Great Plains Anywhere: Ted Hibbeler

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

12/19/2022 Added

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In this episode of Great Plains Anywhere, we talk with Ted Hibbeler, Tribal Extension Educator at UNL and a member of the Iron Shell family from the Rosebud Sioux Nation in South Dakota. Through the Native American Coalition, Hibbeler is working with the Nebraska Tribal communities and schools in the areas of food sustainability, economic development, career development, conservation and leadership.

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[00:00:00.150]Welcome to Great Plains Anywhere,
[00:00:02.040]A Paul A. Olson, lecture from
[00:00:03.930]the Center for Great Plains Studies
[00:00:05.430]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:00:08.370]Today's guest is Ted Hibbeler,
[00:00:10.050]Tribal Extension educator at UNL,
[00:00:12.360]and a member of the Iron Shell family
[00:00:14.400]from the Rosebud Sioux Nation in South Dakota.
[00:00:17.730]Through the Native American Coalition,
[00:00:19.500]Hibbeler is working
[00:00:20.490]with Nebraska Tribal Communities and schools
[00:00:23.400]in the area of food sustainability, economic development,
[00:00:27.480]career development, conservation, and leadership.
[00:00:30.690]The University of Nebraska is a land-grant institution
[00:00:33.780]with campuses and programs on the past, present,
[00:00:36.780]and future homelands
[00:00:38.220]of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria,
[00:00:41.490]Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples,
[00:00:46.680]as well as those of the relocated
[00:00:48.600]Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.
[00:00:51.900]We are in
[00:00:52.830]the UNL
[00:00:57.270]Indigenous Food Sovereignty Program garden.
[00:01:00.480]We call it the UNL Indigenous Garden
[00:01:03.750]on East Campus.
[00:01:05.760]It's a Saturday morning.
[00:01:07.740]Early on.
[00:01:08.850]So we're looking at
[00:01:10.890]harvesting a lot of what we've planted earlier on.
[00:01:15.210]The students planted
[00:01:19.488]these plants early on
[00:01:21.150]in the spring,
[00:01:21.983]and now
[00:01:24.060]we're out here
[00:01:25.470]going shopping, basically.
[00:01:32.760]This program is
[00:01:34.680]designed for
[00:01:37.980]getting Native American high school students
[00:01:40.140]here in Lincoln on the campus
[00:01:42.000]of UNL here on the East campus.
[00:01:45.120]And it's designed to do
[00:01:48.180]a couple of things,
[00:01:49.140]and that is to, of course,
[00:01:50.670]to teach these young Native students,
[00:01:54.720]high school students, how to grow their own food.
[00:01:57.960]And then also to get them to reconnect
[00:02:01.590]to their traditional relationships that we had
[00:02:04.920]with our grandmother Earth, Unci Maka.
[00:02:08.490]And with these
[00:02:10.920]plant relatives
[00:02:11.910]that we call teachers in our language.
[00:02:16.080]They have always taken care of us,
[00:02:17.820]and so we want to make sure
[00:02:19.080]that we
[00:02:20.850]go back to
[00:02:22.980]how they're taking care of them.
[00:02:24.720]And so, we have that reciprocal relationship with them.
[00:02:33.308]So it's a really,
[00:02:36.090]those two things that we had in mind.
[00:02:38.220]And the other thing is to get these young Native
[00:02:42.119]students to come on campus, get familiar
[00:02:45.300]and comfortable with UNL,
[00:02:47.310]so maybe they want to
[00:02:49.950]come to school here after they graduate from high school.
[00:02:52.500]So you can look at this as a college bridge program
[00:02:57.210]for these young Native students
[00:02:59.700]that will be graduating from high school
[00:03:03.102]in one of the high schools
[00:03:04.288]in Lincoln Public Schools, and then coming onto campus,
[00:03:07.020]hopefully here in, on the East campus
[00:03:10.110]with CASNR, College of Agricultural Natural Resources,
[00:03:13.110]but just any program here at UNL.
[00:03:17.070]So this is our first year, our pilot program,
[00:03:20.790]and we were just awarded a grant
[00:03:22.860]to continue this program for the next two years.
[00:03:26.160]And so we'll be recruiting 20 new high school students
[00:03:31.170]for this upcoming year to go through the program.
[00:03:33.990]It's a full year program, and we bring in
[00:03:37.702]College of Agricultural Natural Resource faculty,
[00:03:42.907]on Saturday mornings to meet with the students
[00:03:44.790]and to whatever their specialty is,
[00:03:48.270]if it's entomology,
[00:03:49.500]teaching them about insects
[00:03:51.270]and how insects can help your garden,
[00:03:53.896]or if it's horticulture as far as,
[00:03:56.580]the different plants that you want to plant,
[00:03:59.550]and then seed germination, and so forth and so on.
[00:04:02.746]And we have agronomists come in,
[00:04:04.920]crop planting and so forth and so on.
[00:04:07.710]But we also have Indigenous elders come in
[00:04:10.440]on Saturday mornings
[00:04:11.550]to sit down and talk with these young people
[00:04:13.920]about what I just said earlier
[00:04:16.170]about our relationship, our traditional relationship
[00:04:18.690]with this earth,
[00:04:21.592]and with the plants
[00:04:22.650]that cover this Earth, our Grandmother Earth.
[00:04:28.860]You know we bring in both
[00:04:32.640]perspectives, both worldviews,
[00:04:34.530]as far as the Indigenous worldview,
[00:04:35.777]and then the western science
[00:04:36.610]horticultural worldview as well.
[00:04:41.760]We have herbs over here.
[00:04:45.210]We planted,
[00:04:46.350]what we did was,
[00:04:49.470]in the winter months, this last winter,
[00:04:53.190]we had a class
[00:04:55.440]where we taught
[00:04:58.410]the traditional medicine wheel design,
[00:05:02.370]and what that meant to the students.
[00:05:04.800]And then we asked them to go ahead and design this garden.
[00:05:11.820]So the next Saturday they came back
[00:05:16.421]and they had their
[00:05:18.030]garden designs.
[00:05:20.142]And so all of them had a medicine wheel design.
[00:05:23.010]And so, from there we asked them what kind
[00:05:25.980]of plants that you wanted to plant.
[00:05:28.410]And so they were the ones
[00:05:30.600]that chose the different plants here.
[00:05:33.690]Like for example, we talked to them about
[00:05:36.656]our ceremonial plants,
[00:05:37.890]such as sage here.
[00:05:41.106]And so they wanted to plant some sage.
[00:05:44.955]And with indigenous people,
[00:05:48.510]this particular plant,
[00:05:49.620]this teacher here, you can dry this plant out.
[00:05:54.330]One way to utilize it is drying it out,
[00:05:57.450]and then what we call smudging,
[00:06:02.447]you just use some of the plant
[00:06:04.860]and you burn it,
[00:06:05.693]and then you bless yourself with it,
[00:06:07.140]and you say a prayer.
[00:06:08.790]So we taught them that.
[00:06:10.784]And then the other thing is, you can use this as a tea.
[00:06:14.160]it's really good regarding
[00:06:16.710]certain illnesses that you can use for,
[00:06:18.930]and so forth and so on.
[00:06:20.925]They wanted to do some medicinal plants.
[00:06:23.310]Sweet grass, sage, and so forth and so on.
[00:06:26.430]So that's what this is.
[00:06:30.000]So the garden is designed
[00:06:31.860]and the medicine wheel designed,
[00:06:33.300]And then we had little pathways here
[00:06:36.330]that we put mulch down.
[00:06:38.160]But within each little area is a specific type
[00:06:41.010]of plant that the students wanted to plant.
[00:06:43.830]And this is the herbal section of the garden.
[00:06:48.030]And then we have a lot of tomatoes.
[00:06:51.630]That was a popular crop with the students.
[00:06:56.400]Everybody eats tomatoes,
[00:06:57.840]and so we have little cherry tomatoes here,
[00:07:01.511]and these these guys are ready to harvest.
[00:07:05.160]And so that's what we're doing today,
[00:07:07.765]is harvesting these little cherry tomatoes.
[00:07:12.149]And so they wanted to do that here.
[00:07:15.090]And then back here,
[00:07:18.243]they have peppers,
[00:07:20.250]and then we had squash here,
[00:07:22.950]pumpkins all along here that have already been harvested,
[00:07:26.610]and so forth and so on.
[00:07:28.920]If you get a picture of this entryway here.
[00:07:32.490]So the medicine wheel we're talking about,
[00:07:37.080]it's an indigenous worldview of how we look at life.
[00:07:41.370]Everything's circular, okay?
[00:07:43.710]And everything is, we have four directions.
[00:07:47.190]So when we pray, we go to those four directions, right?
[00:07:51.690]We were talking about that with the students.
[00:07:54.690]And so we wanted to make sure that
[00:07:57.750]each entryway had
[00:08:01.537]a trellis,
[00:08:02.674]or an entryway marking there.
[00:08:06.260]And we did a blessing ceremony.

Great Plains Anywhere: Ted Hibbeler

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