This paper is submitted for consideration in the following Units and Programs, or co-Sponsored Sessions: Native Traditions in the Americas, Indigenous Religions, Religion and Ecology, Extraction, Comparative Religious Ethics .
The tradition of braiding sweetgrass in indigenous cultures is the practice of picking strands of the plant sweetgrass, drying the strands, and intertwining the distinct strands into a braid of different textures. This braid is given to others as a form of goodwill and gratitude. The braids are also used and burned during ceremonies and prayers. Indigenous tradition teaches that the sweet smell and smoke are attractive to good spirits and can carry prayers to the spirit realm. The Greek origin of the botanical nomenclature for sweetgrass, hierochloe, derives from the words sacred (hieros) and grass (chloe). This study utilizes accounts of indigenous sweetgrass practices and myths in anthropological and religious studies fields to evaluate how indigenous approaches serve to expand Western ethical imagination around plants and ecological preservation. Indigenous harvesting practices and uses of sweetgrass are embedded in sacred myths and assumptions about the interconnectivity between humanity and plants. In this interconnection, plants and humans are envisioned to be in a sacred relationship of symbiotic mutuality.
Braiding sweetgrass is a common practice among indigenous peoples of North America and is used for a variety of reasons in religious ceremonies, gift-giving, and practical uses such as basket weaving. Indigenous harvesting methods, and the spiritual practices that accompany the harvest, merit attention as these methods shed light on how indigenous people enact human-plant relationships. Often neglected indigenous teachings about the relationship between humans and plants are illustrated through sweetgrass harvesting practices. The harvest is set within a spiritual context in which the harvester has a relation with the plant. Prayers, particularly of thanksgiving, are chanted before harvest. The plants are sometimes addressed directly and engaged in the process of harvesting. The physicality of harvesting the plant also includes a technique of pinching the plant in the harvest. Ethical principles undergird the harvest, and these principles are sometimes referred to collectively as the Honorable Harvest. Some of these principles include never picking the first plants; always leaving something for others to harvest; only harvesting about half of an area; and braiding or tying plants after harvest.
This study examines how harvesting practices contrast with dominant Western secular and religious paradigms of ecological ethics in approaches to plant replenishing. In terms of method, it is a multidisciplinary approach that sheds light on how practices around sweetgrass contribute to expanding ethical frameworks. Indigenous practices involve ceremonies, mythic stories, and indigenous knowledge about plants. Anthropology and religious studies examine social practices and spiritual dimensions such as myths and ceremonies. The natural sciences, such as botany and ecology, have eschewed spiritual arenas, ignoring important dimensions of indigenous planting, harvesting, and preservation methods. However, these disciplines are increasingly turning attention to studies that take seriously the spiritual and mythic dimensions that help to understand indigenous methods of harvesting and ecology more fully.
The most common consensus in the scientific community holds that the best way to increase a plant population is not to harvest, but to leave the plant alone to reproduce and replenish. By that logic, harvesting a plant population would lead to a decrease in the plant population. This view is the primary model of preservation in the West and is assumed to be the most effective approach to plant conservation. The Western model is based on a view of the human-plant relationship as characterized by human consumption and plant utility. From a strictly scientific point of view, there is a suspension of ethics. If we use less of the plant and leave it be, there will be more for us to use later as needed. In Judeo-Christian tradition, some scriptures illustrate the view that preservation is best achieved by not harvesting and leaving the land alone. Biblical scripture places this sentiment in the context of God’s creation. God created the world, including plants, animals, and human beings in six days, and rested on the seventh day, the Sabbath. Human approach to the land is situated within an ethic of jubilee that shares in the creativity and rest of God. In the jubilee, every seventh cycle of seven years (every 49 years) in the land of Israel, among other things such as the release of prisoners and debt, the soil and plants were to be left to rest for a year (Leviticus 25). In Judeo-Christian tradition, the earth too needs to rest, just as God rested. This is represented in a cycle of years of seven paralleling the rest of the seventh day after creation. The human plant relationship is one of leaving plants and crops to rest and replenish as embedded in the structure and story of the Genesis 1 creation story. This narrative context provides the ethical framework that science suspends in an attempt at objectivity.
Scientific consensus, and Judeo-Christian ethical frameworks both approach plant preservation by leaving the plant population alone and not harvesting the plant for some time to allow for plants to replenish. This approach means humans must conserve plants by leaving them alone. This Western approach is very different from indigenous approaches. Indigenous paradigms encourage an active relationship with plants. To harvest sweetgrass, for example, is to engage in a respectful relationship with a living animate subject. The plant, sometimes associated with the Earth Goddess/Mother, or an ancestor, and living gift, provides for humans. This gift is conditional on a respectful, sacred harvest.
Initial studies regarding sweetgrass indicate that traditional indigenous approaches of human-plant relationality through sacred harvesting have proved more effective than predominant ecological approaches of not harvesting in promoting plant replenishment. Indigenous stories and practices challenge common Western paradigms of ecological preservation and potentially promote the rights of plant-life.
This study utilizes accounts of indigenous sweetgrass practices and myths in anthropological and religious studies fields to evaluate how indigenous approaches serve to expand Western ethical imagination around plants and ecological preservation. Indigenous harvesting practices and uses of sweetgrass are embedded in sacred myths and assumptions about the interconnectivity between humanity and plants. In this interconnection, plants and humans are envisioned to be in a sacred relationship of symbiotic mutuality. This study examines how harvesting practices contrast with dominant Western secular and religious paradigms of ecological ethics in approaches to plant replenishing. Initial studies regarding sweetgrass indicate that traditional indigenous approaches of human-plant relationality through sacred harvesting have proved more effective than predominant ecological approaches of not harvesting in promoting plant replenishment. Indigenous stories and practices challenge common Western paradigms of ecological preservation and potentially promote the rights of plant-life.