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Weaving traditional ecological knowledge into biological education: a call to action. 2002. Kimmerer: Thank you for asking that question, because it really gets to this idea how science asks us to learn about organisms, traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Kimmerer likens braiding sweetgrass into baskets to her braiding together three narrative strands: "indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinaabekwe scientist trying to bring them together" (x). A mother of two daughters, and a grandmother, Kimmerer's voice is mellifluous over the video call, animated with warmth and wonderment. Kimmerer, R. W. 2011 Restoration and Reciprocity: The Contributions of Traditional Ecological Knowledge to the Philosophy and Practice of Ecological Restoration. in Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration edited by David Egan. Tippett: So when you said a minute ago that you spent your childhood and actually, the searching questions of your childhood somehow found expression and the closest that you came to answers in the woods. An audiobook version was released in 2016, narrated by the author. From Wisconsin, Kimmerer moved to Kentucky, where she briefly taught at Transylvania University in Lexington before moving to Danville, Kentucky where she taught biology, botany, and ecology at Centre College. As such, humans' relationship with the natural world must be based in reciprocity, gratitude, and practices that sustain the Earth, just as it sustains us. "Another Frame of Mind". It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. Annual Guide. Kimmerer then moved to Wisconsin to attend the University of WisconsinMadison, earning her master's degree in botany there in 1979, followed by her PhD in plant ecology in 1983. Kimmerer, R.W. The sun and the moon are acknowledged, for instance. 2005 Offerings Whole Terrain. But the way that they do this really brings into question the whole premise that competition is what really structures biological evolution and biological success, because mosses are not good competitors at all, and yet they are the oldest plants on the planet. An herb native to North America, sweetgrass is sacred to Indigenous people in the United States and Canada. She has a keen interest in how language shapes our reality and the way we act in and towards the world. They are like the coral reefs of the forest. Says Kimmerer: "Our ability to pay attention has been hijacked, allowing us to see plants and animals as objects, not subjects." 3. and Kimmerer, R.W. Her latest book Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants was released in 2013 and was awarded the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. The large framework of that is the renewal of the world for the privilege of breath. Thats right on the edge. [12], In 2022 Kimmerer was awarded the MacArthur "genius" award.[13]. Is that kind of a common reaction? Im finding lots of examples that people are bringing to me, where this word also means a living being of the Earth., Kimmerer: The plural pronoun that I think is perhaps even more powerful is not one that we need to be inspired by another language, because we already have it in English, and that is the word kin.. [10] By 2021 over 500,000 copies had been sold worldwide. Milkweed Editions. She has served on the advisory board of the Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability (SEEDS) program, a program to increase the number of minority ecologists. Tippett: Like a table, something like that? So thinking about plants as persons indeed, thinking about rocks as persons forces us to shed our idea of, the only pace that we live in is the human pace. Kimmerer, R. W. 2010 The Giveaway in Moral Ground: ethical action for a planet in peril edited by Kathleen Moore and Michael Nelson. 2007 The Sacred and the Superfund Stone Canoe. She is the author of numerous scientific articles, and the books Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013). Host an exhibit, use our free lesson plans and educational programs, or engage with a member of the AWTT team or portrait subjects. But this is why Ive been thinking a lot about, are there ways to bring this notion of animacy into the English language, because so many of us that Ive talked to about this feel really deeply uncomfortable calling the living world it, and yet, we dont have an alternative, other than he or she. And Ive been thinking about the inspiration that the Anishinaabe language offers in this way, and contemplating new pronouns. Just as it would be disrespectful to try and put plants in the same category, through the lens of anthropomorphism, I think its also deeply disrespectful to say that they have no consciousness, no awareness, no being-ness at all. That means theyre not paying attention. Kimmerer: Thats right. Ses textes ont t publis dans de nombreuses revues scientifi ques. Her enthusiasm for the environment was encouraged by her parents, who began to reconnect with their own Potawatomi heritage while living in upstate New York. Occasional Paper No. She has spoken out publicly for recognition of indigenous science and for environmental justice to stop global climate chaos, including support for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock who are working to stop the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline (DAPL) from cutting through sovereign territory of the Standing Rock Sioux. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32: 1562-1576. Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer is published by Penguin (9.99). One of the things that I would especially like to highlight about that is I really think of our work as in a sense trying to indigenize science education within the academy, because as a young person, as a student entering into that world, and understanding that the Indigenous ways of knowing, these organic ways of knowing, are really absent from academia, I think that we can train better scientists, train better environmental professionals, when theres a plurality of these ways of knowing, when Indigenous knowledge is present in the discussion. (1982) A Quantitative Analysis of the Flora of Abandoned Lead-Zinc Mines in Southwestern Wisconsin. Krista interviewed her in 2015, and it quickly became a much-loved show as her voice was just rising in common life. . "Just as we engage with students in a meaningful way to create a shared learning experience through the common book program . The Rights of the Land. Top 120 Robin Wall Kimmerer Quotes (2023 Update) 1. 98(8):4-9. She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a student of the plant nations. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Journal of Forestry 99: 36-41. Tippett: And inanimate would be, what, materials? Kimmerer, RW 2013 The Fortress, the River and the Garden: a new metaphor for cultivating mutualistic relationship between scientific and traditional ecological knowledge. (November 3, 2015). The Fetzer Institute,helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. The Bryologist 96(1)73-79. Kimmerer 2010. As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. Robin Wall Kimmerer: I cant think of a single scientific study in the last few decades that has demonstrated that plants or animals are dumber than we think. Moving deftly between scientific evidence and storytelling, Kimmerer reorients our understanding of the natural world. And thats a question that science can address, certainly, as well as artists. Americans Who Tell the Truth (AWTT) offers a variety of ways to engage with its portraits and portrait subjects. There are these wonderful gifts that the plant beings, to my mind, have shared with us. Under the advice of Dr. Karin Limburg and Neil . In the beginning there was the Skyworld. A recent selection by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (published in 2014), focuses on sustainable practices that promote healthy people, healthy communities, and a healthy planet. Maple received the gift of sweet sap and the coupled responsibility to share that gift in feeding the people at a hungry time of year Our responsibility is to care for the plants and all the land in a way that honors life.. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of "Gathering Moss" and the new book " Braiding Sweetgrass". The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. Krista Tippett, host: Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerers Braiding Sweetgrass. So I really want to delve into that some more. And its a really liberating idea, to think that the Earth could love us back, but it also opens the notion of reciprocity that with that love and regard from the Earth comes a real deep responsibility. Kimmerer spends her lunch hour at SUNY ESF, eating her packed lunch and improving her Potawatomi language skills as part of an online class. About light and shadow and the drift of continents. Thats so beautiful and so amazing to think about, to just read those sentences and think about that conversation, as you say. So I think movements from tree planting to community gardens, farm-to-school, local, organic all of these things are just at the right scale, because the benefits come directly into you and to your family, and the benefits of your relationships to land are manifest right in your community, right in your patch of soil and what youre putting on your plate. A group of local Master Gardeners have begun meeting each month to discuss a gardening-related non-fiction book. So each of those plants benefits by combining its beauty with the beauty of the other. Kimmerer: You raise a very good question, because the way that, again, Western science would give the criteria for what does it mean to be alive is a little different than you might find in traditional culture, where we think of water as alive, as rocks as alive;alive in different ways, but certainly not inanimate. It was my passion still is, of course. Tippett: [laughs] Right. Plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire, night and day, living and dying. (1994) Ecological Consequences of Sexual vs. Asexual reproduction in Dicranum flagellare. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a professor of environmental biology at the State University of New York and the founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Kimmerer, R.W. I hope you might help us celebrate these two decades. Kimmerer is a proponent of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) approach, which Kimmerer describes as a "way of knowing." We see the beautiful mountain, and we see it torn open for mountaintop removal. ", "Robin Wall Kimmerer: Americans Who Tell The Truth", "Robin Wall Kimmerer: 'Mosses are a model of how we might live', "Robin W. Kimmerer | Environmental and Forest Biology | SUNY-ESF", "Robin Wall Kimmerer | Americans Who Tell The Truth", "UN Chromeless Video Player full features", https://www.pokagonband-nsn.gov/our-culture/history, https://www.potawatomi.org/q-a-with-robin-wall-kimmerer-ph-d/, "Mother earthling: ESF educator Robin Kimmerer links an indigenous worldview to nature". Robin Wall Kimmerer American environmentalist Robin Wall Kimmerer is a 70 years old American environmentalist from . As a writer and scientist interested in both restoration of ecological communities and restoration of our relationships to land, she draws on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge to help us reach goals of sustainability. Mosses have, in the ecological sense, very low competitive ability, because theyre small, because they dont grab resources very efficiently. They are just engines of biodiversity. http://www.humansandnature.org/earth-ethic---robin-kimmerer response-80.php, Kimmerer, R.W. McGee, G.G. Dr. Kimmerer serves as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Nature and Humans. The public is invited to attend the free virtual event at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 21. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Young (1995) The role of slugs in dispersal of the asexual propagules of Dicranum flagellare. And I think of my writing very tangibly, as my way of entering into reciprocity with the living world. The ability to take these non-living elements of the world air and light and water and turn them into food that can then be shared with the whole rest of the world, to turn them into medicine that is medicine for people and for trees and for soil and we cannot even approach the kind of creativity that they have. And if one of those species and the gifts that it carries is missing in biodiversity, the ecosystem is depauperate. Kimmerer: What were trying to do at the Center For Native Peoples and the Environment is to bring together the tools of Western science, but to employ them, or maybe deploy them, in the context of some of the Indigenous philosophy and ethical frameworks about our relationship to the Earth. 3. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives on creating unmet desires. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. TEK refers to the body of knowledge Indigenous peoples cultivate through their relationship with the natural world. And by exploit, I mean in a way that really, seriously degrades the land and the waters, because in fact, we have to consume. All of my teachings come from my late grandmother, Eel clan mother, Phoebe Hill, and my uncle is Tadodaho, Sidney Hill. Kimmerer: Yes, it goes back to the story of when I very proudly entered the forestry school as an 18-year-old, and telling them that the reason that I wanted to study botany was because I wanted to know why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together. Tippett: Heres something you wrote. But again, all these things you live with and learn, how do they start to shift the way you think about what it means to be human? Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) is an American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). Ecological Applications Vol. and R.W. But I just sat there and soaked in this wonderful conversation, which interwove mythic knowledge and scientific knowledge into this beautiful, cultural, natural history. What was supposedly important about them was the mechanism by which they worked, not what their gifts were, not what their capacities were. Tippett: Take me inside that, because I want to understand that. And they may have these same kinds of political differences that are out there, but theres this love of place, and that creates a different world of action. and F.K. How is that working, and are there things happening that surprise you? Tippett: And also I learned that your work with moss inspired Elizabeth Gilberts novel The Signature Of All Things, which is about a botanist. What were revealing is the fact that they have extraordinary capacities, which are so unlike our own, but we dismiss them because, well, if they dont do it like animals do it, then they must not be doing anything, when in fact, theyre sensing their environment, responding to their environment, in incredibly sophisticated ways. Full Chapter: The Three Sisters. It feels so wrong to say that. And theres a beautiful word bimaadiziaki, which one of my elders kindly shared with me. I dream of a time when the land will be thankful for us.. Kimmerer: Yes. Robin Wall Kimmerer was born in 1953 in Upstate New York to Robert and Patricia Wall. AWTT encourages community engagement programs and exhibits accompanied by public events that stimulate dialogue around citizenship, education, and activism. 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 . Kimmerer: There are many, many examples. "[7][8], Kimmerer received the John Burroughs Medal Award for her book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Of European and Anishinaabe ancestry, Robin is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. November/December 59-63. Because the tradition you come from would never, ever have read the text that way. The Bryologist 103(4):748-756, Kimmerer, R. W. 2000. Today, Im with botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. And its, to my way of thinking, almost an eyeblink of time in human history that we have had a truly adversarial relationship with nature. 2004 Population trends and habitat characteristics of sweetgrass, Hierochloe odorata: Integration of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge . NY, USA. A&S Main Menu. Wisdom Practices and Digital Retreats (Coming in 2023). Re-establishing roots of a Mohawk community and restoring a culturally significant plant. 16. Her books include Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental . But this word, this sound, ki, is, of course, also the word for who in Spanish and in French. Kimmerer, R.W. Do you ever have those conversations with people? P 43, Kimmerer, R.W. You say that theres a grammar of animacy. Thats one of the hard places this world you straddle brings you to. Robin Kimmerer Home > Robin Kimmerer Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment Robin Kimmerer 351 Illick Hall 315-470-6760 [email protected] Inquiries regarding speaking engagements For inquiries regarding speaking engagements, please contact Christie Hinrichs at Authors Unbound 2013 The Fortress, the River and the Garden: a new metaphor for cultivating mutualistic relationship between scientific and traditional ecological knowledge. The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. Mosses are superb teachers about living within your means. Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerers Braiding Sweetgrass. and Kimmerer R.W. In "The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence" scientists and writers consider the connection and communication between plants. 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. Im really interested in how the tools of Western environmental science can be guided by Indigenous principles of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity to create justice for the land. But this book is not a conventional, chronological account. She is a vivid embodiment, too, of the new forms societal shift is taking in our world led by visionary pragmatists close to the ground, in particular places, persistently and lovingly learning and leading the way for us all. Tompkins, Joshua. Food could taste bad. is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. And thank you so much. According to our Database, She has no children. Fleischner, Trinity University Press. These are these amazing displays of this bright, chrome yellow, and deep purple of New England aster, and they look stunning together. 2008 . Connect with the author and related events. Trained as a botanist, Kimmerer is an expert in the ecology of mosses and the restoration of ecological communities. It's cold, windy, and often grey. Restoration of culturally significant plants to Native American communities; Environmental partnerships with Native American communities; Recovery of epiphytic communities after commercial moss harvest in Oregon, Founding Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, Director, Native Earth Environmental Youth Camp in collaboration with the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force, Co-PI: Helping Forests Walk:Building resilience for climate change adaptation through forest stewardship in Haudenosaunee communities, in collaboration with the Haudenosaunee Environmenttal Task Force, Co-PI: Learning fromthe Land: cross-cultural forest stewardship education for climate change adaptation in the northern forest, in collaboration with the College of the Menominee Nation, Director: USDA Multicultural Scholars Program: Indigenous environmental leaders for the future, Steering Committee, NSF Research Coordination Network FIRST: Facilitating Indigenous Research, Science and Technology, Project director: Onondaga Lake Restoration: Growing Plants, Growing Knowledge with indigenous youth in the Onondaga Lake watershed, Curriculum Development: Development of Traditional Ecological Knowledge curriculum for General Ecology classes, past Chair, Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section, Ecological Society of America. The invading Romans began the process of destroying my Celtic and Scottish ancestors' earth-centered traditions in 500 BC, and what the Romans left undone, the English nearly completed two thousand . They ought to be doing something right here. Kimmerer, R.W. I was lucky in that regard, but disappointed, also, in that I grew up away from the Potawatomi people, away from all of our people, by virtue of history the history of removal and the taking of children to the Indian boarding schools. TEK is a deeply empirical scientific approach and is based on long-term observation. Restoration Ecology 13(2):256-263, McGee, G.G. We want to teach them. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift we must pass on just as it came to us. Ive been thinking about the word aki in our language, which refers to land. She was born on January 01, 1953 in . Robin Wall Kimmerer, American environmentalist Country: United States Birthday: 1953 Age : 70 years old Birth Sign : Capricorn About Biography In English her Potawatomi name means Light Shining through Sky Woman. While she was growing up in upstate New York, Kimmerers family began to rekindle and strengthen their tribal connections. The ecosystem is too simple. Tippett: I want to read something from Im sure this is from Braiding Sweetgrass. We dont call anything we love and want to protect and would work to protect it. That language distances us. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. : integration of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge. Disturbance and Dominance in Tetraphis pellucida: a model of disturbance frequency and reproductive mode. She is author of the prize-winning Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses , winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Outstanding Nature Writing. And that kind of deep attention that we pay as children is something that I cherish, that I think we all can cherish and reclaim, because attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. I work in the field of biocultural restoration and am excited by the ideas of re-storyation. Tippett: So living beings would all be animate, all living beings, anything that was alive, in the Potawatomi language. 2013. 55 talking about this. And Id love for you to just take us a little bit into that world youre describing, that you came from, and ask, also, the question I always ask, about what was the spiritual and religious background of that world you grew up in of your childhood? Robin Wall Kimmerer: Returning the Gift. Island Press. State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, Higher Education Multicultural Scholars Program, American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, "Writers-in-Residence Program: Robin Kimmerer. Generally, the inanimate grammar is reserved for those things which humans have created. Both are in need of healingand both science and stories can be part of that cultural shift from exploitation to reciprocity. By Deb Steel Windspeaker.com Writer PETERBOROUGH, Ont. And it comes from my years as a scientist, of deep paying attention to the living world, and not only to their names, but to their songs. She said it was a . 24 (1):345-352. For inquiries regarding speaking engagements, please contact Christie Hinrichs at Authors Unbound. I sense that photosynthesis,that we cant even photosynthesize, that this is a quality you covet in our botanical brothers and sisters. Kimmerer: One of the difficulties of moving in the scientific world is that when we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. By Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer: What I mean when I say that science polishes the gift of seeing brings us to an intense kind of attention that science allows us to bring to the natural world. I learned so many things from that book; its also that I had never thought very deeply about moss, but that moss inhabits nearly every ecosystem on earth, over 22,000 species, that mosses have the ability to clone themselves from broken-off leaves or torn fragments, that theyre integral to the functioning of a forest. But I came to understand that that question wasnt going to be answered by science, that science as a way of knowing explicitly sets aside our emotions, our aesthetic reactions to things. Kimmerer: Yes. And so in a sense, the questions that I had about who I was in the world, what the world was like, those are questions that I really wished Id had a cultural elder to ask; but I didnt. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zo Keating. Kimmerer explains how reciprocity is reflected in Native languages, which impart animacy to natural entities such as bodies of water and forests, thus reinforcing respect for nature. Aug 27, 2022-- "Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions and an economy that relentlessly asks, What more can we take from the Earth? Kimmerer teaches in the Environmental and Forest Biology Department at ESF. [3] Braiding Sweetgrass is about the interdependence of people and the natural world, primarily the plant world. Tippett: And so it seems to me that this view that you have of the natural world and our place in it, its a way to think about biodiversity and us as part of that.