The Three Sisters
This crop provides the tall structure that beans climb.
What is corn?
According to the Mayan story, humans were ultimately made from this plant.
What is corn?
This term refers to searching for useful biological compounds in plants or organisms.
What is bioprospecting?
Kimmerer argues humans should not only take from nature but also give back through this principle.
What is reciprocity?
These plants add nitrogen to the soil.
What are beans?
This process turns sunlight into energy that plants use to grow.
What is photosynthesis?
This term describes stealing Indigenous knowledge and patenting it.
What is biopiracy?
Both readings challenge the idea that knowledge should be controlled by this powerful group.
What are corporations?
This plant spreads along the ground and prevents weeds.
What is squash?
Kimmerer argues humans must live with this principle toward nature.
What is reciprocity?
What Hawthorne calls the exploitation of biological resources by corporations.
What is biocolonialism?
Hawthorne critiques systems that treat nature primarily as this.
What is a resource / commodity?
The Three Sisters represent this ecological idea: different species supporting each other.
What is mutualism / cooperation?
Corn and humans depend on each other in this type of biological relationship.
What is symbiosis?
This famous tree example shows how corporations tried to patent traditional knowledge.
What is the neem tree?
Both authors emphasize this idea: ecosystems and societies function through relationships.
What is interdependence?
Kimmerer uses the Three Sisters as a metaphor for this kind of relationship among knowledge systems.
What is Indigenous knowledge and Western sciences?
Kimmerer says this is our gift and responsibility.
What are words and language?
Hawthorne argues that corporations often justify bioprospecting by promising economic benefits to Indigenous communities through these payments from patented products.
What are royalties?
The Three Sisters system contrasts with this modern agricultural practice.
What is monoculture?