This is a true masterpiece! I will throw a lot of commonly used words at you, but they are so true for this book: lifechanging eye-opening touching full of wisdom down to earth I learned a lot and it changed how I think about politics, governments and community. It definitely influenced the way I will approach certain future situations in every positive way. And I hope I can apply those teaching (especially on gratitude for the mundane) to my everyday life. Sometimes the book lost me a bit but the content is so valuable, it is 5 stars anyways. I can't and won't go further into detail. Read it. One hundred percent recommend ✨

"What if you were a teacher but had no voice to speak your knowledge? What if you had no language at all and yet there was something you needed to say? Wouldn't you dance it? Wouldn't you act it out? Wouldn't your every movement tell the story? In time you would be so eloquent that just to gaze upon you would reveal it all. And so it is with these silent green lives." This is the most important book I have read this year. The author is a Potawatomi and a scientist. I learned about indigenous knowledge and culture, gratitude, languages, family and ecology. And most importantly about reciprocity. The authors journey of learning about her heritage and then synchronizing it with science was the perfect introduction for we all are disconnected from nature and so I felt like I was better prepared and more open minded for the stories to come. We see what it means for humans to receive earths gifts, establish gratitude and build relationships with reciprocity with the land and nonhumans. In a beautiful, poetic style Robin Wall Kimmerer explains different examples for symbiosis between the land, humans, plants and animals with indigenous stories and ecological science. Story by Story we understand more and more that land is not a property/commodity, but sacred. That we need to learn to take care of it again. I don't reread books often, but I will definitely come back to these stories!