sitting outside and man, I was, I was feeling such a sense of belonging, but not having found my place of belonging. OK. And I know this is it's a collective energy that's going around because of all of the like everything that's happening. But also at the same time, I just felt so tired and weary, like I'd never find a place that I really want to call home. And so I'm sawing and I look up at the trees and I start, you know, they notice they're not so windy. And then I see Roger there in the, the branch. And I so, you know, I was like, let me ask the squirrel. And I was like, what do you think? And the squirrel, I get these images of the squirrel digging holes and then the squirrel kind of shifts himself and he's like looking at his nest and he's looking at me. And I kind of, well, I don't think he looked at the nest. I think I looked at the nest. He's just looking at me the whole time. And I just get the sense that he's telling me just nest everywhere you go, you know, just put all of your, just take all of your, your treasures essentially. Because I was thinking about my books. Obviously he's like, just take them everywhere you go and like whatever you need is where you're at. And I was like, and it didn't sit right with me, but I was like, this is some squirrely ass advice. And that's when it hit me. The squirrel was talking to me. I was talking to the squirrel. I asked a squirrel a question and the squirrel gave me the answer. And then I start reading the pecans over here. And then lo and behold, guess what special little special little answer I got? And the counsel of the pecans, it was essentially about how squirrels are the one. It talked about how squirrels are one of the one animals that for that, you know, buries its treasure and forgets where it put it. And when I read that little piece, it was maybe about 5 minutes after I had had this whole moment and I was slightly thinking that I was losing it. And I was like, you know, I'm not losing it, it just is what it is. And then I hear that and then I read that about the squirrels and I was like, holy shit, this squirrel was just telling me just you know. And I was like, this really was squirrely advice. No wonder why I was like, I gotta reject this because this guys telling me just to, you know, take my stuff and he forgets where half his shit is, okay, Like I'm surprised he remembers me all the time. Like, you know, he probably forgets half the stuff he buries. Of course he doesn't care about belonging. Of course he doesn't care. He just he lives in a pigeon's nest for crying out. And you know, that made me laugh enough that I like finally felt back in my own body. And I was like, I think I am happy where I am, you know, because where I belong is just where I am. And it was just a beautiful moment. So the concept here is like, you can still hear this stuff. I think the problem is is, you know, and I was one of those kids. I went to talk to animals my whole life. I'm telling you, I'll pick me for wild animals. OK, See, wild animal. And I'm like, well, it choose me. And then I hold my breath, you know, but I don't do that anymore. But my point is, is that these these animals are always talking to you. My cat talks to me. She only talks to me about food, which is why I think sometimes that she pretends to be like non sentient in some way, because she can be very poignant at sometimes. And then sometimes it's just food, food, food. But the point is, is that you just have to listen, not with your ears. And Kevin mentions that like, you know, she had a scholar teacher. I don't want to jump to a head of things, but the way that science looks at the world is through the human lens. So of course trees can't talk, they don't have mouths. And I should say western science. Western science dehumanizes everything, including itself, and also holds everything to the standard of being human in order to be considered conscious or sentient when being human isn't consciousness. Consciousness is consciousness. Consciousness is spiritual. It's not human. So this section, Oh my God, not only are the stories like something that is really important to digest and to understand. I want to say for a minute about like how these people were moved from their own space and place and autonomy and sanctity and shaken down by the government, also known as a mafia, into taking away their in their their community spirit and trading it in for individualism. Like not only was that going on, but also the land was being deprived of its own stewards. The land is being held hostage and so are people because we are one in the same. What happens to us happens to the land. What happens to the land happens to us. We are all connected. So man, I'm jumping around again, but in Potawami Potawatomi, I think the verbs she, you know, mentions her frustration learning the language will get to there, but she mentions how the verbs, verbs, there's a verb for everything you can be to be a river, to be a Bay. And she's like, what do you mean? And then it hit her, just like in The Alchemist, Paulo Quelo, to be the wind. We are all connected. Consciousness is our connection point. That's genetic. And I don't mean like either you have it in your genes or not. No, I mean like your genes are what like keeps conscious. Your genes are what's helping you be conscious. That's why oxygenating your blood is important. Breathing, taking your iron or making sure that your blood, your chi right is healthy because and that your blood is circulating through your system because this is what keeps you conscious or able to stay in alignment and not get overwhelmed by all of the atmospheric fluids that are around you. For anybody who doesn't know anybody and has nothing, nobody thinking about them, that's 14.7 lbs. You're a human born out in the somebody farted you out in the woods. I didn't mean to say it like that, but somebody birthed you out in the woods somewhere. No one's thought of you ever since, OK, and only the trees whisper towards you. You probably only have 14.7 lbs of atmospheric fluid pressuring on you. If you live in any type of situation with people and you have experience in the world and some people in the world who at least one person in the world who you know, probably hates you still, you probably have more than 14.7 lbs of atmospheric pressure. You know what I mean? Maybe, maybe how you alchemize that now, literally the more pressure you have and the more that you can hold, the more you can, the more capacity you have technically, the more energy you have to do what will. So I mean that let's not go. You know, you have a lot of energy. Either it is crushing you or you are wielding it. There's really one or two, one or two options there. And the difference is all of the limiting belief systems that get us there. Now, the reason why energy and why we should have the capacity to hold so much energy, especially as we get older, is because we are stewards of living intelligence, meaning we are the steward of the land around us. We carry responsibility that way. And man, I'm again, I'm jumping around, but the gift giving, the gift of strawberries, a gift giving community way of living as a gift giving culture means that you are constantly shifting energy because if someone gives you something, that thing sits in your energy until it pings you again. And then you realize you have something to give them back to. And it doesn't come to you as trying to settle a score. It just comes to you the same way it comes to you that like, you know, you're, I use this example earlier. You're walking around you, somebody gave you something really cool. And you're like, oh, thanks, right. Maybe it was your parent or something. They give you something really cool. And then you're at work or something like that and people are passing something around. They're like, oh, yeah, I'm trying to get rid of these. And you're like, oh, my mom loves those. Oh, yeah, Yeah. Everybody hates them. Yeah, I know. But for some reason, she loves them. Oh, here you go. Thanks. Yeah, I'll give them to her. And then you just give them to your mom. There you go. See. Gift giving exchange. That's how that works. It's never anything more than that. Usually. That's why gift giving is not altruism. Altruism is doing good deeds because it feels good to you in some way, shape or form, right? Gift giving is, is like because gifts are such an like such a rarity in Western culture, it has a lot of like heavyweight to the word and connotation. It carries a lot of burden and stuff like that. And that's not to say that other people don't make gift giving a burden. People do. It's called bad social etiquette in Eastern cultures. It happens all the time. But gift giving in itself is just an act of exchange, reciprocity. There's no thought behind it. The energy is just moving. And the way that that works is how all of this living intelligence around us is working. Everything is working to conspire in your favor because if it doesn't, then it is conspiring against itself. You know, I bet the earth is exhausted because it's like, Oh my God, I'm trying to help you because I need to help myself. And like half of humanity, I don't want to say half a portion of humanity is like, I'm suspicious. Why would you help me? You know, And the Earth is just, you know, madness, madness, you know, So let me see, energetic. I have so many thoughts to talk about on this, but I'll just leave it so we can get all of it done. Let me see, let me see, let me make sure. I've got so many things highlighted in here that I knew that I would just go on and on and on forever. By the way, I think it is this section. Yes, the Council of Pecans. I wanted to say this. Throughout Indian Territory, there are records of Indian agents being paid a bounty for rounding up kids to ship to the government boarding schools. There's also a story. It's called the brave, the brave stranger. I think the Prince, the brave Prince, the brave and cunning Prince. I got AI got a hold on, hold on. Let me pull it up. I got 2 seconds. OK, It's The Brave and Cunning Prince by James Horne. I'm going to link it for everybody. I should put a message for myself to do that, to link it for everybody in the the post about this. But that's another story, man. That's a book that's got a lot of stories about the time, this exact exchange and time period. But I just wanted to remind everybody for the sake of the Times Now, that is very much of some red pill behavior for somebody to act against their own community for personal gain in some shape or form. And so if you were ever wondering how that happens in community, you can see it here. Indian agents who were working against their own people. All right. And then how does that happen in your own community? Anywhere there is colonial behavior? The whole point is to get people to destroy their own community. Thank you, Photon. The whole point is to get people to destroy their own community. You get what I'm saying? And so because of that, it's important for everyone to be able to spot that when that's happening within their own community. When you live in the West or any type of western nation, is to see the group that is acting as an agent against their own because that's, you know, I don't want to see a massive red flag. I did say that history doesn't repeat itself. History is always repeating because it's a circle. Like, yeah, that that archetype is, is is activated often times in Western culture. It's activated in general. But pay attention because it is a dangerous one. And then I'm trying to see if there's anything else in this one before we move on to the gift of strawberries. Yeah, yeah. OK. So I want to mention this to Doctor Kimimer talks an awful lot from the lens of marrying science right and bridging science between science and like indigenous practices. And so sometimes, and I will mention this a few different times, the language that they use changes to talk about the same thing. And because the language changes, it creates a place of confusion. I'm going to mention it here. So the pecan trees and their kin show a capacity for connected action, for unity of purpose that transcends the individual trees. This is a passage that talks about, you know, how amazing it is that they all fruit at the same time and that there is no essentially scientific understanding of how they're communicating or doing that. And this would be Tau or the flow of nature. I, I don't know if Doctor Kemmamer is not mentioning that for the sake of who their audience is, because if the audience is to persuade or to bridge the gap between science and Indigenous understanding, it is not because she's trying to convince Indigenous people that science is real. Like there's a whole Western culture that's doing that constantly. It's probably because she's trying to convince a scientist who live in the West and think in a Western way that Indigenous culture is like is, is factual, is real. It's science as well, but down here. And yet the conclusion was drawn that plants cannot communicate because they lack mechanisms that animals used to speak. Until quite recently, no one seriously explored the possibility that plants might speak to one another. This is moments where we can point out and Doctor Kimmer is pointing out bad science. Western Science as Cultural: Understanding the Grammar of Animacy But then and I'm going to skip the gift of strawberries really quick to talk about the failure of the Western knowing so Astros and Goldenrod so because it links so so well. And then we'll go back to the gift of Strawberries offering. And yeah, actually, I'll do. We'll talk about, we just talked about #2 I'm going to skip to #5 number four and five, I think is that, is that what it is? But we're going to skip to Astros and Goldenrod and also learning the grammar of animacy and then move back to strawberries and an offering, finish out with the 3rd and the 2nd passages. But the Astros and Goldenrod is an entire section that we get where Doctor Kimmer is talking to us about how Western science is not universal science, it's a cultural science. So well, at least that's what I say. I don't, I don't know if Kevin Moore gets to that point completely by the end of this. And I like to give space because again, when you're writing a book like this, oftentimes the audience has to be walked through, especially when you are presenting ideas that they are generally walled off from. So being accusatory in the beginning never really goes well, especially when talking to specifically colonial and settler cultures. Because. Because being, you know, anything but very calm generally doesn't take the cake, especially in academic settings. So I give the book the rest of the time to find out whether this is something that come or pins down or not. But I do want to say that Western science is not universal science, that that is not the big capital. I said, I mentioned at the beginning, but it is not the capital S science. It is a limited approach to the capital S science. Science is something that has been practiced by all cultures around the world consistently. Hell, science is hugely practiced, obviously based on this section by indigenous people very deeply, right? But because there's the how they practice science is different than how the Western mind does or thinks, it is discounted because it and this is a huge issue. You'll notice the more literate you are, the more people who are illiterate are suspicious of you or are challenge you instead of just learning something new or being brought into awareness. And it's because generally when someone is from a Western, Western space that de educates, we've seen this happening in the wider collective. But when de education is happening, everyone's against intellectualism, things aren't that deep, etcetera, etcetera. And unfortunately, that goes all the way up to PhD spaces in high academia. You don't get his entire society that that's like really difficult or hates, hates intelligence, right? And the in the like high academia points be not suffering as well. I made a video on TikTok about how people are getting their PHD's and they're often told just to skim things. And it's because they haven't had the ideas that you've already read this stuff, so you're skimming to get what you need. But a lot of people, they get overwhelmed because they haven't read all of that stuff and this is their first time and so they don't have time to read all that stuff. So they start skimming for what they need. And because the skimming is a practice that happens with the assumption that you are well read in the, the subject matter, you end up with a culture right that isn't, that is basing its opinions on opinions that they're not quite aware of. I read chapter 5 and so I'm going to pull this opinion from there, even though I have no idea whether chapters one through 4 make any sense whatsoever. If this opinion is valid and the idea is that if it's published, if it's gone through peers, it's valid. But if all the, if everybody's skimming, of course, nobody's reading. So everything is valid. And obviously, you know, I'm not like saying that all of academia is useless, etcetera, etcetera. No, I'm saying that it's a huge trap. And this is all come in, this all stems from the limited belief system. And you have to have a limited belief system to allow other people to oppress you. So generally speaking, in the West, there's a lot of oppression and their natural cultures over in Europe because of the Romans and all of that. So all Western colonials are definitely not unpacking that stuff unless they integrate into the cultures that they immigrated to. So if you're a colonial, that means you did not integrate into the culture, which means you kept your old culture, which is oppressive, which means it's limited in thinking. And anything new is and has to be proven correct and true by someone from the same culture. Like you can't see, you know, they'll look and they'll still be like, wow, this is all. How do you get a bunch of people who come to an amazing, beautiful looking place and go, wow, you have such a nice place here. I'm going to fuck it all up though, unless they truly in their heart believe that they were doing the right thing, that they could make it better or that they could benefit from it without knowing anything about it. But you know that there comes inferiority complexes and stuff. And when you have a superiority complex, you also have an inferiority complex. Those are two hand in hand. So the issue here is that science, I want to iterate, is not a Western science is white supremacy plus science, not science itself. Science itself is in a practice of observation. OK. Science is a practice of observing life. That's it. What is life? Art. So science is observing art. That's it. And that's it. How that happens? Observation. The highest form of observation is when you are using all possible perspectives that you have to your capacity to observe, right? So using your mind or your mental capacity, your mental body, your emotional body, your spiritual body and your physical body, when you're using all four of those things to observe something, you are present because your present, you know yourself and you know what you're observing are two totally different things because you're in your body and you are observing this thing. When you are only using your mental, you may not be in your emotional body. So you can project or think that the emotions you are experiencing and observing are from the object of your observation. And in fact, it could be your own anxiety, not that thing at all. Or that thing is interest is, you know, if you're looking at an animal, it's looking all wild at you. Maybe it's because you're the one who's kind of bringing the wild energy. Meanwhile, you're writing down animals like this are so skittish. It's not skittish. You're skittish. And so it's skittering away from your energy, right? So it is important to be present fully. But someone who has been emotionally abused, psychologically abused, whatever have you, no matter how much intellect they have in their mental body, if they're not in their emotional body, if they don't want to be in their emotional body, if they're afraid of their emotions, they're never going to sit in their emotional body while doing science, especially when science says this is not the room for emotions. Your emotions cannot cloud this sure, which means you have to be balanced, which means you have to know your emotions, not dismiss them. So that is like you see the the the the wisdom between science as a capital S and western science, which is white supremacy plus science, which is white supremacy is always limited. So this is science is a cultural science. That's just what I want to hit you guys with over and over and over with because like this is a it's a passion for me. You know, I spent so many years just kind of uncovering all of that and being very frustrated at the sheer fact of like resistance that people had at simple questions. You know, people could be absolutely totally curious, open minded, this that and the other. And the moment you hit them with the, with the realization that maybe this indigenous practice also accounts for that. What, what, what that's archaic. It's old, It's not old, it's current. Actually, just because the only experience you've had with a native person isn't a history book, as you know, titled the Trail of Tears, doesn't mean that it's old. It just means that the only have experience reading the history, not actually living in the current with it. Right. Like, you know, so if you're ever in AI, don't want to say an argument, those people, but if you're ever noticing that kind of vibe, it is what you think it is. It's it's the need to be supreme. Everything, all roads lead to this one. No, just the one you paved. And then, OK, so I want to get in that and then into the language of life. So learning the grammar of animacy. This is such a huge chapter or the last section that we read. It's so important. And I want to cover this. Oh, I've got Paramore hitting in my head. What is it, Southern roots, southern Gotham or something? I can't remember what the song is called. I'll let you guys know in a minute. Oh, here we go. OK, so language. So here's another section where I mentioned sometimes I'm not sure if commemor is, you know, kind of making a point or a statement or if she hasn't come around to it herself just yet, which is natural because all of the the issues that she that I've come across with her are language based. So sometimes she will say science, but she is referring to Western science. Sometimes she will say indigenous something, but that is also science. So it is just a matter of how does she identify with the word science? And having gone through schooling in a Western system and being as old as she is and still coming out able to like, you know, get in touch with her own indigeneity and not have it completely wiped from her is a miracle in itself, right? Especially given like the trauma her family experienced. So when I say be mindful of that, look and see and ask, is she talking about science or Western science when she says this? When she practices science, she's actually always practicing Indigenous or cultural science. When she's criticizing science, she will say science, but what she's talking about is Western science. She'll mention a person or scholar or a colleague that dismissed something because of their limited thinking, and that is Western science. So keep that in mind. But the reason why this, the language learning, the grammar of animacy was important is because this pulls us back into the importance of language in general. Everybody, I want you to always remember, always remember that language is the key. English as a language. And she mentions this and the offering we'll hit with that. But language isn't what limits you. So English in itself isn't limiting. Language is an expression of ideology. So you have thoughts, you use language to express them with people so that they can, you can like exchange, right? You use language to speak or spread ideology. So what is limiting is what we are sharing using language ideology. English is itself granted, while English, while there isn't a word specifically that means to be a river, right? We in English have found many a different ways to poetically express what it means to be a river. It's just called poetry. OK now the less poetry one reads, the less one has language or ways to build that language. Now, unfortunately, because of the ideology that is most prevalent with English speakers, which is Western or white supremacy, language in itself doesn't grow so fast to create that. Now, however, you get into like AAVE and we got words for everything. We have sayings and stuff like that, that kind of capture moments, expressions, feelings without actually, you know, invoking violence. Like, you know, I grew up with someone saying, Oh my God, anytime I was being petty, right? My mother would look at me and say, Oh my God, don't cut off your nose to spite your face. You know? In other words, don't do that. All you're doing is hurting yourself here. Like that's there's no need to be petty, right? Or anytime my mother was quoting my great grandmother, anytime, you know, somebody was irritating her or something like that or a situation or somebody was, you know, she felt like she really need to assert herself. She might say, you know, I'll cut your ass too short to shit. And that means, listen, I am don't fuck with me. And she said, I'll cut your ass too short to shit like that. Used to make me think, what the fuck that I found out she's walked around the machete. But anyways, you know, the point here is that there's this, there's language. There's many different ways to be poetic, to be very interesting in the English language, to say what you mean to say without necessarily causing harm to anyone else witnessing, or ways in which to express a feeling that doesn't have a single word. Now, the limit of those expressions is due to the ideology, not due to the language itself. We come up with and make up words all the time. We make up statements, phrases. We repackage words, change words. I mean that, you know, I grew up speaking the way that I do. And then, you know, some of the years later, I see a bunch of teenagers, you know, using the same slang that I did in my family home and calling it something different, you know? And I'm like, oh, honey, that's not what that means. That's not even how you say it, you know, but like they're trying, OK, I don't know where you've got this from anyways, but the that is ideology, right? In a country where we we are healthy and expressing and exchanging culture, where like blackness isn't like considered the lowest of the hierarchy and white supremacist faces and all that kind of stuff. So we never lose. Use sling. If you don't, if you are trying to impress people, right, Don't use AA VE, that's slang. No, it's not. It's actually not. There's many different ways in which African American vernacular is used. That is not in any way, shape or form slang. It's just that when certain children pick it up from other cultures, they use it in a lot of inappropriate places and ways. But it does become slang because they're not using it properly, right? So like, if we're in a situation where everyone is actually experiencing healthy cultural exchange, then those words would naturally are our ideologies would be less limiting, and then we would have a need for a new language and we would make that new language. So it's an ideology issue. Let me see here, I said. And so people must become learned in other languages so they can think differently. That's important. Yeah. So it is important. And I do want to say here is that if you are looking to expand your ability to to shift language in your own mind, I'm always telling you guys read older English literature. One read translated works to read outside of the West 3 and read and learn a different culture. Link that a lifelong, pick one language that you're interested in and then make it like a lifelong pursuit to learn that language, not to practice it with people, but just to know other words other than ways of thinking and maybe to one day be able to watch a television program in that language. If you really set the bar super low. It's not so that you can express and do all this and you make it like a daily or a lifestyle habit. Now you can just like slowly get a textbook and slowly make your way through and enjoy your time doing it because it's part of like yourself. Kind of like I love to do it when I need something for my mind to do because it's getting tired, but it won't shut up. And that happens to me all the time. If you've got Gemini energy, learning a language is a great way to make that rat tired when it's spinning in that real, you know, the little hamster wheels going and it's like I need to consume, but consummation is bad. I cannot consume anymore. I said consummation, that's not the right word, but consuming more information is bad right now. That's a great way is learning a language, especially something complicated like from the East, like kanji or something that's totally different or pictorial, you know, it just expands your mind. It gives your mind something to do. The Gift of Strawberries: Reimagining Economy and Material Connection And then the last but not least, the gift of strawberries, gift giving culture. I touched on that a little bit, man. I honestly, I'll save that for everybody's experience, you know, in discussion. But ultimately, when you read the passage of the gift of strawberries and you get to the part where you know, she picks strawberries and it's like, it's, it's free, just food. It grows out of the ground. So then she has to go pick him for a lady, right, For a little bit of pocket change and she gets $0.10 a dime for a quart and the lady sells the quart of strawberries for $0.60 each. And she's kind of rough with them, right? She isn't with the messing up her products and stuff. And I thought, man, how stupid to pay someone to pick something that's free out of the ground to turn around and and charge someone money to take it when you could just go eat the strawberries and enjoy. Oh, we need money for for what? Really, Life's not that complicated and oftentimes people are oversaturated with stuff anyways. Whatever you need always comes to you. That's just, that's just how that works. Whatever you need always comes to you or you somehow come to it. Either way, you and time are meeting each other. Everything else is a distraction. And it also weighs you down. And taking a book from the Tao or Buddhist Buddhism really teaches you that it's not about being detached from everything. It's about not forming energetic connections to things based on material, based on material cravings. You know, that's like me. I'll say it like this. I have these great beautiful fairy tale books that are interactive and stuff. They're really beautiful. And I kept telling myself that the reason why I could not read one of those stories was because I need to go purchase another copy for reading because that one was just like, it's a beautiful interactive edition. And then I really sat with myself one day and was like, why the fuck do you keep carrying around these books if you're never even going to open them up and look at them outside of the first time you got it? And I, I was aghast. And then I told myself, we're going to do something crazy. You think they're so precious, we're going to annotate them. This is the copy we annotate. And I can I tell you that I felt both absolutely titillated by the taboo of highlighting up this amazing. It's they're they're kind of expensive. They're like 25 to 35 bucks a copy because they're a hardback. They're it's book art. OK, So this is the kind of stuff that you get and you're like, wow. Because it's like artistic, you know? Yeah, Now I just color them up and they're all tabbed up and everything, you know? But like now, now they're mine. Before they didn't belong to me, but now they're mine. Now like my inner child, like, like jumps with Glee when I go page to page because like, this is so fucking cool. I like the pop ups and all sorts of cool shit in this book. And it's mine. So the material, the material we want before was to preserve something because it's greedily mine. The second one is because I made it mine. I'm interacting with it now. Now it has a story. Every single mark of highlighter tells a story. You get what I'm saying? That's that. I could lose the book and it's fine now because like, the story between me and it is most important, not the book itself. Before, I would have been really upset if I lost a copy. Why? Because it was expensive and it was pretty and it was cool. Now, I don't think I'd be that upset. I'd yearn for it because I'd yearn for that experience, but then I'd remember it and I'd be filled and fulfilled with joy again. You know what I mean? You know, it's not like I'm trying to get rid of it. So let me move on. But I just want everyone to understand that like, everything comes to you and attack. Like the concept that you can't have material stuff. Like y'all, I'm very bougie and I very much enjoy the comforts in life. So that's kind of expensive, which means that like, I have to make sure that I am not living an extravagant life. Does that make sense? I'm not trying to spend, you know, tons and tons of money to live a very comfortable life. So that means I have to be comfortable and find out what that actually means to me. And it turns out it's very self sustainable because it doesn't mean, you know, I like older buildings and I like things with character. So naturally, I always end up in spaces that are heavily discounted or like these really cool environments that are really tucked away because I just so happened to be interested in really odd stuff, stuff that nobody else wants to spend money on. But see, that's luxury to me, you know what I mean? Like, oh, this has so much character. It's so alive. It's got so many stories. This, that and the other. I love to be surrounded by books and the books that I love and the stuff that I, I do and that takes time. And so like, you know, that's my art that hangs on the wall. Books that I've read, times that I've enjoyed, you know what I mean? Like comfort and luxury to me is an experience that I've been able to give myself. The life that is less stressful, which means I'm not doing things, including keeping up with the Joneses. I don't need to to make money out my ass consistently in order to have a happy life. Some people do. Some people need to purchase every single thing that would bring them stress relief because they're not willing to find out what they really want, which means how they can let go of all the things that are stressing them out in the first place. So gift, the gift of strawberries is so much more. It is so much more than just, we can be in a gift economy instead of just living in capitalism. It is an entirely different way of living, different way of thinking. It is that the gift is life. Every moment is a gift. Oh my goodness, I love that that section so much. And then the last section, the offering, and then I'm going to hop off and let everybody else chat, right? The Offering: Giving Meaning, Crafting Story, and Earth's Reciprocity So the offer, oh man, an offering. I want you all to just understand this one thing from it, and I will let everybody else talk. To give meaning is to give life. Meaning animates. Meaning is what animates. The language of animacy is the language of story. The ability to give meaning to something is what gives it life. I talked about this in depth in a lecture I did over in the Midnight Library. So this is in creative projects, it's called. It's the point of View. I don't know what it's called though. Pretty sure the title of it. It's like Story of structure. Let me say hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. OK, let's see. The title is storytelling, writing from within point of view as a witness, OK. Yeah, so it's the point of view lecture, OK. And the whole entire lecture, I talk about how you are creating meaning when you are a storyteller, Storytellers just organizing a bunch of chaotic information in a way that makes sense. When you do that, you give the earth the only gift you can give the earth, the earth that has everything, including your body. So much as people think they can take it from the Earth, they can't. It'll always come back. As much as people think they can take their body, they can't, right? The only thing that you can give the earth, if not even your body, it owns that already, is the story. The only thing you can give anything, a relationship, an environment, a situation is meaning otherwise. Think about it. Anybody you've ever had to give absence to, they no longer mean anything to you, which means they no longer have any impact in your life whatsoever. Even if they wanted to, you just wouldn't notice. Think about somebody. I don't, I won't say this, but just imagine there's somebody out there who's, you know, just plotting on your demise. And they're going to do that till the day they die. And you will never know. You will never know. You will never know why they may set up all these plots and plans and this and that. They may talk shit about you everywhere they go. And one day, one day you'll know only this reason somebody comes up to you and goes, oh, did you hear so and so died. And you go, oh, no. And they'll be like, Oh, yeah, are you you glad? I mean, they were always talking about you. I think they, they might have loved you. Honestly, the way that they were always talking about you, it must have been your biggest fan. And you'd be like, what? Yeah, they were always talking about you. And you're like, biggest fan. I'm pretty sure that person hated me. And it's like, oh, yeah, I could kind of see that, too. They were a little obsessive. Anyways, yeah, they died. And that'll be the only way that you knew is because somebody mentioned it. And that person didn't even know that they hated you. They're just that person. Can even see the level of obsession over someone that is so far removed from them. You know what I'm saying? Like that is how untouchable you are when you give your absence to something because it cannot populate if you need. If your attention is what draws energy towards you. Intention plus action is attention of some sort, right? If attention orients, your energy demands that the energy match what you give, your absence cannot match. It can't. And so I'm saying this, when you give this your attention to your inner narrator, what story are you crafting for yourself? Do you have to live that story? It is difficult. That's a difficult thing to ask yourself. It's a difficult thing to have to navigate, but it is the most important thing you could ever do in your life because when you start paying attention to the story that you were crafting, you start Co creating the story that you that the story you live with the universe. That's the moment that magic enters your life consistently on a daily basis. Hell, you start having weird conversations with squirrels. Now I know totally as a language thing. Kevin Moore mentions that Indigenous language is heavily embedded with, with humor. And I, you know, my partner, he's part Indigenous. So, you know, like there's like that whole thing where he totally gets it. And I for the life of me could not for the longest time, I would always skip over the humorous mythology stories cuz I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to be in a certain mood for it, you know what I mean? He gets it. He's it's always funny that we are that different, but he always gets it. And this is one of those moments when I'm telling you I finally understood how beautiful it must be to have a language that is so much humor embedded in it. The moment I was sitting there staring at a squirrel and it was telling me that if I want to belong, no need, just go and hide all your shit and make different nests. That's all you got to do. And then I read a book that was like, don't listen to squirrels, they forget everything, You know what I mean? Like, if only I had language in that moment to describe the situation of being like, damn, can't even trust Roger. That is a humorous aspect of life. You know what I mean? You're just sitting by yourself and you're having a moment that is you. That is magic. The universe, only the universe, only the universe, that is a moment that was created between me and the universe. The squirrel just so happened to be a participant. And in that moment, magic happened. It was funny and it was beautiful. So the only offering. Oh, man, when you think, when you, when you, if you ever go back and read an offering, just think to yourself, If the story is the only thing I can offer this earth, this world, then how am I sharing it? OK, What relationship in your life is being animated or released through meaning? That's a prompt, right? If a story is the only thing I can give, what am I giving it right now? Am I giving the universe? Am I giving the universe grief? Am I giving it a nightmare? Am I giving it hope? Am I giving a joy? Because that's what it's going to give you in return. Remember reciprocation, the gift of strawberries. So if anything, as I go, I just want everybody to really see how this works. Full circle. You are the steward of the earth, the universe. What you give it, it gives you. It is a reciprocal relationship. It's never trying. That's the council of pecans. Stick together. So remember, what you radiate out is what it's having to feel. If you're constantly hanging around a tree only when you feel negative and terrible and when you've got whoa, emotional woes, don't be surprised if that tree sends out some crazy image towards you. Because it's like, I'm sick and tired of all this Boo, Boo. Now he now, now the boogeyman has jumped out at you, you know, and you're like sitting outside because you're giving it nothing but negative energy. And I, you know, I only say that because I know that often times we are told, go ground, go get rid of your energy into the earth. Yes, it'll take it for sure, for sure, for sure. But remember, Mother Earth, just because she can take it doesn't mean you should be giving her a bunch of shit if you can turn it into gold first. So that's why the inner work is so important. When we go and we commune with nature, do the inner work. Do the inner work and be grateful. Be thankful to it. Sit with it when you're not in turmoil. Sit with it when you're in joy. Sit with it when you are in neutral. Sit with it when you are curious. Sit with it in all of your beautiful, beautiful, different aspects of you because you were telling it and giving it the gift of the story of you. So give it a full picture. Concluding Thoughts and What's Next for Braiding Sweetgrass OK everybody, that's it for this one. Unfortunately, like I said, I cannot do the discussion filmed. Not yet at least. We'll get that by next week. So, you know, bear with us, but always join us for book club discussion at the end of every Tuesday. Next Tuesday we will be doing the second part of Braiding Sweetgrass, which is tending sweetgrass. So this has 12345 different sections I believe, and it's about 58 pages long. So take your time and joy. I love to listen to the audio book while I'm reading the physical and I do that. I try not to do that anywhere beyond 1.2 speed just because if you're listening, the only reason why I'm saying that is because in this day and age, I think it's important for us to slow things down. Maybe I'm just speaking to myself here, but I do find listening and reading at the same time. I, Kimimer, you know, reads from her own. She's narrates her own book. So it is very lovely. And the way that she tells story is amazing. Plus, I just want to say anytime I'm dealing with anything indigenous, I always think that the oral storytelling is like half of the point. So like anytime you can listen orally is always a great a great time and I will see you all next month. So have a great one. Keep your head above the water or as I have been saying lately, keep your belly above the water. The emotional undertow is quite wild, but I'll always see you on the other side.