Spring into the Semester Community Reading Program: Home

Dickinson College students, staff, and faculty are invited to join us for a community discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 

This event was held online via Zoom on Monday, January 24, 2022 from 4:30 until 6 p.m. for small facilitated group conversations. 

An ebook version of Braiding Sweetgrass is available (with your Dickinson network login) from the Waidner-Spahr Library.

This beautifully written book blends modern science and native cultural practices. 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.

This book is highly relevant to the Dickinson community with the recent approval of our official land acknowledgment, confirmation of Dickinson’s connection to the Carlisle Industrial Indian School (mentioned in the book), and our focus on sustainability. In fact, Kimmerer helps to demonstrate why our commitment to sustainability is so vitally important. Kimmerer’s book is a New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller, in addition to other awards and accolades.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and an environmental biologist. She is on faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and the Founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

Braiding Sweetgrass (Milkweed Editions)

About the Author: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Reviews of Braiding Sweetgrass

The community reading program is designed to provide shared intellectual experiences, build community, and encourage dialogue and discussion on a timely issue. It is an opportunity for the Dickinson community to come together at the beginning of the spring semester, when there are few broad community-centered programs already scheduled.

This event is sponsored by the Dickinson College Division of Academic Affairs, Human Resource Services, Division of Student Life, and the Waidner-Spahr Library. 

For more information, contact Donna Bickford (bickford@dickinson.edu) or Jessica Howard (howardj@dickinson.edu).