Medicine Wheel for the Planet
A Journey Toward Personal and Ecological Healing
Building on sacred stories and field observations, Dr. Jennifer Grenz shares her personal journey of joining her head (Western science) and her heart (Indigenous worldview) to find a truer path toward ecological healing. Eloquent, inspiring, and disruptive, Medicine Wheel for the Planet circles around an argument that we need more than a singular worldview to protect the planet and make the significant changes we are running out of time for.
In Medicine Wheel for the Planet, Dr. Jennifer Grenz reminds us that we are an integral part of the ever-changing environment. By asking questions about that environment from a relational lens, we can turn away from strategies that seek to restore a purity that never existed and turn toward meaningful collaboration with our plant relatives. I will be returning to and recommending this book for years to come.
Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future
I used to be an ecologist. . . . Now, I am a community gatherer, working to help bring healing beyond just the land. I am a story-listener. I am a storyteller. I am a shaper of ecosystems. I work on bringing communities together, in circle, to listen to each other.
A farm kid at heart, and a Nlaka’pamux woman of mixed ancestry, Dr. Jennifer Grenz always felt a deep connection to the land. However, after nearly two decades of working as a restoration ecologist in the Pacific Northwest, she became frustrated that despite the best efforts of her colleagues and numerous volunteers, they weren’t making the meaningful change needed for plant, animal, and human communities to adapt to a warming climate. Restoration ecology is grounded in an idea that we must return the natural world to an untouched, pristine state, placing humans in a godlike role—a notion at odds with Indigenous histories of purposeful, reciprocal interaction with the environment. This disconnect sent Dr. Grenz on a personal journey of joining her head (Western science) and her heart (Indigenous worldview) to find a truer path toward ecological healing.
In Medicine Wheel for the Planet, building on sacred stories, field observations, and her own journey, Dr. Grenz invites readers to share in the teachings of the four directions of the medicine wheel: the North, which draws upon the knowledge and wisdom of elders; the East, where we let go of colonial narratives and see with fresh eyes; the South, where we apply new-old worldviews to envision a way forward; and the West, where a relational approach to land reconciliation is realized.
Eloquent, inspiring, and disruptive, Medicine Wheel for the Planet circles around an argument that we need more than a singular worldview to protect the planet and make the significant changes we are running out of time for.
In Medicine Wheel for the Planet, Dr. Jennifer Grenz reminds us that we are an integral part of the ever-changing environment. By asking questions about that environment from a relational lens, we can turn away from strategies that seek to restore a purity that never existed and turn toward meaningful collaboration with our plant relatives. I will be returning to and recommending this book for years to come.
Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future
What a wonderfully destabilizing book! Through an exquisite weaving of lived experiences, storytelling, and regional Indigenous wisdom, Dr. Jennifer Grenz guides us away from the false promise of western ‘Eden ecology’ into the deeper promise of true relational ecology. Here, if we are open and humble, we come to reinhabit our true place in healing the earth—a place where self-care and land-care are intertwined, where Indigenous understanding is honored and incorporated without superficial fragmentation or appropriation, where our human role within the landscape is revitalized, where business and extraction is replaced by balance and reciprocity. Medicine Wheel for the Planet is practical, uplifting, and beautifully composed—a must-read for all who care about our beloved, thirsting Earth.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit
Through this moving memoir, Dr. Jennifer Grenz shows the reader that western science is incomplete by juxtaposing differing cosmologies, epistemologies, cognitive frameworks, and languages of western and Indigenous worlds.
M. Kat Anderson, author of Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources
Everyone passionate about environmental justice and our relationships to our lands should read this book.
Dr. Jessica Hernandez, author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science
This beautiful book can completely change how we approach science, using both Indigenous and Western approaches, and how we can work collaboratively to help foster balance in nature.
Suzanne Simard, bestselling author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
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