Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Journey Toward Personal and Ecological Healing

By Jennifer Grenz
University of Minnesota Press (2024)
280 pages

Review by Kate Flick

In Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Journey Toward Personal and Ecological Healing, Dr. Jennifer Grenz offers a compelling explo­ration of healing—personal, ecological, and cultural—through the lens of her lived experiences as an invasive species expert, but also as an Indigenous woman, scientist, mother, artist, and com­munity leader. Holding Indigenous knowledge systems with Western ecological science expertise, Grenz embarks on a medi­cine wheel journey that provides guideposts for others walking such paths. She notes an important realization and responsibility: “This wasn’t just about figuring out how to bring these knowl­edges together; it was about ensuring their protection while doing so.”

As an invasive species specialist trained by and operationalized within Western dominant frameworks, she shares her take on (re)building her personal and professional relationships with and for the land via Indigenous ecologies. Grenz reflects critically on her earlier career. Her struggles and transformations from domi­nant lenses are complex and non-linear and, as such, offer a grounding story for supporting and seeing through Indigenous ecologies. “Just like that, I stopped working reflexively, I could set aside the automatic categorization and characterization I had learned to apply to the landscape and all the things within it from my education and work experience,” she writes. “With the permission to see relationality came the freedom to work and think differently.”

The book is a personal, blending memoir with ecological reflec­tion and practical restoration examples. Grenz’s storytelling is driven by elder teachings, plant and animal lessons, and grounded accounts from the field. Her critique of colonial systems of knowl­edge—especially in invasive species management—is sharp and constructive. Grenz offers not just a deconstruction of flawed frameworks, but a generative reorientation toward Indigenous ecologies that center healing, respect, and relational accountability.

Chapter 8, “Forest Gardens, Webwork, and Ecological Leadership,” stands out for its practical offerings for “new-old” environmental students, particularly Indigenous and Indigenous allies, to reorient the narrative to Indigenous-led, land-based lega­cies of human leadership through time. Yet the book’s reach is broader and process based.

Grenz states her purpose: “My goal is not only to provide another example of how our Indigenous worldview and science can work together successfully, but to share my journey so that others may see themselves in my own struggles.” She envisions not just restoration but a paradigm shift: “Not only would we design a guiding process for the application of an Indigenous ecology, but we would also design a new guiding process for rela­tional decision-making.”

Kate Flick, PhD, is a professor of natural resources and geoscience at the College of Menominee Nation.