As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In this work she brings these lenses of knowledge together to show how the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration with the rest of the living world. Only when we can hear the language of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

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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 ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.​​​​