What Does the Earth Ask of Us?

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Robin Wall Kimmerer
Distinguished Professor and
Author of Braiding Sweetgrass 

Recorded on September 30, 6pm

Co-presented by the Arts Extension Service, Creative Women Leading Climate Action and partners (see below)

We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth and yet we are tied to institutions which relentlessly ask, what more can we take? Drawing upon both scientific and Indigenous knowledges, this talk explores the covenant of reciprocity. How might we use the gifts and the responsibilities of human people in support of mutual thriving in a time of ecological crisis?

Video and audio recordings are available by registration only.


Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer and Distinguished Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a student of the plant nations. Her writings include Gathering Moss which was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing and the bestselling Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. As a writer and a scientist, her interests include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land.

Download the press release
Download the poster
More info: feinberg@history.umass.edu

Recommended Readings

Signed copies are available for Feinberg Series attendees at Amherst Books. To order, send an email to books@amherstbooks.com with your cell phone number and the book title/s. Amherst Books will contact you to arrange payment. Curbside pickup available. The handwritten signature is on a bookplate affixed to the book.

Libraries in the Woods is an informal collaborative of mostly small, Franklin County Libraries that launched community read of Braiding Sweetgrass in late February 2020. More than 300 copies are available. Contact any of these libraries to borrow Braiding Sweetgrass.

  • Arms Library (Shelburne Falls)
  • Belding Memorial Library (Ashfield)
  • Buckland Public Library
  • Carnegie Public Library (Turners Falls)
  • Cushman Library (Bernardston)
  • Dickinson Memorial Library (Northfield)
  • Erving Public Library
  • Field Memorial Library (Conway)
  • Greenfield Public Library
  • Griswold Memorial Library (Colrain)
  • Heath Free Public Library
  • Leverett Public Library
  • M.N. Spear Memorial Library (Shutesbury)
  • Montague Center Library
  • New Salem Public Library
  • Pelham Public Library
  • Robertson Memorial Library (Leyden)
  • Rowe Town Library
  • S. White Dickinson Memorial Library (Whately)
  • Shelburne Free Public Library
  • Sunderland Public Library
  • Tilton Library (South Deerfield)
  • Tyler Memorial Library (Charlemont/Hawley)
  • Warwick Free Public Library
  • Wendell Free Library


The Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible thanks to the generosity of UMass Amherst history department alumnus Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67 and associates. The Feinberg keynote series is co-sponsored by the Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies, CMASS, Libraries in the Woods, and by the Feinberg Series’s more than 3 dozen community and university partners.

Creative Women Leading Climate Action is presented by the UMass Arts Extension Service, Augusta Savage Gallery, Women of Color Leadership Network, College of Humanities and Fine Arts Advising and Career Center, Department of History Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series, Department of Theater, and the UMass Amherst Center at Springfield with support from Women for UMass Amherst, UMass Sustainability Innovation and Engagement Fund, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Arts Extension Service’s Arts Entrepreneurship Initiative.