ED U C AT I O N
Creating a Sacred Relationship With the Earth A Q&A with Robin Wall Kimmerer
College of Environmental Science and Forestry and the author of Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss, which will be available for purchase in Holden and Forests giftshops. What do you hope lecture attendees will come away with? A renewed sense of the ways that humans can be medicine for the earth, living as if we were ecological citizens, who return the gifts of the earth not just being consumers. How do you intertwine scientific knowledge and indigenous wisdom? Do you look for relationships between the two? Do you always start with one and the other follows, or what is your thinking process? I think of indigenous knowledge and western science both as powerful intellectual traditions, which grow from different worldviews, but can both illuminate the nature of the living world and how we might better care for it. They are distinctive, sovereign systems of knowledge which can complement one another. Our capacity to achieve sustainability and a more positive relations with the natural world is strengthened when we use both. But traditional knowledge has been historically erased or marginalized, and our work is to protect and revitalize its role. Why is restoration of ecological communities so important and how can each person make a difference? The extent of damage that we have done to the living world is so great, that merely protecting the remnants is inadequate, we have to heal the wounds we have inflicted through restoration of land and the cultural values which shape our responsibility for land.
H
olden Forests & Gardens is honored to begin the new year welcoming celebrated Native American scientist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer in partnership with the City Club of Cleveland and Kent State University. This lecture will be a free virtual event held on Thursday, January 13 at noon. You can reserve your space at cityclub.org or holdenfg.org. Take a moment now to get to know Kimmerer, if you don’t know her already.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor; Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY
22 FORESTS & GARDENS
What do you grow in your farm gardens and why? I grow a wide array of fruits and veggies, including traditional heritage varieties of corn, beans and squash, in order to celebrate and preserve these ancestral plants. I also consider the surrounding woods and fields like a garden, where I nurture wild foods and medicines, pollinator meadows and songbirds. If you could impart one thing to all people about our planet, what would you offer? As we give gratitude for the gifts of the land, can we live in such a way that the land can be grateful for us. Reciprocity is the root of relationship, all flourishing is mutual.
