Career
From Wisconsin, Kimmerer moved to Kentucky, where she found a teaching position at Transylvania University in Lexington. She and her young family moved shortly thereafter to Danville, Kentucky when she took a position teaching biology, botany, and ecology at Centre College. Kimmerer received tenure at Centre College. In 1993, Kimmerer returned home to upstate New York and her alma mater SUNY-ESF where she currently teaches.
Kimmerer teaches in the Environmental and Forest Biology Department at SUNY-ESF. She teaches courses on Land and Culture, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Ethnobotany, Ecology of Mosses, Disturbance Ecology, and General Botany. She is the director of the newly established Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY-ESF. The Center is part of her work to provide greater access for Native peoples to study environmental science.
Kimmerer is a proponent of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) approach, which Kimmerer describes as a “way of knowing.” TEK is a deeply empirical scientific approach and is based on long-term observation. However, it also involves cultural and spiritual considerations, which have left it marginalized by the greater scientific community. Wider use of TEK by scholars has begun to lend credence to it. Kimmerer's efforts are motivated in part by her family history. Her grandfather was a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and was educated at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The school was part of a government program claiming to civilize Native children. The effect was that much of the Native culture was lost.
Her current work spans traditional ecological knowledge, moss ecology, outreach to tribal communities and creative writing.
Read more about this topic: Robin Wall Kimmerer
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