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The Brewster Ladies’ Library Association has announced that Robin Wall Kimmerer, a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, will be the featured speaker for the Frances Mapes Nickerson Memorial Lecture on October 3, 2026, at the Monomoy Regional High School, Harwich, at 2:00 PM with a book signing to follow the lecture.
She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses,was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. In 2022, Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. This new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. Robin’s newest book, The Serviceberry:Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, is a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
Robin tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and in 2015 addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and 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. In 2022 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Robin’s heritage as an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation inspired us to include the Wampanoag Tribe in this event. The Brewster Ladies’ Library has partnered with the Tribe by hosting an annual food drive to support the Tribe’s Pantry. We are delighted that a delegation from the Tribe will attend this very special Nickerson presentation and we look forward to continuing to provide community support to our neighbors.
As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyteecology, traditional knowledge, and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
The annual Nickerson event is sponsored by the Brewster Ladies’ Library Association in memory and honor of Frances Mapes Nickerson, a long-time Brewster resident and library benefactor. Numerous generous donors have continued to support this lecture allowing us to share thought-provoking authors, public officials, and artists. We welcome your support!
Members who joined the Association before August 10th for the membership period July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027, will be eligible for early member registration for two (2) tickets per household starting August 15 at 10:00 AM. Registration for the general public will begin September 1 at 10:00 AM. To register at this time, click here.
If you are not a member of the Association, please join today at www.brewsterladieslibrary.org or by completing the membership form available at the library.
For questions regarding this event, please email BLLAEvents@BrewsterLadiesLibrary.org.
