{"id":39908,"date":"2025-10-26T11:26:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T15:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=39908"},"modified":"2025-10-26T11:26:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T15:26:05","slug":"braiding-sweetgrass-author-environmental-biologist-kimmerer-to-speak-nov-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/braiding-sweetgrass-author-environmental-biologist-kimmerer-to-speak-nov-5\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Braiding Sweetgrass\u2019 author, environmental biologist Kimmerer to speak Nov. 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robin Wall Kimmerer<\/a>, author of the best-selling nonfiction book \u201cBraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants,\u201d will deliver the inaugural address for the Furman Humanities Center<\/a> Distinguished Lecture Series on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 6:45 p.m. in McAlister Auditorium on the Furman University campus. The event is free and open to the public and is part of Furman\u2019s Cultural Life Program.<\/p>\n

Named among Time Magazine\u2019s Most Influential People of 2025, Kimmerer, a 2022 MacArthur Fellow, is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and is the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.<\/p>\n

Her talk, “Just Environments, Native Futures, and\u00a0Braiding Sweetgrass,”\u00a0draws from her 2013 book, \u201cBraiding Sweetgrass,\u201d which won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, and her latest work, \u201cThe Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her presentation invites people to reflect on how they might use their human gifts and responsibilities in support of mutual thriving in a time of ecological crisis, said Michele Speitz<\/a>, director of the Furman Humanities Center and professor of English literature.<\/p>\n

Karen Allen<\/a>, associate professor of sustainability science and anthropology, and Jason Levitt \u201926<\/a>, public health major and president of Furman\u2019s Native American and Indigenous Peoples Association, will introduce Kimmerer.<\/p>\n

Allen believes Kimmerer\u2019s work offers hope in trying times. \u201cKimmerer asks us to do what we do best in the Furman community and a liberal arts world: to think from another perspective, to imagine the question we haven\u2019t yet learned how to ask,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who\u2019s living out my own journey reconnecting with my Indigenous roots and understanding health and wellness, I find Dr. Kimmerer\u2019s teachings inspiring,\u201d said Levitt, a 2025 Udall Scholar. \u201cHer work reminds us that healing, whether it\u2019s people or the planet, begins with relationship, respect and reciprocity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kimmerer\u2019s books have won wide critical acclaim. In addition to \u201cThe Serviceberry\u201d and \u201cBraiding Sweetgrass,\u201d she is author of children\u2019s book \u201cBud Finds Her Gift,\u201d and her first book, \u201cGathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses,\u201d was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding natural history writing. Other works have appeared in Orion and Whole Terrain as well as in numerous scientific journals.<\/p>\n

In 2022, \u201cBraiding Sweetgrass\u201d was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. The new edition reinforces Kimmerer\u2019s belief that greater ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth\u2019s oldest teachers: the plants around us.<\/p>\n

Sponsors for Kimmerer\u2019s visit include The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities and the departments of Earth, Environmental, and Sustainability Sciences; English; and Religion; and the Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary Minor. The Furman Humanities Center acknowledges generous support from the Head, Reid and Sisk Endowed Lecture Funds.<\/p>\n

Following Kimmerer\u2019s address and brief Q&A session, Furman will join M. Judson Booksellers for a book signing session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Named among Time Magazine\u2019s Most Influential People of 2025, Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and is the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” “The Serviceberry,” “Gathering Moss,” and other acclaimed works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":39910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,19,17,37,31,3500,21,94,23,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","category-biology","category-centers-and-institutes","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-english","category-furman-humanities-center","category-health-sciences","category-public-health","category-religion","category-shi-institute-for-sustainable-communities"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39908"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39912,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39908\/revisions\/39912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}