Meet Our 2025 Speakers
We are delighted to welcome four remarkable speakers who will illuminate our theme, "Strong and Supported." They will share insights on the profound ways we offer and receive support and love from the Earth. Through their words, we will explore the deep connections that bind us to our environment, understanding how these relationships empower us to stand resiliently together.
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![Robin Wall Kimmerer]()
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Session 4 Keynote Speaker
September 30 | 6:30 pm CT / 7:30 pm ET
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![Lyanda Lynn Haupt]()
Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Session 3 Speaker
September 30 | 11:30 am CT / 12:30 pm ET
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![Reverend Dr. Randy Woodley]()
Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley
Session 1 Speaker
September 29 | 11:30 am CT / 12:30 pm ET
Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley is the co-founder, with his wife, Edith, of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm & Seeds in Yamhill, Oregon, a regenerative teaching farm. He is a Cherokee descendent recognized by the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and is
Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture Emeritus at Portland Seminary. Randy has written numerous chapters, articles, and 13 books including Becoming Rooted and Journey to Eloheh which he co-authored with his wife. The Woodley's have been serving Indigenous people and others for over four decades. Learn more here.
Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley
Public Theologian, Author, Farmer, Activist, Speaker/Storyteller, and Wisdom Keeper
Books by Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley
Lyanda Lynn Haupt is an award-winning author, naturalist, ecophilosopher, and speaker whose work explores the beautiful, complicated connections between humans and the wild, natural world.. Her newest book is Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit (Little, Brown Spark 2023).
Lyanda’s writing is acclaimed for combining scientific knowledge with literary, poetic prose. Her previous books include: Mozart’s Starling The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild, Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin’s Lost Notebooks, and Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds. She is a winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Nautilus Book Award, a finalist for the Orion Book Award, and a two-time winner of the Washington State Book Award.
Lyanda has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont, and as a seabird researcher for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific. Her essays has appeared in a variety of publications, including Orion, Discover, Utne, LA Times, Times Literary Supplement, Image, Huffington Post, Wild Earth, and Conservation Biology Journal. She lives the mossy green woodlands of Bellingham, Washington.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Award-Winning Author | Naturalist & Ecophilosopher
Books by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
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. 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 lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Plant Ecologist, Educator & Writer | MacArthur Fellow
Books by Robin Wall Kimmerer
