Robin Wall Kimmerer

Lore & Background

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and the former director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Her work is shaped by both Western science and Indigenous environmental knowledge. She has written several books, including *Gathering Moss*, *Braiding Sweetgrass*, *The Democracy of Species*, and *The Serviceberry*. She also narrated the audiobook version of *Braiding Sweetgrass*. Kimmerer was born in upstate New York in 1953 and raised in the hamlet of Ballston Lake. Her father was a mechanical engineer and her mother held a degree in chemical engineering; both encouraged her enthusiasm for the outdoors. As a child, she collected seeds and pressed leaves. She is an enrolled citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She earned a bachelor’s degree in botany from SUNY-ESF in 1975, then worked as a microbiologist for Bausch & Lomb before earning a master’s and PhD in botany and plant ecology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her study of forest ecology led her to focus on bryology. After teaching at Transylvania University and Centre College, she returned to SUNY-ESF in 1993, where she teaches courses on land and culture, traditional ecological knowledge, ethnobotany, and moss ecology. She advocates for “two-eyed seeing,” combining Western and Indigenous worldviews. Her grandfather attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an assimilationist boarding school, motivating her to learn the Potawatomi language. She co-founded the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the Ecological Society of America and has served on advisory boards for programs increasing diversity in ecology.

Reader's Guide

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and former director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Her work is shaped by both Western scientific training and Indigenous environmental knowledge, an approach she describes as “two-eyed seeing.” She has written several books, including *Gathering Moss*, *Braiding Sweetgrass*, *The Democracy of Species*, and *The Serviceberry*, and narrated the audiobook of *Braiding Sweetgrass*. Kimmerer is a proponent of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, which she characterizes as an empirical way of knowing based on long-term observation and relationship, incorporating cultural and spiritual elements often overlooked by Western science. Her research focuses on bryology, particularly moss ecology, and she has taught courses on land and culture, ethnobotany, and disturbance ecology. She also works to increase access for Indigenous students in environmental science and to integrate Native philosophy into sustainability efforts. Her motivations are partly rooted in family history: her paternal grandfather attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an assimilationist boarding school, which led Kimmerer to study the Potawatomi language to preserve cultural knowledge. She has served on the advisory board of the Strategies for Ecology Education, Development and Sustainability program and co-founded the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the Ecological Society of America.

Did You Know?

• Robin Wall Kimmerer is a Potawatomi biologist who provided the source's information on the traditional use of chaga.
• In the Potawatomi language, the chaga fungus is called shkitagen.
• Kimmerer is quoted describing shkitagen as a firekeeping tinder that "will not go out but smolders slowly in the fungal matrix, holding its heat."
• According to Kimmerer, even the smallest spark will be "held and nurtured" if it lands on a cube of shkitagen.