Botanist and author Robin Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomie Nation. In 1838, the U.S. government rounded up the tribal members from their lands in the Michigan area and forcibly moved them to a reservation in Kansas. The journey was called The Trail of Death because more than forty members of the tribe died in transit. Later, the tribe was again forcibly removed from their homes and led onto a smaller reservation in Oklahoma.
Kemmerer works today to revive the dying language of her people because it is intrinsic to the Traditional Ecological Science that she promotes. Most of the elders who speak the language live on or near the reservation. The language provides the subtlties and poetry that are the basis for the English words Kimmerer uses in he essays and her science writing. Traditional Ecological Science is the patient knowldege of the environment that her people have practiced for hundreds of years.