Robin Wall Kimmerer

For more than three decades, Robin Wall Kimmerer has inspired people to do their part to help end threats of environmental catastrophe. Her solution is emotionally stirring and intellectually compelling: Humans must restore their bonds of kinship with nature—especially bonds of reciprocity and mutual responsibility with the flora, fauna, and natural resources that we rely on. By bringing together diverse intellectual traditions, from Potawatomi knowledge to plant ecology, Kimmerer is a visionary storyteller whose research, writing, and speeches have taught diverse audiences of people how to foster and renew their relationship with the natural world. 

Kimmerer’s innovative philosophy is crystallized in her 2013 book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. In a recent interview, Kimmerer shared that her vision for the book was grounded in “the conviction that the materialist worldview based on the fictional pyramid of human exceptionalism is among the root causes of ecological and cultural degradation. This hyper individualist, anthropocentric orientation enables an extractive mindset that endangers our non-human kinfolk.” Braiding Sweetgrass wove together history, memoir, ethics, community narratives, environmental science, and philosophy in ways that moved readers to see themselves as connected to a diverse range of species—from sweet grass, to leeks, to maple—rather than as mere users of their environment.

After receiving her PhD in botany, Kimmerer started her professional career as a plant ecologist and professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where she currently holds the title of Distinguished Teaching Professor. Early in her academic work, she identified critical causes of human exceptionalism and arrogance that had taken root in the way scientists are trained and express themselves. In 2003, as part of an effort to change this culture, she wrote the breakthrough Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, which won the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. 

Reflecting on this book, Kimmerer says, “I’ve had the great privilege, as a scientist, to learn from the mosses for decades. Yet I had only written about them in technical scientific format, reporting on facts of their material lives, which was wholly inadequate to convey the truth about these amazing plants. I wanted to acknowledge and celebrate my relationship to mosses, as my respected teachers, as wise beings in their own right.” Kimmerer’s narrative in Gathering Moss foreshadowed a global movement toward restoring interspecies kinship as environmental advocacy: “If I could get people to fall in love with mosses, then why not the whole green world? Story can activate empathy and care in a way that ‘information’ can never do. I think we have the responsibility to couple science and compassion.” 

Kimmerer’s storytelling and science have occurred alongside her own actions as she works to bring people together to collectively make change. She has energized programs such as the justice for the land initiative, the Voices from Maple Nation: Indigenous Women’s Climate Summit, and the Native Earth Environmental Youth program. In 2015, she addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” 

Kimmerer has shaped higher education by working creatively to change institutions. In addition to numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, and restoration ecology, she has published important articles on how more scientific fields should recognize Indigenous peoples’ knowledge systems, including her influential 2002 article, “Weaving traditional ecological knowledge into biological education: a call to action.” The article contributed to making academia more welcoming to students seeking to pursue careers that connect diverse knowledge systems. Kimmerer founded and now directs 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 feel a deep sense of responsibility to lift up and nurture students—to fan the flames of their becoming who they want to be,” she said. “As a young Indigenous student and scientist, I often felt quite alone, so I want to help create a sense of belonging for my students and colleagues.”

Kimmerer is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and, more recently, published The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.  In taking stock of her works and career, Kimmerer observes, “I think that I’ve been most effective in creating spaces for imagination—in the tension between what is and what could be. I’m not motivated by fine-tuning existing systems, but by creating new approaches that grow out of shared values.”   

—Kyle Powys Whyte