By Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD, Spring | Summer 2016

Fifth Annual Conference at the United Nations on Harmony with Nature

Shaapodaske Gizhgokwe, my name in my ancestral language, refers to light shining through sky onto the face of Mother Earth and I carry the responsibility for that name, but I never would have dreamed that responsibility would lead me here. For you see, a little more than one hundred years ago, my grandfather was taken away from his family in Indian Territory to a government run boarding school where the policy was to wipe away every trace of the indigenous worldview from our people and replace it with the western settler mindset. It is a miracle that today his granddaughter has been invited here to speak of our worldview at a time of accelerating climate change, as we enter the Age of the Sixth Extinction, when the world now has need of the wisdom that was very nearly driven to extinction. This very fact is a source of great hope for it shows that the world can change, that we human people can transform our beliefs, that we can—together—grow toward justice. The perspectives I share today are not mine alone, but the collective wisdom of our people and the Earth herself.

I am a professor of environmental biology, an ecological scientist by training and profession, working to create a symbiosis between indigenous and scientific knowledge systems. I am also by culture an indigenous woman, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. My work has led me to understand the power of complementarity between these two different ways of knowing the world, which has, I think, benefits for sustainability.

Since the time of my grandfather, we have seen dramatic advances in the quality of life for some; we have also seen the costs of environmental degradation—so much so that the UN Millennium report calls into question our continued survival.

As a plant ecologist, aspects of my scientific research involve understanding how we might repair damaged ecosystems and return them to productivity. It’s imperative that we restore the land from the damage we have inflicted. But in my restoration research, I have come to understand that it is not only the land that has been broken. It is our relationship to land. A key to sustainability is not only restoring the land, but restoring the relationship. If we are to survive and if our more-than-human relatives are to survive as well, we need a change in worldview.

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