Botanical Books by Indigenous Authors

This classic, award-winning book provides the first comprehensive description of Hawaiian traditions of plant use. Topics include not only food, but clothing, cordage, shelter, canoes, tools, housewares, medicines, religious objects, weaponry, personal adornment, and recreation.

Originally published in 1972, Native Planters, remains one of the most important ethnographic works on traditional Hawaiian culture. It has been reprinted with an index to subjects and chants, making this edition invaluable for scholars and laymen alike. This pioneering study of cultivation practices, beliefs, and rituals is the fruit of a brilliant collaborative effort between the eminent Pacific anthropologist, E.S. Craighill Handy, and his wife Elizabeth, and the noted authority on Hawaiian language and culture, Mary Kawena Pukui.

In addition to describing the plants and their habitats, this guide relates the significance that native and Polynesian introduced plants had to traditional Hawaiian culture, and tell how these plants are still used today.

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 lenses of knowledge together to show 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 are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.