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Robin Wall Kimmerer and Evelyn White showcase the intersection of identity and nature throughout their works but do so in different ways.  While Kimmerer sees Earth primarily as a nurturer and provider through indigenous oral traditions, White finds nature painful due to the historical context of racial discrimination that is deeply rooted to the land. Both writers, although come from different backgrounds and experiences, sees nature and culture in an ecological sphere, and find desire to reconnect with nature to heal and grow.

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In Skywoman Falling, Kimmerer is explaining the power of sweetgrass, one of the first plants to grow on the Earth that is cherished by many indigenous nations. She compares the sweetgrass to the hair of a woman, “Wiingaashk waves in strands, long and shining like a woman’s freshly washed hair. And so we say it is the flowing hair of Mother Earth” (Kimmerer 5). This shows the interconnectedness between indigenous culture and nature, and how Kimmerer sees the grass and hair as one of the same by comparing its beauty when braiding. As Kimmerer talks about braiding the sweetgrass like it is the hair of Mother Earth, she is giving Earth humanistic traits, another way to interconnect human identity with nature.

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Toward the end of Skywoman Falling, Kimmerer realizes that her students do not see a relationship between the people and the land because they have never heard the story of Skywoman. She realizes that plants and other parts of nature help tell the story of Skywoman, “when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.” (Kimmerer 10). Kimmerer works to understand how to reconnect her students to nature and find interconnectedness between people and the land. But she doesn’t do this through her own teachings, she relies on the story of Skywoman and everything she left behind such as plants that can show there is reciprocity between people and the land.

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White struggles to grasp the views of Kimmerer and her interconnectedness of nature at the beginning. She is fearful of nature because of rooted cultural discrimination and fear that the land will punish her. When she goes on a women’s writing workshop in the Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, she explains her fear: “I was certain that if I ventured outside to admire a meadow or to feel the cool ripples in a stream, I’d be taunted, attacked, raped, maybe even murdered because of the color of my skin,” (White 378). This is because she views the land as a place of suffering and dispossession, which frames her ideas of the Earth not as nurturing or mother like, but rather a punishment as black communities have often been forced off their lands or into slavery.

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After struggling to find belonging and connection to nature throughout her time in the woods, White goes on a rafting trip and her mindset and shift in tone changes. For the first time, she can find appreciation for nature and find peace, “my breathing  finally relaxed and I allowed myself to drink in the stately rocks, soaring birds, towering trees and affirming anglers who waved their rods as we rushed by in our raft...in a magnificently still moment, I looked up into the heavens and heard the voice of black poet Langston Hughes.” (White 383). Earlier in the text, she believed there was a white man when she looked up to the sky, however now she can see the freedom of nature and sees a black man when she looks up. She has begun to realize that reconnection with nature is possible and the power of healing that it has, even for marginalized communities like herself.

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The land as woman trope says that Mother Earth provides nourishment and protections or withholds or punishes. In Kimmerer’s work, the land as a provider and healer is a central theme. She integrates reciprocity and gratitude toward earth, that humans must give back to earth the same way it provides for us. This can be seen in the sweetgrass, which has medicine and spiritual significance. It shows that sweetgrass offers gifts to humans, but humans must care for it too, like braiding or nurturing it. While it takes White some time to get to this idea in her work, she is finally able to see the reconnected relationship to nature. She talks about how reconnecting in nature allowed her to see personal healing from a world that is rooted in discrimination. This can be inferred when she looks up and sees the black poet in the sky.

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In the second form, the Earth can be seen as withholding from humans and punishing. This can be seen in White’s writing at the beginning, where she struggles to find peace with nature is immersed in fear. This fear of nature comes from the cultural impacts of western civilization that have instilled deep discrimination and racial differences, showing her that nature can’t provide for her. With this view, she sees the land as a punisher and something that holds her back and gives her painful memories of the past. This contradicts Kimmerer’s view of Mother Earth, and that Earth always provides no matter what its children take.  These implications are rooted ecological issues or even often the wilderness concept that has been framed in gendered terms that mutually reinforce sexism, and virgin wilderness.

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Kimmerer, as an indigenous woman showcases indigenous environmentalism through oral traditions. These traditions create a sense of understanding with the environment, which is fluent and changing throughout time. These traditions are also told through stories. While a common myth is that there is a universal Native American experience, it is shown throughout Kimmerer’s work that there are many stories from different indigenous cultures. In Skywoman Falling, she tells the story of Skywoman who has an interconnected relationship with nature shown through the geese, and how as a result the land grew due to her gratitude toward it. This emphasizes Kimmerer’s theme of an ecological view of the Earth and the interconnectedness between people, since they provide each other with resources for both to thrive. This form of storytelling is not found in White’s work, but she acknowledges that nature and culture are intertwined, nature either providing nurturing care or fearful pain.

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The writers display an ecology paradigm as they connect nature with culture. While Kimmerer represents nature and culture as interconnected in a positive way, she notices that her students see people and land in two separate spheres. This idea of nature and culture in two separate spheres is the wilderness paradigm, where nature is presented as a beneficiary of or enemy to an external environment. Her entire theme throughout her writing is the importance of an interconnected sphere of nature and culture, that is deeply rooted in indigenous traditions. She uses the Skywoman and other indigenous teachings and stories to show her students there is an interconnectedness between the two.

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Kimmerer, Robin Wall. "Skywoman Falling." Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions, 2013, pp 3-10

White, Evelyn. "The Black Woman and the Wilderness." The Black Woman's Guide to the Natural World, pp. [377-383]

Malla, Joan de la. “Maasai indigenous people in the Kenyan Rift Valley,” phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2017-09-indigenous-storytelling-asset-biocultural.html

“Sweetgrass.” Better Homes and Gardens,  https://www.bhg.com/gardening/plant-dictionary/herb/sweetgrass/

Getty Images, “Langston Hughes.” biography.com, https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/langston-hughes

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At first, White demonstrates an ecology paradigm, but she sees nature connected through cultural historical context that is negative and painful, such as slavery, dispossession, and discrimination. She connects the two together, unlike the wilderness paradigm, but instead of finding peace and wanting to give back to nature, she wants to run away from it. By the end of her rafting trip, she can find a new sense of connection to nature, that nature is there for her peace, healing and comfort, rather than painful memories from past historical events that instill fear. She learns that nature does not discriminate, and rather she can identity with nature, which can be seen when she sees Langston Hughes in the sky.

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The story of the Skywoman Falling is created to communicate the mutual relationship between people and the land, and how that relationship is possible. In the story, the woman grasps “fruits and seeds of all kinds of plants. These she scattered onto the new ground and carefully tended each one until the world turned from brown to green,” (Kimmerer 4). This shows how the woman is giving back to nature after nature sacrificed itself to help her. By saying she was turning the world from brown to green, it means she is giving the world life and giving back what she took. This connects with the ecological paradigm which represents nature and culture as permeable and interconnected.