Braiding Sweetgrass

Kimmerer describes her home of upstate New York, which was once Onondaga land and part of the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederacy. Robin drinks from a cool, clear spring whose water has been filtered by natural limestone. She thinks of how faithful water is, always flowing and providing as it is meant to, and the Thanksgiving Address, which reminds us to be grateful for the water’s diligent work.

Kimmerer tells the story of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s founding. Long ago, she says, the people forgot to live with gratitude, and fought constant wars between themselves. Then a Huron man called the Peacemaker began spreading a message of peace to all the tribes, traveling among them as they fought. An Onondaga chief named Tadodaho initially refused his message. At first Tadodaho was so poisoned by hatred that his hair was full of snakes, but eventually he accepted the Peacemaker’s message and was healed.

The Peacemaker gathered the leaders of the five Haudenosaunee nations at the “Great Tree of Peace,” a white pine on the shore of Onondaga Lake. This was the birth of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, “the oldest living democracy on the planet,” in which all five tribes agreed to abide by the Great Law of Peace. Tadodaho was honored for the special role that the Onondaga played in this act, and the name Tadodaho has since then been passed down to the Confederacy’s spiritual leaders. The Confederacy thrived for many years, Kimmerer says, but today “the ground where the Peacemaker walked is a Superfund site.”

Kimmerer now relates how Onondaga Lake went from a sacred and cherished site to one of the most polluted lakes in the country. Starting in the late 1700s, early industrialists built factories there and used the lake as a chemical dumping ground. The Tree of Peace is now buried by waste beds, which formed new shorelines entirely. This lifeless white waste is known as Solvay waste because it is the byproduct of the Solvay Process, which turns limestone into soda ash, itself a crucial ingredient in many industrial processes. In the late 1800s, the Solvay Process Company made the region explode in wealth. Trains full of products left Onondaga Lake, while the pipes kept pouring out more waste into the lake itself.

The limestone for the Solvay Process was quarried from nearby open pit mines, turned into soda ash, and the waste dumped into the lake. Kimmerer imagines how the wildlife felt as they encountered the very first ejection of that waste. The pipes filled in not only a new shoreline, but the surrounding wetlands as well. Further, even once it has become the new land the waste continues to leach chemicals into the water whenever it rains. “The water has been tricked,” Kimmerer writes: the rain and the creek that flow into Onondaga Lake are fulfilling their purpose responsibly, but now they have been made to carry poison into the lake instead of new life.

Kimmerer describes how Onondaga Lake looks today, its shoreline steep with white cliffs of Solvay waste. The waste continues to leak salts into the water, which keeps aquatic plants from growing. Underwater plants create oxygen that other lake creatures rely on to survive, so the lake without underwater plants remains oxygen-poor and lacking in life. Fishing was banned in the lake in 1970 because of high amounts of mercury in the water, and even today it isn’t considered safe to eat fish from Onondaga Lake. Mercury was a byproduct of another chemical process used by Allied Chemical (the successor company to the Solvay Process Company), and the toxic element still circulates through the lake’s food chain.

In the 1880s, at the height of its industrial wealth, Onondaga Lake was a tourist attraction famed for its swimming and whitefish. Swimming was banned in 1940, however, when the waters became too toxic. The water is also muddy now because of flow from Onondaga Creek, which contains the Tully mudboils: eruptions of mud from the creek floor.

Some consider the mudboils to be natural geologic features, but Kimmerer says that Onondaga elders remember when the creek was perfectly clear, and that the mudboils didn’t appear until salt mining began. Allied Chemical began salt mining from the headwaters of Onondaga Creek when the closer salt wells ran dry, which meant pumping salt for miles through Onondaga Nation territory, ruining their water whenever a pipe broke. The waste also likely created the mudboils that now make the creek run brown. Allied Chemical still refuses to claim any responsibility for the mudboils, saying that they are an “act of God.” “What kind of God would that be?” Kimmerer asks.

Kimmerer compares the wounds of Onondaga Lake and its waterways to the snakes that needed to be combed out of Tadodaho’s hair. All these waters are supposed to be part of the Onondaga Nation, but “water is more faithful to its responsibilities than the United States would ever be.” She describes how George Washington ordered the destruction of the Onondaga people during the Revolutionary War, leading to tens of thousands of deaths, and the many broken treaties that followed—along with the boarding schools like Carlisle that further destroyed so much of the people’s cultural heritage.

Despite all this, Kimmerer says, the Onondaga people continue to feel a responsibility to and love for their land, and they try to live according to the Peacemaker’s Great Law of Peace. “The people went on giving thanks to the land, although so much of the land had little reason to be thankful for the people.” Onondaga also remains an Indigenous nation still separate from U.S. sovereignty, despite having their territory drastically reduced. Recently the Onondaga people have tried to use U.S. law to reclaim their land, filing a suit in 2005 saying that it was illegally taken from them. The Supreme Court even upheld their claims.

Unlike many Native nations who receive various government settlements for their claims, the Onondaga called their suit a “land rights action.” Kimmerer then quotes from the suit, which states that the land is not property to be possessed, and also that they will not try to evict anyone living on the land, instead aiming to bring about peace among everyone who lives there. The suit’s overall goal was “to gain the legal standing necessary to move restoration of the land forward”—to begin the proper cleanup of Onondaga Lake and its surrounding area. The defendants were the state of New York and several corporations, including Honeywell Incorporated (the new name for the former Allied Chemical).

Because of other outside pressures, Honeywell had already begun cleaning up Onondaga Lake, but only in superficial ways—merely covering the contaminants in sand—that wouldn’t help restore the living balance of the lake. The Onondaga Nation suit sought to hold the corporation accountable for a full cleanup of the lake, with no half-measures. Kimmerer emphasizes that this suit was not just about who owns the land, but about the rights of the land itself. She quotes an Onondaga Clan Mother, who says that the suit is about “justice for the whole of Creation.” In 2010, however, a federal court dismissed the suit altogether.

Robin now describes her own experience with Onondaga Lake: she knew nothing of its history until college, when her attention was briefly brought to it by seeing a huge HELP sign along the shore from the highway. Fifteen years later, when she lived in Syracuse again, she had a free day and decided to visit the lake. Robin drives to an abandoned fairground on the lake’s shore, parking her car and finding her way along a path through thick, tall reeds. There are more than a thousand acres of “wasteland” along Onondaga’s shore, and as she walks alone through the reeds Robin suddenly feels afraid, like she’s in a horror movie.

Robin turns a corner and faces what initially seems to be the scene of a gruesome murder—but then she realizes that all the bloody figures make up a life-sized diorama, part of an abandoned “Haunted Hayrides” attraction from the previous Halloween, sponsored by the Solvay Lions Club. After her initial terror Robin can’t help but laugh, but then she thinks about the irony of it all. What has actually happened on this land is just as gruesome as any bloody execution—and the executioner is named Solvay Process, now Honeywell. She thinks further about the horror of the fact that these were not faceless corporations, but real people who filled the lake with poison, all “just doing their jobs.”

Kimmerer comments on how contemporary people have been psychologically conditioned to avoid confronting environmental disasters directly. She then muses on the word “wasteland,” which implies that the land itself has become useless or been squandered—and in the case of Onondaga Lake no one seemed concerned, as “ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.”

In the 1970s, a professor at the local College of Environmental Science and Forestry seeded and fertilized one of the Solvay waste beds facing the highway such that when the grass eventually sprouted, it spelled out the word HELP—the same sign that Robin herself had seen as a student. This one-word message was apt, she thinks, as Onondaga Lake was like a kidnapping victim unable to speak for itself.

Kimmerer now asks the reader how we respond to these wastelands. We can despair, letting ourselves be overwhelmed by the environmental disasters everywhere in our world. It is important to grieve for the land, she believes, but grief is also a part of love, and to love the land is also to give back to it some of the gifts and joy that it still gives to us. Environmentalism has mostly become about doomsday predictions and pessimism, she notes, rather than about actively giving back to the land and having a healthy relationship with it.

The idea that if people only knew what was happening then they would change their ways is misguided, Kimmerer believes. People do know about what our economies have done to the planet, and those that care are merely moved to despair, not positive action. “Despair is paralysis,” she writes, and we cannot let ourselves be paralyzed when the land itself is crying out for “HELP.” “It’s not enough to grieve,” she says. “It’s not enough to just stop doing bad things.”

After eating the feast that Mother Earth has provided for us, Kimmerer says, it’s time for us to do our dishes. This doesn’t have to be a burden, but can be a communal effort that forms relationships between people and the land. The act of restoring the land, “doing the dishes,” also means reconsidering how we think about land in the first place. Kimmerer suggests a new tableau as a counterpart to the Haunted Hayride at Onondaga Lake. This would be a ride about reimagining land in the process of restoring it.

The first stop in this “hayride” might be called “Land as Capital,” Kimmerer imagines. This is the general modern mindset that the land is nothing but a commodity to be exploited for profit, as represented by the original Solvay waste beds themselves. The second stop, “Land as Property,” is reflected in the city’s sloppy attempts to undo the damage by planting invasive reeds to cover the waste beds. This strategy is employed widely, as companies and governments that destroy entire ecosystems then just cover the carnage with some new vegetation to feel like they have done right by their property.

Some people have stood against this kind of behavior, however, like Bill Jordan, who cofounded the Society for Ecological Restoration. Ecological restoration is not about returning the appearance of nature, but the actual functioning ecological system that was previously lost. At the ride’s third stop, “Land as Machine,” Kimmerer describes how native plants can be used as engineering solutions for restoration, like the push to plant willow trees to absorb water pollution. Kimmerer understands the good intentions behind these ideas, but they also assume a worldview in which only humans can be active subjects, while plants and other creatures are passive objects.

Instead, Kimmerer suggests that we take the Indigenous worldview, viewing the ecosystem as “not a machine, but a community of sovereign beings.” This leads to the ride’s next display, which Kimmerer doesn’t yet name. The restoration ecologists at work at this stop are not scientists, however, but the plants themselves, Mother Earth’s greatest teachers and healers.

Kimmerer then describes the plants that have gradually taken root along the wounded shores of Onondaga Lake. Robin digs into the soil where these plants have survived and sees that it is slowly returning from white waste to dark rich earth. She watches ants carrying both waste and grass seeds, slowly removing the poison and spreading new life. Birch trees grow with the help of algae, and birds perch in the branches, defecating seeds that become fruiting shrubs. Robin sees new beginnings and reciprocity everywhere here, in “the small incremental processes by which an ecological community is built.”

Kimmerer finally names this tableau: “Land as Teacher, Land as Healer.” We can learn from the natural processes that plants use to build new ecosystems and restore lost ones. Indeed, the lake has “offered signs of hope” in recent years, as life returns with the help of human engineering and restoration efforts. The water itself continues to remember its duty as well, Kimmerer says.

Whatever new ecosystem might emerge at Onondaga Lake, it is likely to be “naturalized” rather than native, and unrecognizable to the people who lived there with the Peacemaker. Some new plant communities are thriving here, however, and Robin goes to visit them with a fellow professor and his students, who have been testing which plants can survive and hopefully recreate the original salt marsh. As she observes the plants, she smells something haunting and familiar, but soon it disappears. Next she admires a stand of goldenrod and asters. She imagines this tableau of restored plant-life as another stop on the hayride, this one titled “Land as Responsibility.”

As she observes the students working among their plants, however, Robin feels that something is missing in this tableau as well. Everyone speaks of data and solutions, but no one dares to use words like “beautiful” or “love.” Suddenly she smells the familiar aroma again. Examining a nearby patch of green, Robin sees that it is sweetgrass—thriving even here at Onondaga Lake. Referring to sweetgrass like a teacher and friend, Kimmerer says that “she reminded me that it is not the land that has been broken, but our relationship to it.”

Restoration is necessary to heal the earth, Kimmerer says, but “reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful restoration.” Science is a crucial part of restoration practices, but restoration should not be the domain of only science. We must be reminded that we aren’t the ones in control of the earth, only our relationship to it. Along with restoring the land itself, we must restore “a relationship of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. And love.” Kimmerer then quotes a statement from the Indigenous Environmental Network, saying that science is the “head and hands” of restoration, but Native spirituality is the “heart” that guides them. “Ecological restoration is inseparable from cultural and spiritual restoration.”

Robin recalls going on a date when she was a college student in Syracuse; she asked her date to show her Onondaga Lake, but he seemed embarrassed by it because of its odor and wouldn’t even get out of the car when they got there. Another friend who grew up there recalls imagining the toxic sludge of Allied Chemical as a vision of hell. It’s easy to write off Onondaga Lake, Kimmerer says, but there are seeds of hope here as well. Just as resilient plants have returned to the waste beds, so the Onondaga people themselves have endured and continue to try to fulfill their duty to the land.

Kimmerer now describes a new declaration put forward by the Onondaga: the “Onondaga Nation Vision for a Clean Onondaga Lake.” The declaration follows the pattern of the Thanksgiving Address, greeting each element of creation while also offering a plan for restoring the lake. The declaration is an example of a new approach called “biocultural or reciprocal restoration,” which echoes the Indigenous worldview that restoration should be part of a people’s relationship to the land. “It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land,” Kimmerer writes. “It is medicine for the earth.”

There was a recent cultural event held for the restoration of Onondaga Lake, Kimmerer says. Participants brought vessels of clean water (including one all the way from Mount Fuji in Japan) and poured them into the lake as a symbol of healing. Onondaga people danced traditional dances, people gave speeches, and the group joined together to plant a new tree in the tradition of the Tree of Peace. This sixth stop on the hayride would be called “Land as Sacred, Land as Community.”

There are hopeful stories of environments being restored, Kimmerer asserts, and these stories can serve as inspiration, feeding the desire within us all to be closer to our mother earth, acting as “antidotes to the poison of despair.” Restoration and relationship to the land must continue to push our society towards a “life-sustaining civilization” instead of the current “Industrial Growth Society.” We need to heal the earth, but in the process the earth will also heal us—and we need it to. To close the chapter, Kimmerer imagines one last, future stop on the hayride tour. In this scene, titled “Land as Home,” families gather happily by Onondaga Lake, fishing and swimming under trees full of birds, with both the American flag and the Haudenosaunee flag flying proudly together.