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Robin Wall Kimmerer and Tara June Winch

‘When a language dies, so much more than words are lost,’ the botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer has said. ‘Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else.’

In our Broadly Speaking talk on translation and language, we bring together two First Nations writers whose work reflects on Indigenous languages and the languages of the natural world.

Kimmerer is a professor of environmental biology at the State University of New York and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She’s also the author of the remarkable bestselling essay collection, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.  

In this podcast, she speaks with acclaimed Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch, whose Miles Franklin-winning novel, The Yield, is about traditional language and the stories that words contain. Join them as they discuss how living organisms and living languages can connect us to the past and enrich our collective future.

The Broadly Speaking series is proudly supported by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and family.

We had a few technical problems while trying to record this conversation as an event, scheduled for Tuesday 27 October at 6.15pm – so we rescheduled the discussion to take place exclusively in podcast form.