She mentions that she was "stunned" upon learning that her third-year university students "cannot think of any" beneficial relationships between people and the environment...and she asks "How can we begin to move toward ecological and cultural sustainability if we cannot even imagine what that path feels like?"
Kimmerer carefully describes how traditional people have built a reciprocal relationship with the natural world: it gives people gifts, and the people return them, pay back the gift.
In a review in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Elizabeth Wilkinson writes: "While she lovingly weaves a braid of literary sweetgrass, as her narrative develops she reminds that, like the actual braiding, there has to be someone on the other end holding the strands taut. She slowly, patiently builds the case for 'cultures of regenerative reciprocity' because, as she says, 'it makes us happy.'"
Kimmerer gently pulls on us, like the other person at the end of the braid, to act wisely. She says "The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken. It's our turn now, long overdue."
