Robin Wall Kimmerer

Citizen Potawatomi Nation botanist, plant ecologist, and writer, born 1953. Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at SUNY-ESF; founder of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She holds a PhD in plant ecology and was trained as a Western scientist before she fully reclaimed the indigenous knowledge her grandfather had been forced to suppress at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Her project is the bringing of those two ways of knowing — peer-reviewed botany and Potawatomi teaching — into the same room without forcing either to translate itself into the other. She writes about reciprocity: the world is not made of resources, it is made of gifts, and the only honest response to a gift is gratitude and a gift in return. Core teaching: the land is not property. It is a community of relatives. The Honorable Harvest: never take the first, never take the last, take only what you need, give thanks, share, reciprocate. Key works: *Braiding Sweetgrass*, *Gathering Moss*, *The Serviceberry*.