Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer grew up in upstate New York, surrounded by nature and learning about her family’s Potawatomi heritage—her grandfather was forced to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which sought to entirely strip Native children of their culture and integrate them into white society. Kimmerer majored in Botany at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) and went on to receive a master’s degree and PhD at the University of Wisconsin. She is known for teaching “Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” a practice combining scientific observation with cultural and spiritual knowledge. She also specializes in the study of moss ecology, and her first book was called Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Her second book, Braiding Sweetgrass, became a bestseller despite originally being released only by a small nonprofit publisher. Kimmerer, now an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, currently teaches at ESF and lives and writes in upstate New York.