In her university classroom, Robin Wall Kimmerer begins the semester by surveying her students on their perceptions of human’s interactions with land. She routinely found that nearly all her students believed humans and nature are a bad mix. Furthermore, they could not think of any beneficial interactions between humans and the environment, or even imagine what a beneficial interaction might look like.

What has led to this rising skepticism over human’s positive relationship with land? One could easily point to rising concern over human destruction of natural ecosystems, unchecked pollution, and last summer’s Code Red warning to humanity by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as all contributors to our collective pessimism.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, an author, a botanist, a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. In her New York Times bestselling book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin outlines how we can reclaim our knowledge of ecology to collectively move toward sustainability.

Join the City Club of Cleveland in a virtual conversation, in partnership with Holden Forests & Gardens’ NEA Big Read Northeast Ohio with Kent State University. We will hear from Robin Wall Kimmerer on how we can repair not only ecological communities, but also the reciprocal relationship humankind has with land.

Want to read the book? Buy local at Mac’s Backs! City Club members are eligible for a 20 percent discount on the purchase of this book. Email info@cityclub.org for details.

The livestream will be available beginning at 12:00 p.m. Have questions? Tweet them at @TheCityClub or send a text to 330.541.5794.