Speaker Detail
Dr. Robin Kimmerer
Dr. Kimmerer is Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York and the 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. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and the ecology of mosses. In collaboration with tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. She is active in efforts to broaden access to environmental science training for Native students, and to introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community, in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge. Robin is an enrolled member of the Citizen Band Potawatomi. Her writings include “Gathering Moss” which was awarded the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing in 2005. She has served as writer in residence at the Long Term Ecological Reflections, the Sitka Symposium and the Mesa Refuge. She is currently working on a second book of essays on the subject of living in reciprocity with land, which incorporates both traditional indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives. Her literary essays appear in Whole Terrain, Adirondack Life, Orion and several anthologies. She is the author of numerous scientific papers on the ecology of mosses and served as associate editor of The Bryologist. As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land.
