The Citizen Potawatomi is the Indigenous community to which Robin Wall Kimmerer belongs. They are a federally recognized tribe belonging to the larger community of Potawatomi peoples, who are themselves part of the larger Anishnaabe people. Although the historical territory of the Anishnaabe is the Great Lakes Region, the Citizen Potawatomi are the descendants of the Mission Band of Potawatomi, a tribe forcibly removed from this region in the mid-1800s. Today the tribe’s government is located in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and between a quarter and a third of their population lives in this state. Many Citizen Potawatomi live in other areas of the United States—like Kimmerer’s family, who settled in upstate New York.

The cultural values Kimmerer was raised with are heavily influenced by her Potawatomi heritage. These values helped shape her relationship with the natural world and inform the way she chooses to approach her work—both as a scientist and as a writer. In their presentation “Preserving Potawatomi, the Heart of a Nation,” the Citizen Potawatomi note that these values include “connection to the earth” and “a high regard for mother nature and living beings.” These values can be seen in things like their clan names: their clans are all named for different animals, such as Bear, Deer, Fish, Bird, Crane, Eel, Loon and Marten.