Exploring care ethics through a more-than-human lens - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Bio: Robin Wall Kimmerer, researcher and writer (USA, Indigenous Potawatomi people)

Background info: Robin Wall Kimmerer is an American 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). In her popular books, she mixes scientific knowledge with indigenous wisdom (she is a descendant of the Potawatomi tribe), poetry and much else. Some of her books are world-wide known and loved, like ’Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses’ (2003), and ‘Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants’ (2013).

We invite you to watch this video presentation (20 min) Robin gave at the Bioneers conference, in which she talks beautifully about issues that have much to do with pluralisation, caring, and more-than-human worlds.

Some issues  we believe are particularly valuable to the content of this video lesson, and around which we invite you to reflect and share your thoughts are:

- the power of language and storytelling, when Prof. Wall Kimmerer reflects upon the different ways of naming and thus framing of ‘land’. She discusses the importance of knowing the names of plants and animals, in order to be able to be attentive to them and understand their needs. Knowing their names, is the first step to open the doors to reciprocity. Attentiveness and reciprocity are important values according to the ethics of care scholarship (Moriggi et al 2020);

- Prof. Wall Kimmerer talks about the convergence of non-human extinction and indigenous people mass eradication;

- She discusses the ethics of the ‘honorable harvest’, stressing how the Earth does not belong to us, and we must practice gratitude as a radical act, and that a culture of sharing is a culture of resistance;

- she discusses the importance of the ‘restoration of our honor’ rather than the restoration of the land per se’, against extractivism. ‘The land is not broken, our relationship to it is broken’ says Professor Wall Kimmerer.

QUESTIONS:

• Which of the points she raises trigger your curiosity?
• How do you value the style of her presentation, certainly very different from the ones usually given in standard academic conferences? Would you do the same for your talks?