Check out the media our volunteers and staff have been engaging with lately!

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

“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.”

Supreme Court limits environmental reviews of infrastructure projects. All Things Considered, NPR

The Supreme Court recently narrowed the scope of a “key environmental statute,” paving the way for easier approval for infrastructure projects like highways, bridges, pipelines, and wind farms.

Army Corps analysis: Great Lakes pipeline tunnel would have sweeping environmental impacts. Todd Richmond, Associated Press

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ draft environmental analysis shows that constructing an underground tunnel for Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline could lead to significant environmental impacts, including wetland destruction. 

How AP calculated the costs and death toll of EPA rule rollbacks. M.K. Wildeman and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

The Trump Administration is attempting to roll back more than 30 environmental regulations, so the Associated Press set out to calculate the consequences of these actions.