Thinker · TH-0616
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer is an American botanist, writer and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. A professor at the SUNY College of Environmental…
b. 1953 · Ballston Lake (New York), Madison (Wisconsin), Kentucky, Syracuse
Traditions: American, Indigenous
Robin Wall Kimmerer is an American botanist, writer and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. A professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, she directs its Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her book Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) weaves together plant science, Potawatomi stories and personal essay to argue that the natural world is a community of relatives to whom we owe gratitude and reciprocity. It became a bestseller and is now widely read in courses on environmental ethics.
Key ideas
- Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science are complementary ways of knowing, used together as 'two-eyed seeing'.
- Relationships with land should follow reciprocity: take only what is given, and give something back.
- A 'gift economy' of gratitude offers an alternative to treating nature as a commodity.
- Language shapes ethics: a 'grammar of animacy' treats plants and animals as beings rather than objects.
Major works
- Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
- Gathering Moss (2003)
- The Serviceberry (2024)
In the Book corner
- Braiding Sweetgrass
A collection of essays, subtitled Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by a botanist who is an enrolled member…
In the conversation
No topics yet. Start one about this thinker.