Robin Kimmerer, professor of environmental biology at the State University of New York and the author of several award-winning books about nature, spoke at the United Nations on Monday. Kimmerer had been invited by the president of the U.N. general assembly to take part in a panel on how harmony with nature can help conserve natural resources.

Kimmerer's book, "Braiding Sweetgrass," published by Milkweed Editions of Minneapolis, won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. Her earlier book, "Gathering Moss," won the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing.

She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

"Can we turn our attention away from the covenant of unlimited growth and return to the covenant of reciprocity?" she asked.

"As we give thanks for the earth, will we live in such a way that the earth will be thankful for us? ...We humans are more than consumers, we have gifts of our own to give to the earth."