Robin Wall Kimmerer
Plant Ecologist, Educator & Author, Citizen Potawatomi Nation Member
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 Teachings 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. In 2022, Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. This new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. Robin’s newest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (November 2024), is a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
Robin 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 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. In 2022 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
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. 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 lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
Learn more about Robin: authorsunbound.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/
Severn Cullis-Suzuki
Intergenerational Justice Advocate
Since childhood, Severn Cullis-Suzuki has dedicated her life to intergenerational justice and healing our relationship with the earth, and each other. Born in Vancouver to English and Japanese ancestry, she was raised in a scientific family with utmost respect for Indigenous teachings, and a deep sense of responsibility. As a child she started the ECO club with friends, which culminated in a speech at the 1992 UN Earth Summit, seeking to awaken leaders to their responsibility to future generations.
Since then, Severn has continued to challenge western society to confront its destructive legacy, speaking about climate change, the true costs of an individualistic society, the significance of Indigenous ways of knowing and being, fossil fuel supremacy, and what each of us needs to do to be the change we need. Committed to interdisciplinarity and diversity in thinking through solutions, Severn has a B.Sc. in Evolutionary Biology from Yale, an M.Sc. in Ethnoecology from the University of Victoria, and a PhD in Linguistic Anthropology at UBC (2025).
Severn married Gudt’aawt’is Judson Brown, a member of the Haida Nation. Moving to Haida Gwaii, she joined his passion for the Haida language, and learned that Indigenous languages are portals to completely different relationships with the land, different possibilities and decolonized futures. With their two sons, they are committed to Haida language and ways of being, and continuing to practice traditional ways in our ever-changing context.
Severn’s collaborative work includes serving on the Earth Charter Commission, partnering with Japan’s Sloth Club and Million Mothers Movement, and working with Haida Elders on language revitalization programs on Haida Gwaii. She has worked with filmmakers on documentaries and hosted two television series. From 2021 to 2025, Severn served as the Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation.
Learn more about Severn Cullis-Suzuki: severncullissuzuki.com.