A little more than a century ago, Hoosier novelist and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter was one of the most famous and influential leaders of what was blossoming into America’s modern conservation movement. Stratton-Porter reached many different audiences throughout her renaissance life as a novelist, a writer of nonfiction nature studies, magazine articles, poetry and children’s literature, as well as her work as a nature photographer, an environmental activist and a Hollywood film studio owner/producer.
Her fame and wealth also helped her gain access to influential leaders in politics and society. In 1922, Gene, along with her husband Charles, were two of the founders of the national conservation group The Izaak Walton League. She was one of the civilian leaders that helped establish and promote the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife and Fish Refuge Act in 1924. And she was one of the only female delegates to the 1908 Conference of Governors, headed by President Theodore Roosevelt, which included noted leaders like Gifford Pinchot, the Chief of the U.S. Division of Forestry, and millionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. The Conference of Governors was the first national initiative to exclusively address environmental sustainability and wildlife conservation, an effort designed to treat America’s natural resources as a shared national trust.
Gene’s vision and passion are reflected in a new generation of women who stand at the forefront of today’s national and international wildlife conservation efforts. Several of them sat for interviews for the new WTIU/PBS documentary Gene Stratton-Porter: Music of the Wild. These visionary women are continuing Gene’s important legacy. Even though they come from a variety of backgrounds and causes across the country, they all advocate for initiatives that promote greater sustainability practices and cultivate richer wildlife habitats. They also invite us to explore our physical and spiritual interconnectedness with the more-than-human world.
A few of our interviews include…
Robin Wall Kimmerer – Robin is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a botanist and a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She is the best-selling author of the books Gathering Moss, Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry, among many articles for leading magazines and scholarly publications. Robin grew up reading Gene Stratton-Porter. She also leads a national initiative, “Plant Baby Plant,” a grassroots movement to guide individuals and communities to take meaningful, regenerative action to care for the earth.
Kathryn Aalto – Kathryn is a New York Times bestselling author of Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shaped How We See the Natural World, Nature and Human Intervention, and the Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh. Her in-depth historical magazine feature about Gene Stratton-Porter, “The Legend of the Limberlost,” was featured in the March 2020 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. She is an instructor of narrative nonfiction, a garden historian and a landscape designer who works in Exeter in England.
Elizabeth Rush – A best-selling author of nonfiction nature publications, Elizabeth is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her works include The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, a book that documents her experiences with a team of research scientists who traveled to the furthest reaches of Antarctica to study glacial ice melt and global sea rise. She is also the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a work documenting the transformation of American coastlines due to rising sea levels. She is a professor of narrative nonfiction at Brown University.
Carolyn Finney – Carolyn is a storyteller, author and cultural geographer. She is a best-selling author of Black Faces, White Spaces and The N Word: Nature Revisited, which explore the complex relationship between African-American history and America’s natural history. An actress and public speaker, she served eight years on the Advisory Board for the National Park Service. Carolyn is also an instructor and artist-in-residence for environmental affairs at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Camille Dungy – Camille is a poet and the best-selling author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, Trophic Cascade, and America: A Love Story. She is also the author of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first in-depth anthology that focuses on nature writing by Black poets. Camille explores Gene Stratton-Porter’s legacy as a writer of nonfiction nature studies, as well as her poetry, and theorizes when it is most effective to make an argument for conservation through scientific data, and when it is effective instead to reach for a poem to help promote greater environmental awareness and heal one’s mind and heart through the power of nature and poetry.
Tammy Marlar – Tammy is a celebrated freelance nature photographer who is headquartered in London. She has earned such international honors as Outdoor Photographer of the Year and Bird Photographer of the Year. Tammy routinely travels to remote sites in Africa, India and throughout Europe, snapping images of everything from tiger families in Asia and elephants in Kenya to colorful butterflies in her own backyard. Tammy examines several of Gene Stratton-Porter’s photographs and explains the challenges for women working in the field, handling nearly 100 pounds of camera gear and large, 8” x 10” glass-plate negatives at the turn of the 20th century.
Jodi Arndt Labs – Jodi is the past president of the national wildlife conservation organization The Izaak Walton League. The League’s mission is to conserve, restore and promote the sustainable use and enjoyment of America’s natural resources. Among the League’s founders in 1922 were Gene Stratton-Porter and her husband Charles. The organization still exists today with more than 40,000 members in more than 200 regional chapters throughout the United States. Jodi is also one of the Midwest’s top environmental health and safety attorneys with offices in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Ellen Ketterson – Ellen is a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Indiana University and one of the nation’s leading ornithologists, specializing in the study of the North American dark-eyed junco. As the head of Ketterson Labs, she and her team study the evolution and migratory patterns of various bird species and the overall effects of global climate change to predict the health of various animal populations across the country.
Roselyn LaPier – Roselyn is an award-winning Indigenous writer, environmental historian, and traditionally trained ethnobotanist. Roselyn researches and writes about Indigenous landscape management practices, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and Native American relationships with the natural world. A member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis, Roselyn studies Indigenous landscape management practices, Bison and Grassland Ecologies and is an instructor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois.
These are just a few of the interviews showcased in the new WTIU documentary Gene Stratton-Porter: Music of the Wild. Other interviews feature regional and national historians, archivists, museum site directors, representatives from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the National Park Service, early film scholars, writers, poets, musicians and other major thought leaders who each reflect on Stratton-Porter’s life, works and legacy, and how they see their own specific roles in helping keep Gene’s vision and mission alive.
Gene Stratton-Porter: Music of the Wild, premieres on WTIU and throughout the country in November 2026. It takes help from foundations, corporate supporters and individual donors to help provide the financial support to travel throughout the country and to explore the powerful national legacy of this Hoosier icon. These interviews help us learn more about how these lessons from the past inform and guide tomorrow’s leaders in history, science and environmental affairs. Thank you for your continued support of local and national PBS initiatives produced locally at WTIU and Indiana Public Media.
