Image of Robin Wall Kimmerer standing in a forest
Courtesy of Robin Wall Kimmerer

Center for Native Peoples and the Environment

esf.edu/nativepeoples
Syracuse, NY

The Center for Native Peoples and the Environment (CNPE) at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry is the home of the work of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a mother, scientist, decorated professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Robin serves as the founding Director of the CNPE whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both Indigenous and scientific knowledge for shared goals of sustainability. In collaboration with Tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. As a writer and a scientist, Robin’s interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land.

Featured Media

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants

In this non-fiction book—drawing on her life as an Indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman—Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices.

Robin Wall Kimmerer: ‘People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how’

In this interview Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about her fight for plant rights, and why she hopes the pandemic will increase human compassion for the natural world.

Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System

Following a nine-thousand-year journey, Robin Wall Kimmerer reflects on the ancient technology embedded in our relationship with corn.

The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance

As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy.

Speaking of Nature

Finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world.

Greed Does Not Have to Define Our Relationship to Land

Robin Wall Kimmerer on choosing to belong to a place.