From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”
As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”
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Bridging Western botanical science and Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge, nature writing has found a transformative voice in environmental literature and restoration ecology. Robin Wall Kimmerer, an Indigenous botanist and professor, has reshaped how readers understand human relationships with the natural world through her acclaimed books, including Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.
An enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer was born in 1953. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Botany from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF), followed by a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Wisconsin. She serves as a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at SUNY ESF and is the founder and former director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her academic research centers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, and ecological restoration. Kimmerer is the author of numerous scientific papers published in professional journals, and her essays have appeared in publications such as Orion and Whole Terrain. Beyond academia, Kimmerer tours widely as a speaker, having been featured on NPR's On Being with Krista Tippett. In 2015, she addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on the topic 'Healing Our Relationship with Nature.' In recognition of her work combining scientific research and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, she was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022. She resides on an old farm in upstate New York near Syracuse, where she tends both cultivated and wild gardens.
As a writer, mother, and scientist, Kimmerer focuses on ecological restoration that encompasses both physical ecosystems and human relationships with the land. Her writing blends rigorous botanical observation with the principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)—the living body of understanding cultivated by Indigenous peoples across generations. Rather than viewing nature strictly through utilitarian or objective scientific frameworks, Kimmerer's prose emphasizes kinship, gratitude, reciprocity, and the understanding of plants as humanity's oldest teachers. Her work explores how economic models and cultural perspectives can shift away from scarcity and exploitation toward abundance, gift economies, and mutual responsibility.
