“Robin’s generous spirit and rich scholarship invited the audience to fundamentally reimagine their relationship to the natural world.” — Queen’s University

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Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. In 2022, Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. This new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. Robin’s newest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (November 2024), is a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

Robin tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and in 2015 addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and 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. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.

Robin's Featured Titles

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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

This talk explores the dominant themes of Braiding Sweetgrass which include cultivation of a reciprocal relationship with the living world. Listeners are invited to consider what we might learn if we understood plants as our teachers, from both a scientific and an indigenous perspective. The talk includes a look at the stories and experiences that shaped the author. This talk can be customized to reflect the interests of the particular audience.

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What Does the Earth Ask of Us?

We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth and yet we are tied to institutions which relentlessly ask what more can we take? Drawing upon both scientific and indigenous knowledges, this talk explores the covenant of reciprocity, how might we use the gifts and the responsibilities of human people in support of mutual thriving in a time of ecological crisis.

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The Honorable Harvest: Indigenous knowledge for sustainability

Honorable Harvest is a talk designed for a general audience which focuses upon indigenous philosophy and practices which contribute to sustainability and conservation. It offers approaches to how indigenous knowledge might contribute to a transformation in how we view our relationship to consumption and move us away from a profoundly dishonorable relationship with the Earth. This talk can be customized to reflect the interests of the particular audience

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“We the People”: expanding the circle of citizenship for public lands

This talk is designed to critique the notions of “We, the People” through the lens of the indigenous worldview, by highlighting an indigenous view of what land means, beyond property rights to land, toward responsibility for land. The talk raises the question of whose voices are heard in decision making about land stewardship, and how indigenous voices are often marginalized. It raises questions of what does justice for land and indigenous people look like and calls upon listeners to contribute to that work of creating justice. This talk can be customized to reflect the interests of the particular audience.

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Justice for the Land

How we understand the meaning of land, colors our relationship to the natural world, in ecology, economics and ethics. Indigenous knowledge frameworks dramatically expand the conventional understanding of lands, from natural resources to relatives, from land rights to land responsibilities. We consider what enacting justice for the land might look like, through restoration, reparations and Rights of Nature.

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Learning the Grammar of Animacy: land, love, language

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The Personhood of Plants

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Restoration and reciprocity: healing relationships with the natural world

Ecological restoration can be understood as an act of reciprocity, in return for the gifts of the earth. This talk explores the ecological and ethical imperatives of healing the damage we have inflicted on our land and waters. We trace the evolution of restoration philosophy and practice and consider how integration of indigenous knowledge can expand our understanding of restoration from the biophysical to the biocultural. Reciprocal restoration includes not only healing the land, but our relationship to land. In healing the land, we are healing ourselves.

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The Fortress, the River and the Garden: a new metaphor for knowledge symbiosis

This talk is designed primarily for an audience focused on education and how we might decolonize education by integrating indigenous knowledge as a complement to western scientific knowledge. The talk examines the relationship between three metaphors for types of knowledge. The Fortress is the metaphor for the dominance of western science and its virtual erasure of indigenous knowledge, the River refers to indigenous models of autonomy and coexistence between western and indigenous knowledge and the Garden examines the potential for a productive symbiosis between western and indigenous knowledges which could grow together in complementarity. This talk can be customized to reflect the interests of the particular audience.

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Land Justice: Engaging Indigenous Knowledge for Land Care

What might Land Justice look like? Dr. Kimmerer will explore Indigenous perspectives on land conservation, from biocultural restoration to Land Back.  This discussion invites listeners to consider how engaging Traditional Ecological Knowledge contributes to justice for land and people.

MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022

Robin Kimmerer – Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass | Bioneers

Questions for a Resilient Future: Robin Wall Kimmerer

Book Lovers Ball 2020 presented by Milkweed Editions

Upcoming Events

Discussion Guide for Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults Link

Honors, Awards & Recognition

Recipient of the 2024 Richmond Distinguished Fellowship in Public Life
Elected to U.S. National Academy of Sciences 2023
2022 MacArthur Fellow
NYT Bestseller
Midwest Book Award Winner
Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award 2022 – Braiding Sweetgrass
John Burroughs Association

Media Kit

By clicking the link below you will be directed to a Google Docs Folder
where you can download author photos and cover images.

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