Ecologist, author Robin Wall Kimmerer proposes “reclaiming the grammar of animacy” at Engel-Morgan-Jardetzky Lecture

By Libby Sykes
The Mac Weekly
March 11, 2021

Author and professor Robin Wall Kimmerer spoke up for the human rights of land itself as a living ecosystem last Thursday, vying for a shift in perception of nature in language and policies. From Syracuse, New York, Kimmerer spoke at Macalester’s Engel-Morgan-Jardetzky Distinguished Lecture on Science, Culture and Ethics over Zoom on the topic of “restoration and reciprocity.”

Macalester biology professors Devavani Chaterjea and Mary Montgomery introduced the lecture speaker. The Engel-Morgan-Jardetzky Distinguished lecture series was founded and funded in 2001 by Oleg Jardetsky, pioneer of biological applications of nuclear magnetic resonance. 

Guest speaker Kimmerer, or “light shining through sky woman” in Anishinaabeg Potawatomi, argued in her lecture to rethink the westernized ideology of land as property in favor of the Indigenous ideology of land as identity, sustainer and teacher.

Read the full article here.