One Book, One College

Below is a brief description about the book from the the publisher Milkweed Editions:

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Braiding Sweetgrass is a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times Bestseller, and was named the "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub. The book is available for free to all ELAC students, faculty, and staff in print and as an eBook from the ELAC Library.

Spring 2025

Fall 2024

Fall 2023

For questions about campus events or to schedule an event for One Book, One College, please contact Lorena Madrigal, madrigl@elac.edu.

ELAC encourages persons with disabilities to participate in programs and activities. For disability accommodation requests, please contact adacoordinator@elac.edu at least one week prior to the event.

Plant Ecologist, Educator, and Writer Robin Wall Kimmerer articulates a vision of environmental stewardship informed by traditional ecological knowledge and furthers efforts to heal a damaged planet.

In this video, she works in her home and office wearing a blue textured shirt and beaded earrings, and she walks us through natural landscapes wearing a red fleece jacket as she explains the relationship between Western science and Indigenous knowledge, and the relationship between humans and the Earth.