The Socialist Newspaper Founder, Articles R

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. It doesnt work as well when that gift is missing. 1993. The Michigan Botanist. Edited by L. Savoy, A. Deming. M.K. Kimmerer also uses traditional knowledge and science collectively for ecological restoration in research. 2002. We want to teach them. We don't have much information about She's past relationship and any previous engaged. She is also a teacher and mentor to Indigenous students through the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York, Syracuse. Kimmerer: Yes. Nightfall in Let there be night edited by Paul Bogard, University of Nevada Press. No.1. So I really want to delve into that some more. So one of the things that I continue to learn about and need to learn more about is the transformation of love to grief to even stronger love, and the interplay of love and grief that we feel for the world. It should be them who tell this story. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants. Tippett: One way youve said it is that that science was asking different questions, and you had other questions, other language, and other protocol that came from Indigenous culture. 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. And the two plants so often intermingle, rather than living apart from one another, and I wanted to know why that was. Driscoll 2001. By Robin Wall Kimmerer. And so there is language and theres a mentality about taking that actually seem to have kind of a religious blessing on it. According to our Database, She has no children. AWTT encourages community engagement programs and exhibits accompanied by public events that stimulate dialogue around citizenship, education, and activism. You remain a professor of environmental biology at SUNY, and you have also created this Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. The Bryologist 96(1)73-79. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of "Gathering Moss" and the new book " Braiding Sweetgrass". 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. The Bryologist 98:149-153. So that every time we speak of the living world, we can embody our relatedness to them. Robin Wall Kimmerer, has experienced a clash of cultures. Forest age and management effects on epiphytic bryophyte communities in Adirondack northern hardwood forests. and Kimmerer R.W. Kimmerer presents the ways a pure market economy leads to resource depletion and environmental degradation. . Are there communities you think of when you think of this kind of communal love of place where you see new models happening? Does that happen a lot? Restoration Ecology 13(2):256-263, McGee, G.G. 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. Thats not going to move us forward. Biodiversity loss and the climate crisis make it clear that its not only the land that is broken, but our relationship to land. 55 talking about this. Leadership Initiative for Minority Female Environmental Faculty (LIMFEF), May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society Podcast featuring, This page was last edited on 15 February 2023, at 04:07. Kimmerer is also the former chair of the Ecological Society of America Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section. Today, Im with botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. November 3, 2015 SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ph.D. is a leading indigenous environmental scientist and writer in indigenous studies and environmental science at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. 21:185-193. Kimmerer, R.W. Vol. They work with the natural forces that lie over every little surface of the world, and to me they are exemplars of not only surviving, but flourishing, by working with natural processes. And: advance invitations and news on all things On Being, of course. In the English language, if we want to speak of that sugar maple or that salamander, the only grammar that we have to do so is to call those beings an it. And if I called my grandmother or the person sitting across the room from me an it, that would be so rude, right? She 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. And now people are reading those same texts differently. She spent two years working for Bausch & Lomb as a microbiologist. Tippett: And you say they take possession of spaces that are too small. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this. She is currently Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Plant Ecologist, Educator, and Writer Robin Wall Kimmerer articulates a vision of environmental stewardship informed by traditional ecological knowledge and furthers efforts to heal a damaged. The Bryologist 94(3):255-260. It feels so wrong to say that. Kimmerer, R.W. and R.W. Introduce yourself. Modern America and her family's tribe were - and, to a . "Moss hunters roll away nature's carpet, and some ecologists worry,", "Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Biological Education: A Call to Action", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robin_Wall_Kimmerer&oldid=1139439837, American non-fiction environmental writers, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry faculty, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry alumni, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, History. So thats a very concrete way of illustrating this. Randolph G. Pack Environmental Institute. The program provides students with real-world experiences that involve complex problem-solving. Some come from Kimmerer's own life as a scientist, a teacher, a mother, and a Potawatomi woman. Youre bringing these disciplines into conversation with each other. We want to bring beauty into their lives. 2. Braiding Sweetgrass was republished in 2020 with a new introduction. I sense that photosynthesis,that we cant even photosynthesize, that this is a quality you covet in our botanical brothers and sisters. Knowing how important it is to maintain the traditional language of the Potawatomi, Kimmerer attends a class to learn how to speak the traditional language because "when a language dies, so much more than words are lost."[5][6]. I wonder, what is happening in that conversation? So we cant just rely on a single way of knowing that explicitly excludes values and ethics. So I think of them as just being stronger and have this ability for what has been called two-eyed seeing, seeing the world through both of these lenses, and in that way have a bigger toolset for environmental problem-solving. And having told you that, I never knew or learned anything about what that word meant, much less the people and the culture it described. 36:4 p 1017-1021, Kimmerer, R.W. So Im just so intrigued, when I look at the way you introduce yourself. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 123:16-24. June 4, 2020. Are we even allowed to talk about that? 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). 2004 Environmental variation with maturing Acer saccharum bark does not influence epiphytic bryophyte growth in Adirondack northern hardwood forests: evidence from transplants. These are these amazing displays of this bright, chrome yellow, and deep purple of New England aster, and they look stunning together. That we cant have an awareness of the beauty of the world without also a tremendous awareness of the wounds; that we see the old-growth forest, and we also see the clear cut. You went into a more traditional scientific endeavor. 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. 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. Mosses build soil, they purify water. But the botany that I encountered there was so different than the way that I understood plants. 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. 3. 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). Her current work spans traditional ecological knowledge, moss ecology, outreach to Indigenous communities, and creative writing. The plural, she says, would be kin. According to Kimmerer, this word could lead us away from western cultures tendency to promote a distant relationship with the rest of creation based on exploitation toward one that celebrates our relationship to the earth and the family of interdependent beings. Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Kimmerer, R.W. ", "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". The concept of the honorable harvest, or taking only what one needs and using only what one takes, is another Indigenous practice informed by reciprocity. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2(4):317-323. (1991) Reproductive Ecology of Tetraphis pellucida: Differential fitness of sexual and asexual propagules. 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. And that kind of attention also includes ways of seeing quite literally through other lenses rhat we might have the hand lens, the magnifying glass in our hands that allows us to look at that moss with an acuity that the human eye doesnt have, so we see more, the microscope that lets us see the gorgeous architecture by which its put together, the scientific instrumentation in the laboratory that would allow us to look at the miraculous way that water interacts with cellulose, lets say. And I was just there to listen. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Balunas,M.J. Tippett: Now, you did work for a time at Bausch & Lomb, after college. Weaving traditional ecological knowledge into biological education: a call to action. Kimmerer: Yes. Today many Potawatomi live on a reservation in Oklahoma as a result of Federal Removal policies. I dream of a time when the land will be thankful for us.. Director of the newly established Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at ESF, which is part of her work to provide programs that allow for greater access for Indigenous students to study environmental science, and for science to benefit from the wisdom of Native philosophy to reach the common goal of sustainability.[4]. Transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge. Robin tours widely and has been featured on NPRs 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. I thank you in advance for this gift. 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 . The ebb and flow of the Bayou was a background rhythm in her childhood to every aspect of life. Image by Tailyr Irvine/Tailyr Irvine, All Rights Reserved. ". And by exploit, I mean in a way that really, seriously degrades the land and the waters, because in fact, we have to consume. Americans Who Tell the Truth (AWTT) offers a variety of ways to engage with its portraits and portrait subjects. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, nature writer, and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the State University of New York's College of Environment and Forestry (SUNY ESF) in Syracuse, New York. And having heard those songs, I feel a deep responsibility to share them and to see if, in some way, stories could help people fall in love with the world again. I was a high school junior in rural upstate New York, and our small band of treehugging students prevailed on the principal to let us organize an Earth Day observance. And Ill be offering some of my defining moments, too, in a special on-line event in June, on social media, and more. : integration of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge. And shes founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. A mother of two daughters, and a grandmother, Kimmerer's voice is mellifluous over the video call, animated with warmth and wonderment. "Just as we engage with students in a meaningful way to create a shared learning experience through the common book program . Muir, P.S., T.R. Re-establishing roots of a Mohawk community and restoring a culturally significant plant. 2013 Where the Land is the Teacher Adirondack Life Vol. The rocks are beyond slow, beyond strong, and yet, yielding to a soft, green breath as powerful as a glacier, the mosses wearing away their surfaces grain by grain, bringing them slowly back to sand. She works with tribal nations on environmental problem-solving and sustainability. Her books include Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. The Fetzer Institute,helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Submitted to The Bryologist. Together, we are exploring the ways that the collective, intergenerational brilliance of Indigenous science and wisdom can help us reimagine our relationship with the natural world. Kimmerer: It certainly does. Today, Im with botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. Im thinking of how, for all the public debates we have about our relationship with the natural world and whether its climate change or not, or man-made, theres also the reality that very few people living anywhere dont have some experience of the natural world changing in ways that they often dont recognize. Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a Native American people originally from the Great Lakes region. And that shift in worldview was a big hurdle for me, in entering the field of science. The Pause is our Saturday morning ritual of a newsletter. 2002 The restoration potential of goldthread, an Iroquois medicinal plant. Food could taste bad. Tippett: Sustainability is the language we use about is some language we use about the world were living into or need to live into. What were revealing is the fact that they have a capacity to learn, to have memory. We dont call anything we love and want to protect and would work to protect it. That language distances us. I think so many of them are rooted in the food movement. Talk about that a little bit. . In April 2015, Kimmerer was invited to participate as a panelist at a United Nations plenary meeting to discuss how harmony with nature can help to conserve and sustainably use natural resources, titled "Harmony with Nature: Towards achieving sustainable development goals including addressing climate change in the post-2015 Development Agenda. 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 is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. The public is invited to attend the free virtual event at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 21. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. [music: All Things Transient by Maybeshewill]. A group of local Master Gardeners have begun meeting each month to discuss a gardening-related non-fiction book. Reciprocity also finds form in cultural practices such as polyculture farming, where plants that exchange nutrients and offer natural pest control are cultivated together. Volume 1 pp 1-17. If something is going to be sustainable, its ability to provide for us will not be compromised into the future. Her second book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, received the 2014 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. On Being is an independent, nonprofit production of The On Being Project. 2005 The Giving Tree Adirondack Life Nov/Dec. And I sense from your writing and especially from your Indigenous tradition that sustainability really is not big enough and that it might even be a cop-out. By Robin Wall Kimmerer 7 MIN READ Oct 29, 2021 Scientific research supports the idea of plant intelligence. P 43, Kimmerer, R.W. And thats all a good thing. 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. March 2, 2020 Thinking back to April 22, 1970, I remember the smell of freshly mimeographed Earth Day flyers and the feel of mud on my hands. Center for Humans and Nature Questions for a Resilient Future, Address to the United Nations in Commemoration of International Mother Earth Day, Profiles of Ecologists at Ecological Society of America. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Robin Wall Kimmerer . She describes this kinship poetically: Wood thrush received the gift of song; its his responsibility to say the evening prayer. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift we must pass on just as it came to us. They have to live in places where the dominant competitive plants cant live. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. 2003. Robin Wall Kimmerer to present Frontiers In Science remarks. The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. Tippett:I was intrigued to see that, just a mention, somewhere in your writing, that you take part in a Potawatomi language lunchtime class that actually happens in Oklahoma, and youre there via the internet, because I grew up, actually, in Potawatomi County in Oklahoma. Spring Creek Project, Kimmerer, R.W. You wrote, We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity. 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.. In this breathtaking book, Kimmerer's ethereal prose braids stories of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the science that surrounds us in our everyday lives, and the never ending offerings that . [2], Kimmerer remained near home for college, attending State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and receiving a bachelor's degree in botany in 1975. McGee, G.G. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. 2007 The Sacred and the Superfund Stone Canoe. Bryophyte facilitation of vegetation establishment on iron mine tailings in the Adirondack Mountains . I think thats really exciting, because there is a place where reciprocity between people and the land is expressed in food, and who doesnt want that? Kimmerer, R.W. Elle vit dans l'tat de New . Kimmerer: I think that thats true. American Midland Naturalist. And when I think about mosses in particular, as the most ancient of land plants, they have been here for a very long time. 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. The privacy of your data is important to us. Sign up for periodic news updates and event invitations. Kimmerer is a co-founder of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge section of the Ecological Society of America and is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Were these Indigenous teachers? Tippett: [laughs] Right. 2011 Witness to the Rain in The way of Natural History edited by T.P. Its that which I can give. I created this show at American Public Media. Young (1996) Effect of gap size and regeneration niche on species coexistence in bryophyte communities. 2011. Both are in need of healingand both science and stories can be part of that cultural shift from exploitation to reciprocity. Tippett: Robin Wall Kimmerer is the State University of New York Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. Tippett: Heres something beautiful that you wrote in your book Gathering Moss, just as an example. [12], In 2022 Kimmerer was awarded the MacArthur "genius" award.[13]. There are these wonderful gifts that the plant beings, to my mind, have shared with us. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild. and F.K. (1984) Vegetation Development on a Dated Series of Abandoned Lead-Zinc Mines in Southwestern Wisconsin. Registration is required.. The sun and the moon are acknowledged, for instance. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Kimmerer: I have. And what I mean, when I talk about the personhood of all beings, plants included, is not that I am attributing human characteristics to them not at all. 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. To love a place is not enough. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zo Keating. Jane Goodall praised Kimmerer for showing how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people. and Kimmerer, R.W. Kimmerer is also involved in the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and works with the Onondaga Nation's school doing community outreach. Although Native peoples' traditional knowledge of the land differs from scientific knowledge, both have strengths . Tippett: So living beings would all be animate, all living beings, anything that was alive, in the Potawatomi language. Krista interviewed her in 2015, and it quickly became a much-loved show as her voice was just rising in common life. But I just sat there and soaked in this wonderful conversation, which interwove mythic knowledge and scientific knowledge into this beautiful, cultural, natural history. [music: Seven League Boots by Zo Keating]. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants 154 likes Like "Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, writer and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. I honor the ways that my community of thinkers and practitioners are already enacting this cultural change on the ground. Top 120 Robin Wall Kimmerer Quotes (2023 Update) 1. "If we think about our. . If citizenship means an oath of loyalty to a leader, then I choose the leader of the trees. 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.