Friends of Rogers will host its sixth annual Spring Frolic fundraising event for Rogers Environmental Education Center on March 30 from 6-9 pm. A highlight of this year’s festivities will be special recognition of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, an award-wining author, ecologist, and educator who is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor with the College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.
Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, and writer. She serves as the founding 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. She is engaged in programs which introduce the benefits of traditional ecological knowledge to the scientific community, in a way that respects and protects indigenous knowledge.
She is co-founder and past president of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge section of the Ecological Society of America. Kimmerer also serves as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Nature and Humans.
Of European and Anishinaabe ancestry, Robin is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her interests include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. Her essays appear in Adirondack Life, Orion, Whole Terrain and several anthologies. Her book “Gathering Moss,” which incorporates traditional indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing in 2005. Her latest book “Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants” was released in 2013 and was awarded the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award.
“In celebration of our sixth annual Spring Frolic, we are honoring an individual whose message and mission uniquely compliments ours,” said executive director Simon Solomon. “Dr. Kimmerer’s approach in ‘the land as teacher’ mirrors much of what Friends of Rogers seeks to convey, and we anticipate many of our guests will draw inspiration from her.”
Spring Frolic is the primary fundraising event for Friends of Rogers, attracting nearly 200 community supporters. Proceeds raised from the event fund more than 5 percent of the organization’s annual operating budget, allowing Friends of Rogers to continue providing outstanding educational opportunities that excite, inspire, and motivate people of all ages to enjoy, understand, appreciate, and protect our natural environment.
For more information, call (607) 674-4733.
A non-profit organization, Friends of Rogers has managed Rogers Environmental Education Center since state funding closed operations at the end of 2010. In the years since, Rogers Center has evolved into the region’s premier eco-tourist destination and environmental resource, serving more than 13,000 visitors each year.