Doing a basters job providing an honest assessment the Foreign Office added the derricks views are not necessarily shared by the government Frank Langfitt n.p.r. News London this is n.p.r. Another round of protests in Hong Kong today tens of thousands marched through a district that's popular with tourists from mainland China in order to demonstrate concerns over a controversial extradition bill in Iker rug thousands of supporters of the socialist government filled the streets this weekend to commemorate the 40th anniversary of a battle that helped bring President Daniel Ortega Sandinista party to power but as Maria Martin reports Nicaragua remains politically divided thousands of Sundanese to supporters and a large police contingent came out on Saturday to show their backing for president in the north they go up on the anniversary of the battle Maasai out which eventually led to the takeover by the Sun The nice to read both in July of 1970 $91.00 of those rebels was who's now involved in a power struggle with a broad opposition This after more than one year of heavy handed tactics against anti-government protests that have left several 100 dead or think I and his followers are using the 40th anniversary of the sun the niece of victory to tell the world all this all right in the gut how will his opponents meanwhile are calling for further international pressure again sort that us government when they call this much of a dictatorship as the one defeated 40 years ago for n.p.r. News I'm Maria Martin music icon Stevie Wonder says he's getting a kidney transplant in September the 69 year old singer and songwriter made the announcement at a concert in London last night Barbara Klein n.p.r. News. Support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation providing scholarships throughout the nation to exceptionally high achieving students with financial need from middle school to college more information about Cook scholarships is available at j.k. C.f.a. Dot org. This is cultivating place I'm Jennifer joy on this 4th of July I'm honored to welcome Robin wall Kimmer mother botanist plant ecologist writer and teaching professor at the Sunni College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse New York as the founding 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 is engaged in programs which introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge many of you will be familiar with her acclaimed books gathering moss a natural and cultural history of mosses as well as breeding sweet grass indigenous wisdom scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants a gardener in the greatest sense of the word Robin spoke with us a little earlier this spring from the studio of. Our Syracuse public media to explore the interrelationships between gardening and the heart of citizenship in this world Welcome Robin thanks Jennifer I'm delighted to be with you. I have interviewed you before in relation to a book on contemporary women and leadership moving the world of horticulture forward and I am of course a devoted reader of of your books which have taught me so many people a great deal about indigenous ways of knowing traditional ecological knowledge and the incredible power of story and metaphor that you. You deploy for such. Beautiful and pointed purposes Robin and there are a lot of interviews with you about all of these things and I really wanted to engage with you in this conversation as a fellow gardener and a fellow citizen of this planet and so I would love to start in a place that I don't often hear you talk about and that is your early childhood and some of your 1st learning about plants either from people or from the plants themselves and what taught you earliest that you were a plant person at heart. Your question Jennifer takes me back immediately to being a little girl in the garden with my dad. We always had a garden growing up I grew up in there in the country and I remember that the smell of the soil the smell of the tomato plants we're putting them so gently into the ground are some of my earliest memories of. Being with plants in a garden setting but you know truthfully I can't name my 1st encounters with plants or those times when I I knew I was meant to be a cloud person because it's so much in. My being I feel like the plants were and were always aware. That the landscape that I that I gravitated to the the wild. Fields behind my house that were in by some post Dagr a cultural succession of fields bordered by woods and ponds and wetlands so I had a. Big biodiversity rich backyard if you will Yeah that I would I just always gauged with the plants. You talk about inbreeding sweetgrass how there is this cultivation of garden and cultivation of gratitude with open spaces from from your father from your early childhood but then you you also talk a great deal about working within different spaces around you whether it's looking for the wild strawberries are looking for the wild leaks or even the way you tend to your pond to remove the algae and save the little tadpoles from the algae as you rake it out this all seems to me as a greater sense of gardening somehow. You're exactly right if what we mean by gardening is to be engaged with the plan being aged with the world you know means. Reciprocity that that you know return for everything that the plants give us starting with wonder and curiosity in the fact that you cannot go outside without being surprised by something beautiful at your feet or something interesting around you that that we are called to give back to those plants and so it's more of like attending I think which is how I think of that kind of gardening you know you make me also flashback to what plant nerdy kid I had to have been because I remember taking my mom's pruning shears and going out in the woods and you know nipping off dead branches here and there oh I just always had this sense that I needed to care for them in the way that they cared for me in the things that they taught me and the happiness that they that they brought me so from that perspective I do think about my work in the world and perhaps collectively our work in the world is as gardeners as as nurturers as tenders of the abundance that's around us not just harvesters and and takers from the our from the world but that deep satisfaction that comes from being engaged with the world interests or prickle way yeah yeah one of the questions I wanted to ask you was throughout your work both in gathering moss and your braiding sweetgrass and in several of your lectures that I've heard there is this your early childhood time in which you you were with your individual family but not yet fully. We immersed in your traditional heritage culture and so you hadn't yet really gotten your traditional ecological knowledge or you hadn't been put in that context yet and yet you were taught a respect for plants and open spaces well you describe that with your with your dad and your mom and your and your siblings a little bit. Certainly in the way I would like to think about that is that I was involved in cultural teachings I just didn't know it I didn't have the name for it . Because because of history my family was separated from our reservation in Oklahoma via the Carlisle Indians call when my grandfather was it was taken away from his family and sent to those boarding schools and so we were separated from our large Pottawattamie family by that tragic history but within our family there was. The acknowledgment the reality of. Land as our teacher. As our pharmacy as our provider those values that are associated with the right relationship to the living world are very much alive in my family her much practice . And. So it was only later when I became. More connected to our traditional people saw in our homeland that I had a language for that and a ways to manifest that in a culturally specific way but was always present you know I tell the story often about how my dad when we were out in the woods would always do gratitude for the day for the world for the beings that were around us and. That was a. Practice that he felt called to do it in our language know that language had been taken from him and he do it in a way that that our traditional elders would recognize. In the heart of it absolutely because it was this. Recognition of our interconnectedness and gratitude for all the gifts that we receive so it was always part of my values growing up you know but not any any culturally specific way. So that actually brings me to my next question which is related to the curable disruption of your violence perpetrated against not only your family but the whole generations of native peoples in this land. And you have a beautiful thought at some point in your mid adulthood early adulthood I think is when it occurs and you think to yourself if the Carlisle School could have taken that from my grandfather and taken that from all of us they came after my grandfather if there's a school that can take that away there must be a school they can give that back to you and I think that again you use metaphor so beautifully through your work because you use an expansive sense of the word school and teacher when we knew you'd model for us throughout your work what schools and what teachers have brought this back to you and actually pointed you in the direction of sharing it with everyone that you possibly can where you walk us through some of the schools that have refueled you and your family. I'd be glad to and I would start with my very earliest school which was the land and continues to be the land that is the place where I am most at home most odd and humbled to be in the presence of teachers everywhere birds and plants and earth and rocks and water and I really in every sense of the world view that as my school and those beings as as as my teachers and I think that that habit of mind also began on the land as as a child because I was acutely aware that I did not have cultural teachers at that time outside of my family and the plants were very much my elders and very much my teachers and so I I start with that is my 1st school as is the intelligences other than human who surrounded me and taught me so much. I would say that also the schools that have been important to me. Let's start also with them probably what was my 2nd school being in love with plants being in love with with the living world. And choosing to go to college right after really coincidental with the 1st Earth Day I knew that that I needed to go study ecology and I needed to go study plan to call it a need to study botany and so one of the very important schools for me was entering into university plan. And there were certain challenges for me in making that transition from a from what I think of as an indigenous worldview about plants to the scientific world to you but. Throughout it was for me my fascination with the way that plants. Achieve their incredible creativity and generosity I wanted to know everything so I credit part of my school at the hand Lance as the microscope as indeed the test tube to try to find out. I know that you plants are teaching us so much Here's another way that you could teach us and that you do teach us so the world of science was an important school for me and continues to to be so. The. Very important school for me a place of powerful learning was within my own Pottawattamie culture and coming into the circle of knowledge holders who were generous in their sharing who helped me understand that I was not alone on this path of longing for and wanting to know and. Traditional knowledge of the of the living world. Who helped me understand in a historical context through our traditional teachings and through history that what had happened was a great violence against our traditional knowledge and that all of us whether we grew up in our traditional territories or we grew up. Away from them we are all in the process of a great remembering and bringing that knowledge back among our people hadn't gone anywhere in the land remembered Fortunately many of our people and our in our teaching remembered as as well but that collective remembering to which I was invited. Was perhaps one of the most meaningful schools for me school where I could listen to knowledge holders and walk through the was with Matt of medicine gatherers and. Begin that process of trying to learn a little bit of our language all of that was a very powerful school for me and continues to be. The most beginning students in my own culture. If you're just joining us I'm Jennifer jewel and on this 4th of July Robin wall Kimmer author of breeding sweet grass and happy citizen of maple nation is speaking with us about gardening and our longing to belong We'll be right back after a break stay with us. It's Francis lamb and this week it's a pepper party from a hot sauce facing the honey calling for my mother to the best as you might ever have a magical little pepper powder from France of all places it's a chilly world. When the table from American Public Media. And you can catch that episode of The Splendid Table coming up next at 10 support comes from Jake at a automotive author's full service maintenance and repair for all Subaru involve the models as well as other makes new and old j.n.j. Automotive is located in Chico on plummers lane in the Cohasset industrial park information directions and on line scheduling at j. And j. Automotive Chico dot com. This is cultivating place I'm Jennifer jewel when we ended our last part of this conversation with Dr Robin wall Kuma button is ecologist indigenous plant knowledge advocate and author she was sharing with us some of her most formative teachers and classrooms in this plant world we return now with her sharing about an experience in which her own ways of learning and knowing made an important breakthrough it was just after Actually I got my Ph d. And it was because you know at that point at which the Western world says 0 you really know something I like began to teach botany and I am ashamed of myself to say that how did I begin teaching it I taught it in just a mechanistic reduction is way that I had been taught that's not really the way I learned as a young person but it was the way I learned in the university and so I began to replicate. That and I still do not know where and how this invitation came to me but I was invited to come to this gathering of traditional plant knowledge holders and I was allowed to sit in the back quietly we're not allowed to have a pencil even with us just to listen to engage and not really deep listening that that traditional way of sharing knowledge and for for a days I sat quietly and listened as elders and culture bearers told planned stories and I was simply. Overwhelmed. By the depth of their knowledge I wouldn't say that I came to a place to think that they had scientific and traditional knowledge were equal no no no in fact what I came to understand is that traditional knowledge of plants was so much bigger and so my drift here then than the scientific world do you allowed because it brought in not only that which we can observe him Pyrrhic all scientific though called scientific knowledge but it also brought in history and story and and spiritual teachings and it brought in mind body emotion and spirit and so I began to understand that this was a much bigger and powerful way of knowing that creates a different framework for living in a world that's not just about information and. It's about wisdom. And this really pivotal shift in worldview that you you also go on to describe as you're you're learning the language you're starting to learn the language in there's this just really beautiful moment electric as you describe it where you're trying to understand the language and you're so frustrated because you are so. Fully contained by how the English language is structured that you can't get outside of that to grasp your traditional language and you or you describe it as being ready to give up and then you describe it like this vision that the colonizers who stole your language are being pleased in their places of terribleness and you have this electric shift will you describe that shift. I will one. Who is so sure my memory of being frustrated because to learn Pottawattamie languages I was trying to do. Is that the verbs are very very difficult to conjugate and 70 percent of the words in our language are verbs as opposed to 70 percent in English which are now which are about things which are about objects right. And so I was struggling with this with this these these verbs not only in their great diversity and specificity but in the fact that they are animate we have cases in our language which are animate and in and I met when we speak of the living world we use the same grammar and verb conjugations that we use for one another we speak of the living world with different grammar than we do with the manufactured world already in animate world and for me as I was struggling with this and and trying to think about this it for me it all comes down to this one word the word with quick comma which meant verb to be a way and I thought that's crazy that's not a verb and until of course this is for me this literally electric moment was. Of course it's of her because water is alive because the ducks on the water are alive because they are alive because I am alive because the world is alive and only the complexity our language fell into place in this beautiful scaffolding of the atom a thing that it all made sense to me because it held the world view that the world is alive and that we speak of a world made of beings not a world made of objects and so for me that that that great realisation was for me a remembering of how the Western scientific way of thinking in particular which renders beings as objects in the ecosystem. Carried with it. So many assumptions about the world that I wanted to be not only that I wanted to be free of but I could see how if collectively as a society if we could free ourselves from the necessary necessary linguistically I mean objectification of the world we would lead a very different world and that's the world I want to live in. That's the world I want to live in with you Rob And this moment I have to share with you when I 1st read ratings we grasp it was in the spring and I live in Northern California and so the word Bay to me automatically was it was a tree it was a big tree that was in bloom and very fragrant and very medicinal the leaves are powerful and they line are ripe arean corridors here so while I was reading this is about to be a bad day I'm seeing a big plant and then I get to the part where you're saying and the water is alive in the water is lapping against the the stones in conversation and I always said you realize that you're talking about a Water Bay and I'm talking about a plant day but I still got there with you so it was also another moment opinion for me when you are describing. And I can't remember fits before the grammar of animist see or after the grammar of anime see that you've just described to us but you you begin you begin to lay out for us metaphorically through through these these lessons that you take on in your relationship with the plants in the world around you the idea of of gratitude and economy a gift economy and this idea of reciprocal relationship between us and the world around us and you are talking about beans and it is in the garden that you have it is kind of the pissing me of the world does love me and need me to love it I am not just a terrible species on this planet although it's sometimes hard to remember that. And you talk about it loving us in beings will you will you walk us through that. Well I think said probably most gardeners have had that moment of feeling your basket you know when you go into the garden and. There's so many gifts there for you know. And I just remember her all these big beings hanging from the pole being in the sand and thinking oh my gosh you know my my basket is overflowing and look over there there's the tomatoes in over there those beads that haven't pulled did this have overwhelming abundance and I thought to myself well what does what does this all mean all of this abundance that is is waiting there for me and it felt to me like love like Oh of course we provide for you of course we provide for you all the in need is here in the world and and that. Gift from the plants. And it's important to me that my thinking about that happened in a garden that up in which I was a participant in that abundance I sometimes feel when I'm out picking wild berries or you know gather hickory nuts to like all of this abundance but in the garden. I tended those seeds I planted those seeds and in reciprocity for that look what they're giving me and I and I started to think about this in the same framework that I think about well how is it that I show my children how much I love them by feeding them by caring for them by bringing them beauty by teaching now by asking them to participate to write the lessons of picking those potato bug you know you have you have to participate and this guest and that recognition that that we can talk about our gardens be it a cultivated vegetable garden or the Garden of the of the earth as being a maternal relationship. There's a reason we call her Mother Earth because she behaves toward us as a mother does with with love and with lessons Robin wall came or is a highly acclaimed botanist ecologist and Professor She is also a gardener We'll be right back after a break with more of our conversation with Robin Stay with us. This week on This American Life what it is like in Iowa right now this place is crawling with what is it 25 presidential candidates. Back I. Think when you're walking through a small town in Iowa a guy read president this strange crowded early moment in this election. That's the American life later this afternoon at 5. Support comes from Magnolia gift and garden a full service offering guidance and Flora best suited to the Northern California climate as well as pottery for Home and Garden open daily at 1367 East Avenue in Chico and on line at Magnolia gardening dot com You're listening to cultivating place on North State Public Radio. This is cultivating place I'm Jennifer jewel when we left off in our conversation with Robin she was sharing her garden moment revelation that the earth loved and cared for her just as she loved and cared for her own children and that it was more importantly a reciprocal relationship I've gone on to ask her about the larger concept of what it is to be a gardener and if there is such a word as gardener or gardening in her native language of Pottawattamie. Peoples Archuleta. Contract or a sea of what we call the 3 fires Confederacy so Pottawattamie odor and I just wait people are all on. The process. And so part of want to me is an honest language. That makes sense yes Ok in that Langley. Is there a word similar to garden or gardener or gardening. The word that I know for that and there probably are many many words associated with it is good to gone and I understand that when you take the word apart it basically refers to the fact that these are plants that we put here. As distinct from the plants which are I want to say sovereign beings who decided where they were going to grow. And I like that that framing because of what to me what that means is that that that most plants decide where they're going to grow but there is a certain subset of plants that we take to a certain spot. Which kind of gets us to the garden with a little g in garden with a big key the important identity that we bring to these words is directly related to our creation stories where you walk us through that a little bit. The big garden story in a way and in the Abrahamic traditions right of the garden Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is of course this notion that the world is rich and full of plant life and animal life all that we need is provided for us. But of course Adam and Eve by partaking are actually exiled from the garden. And so it's a it's a story you do not belong here the way that you all is not by. Accepting the gifts that are offered to you but you have to work for this from now on. And that's different than. The 1st woman in the creation story of both of peoples and interestingly of. People among where I live today and their ancestral territories that's the sky woman story in the sky woman story the 1st woman. Is actually creator of abundance she's a co-creator because she's the one who brought. She's the one who by her dad took the Earth at the analogs had given her and with her gratitude and her. Help that the little handful of earth to grow into the soils on earth that we have today until which she planted seeds. Brought with her from the sky world so in one story we have people being exiled. Abundant and in the other story we have a profound act of reciprocity. City between people and the living world and therefore we have instructions to live and reciprocity to be grateful for the gifts that have been given us and that for those gifts to multiply and to care for us. We have to care for them and that we have our role to play in this creative process and in that way for me. The whole world becomes the garden becomes a place where I think of a garden that garden as the place where way. And I asked our reciprocity. For the gift of life that this is who we are we are who are linked in reciprocity with a with a. Profound consequences for our environment for women for the nature and look of love. Incredibly thought provoking. And. In the way that we think of ourselves as and the way that we belong to the land I think that is our deepest longing to belong to each other and to belong to this larger community of life and. This notion of tending the garden. At all the chaos we've been implying here is a powerful way to block. That brings me to this notion of citizenship and what it means to belong both what we can expect from it and what should be expected of us as a result of belonging and your lecture presentation at the Oregon humanity center all around the concept of We the People was so powerful and it came after the debacle which was powerful and I'll just say that powerful I'm not sure where else to there's so much we could go into there of the the Standing Rock crisis in our country. Will you walk us through some of your thoughts as to what citizen ship should be you are a a member of the citizen in Ottawa to me nation you often refer to yourself as a citizen of maple nation. Give us your thoughts on citizenship Robin. It's so interesting Jennifer that you chose those 2 uses of the word citizen and let me say that our citizen Pottawattamie nation and Arne so named because after having been removed from our Great Lakes homelands. Multiple times and eventually to Kansas where we continue to hold our lands in common despite the fact that this was a brand new homeland for us that many of our people were marched away from our great lake homeland said at gunpoint to this new homeland nonetheless this notion of communal ownership of land the refusal to see land as private property was strong until the continued assaults of history shall we say briefly have led to a schism within our people and some people said well these newcomers this is the this American society the only thing that they really. Value that they really would be a protection is this notion of citizenship that there were certain rights that came with citizenship including the fact that your property could not be taken from you if you were a citizen and so some of our people accepted this offer to go to Indian Territory what became Oklahoma. And and and to actually hold private property which was so counter to our our traditional thinking but it was viewed as a survival strategy to say these people these colonizers the only thing that will protect you is citizenship and private property and so in order to survive. I will do their last retaken from them anyway. So that's the story of citizen ship of accepting citizenship because it was thought to come with certain rights. And as it turns out those rights were not applied toward people in. No way did I mean that word citizen when I happily call myself a citizen of maple nation is to live the end of culture which isn't about the rights that come with citizenship but the responsibilities that come with citizenship that when I mean right now here in upstate New York it's almost sugar time it's almost maple time and really our leading citizens here are maples they far outnumber human beings and in terms of their impact on this landscape they far outnumber humans as well in Beautiful. Forests in the local economies that are associated with sugaring with the firewood that at this moment is warming my house with you know sequestering carbon with making oxygen with shading us all of those things I think of that method Maples they're such responsibility for this entire landscape so I think of them as are the leading citizens and then I as a human citizen here have to say well. If the maples are leading the way of showing us what it means to contribute to your society to be responsible for the place that you have and and so that's why I cast myself as I as a citizen of maple nation it's again learning from this plant teachers what it what it is to be a citizen not to simply claim riots by to claim responsibility. And those responsibilities are or are are many and great and more of us are I hope every day being called to. To live up to them. One of the ways that you address people's questions to you about how to be the the most active pro active citizens of our planet. You say to people look to gratitude and look to your gifts and make a real connection to your own place and from those sort of 3 things you will know how best to act in this world to make it a better place and this I think you suggest to us is among our responsibilities to have a relationship to our places too to listen to them and to find our gifts and what we are most grateful for and act from their lead from there and in gathering last you make this really beautiful point that you do not have to be big to be successful and you do not have to be flamboyant or or Enormous to make a powerful impact and in gathering moss you have said to me before you really came to find one of your powerful gifts in writing and in the use of metaphor. Well you know you talk about this revelation to you and this gift that you worked to bring to the world writing gathering mass for me was a watershed moment in that most of the writing I had done as an adult was it was technical peer reviewed scientific literature. And there's a certain kind of poetry in doing that and I love doing botanical research I really do. But I also felt deeply dissatisfied that my lifelong relationship with plants would be boiled down to some tables and figures and statistics about what monsters do and don't do and I felt as if in return for the gifts that Moss's had given me throughout my that I was doing a disservice to them by reducing them I was going to say by allowing them to be reduced No no I was doing it as part of my professional discourse and so I wanted to tell their stories I wanted to and to to share what I had learned from us as not what I had learned about Moss' into it and to really. Illuminates their wisdom and and so it 1st it was really difficult to do because the little scientific editor that was sitting on my shoulder kept saying you can't say that and the part of the process of reclaiming my own voice to say yes I not only can say that I need to say that that that this would be a much more powerful message than my statistics and that must reproduction and so it was a challenge but I also found it to be an exercise in love my love. For the mosses and for the experiences that I had with them just became so. Alive in presence of me as a force in the world not just in emotion but of force in the world that I began thinking if I could get people to fall in love with Moss' these little tiny beings that everybody walks by and they don't even know what they are if I could get someone to fall in love with mosses then madge and the possibilities of people could fall with the whole world and that really was my go on and. Be there when a gathering monster was received no one was more surprised than I. To know that that experiment and could keep mine says the answer is yes we already do we just needed a frame for it we needed language for it we needed stories to to to magnify it. And so that's when I came to understand that the power of storytelling and the necessity of storytelling if we were to reweave our relationship with the world as it as a practicing scientists I too was so caught up in the well if we only had more interim ation about the living world then surely people would behave differently. Well that didn't turn out to be true did it you know we had lots of information about the way the world is but what we need is a change of heart and I think that stories are particularly brilliant in transforming the reader and so that is the path that I've chosen for for this my life. Is to try to tell those stories. You know I keep coming back to the garden and the gardener because that is my level of deepest connection in the world and when you talk about this great hunger in our inner world. I see the garden in gardening at its best at its least harmful at its most integrated and whole as a just a wonderful access point for so many people to connect to that hunger and longing for belonging that you reference to really are. And as a way to create this connection from which then decision making and values get refrained for us and I wonder if as a traditional ecologist as a scientist as a storyteller as. A plant person are there things that you would say to gardeners for how to keep making a difference as citrus and gardeners in this world what would those be Robin what an important charge and I think. That one of the things I would want to say about that has to do with sharing. From the garden just as the plants have shared with us that it is our responsibility to share with the plants are giving us and that might be physical it might be even I mean it more than more than the beans right. But it but sharing the connection to the living world Clare sharing the satisfaction of having your hands in in the earth. But the other thing that I want to say Jennifer particularly related to your notion of of the gardens that we tend perhaps in our backyards and the bigger garden is that I think our responsibilities as gardeners the things that have we have learned from our gardens and from the act of gardening is that individual action really makes a difference right you know we are the ones who are planting the seeds saving those seeds creating. Pollinator habitat for example on a small scale but I think the other thing that gardeners can do in particular is to expand the scale of what we consider to be our garden because it is deeply satisfying let's say to 2 plants a native pollinator garden in your backyard does it do good you bet it does but at the same time that individual where tending that small garden if we have federal policy that enable this braying of be killing pesticides over public land let's say wow we're tending our little square feet of native garden we need to think bigger we need to not only embrace our individual action but to claim our power in the collect. To really be a voice for that bigger garden the the phrase to like to use is where we gardeners we need to raise a garden but we also need to raise a ruckus. We really need to be advocates and spokespeople for those beings who we love in the world. And that in a time of the age of the 6th extinction in a time of impending climate chaos we can't just had our little our little garden with ten's a big garden too and this comes from a change in heart it comes from a change internally in the ways that we've been talking about but it also demands systemic change and I think that if we act out of the love that we have. For the world at a collective level. We will be really fulfilling our responsibilities as citizens and their big garden thank you so much for being a guest today has been an honor to speak with you thank you this is the wonder thank you for all you do. Dr Robin wall Kuma is a mother botanist plant ecologist writer and Suny distinguished teaching professor at the Sunni College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse New York and the founding director of the Center for native peoples and the environment whose mission it is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both Indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability rather amusing gaged in programs which introduce the benefits of a traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge Robbins work and heart in her books gathering moss and breeding sweet grass as an. All that she does as a mother professor and citizen are eloquent really storying re framing of a compassionate respectful responsible and reciprocal relationship to our greater than human world and its many creatures and beings cultivating places a listener supported co-production of nor State Public Radio for more information and many photos from Robin while cameras work and books see this week's show notes under the podcast tab at cultivating place dot com The cultivating place team now includes producer and engineer Matt fiddler and executive producer Sara Bo Hannan original theme music is by Ma accompanied by Joe craven and Sam Bevan cultivating place is distributed nationally by p r x Public Radio Exchange until next week enjoy the cultivation of your place I'm Jennifer jewel. Staite Public Radio. And k f p r reading with the following translators. To the 598. 208 b.j. Weaverville 222. Shasta. 0 Bernie 252 Hail Westwood 209 Chester k. 265 a Greenville and. A q. . As well as k s you are.