A Conversation with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer

UBC Library presents, in partnership with UBC Forestry and the Simon K. Y. Lee Global Lounge and Resource Centre, a conversation with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer on Friday, January 29 (1:00 -2:30 p.m. PST). The acclaimed author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants will be joined by moderators, Dr. Ayesha S. Chaudhry and Corrina Sparrow to discuss the author’s influence on multidisciplinary understandings of her work and how readers can integrate this into our connections with land and each other through our respective disciplinary lenses.

Special thanks to Xwi7xwa Library for their contributions to this event in providing honoraria to the event’s moderators and to Alumni Events for their support in hosting the event.

About the author:

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. She tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and in 2015 addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and 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.

As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.

About the moderators:

Dr. Ayesha S. Chaudhry is the Canada Research Chair in Religion, Law and Social Justice and Associate Professor of Islamic studies and Gender studies at the University of British Columbia, where she has served on the Board of Governors. In 2018, she was named a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellow and in 2019, she will be inducted as Member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. She was a 2016-17 Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Study at UBC and she was the 2015-16 Rita E. Hauser fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is the author of Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition: Ethics, Law, and the Muslim Discourse on Gender (Oxford University Press, 2014). She has consulted on high-level national and international cases concerning human rights, religious freedom, and pluralism. She works with NGOs and international development organizations to improve women’s rights and promote pluralism. She has just finished writing a book entitled The Colour of God (forthcoming 2021).

Corrina Sparrow comes from the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nation, and the Qualicum Nation of the Pentlatch People on the west coast of what is now known as British Columbia; and they also have some Dutch ancestry. Corrina is a current PhD student with the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, whose research explores Coast Salish Two Spirit/Indigequeer identities and resurgence, and how this knowledge informs Two Spirit community development and wellness. Corrina brings extensive community-based experience to their work – from their most recent role as Social Development Manager with xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nation, to over twenty years of strong advocacy and helping with Indigenous children and families in both rural and urban communities. Corrina sits on multiple working groups for Two Spirit advocacy, including the UBC IRSI-Indigenous Advisory Committee, the Trans, Two Spirit & Gender Diversity Task Force with UBC Equity & Inclusion Office, and they are the elected BC representative, and executive Co-Chair for the national 2 Spirits in Motion Society. Corrina is committed to the animacy of land-based knowledges that inform the centralization, protection, and wellbeing of Two Spirit/Indigequeer kin, and in the promotion of decolonial conceptions of Indigenous gender, sexualities, and research.

Please note: The recording of this event is no longer available, but here are some other resources you can explore:

• Dr. Kimmerer’s faculty profile page includes links to many works, including videos and speeches.
• Reconciling Ways of Knowing (24 Sept 2020): Watch Dr. Kimmerer speak in dialogue with Dr. Nancy Turner on the theme of Braiding Ways of Knowing.
• CBC Radio’s Tapestry program (27 Nov 2020): Why is the world so beautiful? Hear Dr. Kimmerer speak on the spirit of life in everything in this episode of Tapestry.