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Robin Wall Kimmerer Quotes (1953-)
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About Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born September 13, 1953) is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation who is the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). She is the author of numerous scientific articles, and the books Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013).
Best Robin Wall Kimmerer Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Robin Wall Kimmerer quotes.
“Appreciation begets abundance.”
“To be indigenous is to protect life on earth.”
“To carry a gift is also to carry a responsibility.”
“In learning reciprocity, the hands can lead the heart.”
“If you ask permission, you have to listen to the answer.”
“The ultimate reciprocity, loving and being loved in return.”
“The presence of our reciprocal love is hard to say good-bye to.”
“Our histories are inevitably braided together with our futures.”
“Transformation is not accomplished by tentative wading at the edge.”
“There is no formula complex enough to hold the birthplace of stories.”
“Sweetgrass is a teacher of healing, a symbol of kindness and compassion.”
“When we call a place by name it is transformed from wilderness to homeland.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer Quotes by Topic
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Robin Wall Kimmerer on Land 9 quotes
View all 9 quotes on Land →Robin Wall Kimmerer on Gifts 8 quotes
“People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how it’s a gift.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Plants 7 quotes
View all 7 quotes on Plants →Robin Wall Kimmerer on Gratitude 6 quotes
View all 6 quotes on Gratitude →Robin Wall Kimmerer on Reciprocity 6 quotes
“In learning reciprocity, the hands can lead the heart.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on World 5 quotes
“Being a good mother means teaching your children to care for the world.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Onondaga Lake 5 quotes
“Swimming was banned in 1940. Beautiful Onondaga Lake. People spoke of it with pride. Now they barely speak of it at all, as if it were a family member whose demise was so shameful that the name never comes up.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Ceremony 4 quotes
“That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Science 4 quotes
“To name and describe you must first see, and science polishes the gift of seeing.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Attention 4 quotes
“Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Trees 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Trees →Robin Wall Kimmerer on Grief 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Grief →What Robin Wall Kimmerer Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Robin Wall Kimmerer shared regarding contemporaries.
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Mothers 2 quotes
“Being a good mother means teaching your children to care for the world.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Onondaga people 2 quotes
“Generations of grief, generations of loss, but also strength—the people did not surrender. They had spirit on their side. They had their traditional teachings. And they also had the law. Onondaga is a rarity in the United States, a Native nation that has never surrendered its traditional government, never given up its identity nor compromised its status as a sovereign nation. Federal laws were ignored by their own authors, but the Onondaga people still live by the precepts of the Great Law.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Joanna Macy
“Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Native Americans in the United States
“In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer on Mohawk people
“Mohawk language and culture didn’t disappear on their own. Forced assimilation, the government policy to deal with the so-called Indian problem, shipped Mohawk children to the barracks at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the school's avowed mission was "Kill the Indian to Save the Man." [...] Despite Carlisle, despite exile, despite a siege four hundred years long, there is something, some heart of living stone, that will not surrender. I don't know just what sustained the people, but I believe it was carried in words. Pockets of the language survived among those who stayed rooted to place. Among those remaining, the Thanksgiving Address was spoken to greet the day: "Let us put our minds together as one and send greetings and thanks to our Mother Earth, who sustains our lives with her many gifts." Grateful reciprocity with the world, as solid as a stone, sustained them when all else was stripped away.”
Quotes About Robin Wall Kimmerer
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Jane Goodall blurb for on Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people. It is the way she captures beauty that I love the most-the images of giant cedars and wild strawberries, a forest in the rain and a meadow of fragrant sweetgrass will stay with you long after you read the last page.”
Rebecca Solnit on Robin Wall Kimmerer
“"Even a wounded world is feeding us," writes the Indigenous plant scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. "Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift."”
Krista Tippett on Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. She’s written, “Science polishes the gift of seeing; Indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.” An expert in moss, a bryologist, she describes mosses as “the coral reefs of the forest.” She opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life that we are used to naming and imagining as inanimate.”
James Yeh on Robin Wall Kimmerer 2 quotes
“Behind her, on the wooden bookshelves, are birch bark baskets and sewn boxes, mukluks, and books by the environmentalist Winona LaDuke and Leslie Marmon Silko”
About Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer (born September 13, 1953) is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation who is the Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). She is the author of numerous scientific articles, and the books Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003), and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013).