Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings ― asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass ― offer us gifts and assignments, indeed if we have forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that hang its flourishing moment, she circles toward a central argument that the awakening of ecological knowledge requires the acknowledgment and festivity of our complementary relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be able of understanding the liberality of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mama , scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She's the author of platting Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the tutoring of shops and Gathering Moss A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she's a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the author and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.