Robin Wall Kimmerer (Photo courtesy of Matt Roth)
This year's Walter Harding Lecture will be delivered by Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Kimmerer will deliver "Healing Relationship with Land: Nature Writing in a Time of Crisis" on Thursday, October 19, at 6:15 p.m. in Wadsworth Auditorium. It is free and open to the public. There will be an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter on stage.
Kimmerer will sign copies of her bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, immediately following the lecture. The lecture is sponsored by the Department of English and named for Walter Harding, who was a Distinguished Professor of English at Geneseo and an esteemed Thoreau scholar.
Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, educator, MacArthur Fellow (2022), and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In addition to Braiding Sweetgrass, she wrote Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, which was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. Her work has also appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. She tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s "On Being with Krista Tippett." In 2015, she addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.”