"I want to be part of a system in which wealth means having enough to share, and where gratification of meeting your family needs is not poisoned by destroying that possibility for someone else. I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use." (pg. 91)
Robin Wall KimmererRobin Wall Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York.
Dr. Kimmerer serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. In 2022 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. In collaboration with tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. She is active in efforts to broaden access to environmental science education for Native students, and to create new models for integration of indigenous philosophy and scientific tools on behalf of land and culture. She is engaged in programs which introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community, in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge.
She is the author of "Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses" which incorporates both traditional and indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives, as well as "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants."
- Faculty profile from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and author's website.
Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, photo by Dale Kakkak.
Gathering Moss by
Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.
Braiding Sweetgrass by
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" ("Publishers Weekly") and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by "Library Journal," "Braiding Sweetgrass" is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices.
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