Culture as Medicine
The Native Nations Nursing, Helpers, and Healers Summit is for nurses and other healers to share knowledge and collaborative approaches to address the health and well-being of Indigenous communities, incorporate Indigenous wisdom, and promote planetary health which we depend on for our foods, medicines, and life itself.
The 2025 summit will also feature a book discussion and signing with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer.
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Keynote Speaker
Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer
Plant Ecologist, Educator, Writer, and MacArthur Fellow
Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. 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 (November 2024), 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.
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.
Learn more about Dr. Kimmerer on her website.
Thank You for Joining Us!
Thank you for attending our 2024 Summit: Reclaiming Traditional Knowledge and Practices to Promote Healing and Wellness in Indigenous Communities. Read a recap of the 2024 summit here.
Thank you to our partners
Great Lakes Intertribal Council
Madison College
Medical College of Wisconsin
Native American Center for Health Professions
"Our goal is to make sure every participant at this event feels knowledgeable about interprofessional collaboration to address health disparities as well as increased confidence in their ability to provide culturally sensitive care to our Indigenous relatives."
Dr. Jeneile Luebke (Bad River), Assistant Professor, UW–Madison School of Nursing
Accreditation Statement
In support of improving patient care, the University of Wisconsin–Madison ICEP is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.