Robin Wall Kimmerer: "We the People": Expanding the Circle of Citizenship

Current debates on the future of public lands call for a focus on who is included in the ‘public.’ Who is inside the circle and who is not? Whose voices are heard, and whose are silenced? Indigenous people have largely been excluded from decision-making involving public lands—as has their sophisticated environmental philosophy and practice, derived from traditional ecological knowledge. How might the indigenous concepts of the personhood of non-human beings expand our notion of the public good? This talk explores facets of how respectful engagement with indigenous knowledge might re-draw the boundaries of “We, the People” as we consider our relationship to ancestral ‘public’ lands. This was the 2017-18 Clark Lecture.