Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born September 13, 1953) is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and the director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York. She brings together Western science and Indigenous knowledge in her research and teaching, especially traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). She studies mosses and the connections between people and the land, and she works to make science more accessible to Indigenous communities.
Kimmerer has written several books. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003) blends science with cultural history. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013) explores how plants teach us to live well with the Earth. The Democracy of Species (2021) and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024) further expand on how humans relate to other living beings. An audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass was released in 2016, with a new introduction in 2020.
She was born in upstate New York and is an enrolled citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Kimmerer earned a Bachelor of Science in botany from SUNY-ESF in 1975, followed by a Master of Science (1979) and a PhD in plant ecology (1983) from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She worked for two years as a microbiologist at Bausch & Lomb, then taught at Transylvania University in Kentucky and later at Centre College in Danville, where she earned tenure. She returned to ESF in 1993.
Kimmerer’s TEK approach emphasizes long observation and a relationship with the land. She promotes “Two-eyed Seeing,” the idea of using both Indigenous and Western ways of understanding. She also values language and cultural preservation, including learning Potawatomi.
Her work includes outreach and mentoring programs to help Indigenous students pursue environmental science, collaboration with the Onondaga Nation, and involvement with organizations such as AISES. She has served on advisory boards and spoken at the United Nations about harmony with nature and sustainable resource use.
Kimmerer has received several honors. She won the John Burroughs Medal for Gathering Moss, and Braiding Sweetgrass earned the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award in 2014. She also received a second Burroughs Award for an Orion magazine essay in 2013. In 2020 she received an honorary MPhil in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic, and in 2022 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2025 she was named to Time magazine’s Time 100 list of influential people.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 01:25 (CET).