2016 Hubbard Lecture: First Peoples of the Plains

University of Nebraska State Museum Author

10/28/2016 Added

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The University of Nebraska State Museum welcomed Dr. Robin Kimmerer for the Claire M. Hubbard First Peoples of the Plains Lecture on Oct. 25, 2016 at the Great Plains Art Museum. Dr. Robin Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, is the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her talk examined traditional indigenous approaches to the environment and the valuable lessons it teaches.

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[00:00:10.189]Welcome, I'm so pleased to have you here
[00:00:14.260]for the fourth annual Hubbard Lecture,
[00:00:16.627]First Peoples of the Plains.
[00:00:18.617]I am Susan Weller Director at
[00:00:20.909]the University of Nebraska State Museum.
[00:00:23.707]And it's just so wonderful to welcome
[00:00:25.314]all of you here tonight.
[00:00:27.707]We are so very grateful to Dr. Anne Hubbard
[00:00:30.221]and to the Claire M. Hubbard Foundation
[00:00:32.636]for the generous endowment given to the State Museum
[00:00:36.122]that supports this lecture series.
[00:00:39.488]And the purpose of this lecture is to help advance
[00:00:42.730]the understanding and appreciation of the cultural
[00:00:45.714]heritage of the first peoples of the plains.
[00:00:49.248]I would now like to ask Anne to step forward
[00:00:52.522]and receive a small token of our appreciation and thanks,
[00:00:56.496]Anne.
[00:01:00.106]You're here good.
[00:01:03.078]I have to have an assistant.
[00:01:08.007]And there we go.
[00:01:09.996](audience applause)
[00:01:15.508]Would you like to say a few words?
[00:01:18.032]Anne, if you'd like to say a few words.
[00:01:23.204]Oops, somewhere, well anyway I know where it was,
[00:01:26.599]but anyway I developed a deep interest
[00:01:30.099]and curiosity of indigenous peoples
[00:01:34.085]really when I was in college here
[00:01:35.441]at the University of Nebraska.
[00:01:37.968]When I moved back here it was about the time
[00:01:39.825]they were getting ready to remodel the
[00:01:41.816]first peoples of the plains exhibit,
[00:01:43.640]so I wanted to be involved in that because
[00:01:46.550]it had meant so much to me in the way
[00:01:48.961]in what has been interesting to me.
[00:01:52.182]I wanted to have this lectureship to go along with it
[00:01:54.343]so that people knew that Native Americans
[00:01:56.393]were alive and doing really interesting things
[00:02:00.166]and lots of different things.
[00:02:02.111]So, as a philanthropist, I think the best thing
[00:02:06.441]I get out of it is I've gotten to meet
[00:02:08.934]incredible people in the Native American community.
[00:02:11.030]Like I said doing many things, and the people
[00:02:13.744]that have been the lecturers, some of them
[00:02:16.080]have become friends so it's that circle of life
[00:02:20.938]that what you give, you get back way more.
[00:02:23.978]I had a chance to be with Robin here today,
[00:02:26.406]and as in my part time I'm an environmentalist
[00:02:29.999]in my spare time.
[00:02:31.536]So what she's going to speak to,
[00:02:32.801]what I heard her speak about today
[00:02:34.125]really spoke to my heart, so I look forward
[00:02:36.085]to hearing what she's saying today.
[00:02:37.943](audience applause)
[00:02:47.710]Oh, and thank you, Anne.
[00:02:50.027]You know this lecture series would not be
[00:02:51.818]successful without our community partners,
[00:02:54.189]and I wish to thank Judy Gaiashkibos the Executive Director
[00:02:57.877]of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs
[00:03:00.538]and Charlie Foster the Director of the Office
[00:03:02.509]of Academic Success and Intercultural Services
[00:03:05.571]for co-sponsoring some associated events
[00:03:08.474]with Robin Kimmerer's visit to us.
[00:03:11.440]I also wish to give a special thanks to our hosts tonight
[00:03:14.992]the Center for the Great Plains and Great Plains Art Museum
[00:03:18.729]we sincerely thank them for offering this beautiful venue
[00:03:22.575]for our lecture and reception.
[00:03:24.479]Thank you, Rick, for having us come to your house.
[00:03:27.275](audience applause)
[00:03:32.318]You know each year the Hubbard Committee,
[00:03:34.772]Lecture Committee, consists of many people
[00:03:37.279]from across Lincoln to select the annual speaker,
[00:03:41.056]and I ask the committee members now rise
[00:03:44.151]and be recognized, so please, committee members,
[00:03:48.143]Shirley, Judy, others, thank you.
[00:03:50.903](audience applause)
[00:03:56.447]And our State Museum benefits from the wisdom and support
[00:03:59.810]of its friends board, I'd like to ask our museum board
[00:04:03.374]chair Art Zygielbaum to rise, our president,
[00:04:06.472]and remain standing while other members
[00:04:08.958]of the museum board now join him, please.
[00:04:12.288]Friends of the museum board thank you so much
[00:04:15.126]for all you do for us.
[00:04:16.309](audience applause)
[00:04:21.182]It's now my pleasure to ask Rick Edwards
[00:04:23.512]to step forward to the podium and make a few remarks, Rick.
[00:04:34.819]Thank you, Susan, and welcome to all of you.
[00:04:37.506]We're delighted to have you here in the
[00:04:38.991]Center for Great Plains Studies.
[00:04:41.138]I want to start by thanking Susan
[00:04:43.802]and the State Museum, the friends,
[00:04:46.937]and the other folks who have been involved
[00:04:48.929]in helping us establish this partnership.
[00:04:53.253]This is a great combination.
[00:04:56.726]Our interest here in the center meshed nicely
[00:05:00.701]with what the State Museum's doing and especially
[00:05:03.034]with this lecture, and of course thank you
[00:05:05.940]to Anne Hubbard and the Hubbard Foundation,
[00:05:09.731]and to our other partners Judy Gaiashkibos
[00:05:12.282]and others who have worked on this.
[00:05:17.098]I might just say a couple of words about the center.
[00:05:20.550]First of all we're glad that you moved over here
[00:05:23.572]after doing your rehearsals in the Sheldon.
[00:05:27.306]Moved to the main stage here at the
[00:05:28.848]Center for Great Plains Studies.
[00:05:31.848]The center if you don't know about the center,
[00:05:34.790]is in this building but we have fellows
[00:05:38.674]on all four of the Nebraska campuses and have
[00:05:42.281]programs and activities and
[00:05:45.984]relate to all four of the campuses.
[00:05:48.257]Our mission is to promote understanding of
[00:05:52.001]and appreciation for the people, cultures,
[00:05:54.240]and natural environment of the Great Plains.
[00:05:58.667]Two of the priorities that we currently stress
[00:06:01.437]right now in our own work have to do with
[00:06:04.916]the past, present, and future
[00:06:06.707]of Native Americans in the Great Plains.
[00:06:09.203]And preserving the biodiversity of the Great Plains.
[00:06:14.032]So you could see that the first time
[00:06:15.640]you come to the Center with this speaker
[00:06:18.664]is a wonderful match for us.
[00:06:21.765]I want to thank the staffs of the museum
[00:06:24.765]and of the center for working together
[00:06:26.661]to bring this event to its realization.
[00:06:32.586]The first time you partner with somebody
[00:06:34.658]and they have their way of doing things
[00:06:36.920]and we have our ways, you never quite know
[00:06:38.969]how it's gonna go, but this in fact has been
[00:06:41.093]a wonderful partnership and we really appreciate
[00:06:44.682]working with you.
[00:06:47.114]I hope you've had a chance to look around at the art
[00:06:49.969]in this room, and in the lower level.
[00:06:52.845]On this level we have as the slides said,
[00:06:56.813]our third contemporary indigeneity exhibition.
[00:07:02.592]And we do this on a biennial basis,
[00:07:06.233]and we feel like this is our best exhibition yet,
[00:07:10.648]so I hope you have a chance to enjoy the art.
[00:07:13.913]Again, welcome to the Center for Great Plains Studies
[00:07:16.482]we're delighted to have you here.
[00:07:18.034]Thanks, Susan.
[00:07:19.118](audience applause)
[00:07:26.216]I'm now pleased to introduce our
[00:07:28.101]featured speaker Dr. Robin Kimmerer.
[00:07:30.869]She is a Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology
[00:07:34.305]at the State University of New York
[00:07:35.949]College of Environmental Science and Forestry,
[00:07:40.064]the Director of the Center for Native Peoples
[00:07:42.653]and the Environment at SUNY,
[00:07:44.777]and her part of her work is to provide
[00:07:47.337]greater access for Native Peoples
[00:07:49.707]to study environmental science.
[00:07:52.145]Robin is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation
[00:07:56.384]and she combines her heritage with her
[00:07:59.089]scientific and environmental passions.
[00:08:02.659]She will be talking tonight about
[00:08:03.492]traditional ecological knowledge, TEK,
[00:08:07.979]and I don't want to steal her thunder, but I do want to say
[00:08:11.569]that TEK is receiving more and more recognition
[00:08:15.476]across the greater scientific community.
[00:08:18.613]Robin is a pioneer in the best sense.
[00:08:21.979]She crosses disciplines and she moves gracefully
[00:08:25.455]from erudite articles on mosses to inspiring
[00:08:31.376]books like Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural
[00:08:34.675]History of Mosses, which won the John Burroughs Medal.
[00:08:38.032]And I know she has just recently published
[00:08:41.592]Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,
[00:08:44.048]Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.
[00:08:48.793]She's received many awards and recognition
[00:08:51.111]for impactful teachings and writings.
[00:08:54.249]As a fellow biologist I feel truly honored
[00:08:57.181]to have her here tonight and I'm so
[00:08:59.262]looking forward to learning more about
[00:09:01.452]how we can bring our own personal, cultural traditions,
[00:09:05.524]our humanity into our work as scientists.
[00:09:09.940]So Robin, thank you so much the podium is yours.
[00:09:13.549]And I want to remind everyone cellphones silenced please.
[00:09:18.219](audience applause)
[00:09:22.653]Thank you so much.
[00:09:24.608]Thank you.
[00:09:30.514]Gettin' organized here.
[00:09:32.879]Meegwetch, thank you so much for that really warm welcome.
[00:09:37.867]Thank you Dr. Hubbard for your support of this
[00:09:40.745]important, important series of making visible
[00:09:44.728]and honoring these ways and scholars
[00:09:47.560]who are often overlooked, so thank you very much for that.
[00:09:51.705]And thank you all for being here I'm really honored,
[00:09:55.627]it's been a wonderful visit, a very warm welcome.
[00:09:59.628]Getting to visit with students, getting to see the prairie,
[00:10:02.646]getting to see a bit of your beautiful city, so thank you.
[00:10:07.648]And I want more, oh I best I better stay right here, huh?
[00:10:11.790]Can't move too much, let me do that.
[00:10:14.599]Put everything away here, there we go.
[00:10:16.974]I want especially as we always do,
[00:10:20.511]to begin with gratitude.
[00:10:24.239]Gratitude that when we all woke this morning,
[00:10:27.740]and put our feet upon Mother Earth,
[00:10:31.343]there was sweet morning air to breathe,
[00:10:34.140]there was food to eat, there was water,
[00:10:37.424]there was companionship of birds, and clouds, and wind.
[00:10:43.047]How blessed we are.
[00:10:45.406]Gratitude for our companionship of one another
[00:10:49.377]and for attention that you have chosen
[00:10:51.412]to spend your time together this evening
[00:10:53.818]thinking about these very important issues.
[00:10:57.571]And gratitude for the first people of this place,
[00:11:01.076]I'm honored to be here in the country
[00:11:02.878]of the Omaha, or the Ponka, the Santee, and the Winnebago.
[00:11:08.435]So in our way meegwetch, meegwetch,
[00:11:10.900]for the care that you have given to this land,
[00:11:13.284]and it shows.
[00:11:16.267]Let me also bring you greetings in my language,
[00:11:18.941]I'm just a beginner in my language.
[00:11:21.141]But our teachers tell us because it is
[00:11:22.942]an endangered species that we should speak it
[00:11:25.643]whenever we have the chance to breathe life
[00:11:27.639]into that language.
[00:11:30.037]Our greeting in Potawatomi is bozho, bozho.
[00:11:35.929](speaks foreign language)
[00:11:50.359]In our language I told you that I'm a Potawatomi woman
[00:11:54.555]a member of the Anishinabe as well.
[00:11:57.428]A member of the Bear Clan,
[00:11:58.919]and then adopted into the Eagles as well.
[00:12:02.257]I'm very grateful to be here and I come to you
[00:12:05.579]from my home which is in the ancestral territory
[00:12:09.496]of Onondaga Nation up in Haudenosaunee Territory,
[00:12:13.652]and I'm very grateful for the teachings
[00:12:15.041]and friendship of my friends there.
[00:12:18.456]The language that you just heard a little snippet of
[00:12:21.488]was the language of the Great Lakes, Anishinaabemowin.
[00:12:25.229]And what you see here in red is the historic territory
[00:12:28.976]of our Potawatomi people.
[00:12:31.811]We are part of the great confederacy
[00:12:33.886]of the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi.
[00:12:37.906]And this beautiful language just rippled
[00:12:40.330]along the shores of Lake Michigan.
[00:12:43.139]Including in the name of that signal city,
[00:12:45.542]of Southern Lake Michigan, shikaakwa,
[00:12:48.245]maybe you've heard of it (laughs).
[00:12:50.813]It means the big field of wild onions
[00:12:53.490](audience laughs).
[00:12:55.855]Now you might think that having invited
[00:12:58.358]a plant ecologist here to speak to you tonight,
[00:13:01.911]an ESF scientist, that you would hear a science talk today
[00:13:06.557]filled with P-values and data.
[00:13:09.292]And gosh I love data and P-values as much
[00:13:12.009]as the next scientist but the kind of values
[00:13:14.414]that we're gonna talk about tonight are different.
[00:13:16.826]We're talking about cultural values tonight.
[00:13:20.354]And one of the things that I treasure about
[00:13:23.071]being a scientist is the power of the tools
[00:13:25.778]that science gives us.
[00:13:27.495]But we also know that by its very nature,
[00:13:30.391]as a reductionist purely rational mode
[00:13:32.943]of knowledge generation, that we privileged
[00:13:36.067]the mind and the body, right?
[00:13:38.286]In the way that we generate knowledge and science.
[00:13:40.873]Powerful tools, but we're told by our elders
[00:13:44.899]and by our teachings of the medicine wheel.
[00:13:46.914]That every person has these four gifts.
[00:13:49.830]We have the gift of mind and body,
[00:13:52.056]but also emotion and spirit.
[00:13:54.394]In science it intrinsically leaves two of those out, right?
[00:13:59.752]We don't bring in our emotion or spirit
[00:14:01.900]to our scientific research.
[00:14:04.694]But you know when we look at the sustainability
[00:14:06.968]issues that we face today, are they primarily
[00:14:10.644]issues of not enough information, not enough data?
[00:14:15.721]Not so much, you know, they're really at the nexus
[00:14:19.510]of culture and land.
[00:14:22.143]And it is at that's where we find values, right?
[00:14:26.181]And so because science by its very nature excludes values
[00:14:30.016]it can't be the only tool that we use
[00:14:32.134]in an environmental problem solving.
[00:14:34.152]And traditional ecological knowledge is,
[00:14:36.595]as was mentioned earlier, explicitly incorporates
[00:14:39.358]all of these ways of knowing.
[00:14:41.521]And what I'd like to share with you tonight
[00:14:43.460]is some perspectives on bringing
[00:14:45.512]traditional ecological knowledge
[00:14:46.967]into the picture for environmental work.
[00:14:50.011]For our shared concerns for Mother Earth.
[00:14:53.442]And so instead of talking about data and P-Values,
[00:14:58.714]not a single graph I promise you.
[00:15:01.508]What we really need is the technology of story.
[00:15:04.983]So we're going to tonight talk about story.
[00:15:10.661]Once upon a time, this skies over our Potawatomi
[00:15:14.720]homelands would carry flocks of birds so vast,
[00:15:18.742]that the skies were darkened by their numbers.
[00:15:22.213]Flocks that as you know could take days to pass
[00:15:25.494]over the Onondaga homelands, over the Huron,
[00:15:29.106]the Lenape, and perhaps over the homelands
[00:15:31.538]of your grandparents as well.
[00:15:35.064]Did you know that the flocks were so large
[00:15:37.189]that the collective weight of these birds
[00:15:39.487]would cause tree branches to fall to the forest floor?
[00:15:44.837]Huge flocks of these wonderful birds.
[00:15:49.186]And it was 102 years ago this fall in September
[00:15:53.675]of 1914 that the last passenger pigeon
[00:15:57.885]passed from the Earth and her name was Martha.
[00:16:01.892]And she lived in the Cincinnati Zoo, alone.
[00:16:06.608]And in this time of accelerating species loss,
[00:16:09.885]you know that conservation biologists tell us
[00:16:12.131]that we are now in the age of the sixth extinction.
[00:16:16.780]And that the rate of species loss estimated today,
[00:16:20.457]is 200 species every day,
[00:16:27.117]every day.
[00:16:30.590]And so against that backdrop the passage of Martha
[00:16:36.593]weighed heavily on my shoulders.
[00:16:38.653]And one of the things that I found is that I knew
[00:16:40.806]a lot more about how she became extinct
[00:16:43.398]than I did about how they lived.
[00:16:45.343]So I began reading, doing some research,
[00:16:48.193]consulting with my ornithology colleagues.
[00:16:51.521]And so I read about their vast numbers,
[00:16:54.196]their communal nesting, all wing-to-wing in those trees,
[00:16:58.638]and how they cherished a single egg in the nest.
[00:17:03.236]How they shaped the forests by
[00:17:05.525]their foraging on acorns and beechnuts.
[00:17:09.857]Their dancing movement, and even the massive quantities
[00:17:13.228]of dung that built up underneath these roosts,
[00:17:16.978]so much dung that in fact it would ignite
[00:17:20.594]spontaneously, set the forest floor on fire,
[00:17:25.492]which is exactly what Oak trees need in order to regenerate.
[00:17:30.236]So the abundance of the birds and the food that they used
[00:17:33.280]were linked in this quite remarkable way.
[00:17:36.489]How they came to settle like a distant wind
[00:17:39.606]into a grove of trees, and they had these wonderful
[00:17:44.391]voices that when they came together they would talk
[00:17:47.030]to one another at night and those voices linger
[00:17:50.638]in the name that our people have for them.
[00:17:52.918]And the name is omemee, omemee.
[00:17:56.696]In recognition of the music of their voices.
[00:18:01.453]I was also fascinated about the lives of omemee
[00:18:04.684]and how they intersected actually,
[00:18:06.576]with the lives of our Potawatomi ancestors.
[00:18:10.077]And the theory that the great abundance of omemee,
[00:18:12.910]of the passenger pigeon, was actually a result
[00:18:17.316]of the deep population of Native Peoples.
[00:18:21.605]Because Native Peoples had tended the land
[00:18:23.941]in such a way that it actually caused
[00:18:26.471]the massive increases in the number of these birds,
[00:18:31.638]and then when our people were lost
[00:18:33.473]to displacement and disease the ecological
[00:18:36.175]stage was set for further population
[00:18:38.573]explosion of these birds.
[00:18:41.988]We also understood that in the Potawatomi way,
[00:18:44.427]the passenger pigeons were understood
[00:18:48.025]as flocks of departed souls.
[00:18:51.843]And today our bird clan regalia, in which we dance
[00:18:55.652]still is red and blue in the celebration
[00:18:59.246]of the colors of omemee.
[00:19:03.670]And that one of the great chroniclers of the
[00:19:05.618]abundance of this beautiful bird was none other
[00:19:08.334]than Simon Pokagon who was a Potawatomi leader
[00:19:11.473]and writer in the Southern Great Lakes.
[00:19:14.938]And he described them in the flowery language of
[00:19:17.513]his time, "I have stood by the grandest waterfall
[00:19:21.434]"of America," he wrote, "yet never have my astonishment,
[00:19:25.303]"wonder, and admiration been so stirred as when
[00:19:28.516]"I have witnessed these birds drop from their course
[00:19:31.156]"like meteors from heaven."
[00:19:34.279]He was pretty impressed and why not?
[00:19:37.288]And in Simon Pokagon's people in their villages
[00:19:40.867]up there on the St. Joseph River in Southern Michigan
[00:19:45.202]was a chief was a leader named Chech-aw-gin
[00:19:49.044]who had a daughter whose name was Shah-no-dah,
[00:19:52.008]the wind blowing through.
[00:19:54.351]And she was my many great's great-grandmother.
[00:19:57.975]And Simon Pokagon's people lived in communal lodges
[00:20:03.485]next to one another taking care of the oak forest,
[00:20:07.328]harvesting those acorns, just like omemee did.
[00:20:12.093]They too set their lodges in communal circles.
[00:20:15.579]They too cherished a single offspring,
[00:20:20.016]and would gather in the evening to sing together.
[00:20:25.747]The forest that the bird needed,
[00:20:27.643]and the forest that the Potawatomi used,
[00:20:30.980]as you know were wanted by other people
[00:20:33.042]for timber and for agriculture.
[00:20:36.280]And as the forests were cut and agriculture implemented
[00:20:39.748]in these areas the forest dwindled.
[00:20:42.676]There were no more beechnuts and acorns to eat,
[00:20:44.835]and so what did the birds do?
[00:20:46.347]They turned to eating the crops,
[00:20:48.330]which got them labeled as pests.
[00:20:50.904]And when they were labeled as pests
[00:20:52.512]the massive hunting began.
[00:20:53.968]You know this part of the story I'm sure,
[00:20:56.630]about how they were killed by the thousands
[00:20:58.805]in nets and shotguns and all kinds of ingenious traps
[00:21:02.248]invented just for the slaughter of these birds.
[00:21:05.210]Packed in barrels of salt put on the train
[00:21:07.553]for the East Coast where they were consumed
[00:21:09.976]both in fine restaurants and by the
[00:21:12.203]bucket load fed to pigs.
[00:21:16.817]This was in the same year that our people
[00:21:20.031]became fewer as well.
[00:21:23.549]And our Potawatomi people were canoe people.
[00:21:27.150]Until they made us walk, our lodges were built
[00:21:30.365]on cold blue lakes under the birches and the aspens,
[00:21:34.516]ringing with the voices of loons.
[00:21:37.541]And we lived among our clan animals
[00:21:39.528]who are our relatives and our teachers,
[00:21:42.731]the cranes, the wolf, and the moose.
[00:21:46.591]Our Potawatomi people were canoe people
[00:21:49.052]until they made us walk.
[00:21:51.189]Until someone wanted that forest and we were
[00:21:53.221]marched away at gun point from all that we knew
[00:21:56.264]in the era of removal and this is what we call
[00:22:00.344]the Trail of Death as we were marched
[00:22:02.782]from the Great Lakes to Kansas.
[00:22:05.606]And I imagine the people, I think of my
[00:22:09.377]great, great, many greats grandmother Sha-no-dah
[00:22:12.264]her hands trailing over the leaves of those
[00:22:14.103]beloved medicine plants as she left them behind.
[00:22:18.211]And did she look over her shoulder at the last
[00:22:21.148]tree whispering a silent farewell to maples?
[00:22:28.661]We should ask them about climate change
[00:22:32.117]because they lived it.
[00:22:34.329]What is it like to exchange a cool, lush forest,
[00:22:37.624]for a hot, dusty grassland?
[00:22:40.319]Lakes, for dry river beds, baskets of wild rice,
[00:22:44.827]for a sack of weedly flower.
[00:22:47.946]Loons, well there is no replacement for loons.
[00:22:55.617]The animal teachers were all gone,
[00:22:57.620]the clans lost their meaning.
[00:22:59.589]How do you heal your family without
[00:23:01.171]the familiar medicines at your feet?
[00:23:03.818]What do you eat?
[00:23:05.285]The songs, the stories, even people's names.
[00:23:07.939]The man whose name was light on the snow,
[00:23:11.669]lost their meaning.
[00:23:13.550]There were no reference points anymore.
[00:23:16.987]This was climate change, this is climate change.
[00:23:22.796]Climate change in a single season.
[00:23:25.084]So much loss and shouldn't we too
[00:23:27.827]be looking over our shoulders and saying, "Goodbye."
[00:23:32.990]Because as we know climate change is one of the major
[00:23:36.470]drivers of that species loss of
[00:23:38.980]200 species every single day.
[00:23:43.575]And when I found that photograph,
[00:23:45.219]this artistic photograph of Martha,
[00:23:48.714]the last passenger pigeon on her perch.
[00:23:52.036]I felt in that lonely gaze that you see here,
[00:23:56.046]a lament as if she's saying,
[00:23:57.900]"How could something so beautiful, so ancient,
[00:24:01.371]"so prolific simply vanish?
[00:24:04.253]"What happened to the sound of their wings?
[00:24:07.083]"Where did everybody go?
[00:24:09.337]"What happened to the world that I used to know?"
[00:24:13.568]And every time I looked at the photograph of Martha
[00:24:17.422]I felt my great-grandmother's voice tugging
[00:24:19.875]at my sleeve, born on the shores of Lake Michigan,
[00:24:24.340]and buried on the windblown Kansas prairie.
[00:24:27.948]Saying of her people and her culture,
[00:24:30.534]"How could something so beautiful, so ancient,
[00:24:34.059]"so prolific just vanish?
[00:24:37.053]"Where did everybody go?
[00:24:38.758]"What happened to the world that I used to know?"
[00:24:43.337]Because as you see the stories of our people
[00:24:45.711]and the stories of omemee converge don't they?
[00:24:48.694]Because both of them were swept away, or I should say,
[00:24:52.542]attempted to be swept away by the same wind.
[00:24:56.730]And we know what happens when two great air masses,
[00:24:59.261]two winds, meet, right?
[00:25:01.729]There's a lot of turbulence above
[00:25:04.141]and often times a lot of suffering below.
[00:25:07.702]And two winds met on this continent.
[00:25:10.020]Two winds of world views, world views that color
[00:25:12.774]our relationships with the living land
[00:25:15.615]that cares for us, which shape our answer
[00:25:17.950]to the question, what is it that land means?
[00:25:22.565]A world view in which land is understood
[00:25:25.282]as our sustainer, as our library, as our identity,
[00:25:29.516]as our home, as sacred, as our pharmacy.
[00:25:32.840]A world view in which all living beings
[00:25:34.881]are understood as persons and that humans
[00:25:37.183]are just one member of the democracy of species.
[00:25:41.516]In which everyone gets a vote,
[00:25:44.332]people and passenger pigeons.
[00:25:47.265]And this view of what land means suddenly
[00:25:50.530]encountered another view, kind of values
[00:25:53.455]climate change and the great wind
[00:25:55.492]sweeping across the continent.
[00:25:57.404]The whole notion of land as a set of relationships
[00:26:00.284]and responsibilities was replaced by the notion
[00:26:03.168]of land as a set of rights, rights to land,
[00:26:06.667]as property not rights of land.
[00:26:08.709]But rights to land as property, as capital,
[00:26:12.179]as natural resources.
[00:26:14.761]What Native People called the gifts of the land
[00:26:18.278]became called the natural resources.
[00:26:22.035]Nature as family, became nature as machine.
[00:26:25.492]And our non-human relatives that we regarded
[00:26:28.224]as our teachers became nothing more
[00:26:30.492]than objects for our consumption.
[00:26:33.266]And the whole question shifted from
[00:26:35.328]what does the Earth ask of us,
[00:26:38.887]to what more can we take from the Earth?
[00:26:42.122]And this set of questions and these values
[00:26:46.044]may seem to have, "Oh this happened in 1838."
[00:26:49.809]They're playing out in 2016 aren't they?
[00:26:53.134]They're playing out at Standing Rock,
[00:26:54.438]these are the questions that are at stake at Standing Rock.
[00:26:58.552]What does land mean, is land sacred,
[00:27:01.897]is land all of these other ways?
[00:27:03.886]Or is land property, capable of simply being exploited?
[00:27:08.906]The real questions that we are facing
[00:27:10.661]that have on the brink of climate chaos,
[00:27:13.530]and the age of the sixth extinction is what is land?
[00:27:16.694]Is it a source of belongings,
[00:27:19.139]or is it a source of belonging?
[00:27:22.287]That's the question we all face together.
[00:27:25.700]And the turbulence of this clash of world views
[00:27:28.130]spawned the wind that blew the Potawatomi to Kansas
[00:27:31.854]and propelled the extinction of the
[00:27:33.535]most abundant bird on Earth.
[00:27:37.688]And we need to remember this heartbreak.
[00:27:40.240]We need to hear and remember this sad story,
[00:27:44.153]because it is the same wind that threatens
[00:27:47.614]to blow us all away today.
[00:27:49.546]And the temperature of that wind is rising.
[00:27:55.651]And you should also know that the story
[00:27:57.383]of Martha the last passenger pigeon,
[00:27:59.989]and of my grandmother Shah-no-dah,
[00:28:02.055]are also foretold in the teachings of the
[00:28:04.577]Anishinaabe people which are known as the prophecies
[00:28:07.710]of the people of the seventh fire.
[00:28:10.091]And I don't have time tonight to talk to you
[00:28:12.279]in detail about this, it would take days
[00:28:14.654]to really talk about all of the teachings
[00:28:17.536]that are associated with this.
[00:28:19.233]But I'll just tell you a fragment of it.
[00:28:21.303]In each of the fires of which I will speak,
[00:28:23.776]referred to a historical era
[00:28:25.786]in the history of our people.
[00:28:29.665]And because in our way time moves in a circle,
[00:28:33.495]prophecy becomes history, history becomes prophecy.
[00:28:37.906]They are really inseparable from one another.
[00:28:40.730]And the story of the people of the seventh fire
[00:28:43.947]really begins way over on the Atlantic Coast
[00:28:46.200]at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence,
[00:28:47.890]where our people lived among our Wabanaki relatives.
[00:28:51.208]We're all there together long before
[00:28:53.237]the sails were seen in the East.
[00:28:55.891]And it was said that a teacher came
[00:28:58.602]among the people and said,
[00:28:59.970]"Big changes are coming to Turtle Island,
[00:29:02.087]"and in order to safeguard the sacred fire
[00:29:04.797]"we shouldn't have all our eggs in one basket as it were
[00:29:06.680]"and some of the people should move to the West."
[00:29:10.209]And so it was decided that some of the families
[00:29:13.293]would walk under the directive of go west
[00:29:16.084]until you come to where the food grows on the water,
[00:29:19.224]to the land of wild rice,
[00:29:21.286]and there you should make your homes,
[00:29:22.925]and that someday in the future the people
[00:29:25.471]would come back together again.
[00:29:28.024]And it was also foretold this whole migration path
[00:29:30.990]of where we would stop and live for a time.
[00:29:34.784]This took generations for the people
[00:29:36.418]to move all the way out to the
[00:29:38.247]land of where the wild rice grows.
[00:29:42.167]But it was told that in each one of these fires
[00:29:44.710]there would be certain things that would happen.
[00:29:46.690]And in those fires it would talk about the time
[00:29:49.071]when new camp comers came to Turtle Island,
[00:29:52.516]and we know that has come to pass.
[00:29:54.690]And we also in these stories would be told
[00:29:57.412]at the time was it would be the people
[00:29:59.524]would be separated from their homelands.
[00:30:01.308]They'll have to make long walks,
[00:30:03.838]and we know that that came to pass.
[00:30:06.420]That the language would be lost.
[00:30:08.773]That new religions would come among the people
[00:30:11.685]and try to break the sacred hoop of the people.
[00:30:16.624]It was said that there would come a time
[00:30:20.110]when you could no longer dip your cup
[00:30:21.792]into the stream and drink.
[00:30:24.630]There would come a time when the air
[00:30:26.761]was too thick to breathe.
[00:30:29.820]And that there would come a time when
[00:30:31.283]the plants and animals, our relatives,
[00:30:33.492]would start to turn their faces away from us.
[00:30:37.473]And we know that that too has come to pass.
[00:30:40.428]That that is a time in which we live.
[00:30:43.847]These are the teachings of the seventh fire.
[00:30:48.037]But it's told that in the time of the seventh fire
[00:30:51.313]all of the world's peoples, the original peoples,
[00:30:53.942]and the Sauganash the newcomers,
[00:30:57.247]would stand together at a fork in the road.
[00:31:01.647]And when we think about that fork in the road
[00:31:04.009]this decision that needs to be made
[00:31:06.020]about how it is that we will live here on the Earth.
[00:31:09.639]That in my imagination anyway,
[00:31:11.358]one of those paths is so soft and green
[00:31:14.347]and all spangled with dew, you would want to take
[00:31:16.941]your shoes off and walk barefoot there.
[00:31:19.279]We know that's the path we want.
[00:31:21.591]And the other path is black and burnt.
[00:31:24.751]And it's all made of cinders that would cut your feet.
[00:31:27.729]And we're told that we all stand there,
[00:31:30.212]and have to make a choice.
[00:31:33.152]What the prophecies of the seventh fire tell us
[00:31:36.137]is that we can't just go bounding down
[00:31:39.001]that green path, not yet.
[00:31:42.369]In fact what they say is that what we have to do,
[00:31:45.848]all of us together, is turn around and walk backward.
[00:31:50.422]Walk backward along the ancestor's path
[00:31:53.694]and pick up all of those things that have been
[00:31:55.398]dropped along the way.
[00:31:57.395]To pick up the fragments of land, and stories,
[00:32:01.826]to pick up the teachings, to pick up a world view
[00:32:05.282]of belonging to land.
[00:32:07.528]That to pick up the ceremonies,
[00:32:09.439]to pick up our plant and animal relatives.
[00:32:12.335]And after we have done that, and put them in our bundles,
[00:32:15.895]then we can go together and walk down that green path.
[00:32:20.285]And when we choose this life-affirming path
[00:32:23.240]which is imbued with mind, body, emotion and spirit
[00:32:28.128]all of those ways, then we can walk forward
[00:32:31.084]and light the eighth and final fire.
[00:32:34.789]And our elders tell us that this eighth, and final, fire
[00:32:37.642]is the one that will endure and they tell us
[00:32:41.950]that we are the seventh fire people.
[00:32:45.015]That we are the ones who stand at that crossroads
[00:32:47.361]and that it's incredibly difficult work
[00:32:50.727]of reweaving the world.
[00:32:53.025]But that that is our responsibility as seventh fire people.
[00:32:57.152]It's a hard story, but also a hopeful story.
[00:33:00.353]That that work is there to be done.
[00:33:02.245]And that if we go pick back up those things
[00:33:04.498]that the land has taught us throughout history,
[00:33:07.806]then we'll be able to light that eighth fire.
[00:33:11.721]And one of the things of course that we need
[00:33:14.025]to pick up along that pathway is
[00:33:16.328]traditional, ecological knowledge.
[00:33:18.674]And that's really what I want to spend
[00:33:20.229]the rest of my time talking about is what are
[00:33:22.293]those things that we might pick up along the way?
[00:33:25.814]Now, I'm going to assume that because there are very,
[00:33:28.083]very few places where you can study
[00:33:30.314]traditional ecological knowledge in a university setting
[00:33:33.390]that most of you are not familiar with this.
[00:33:35.835]So let's just take a quick look at what we mean
[00:33:39.275]by TEK or traditional ecological knowledge.
[00:33:42.504]And oftentimes we think about it as just this, as just,
[00:33:47.596]I don't mean as just, as the local knowledge
[00:33:49.998]of plants and animals, it's land knowledge.
[00:33:52.198]Empirically derived experience on the land
[00:33:55.620]that brings us great understanding about the land.
[00:33:58.340]But as you see it's also embedded in how we care
[00:34:00.531]for the land and the land management practices,
[00:34:03.720]which are embedded in social institutions
[00:34:06.533]of how we organize ourselves and think of ourselves
[00:34:09.615]which are embedded in the world view.
[00:34:12.024]So the world view that we talked about
[00:34:13.580]a few moments ago, is as integral to thinking
[00:34:16.048]about TEK it's the philosophical constructs
[00:34:19.375]that in which the empirical knowledge
[00:34:21.485]of the land is really embedded.
[00:34:25.125]One of the things that's important to note
[00:34:26.724]is when you say traditional ecological knowledge
[00:34:29.372]it sounds like a museum piece, like you know
[00:34:31.468]it's what we used to do.
[00:34:33.158]But it isn't, it is in fact some people say
[00:34:36.800]a lot of Native scholars say,
[00:34:38.227]We should call it naturalized knowledge.
[00:34:40.297]Because this is knowledge which is constantly evolving.
[00:34:43.028]It's adaptive knowledge.
[00:34:44.840]It's the knowledge that lets you survive relocation
[00:34:48.479]and removal and the climate change
[00:34:51.086]that was associate with that.
[00:34:52.623]It's dynamic knowledge and that this is knowledge
[00:34:55.433]that doesn't come with a chromosome.
[00:34:57.601]This is knowledge which is shared with people
[00:34:59.846]who pay attention to land.
[00:35:02.022]So this is land, this is knowledge which is held by the land
[00:35:06.636]and shared with the people.
[00:35:11.032]So I think about traditional knowledge
[00:35:13.365]in the most simple way, as it is the way
[00:35:15.853]we enact reciprocity with the land.
[00:35:18.352]As the land gives to us and sustains us
[00:35:21.255]we use traditional ecological knowledge
[00:35:23.590]to in turn sustain the land.
[00:35:27.405]And I'm very fortunate where I live in Central New York,
[00:35:31.421]to sit at the confluence of two great
[00:35:33.360]intellectual traditions of traditional ecological knowledge
[00:35:36.710]represented by the Haudenosaunee on whose homelands I live
[00:35:41.088]and the SEK of the university where I work.
[00:35:46.858]SEK was an important term I think to bring up there
[00:35:49.631]because we often hear, well we have TEK,
[00:35:51.884]and we have science.
[00:35:53.446]Like science is the valid kind of knowledge and we have TEK.
[00:35:56.599]So I like to call science SEK it's
[00:35:58.631]scientific ecological knowledge.
[00:36:01.199]There are multiple ways of knowing
[00:36:03.558]and we need to understand both of them.
[00:36:06.395]But you know what you too sit at a confluence
[00:36:08.528]of knowledge systems here don't you in Nebraska?
[00:36:11.168]Between the knowledge of the first peoples here
[00:36:13.238]and the knowledge of the university.
[00:36:15.296]And certainly at my university there was
[00:36:17.377]very little conversation between these two ways of knowing.
[00:36:20.645]And the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment
[00:36:22.964]was really born out of that conversation,
[00:36:25.442]that beginning conversation of how could we use
[00:36:27.859]both these splendid tools for caring for Mother Earth
[00:36:31.862]and bring them together in an important way?
[00:36:36.417]And it's really important that we do this
[00:36:38.385]of course because let's just step back for a second.
[00:36:41.369]We're really talking about evolution here.
[00:36:43.792]I would submit to you that if we are going to arrest,
[00:36:47.883]also species loss of 200 species every single day,
[00:36:51.424]that we need cultural evolution, right?
[00:36:53.644]We need to live differently.
[00:36:54.821]We need to conceive of ourselves differently.
[00:36:57.464]And what is it that drives evolution?
[00:36:59.514]We all learn in Bio 101 what it is that drives
[00:37:02.343]biological evolution, it's genetic diversity, right?
[00:37:06.094]We all know that.
[00:37:07.449]And what is it that drives cultural evolution?
[00:37:09.981]An element of it is intellectual diversity,
[00:37:13.187]cultural diversity, and so we need all
[00:37:15.285]of these ideas on the table.
[00:37:17.504]For too long traditional ecological knowledge
[00:37:19.893]has been dismissed as folklore and marginalized
[00:37:22.894]from the academy and our work is to bring it back.
[00:37:26.419]And the model that we try to use
[00:37:28.337]at least in our institution is a model
[00:37:31.167]taught to us by the great intelligence of the plants
[00:37:34.441]and the way that Native Peoples used them.
[00:37:36.808]You're looking here at a three sisters garden, right?
[00:37:39.345]I think you're all familiar with that kind of polyculture
[00:37:41.977]in which corn, beans, and squash are all grown together.
[00:37:45.958]And they help each other,
[00:37:47.383]they don't compete with one another, do they?
[00:37:49.999]They help each other out, they're complementary.
[00:37:53.649]And does the corn become the beans when they grow together?
[00:37:58.036]Of course not, beans don't become the squash,
[00:38:00.851]they maintain their individuality, their sovereignty.
[00:38:04.770]But they work together.
[00:38:06.414]And we like to take this metaphor
[00:38:08.218]of the three sisters garden and think about
[00:38:10.325]how do we plant a knowledge garden
[00:38:12.968]that looks something like that?
[00:38:14.744]Where the traditional knowledge isn't subsumed
[00:38:17.247]by science, they keep their individuality,
[00:38:20.057]they work together and so we really are imagining
[00:38:24.193]what would it be like to have a knowledge symbiosis
[00:38:26.774]where the powerful tools of Western science
[00:38:29.008]are guided by the indigenous world view
[00:38:31.534]toward conservation and the sustainability?
[00:38:34.477]That's what we're reaching for,
[00:38:36.407]that's the great experiment that we're doing.
[00:38:39.503]And so when we talk about the realms of
[00:38:41.374]traditional ecological knowledge,
[00:38:43.872]just a little whirlwind tour about
[00:38:45.999]what we're talking about.
[00:38:47.276]We're talking about agricultural knowledge, right?
[00:38:49.950]Like the example of the, what was it,
[00:38:54.313]damn wildcats term of the indigenuity of
[00:38:57.159]the three sisters garden.
[00:38:59.952]Agricultural knowledge, certainly pharmaceutical knowledge
[00:39:03.081]of medicine plants which is very deep.
[00:39:06.882]Knowledge of wildlife and fish population dynamics,
[00:39:10.190]that in many cases rivals and in documented cases
[00:39:13.727]exceeds what wildlife biologists understand,
[00:39:17.116]and let's not forget that the first red flag
[00:39:19.559]about climate change was raised by Inuit people
[00:39:22.498]who knew so much about their Bering Sea food chains
[00:39:25.551]that they could say, "Something is amiss here.
[00:39:28.289]"Something is amiss because all these warm water fishes
[00:39:31.305]"are here that shouldn't oughta be here."
[00:39:33.794]But we didn't listen.
[00:39:36.918]Another story of what is traditional knowledge
[00:39:40.547]comes from just a tiny anecdote here of some
[00:39:43.792]work that was done in South America.
[00:39:46.624]To differentiate traditional knowledge
[00:39:48.825]from what was called folklore.
[00:39:50.724]The folklore was that the Quecha speaking peoples
[00:39:54.739]would go to a certain mountain on a certain day
[00:39:58.153]and the elders would go there and they would ask
[00:40:00.008]the stars what they should plant that year.
[00:40:03.252]And then they would listen and they'd go plant that.
[00:40:05.467]And this was widely dismissed as nonsense, right?
[00:40:09.221]Not really validated, the stars aren't gonna
[00:40:11.351]tell you what to plant.
[00:40:13.566]Well it turns out of course that what was happening
[00:40:16.230]is these were very skilled observers
[00:40:18.251]going to exactly the same place on the same
[00:40:20.676]calendar day of the year looking at the Pleiades,
[00:40:23.698]the cluster of seven stars, that vary in brightness.
[00:40:27.519]And they were looking and comparing the brightness
[00:40:29.481]of those stars and it turns out that the brightness
[00:40:33.543]of those stars varies with the density
[00:40:35.720]of ice crystals in the stratosphere.
[00:40:38.479]Which varies with the temperature of the South Pacific.
[00:40:43.969]Which varies in what we call
[00:40:45.910]the Southern Oscillation, also known as El Nino.
[00:40:53.072]They were predicting El Nino years long before
[00:40:55.464]Western science even knew that that oscillation existed,
[00:40:57.992]and were adjusting their agricultural
[00:41:00.021]strategies on an annual basis.
[00:41:02.539]That's the predictive power of
[00:41:04.764]traditional ecological knowledge,
[00:41:06.585]and the kind of sophisticated observations
[00:41:09.156]that are linked from the stars to the soil.
[00:41:14.548]Traditional knowledge is as I said not a museum piece.
[00:41:18.840]Traditional knowledge is of vital importance for us
[00:41:21.567]in conservation and a resilience in a time of change
[00:41:25.135]particularly in a time of climate change.
[00:41:27.547]I want to give you just a few examples.
[00:41:30.215]We think about as desertification,
[00:41:32.359]as one of the great, large impacts of climate change.
[00:41:38.064]So can we rely on our relatives from the Southwest
[00:41:42.387]who have devised these remarkable forms
[00:41:44.376]of dry land farming to lead us to sustainable agriculture?
[00:41:49.278]Knowledge of alternative food plants.
[00:41:51.301]We eat so few plants.
[00:41:53.049]We eat basically 10 plants folks,
[00:41:55.344]and there are a quarter of a million others
[00:41:56.871]to choose from that are eaten by Native Peoples
[00:41:58.712]all over the world as a way
[00:42:01.233]of supplementing our diets.
[00:42:04.450]This shot is to remind us of the power of
[00:42:06.551]traditional land management what you're looking at here
[00:42:09.742]are some beautiful tall grass prairies,
[00:42:11.986]of some of the eastern most distribution of them.
[00:42:15.326]This is at Walpole Island First Nation, Bkejwanong.
[00:42:18.551]Bkejwanong has the highest tall grass prairie
[00:42:22.108]biodiversity on the planet.
[00:42:24.552]Botonists, ecologists, go there all the time
[00:42:26.913]to study what a real tall grass prairie ought to look like.
[00:42:30.417]Why does it look so good?
[00:42:32.204]Because this is the home of three fires people,
[00:42:35.908]who have an uninterrupted history of annual fall burning
[00:42:39.950]of these tall grass prairies.
[00:42:41.639]The traditional management regime
[00:42:43.539]has never been interrupted
[00:42:45.028]and has been a powerful generator of biodiversity.
[00:42:48.335]As we think about land management
[00:42:50.199]and conservation strategies oughten we
[00:42:52.336]to be thinking about the traditional tending practices
[00:42:55.639]that in many cases generated and protected biodiversity?
[00:43:00.561]There are models all over the country,
[00:43:02.966]and often models that are not celebrated,
[00:43:05.396]receive much attention like the amazing forests
[00:43:08.854]of the Menominee Nation of Northern Wisconsin,
[00:43:11.885]who have been using traditional ecological knowledge
[00:43:14.591]to manage their forests for centuries.
[00:43:17.379]When you go to that forest it looks like
[00:43:19.444]an old growth forest, yet they are taking so much
[00:43:22.970]timber out of that forest that they can sustain
[00:43:25.612]their entire tribal population.
[00:43:27.688]They've cut that forest over four times
[00:43:31.302]and there's more timber on it now than when they started.
[00:43:34.619]This is traditional knowledge in action as a model
[00:43:38.779]for sustainability yet how many forestry courses
[00:43:42.009]study Menominee forestry and the teachings of Chief Oshkosh?
[00:43:46.222]Not too many.
[00:43:47.641]What about the fishing wildlife service
[00:43:49.822]working in tandem with the Nez Perce people?
[00:43:53.629]Using traditional knowledge and traditional wolf stories
[00:43:56.611]to restore the wolf to Idaho.
[00:44:00.789]What about the fact that by using treaty rights
[00:44:03.633]and traditional knowledge and traditional responsibilities
[00:44:06.993]to the salmon that the Columbia River tribes
[00:44:10.468]are really leading watershed restoration
[00:44:13.440]in the Pacific Northwest against all odds
[00:44:16.705]to care for their salmon relatives led by
[00:44:19.401]amazing scientists and leaders like Billy Frank.
[00:44:23.779]In my own territory what you're looking at there
[00:44:26.053]is Onondaga Lake the sacred lake
[00:44:28.114]of the Haudenosaunnee Confederacy.
[00:44:30.068]The place where democracy was modeled.
[00:44:32.642]The place where the great love of peace
[00:44:34.070]was delivered is also the home of 13 different
[00:44:37.701]Superfund sites the most
[00:44:39.674]contaminated lake in North America.
[00:44:43.342]And the Onondaga Nation has put forward their vision
[00:44:46.866]based on traditional knowledge of what that lake
[00:44:49.362]ought to be as a partner to the
[00:44:51.374]scientific tools of restoration.
[00:44:53.984]This is what I'm talking about of how traditional knowledge
[00:44:56.813]can be used as a guide and an
[00:44:58.896]inspiration for doing our work.
[00:45:02.933]I want to take a minute and have you look
[00:45:04.304]at this map for a second which might be familiar
[00:45:07.427]to those of you in the conservation community,
[00:45:09.669]because it's a map of biodiversity hotspots.
[00:45:12.520]You've probably seen this from World Wildlife,
[00:45:15.430]from the Nature Conservancy, IUCN,
[00:45:19.163]really famous map showing all of the places
[00:45:21.222]that are super species rich.
[00:45:24.035]And overlain onto that map of species biodiversity
[00:45:27.784]is a map of language diversity and cultural diversity.
[00:45:33.937]And they map almost one-for-one, isn't that interesting?
[00:45:38.202]Why should that be?
[00:45:39.883]We could talk all night about that,
[00:45:41.139]but just a glimpse of this,
[00:45:42.473]why is linguistic and cultural diversity
[00:45:45.262]associated with hotbeds of biodiversity?
[00:45:48.784]In large part because of the care taking
[00:45:50.589]practices of people for that land.
[00:45:53.013]The respect that they have for the plants and animals
[00:45:55.422]around them and it is held in language.
[00:45:59.133]Language as a window for how it is
[00:46:01.209]that we see and interact with the world.
[00:46:04.686]A tiny story about that, you're looking here
[00:46:07.540]at the endangered species the desert tortoise.
[00:46:10.655]A species that was so endangered that the
[00:46:13.272]fish and wildlife biologists who were designated
[00:46:16.646]to create critical habitat for it
[00:46:18.983]weren't even sure exactly what it needed to survive,
[00:46:22.421]which pieces of land should be
[00:46:23.697]designated for its protection.
[00:46:26.263]And my friend Gary Nabhan, whose writings you probably know,
[00:46:29.345]a wonderful ethnobotonist, and writer,
[00:46:31.541]and conservation biologist was working with them
[00:46:34.771]on trying to find the right
[00:46:37.310]habitat for the desert tortoise.
[00:46:39.108]And he brought along a friend of his
[00:46:41.348]who was a Tohono O'odham herbalist.
[00:46:44.334]And she didn't speak much English and she was
[00:46:46.396]pretty quiet on most of the field trips
[00:46:48.622]as they got in and out of the truck driving
[00:46:50.403]to this place and driving to that place
[00:46:52.501]assessing his habitat suitability.
[00:46:54.579]Until they came to a particular valley,
[00:46:57.434]and they were saying, "Well, yeah maybe, I don't know."
[00:47:00.808]And she pointed to this plant that was abundant
[00:47:03.804]in the bottom of that valley floor,
[00:47:05.892]and she spoke in her language and she told them
[00:47:08.810]the name of that plant and the name of the plant
[00:47:11.527]was desert tortoise eats it.
[00:47:14.337](audience laughs)
[00:47:16.959]Linguistic diversity, biodiversity,
[00:47:22.048]you know where the desert tortoise reserves are now.
[00:47:25.053](audience laughs)
[00:47:27.094]So just a quick commentary on this
[00:47:29.331]preservation and revitalization of indigenous languages
[00:47:33.139]is not something that we often think of
[00:47:34.593]as a conservation biology tool,
[00:47:36.806]but I hope you're getting a glimpse
[00:47:38.139]of how very important it is.
[00:47:40.412]And one of the important elements of this not just
[00:47:43.106]in the vocabulary but in the whole way
[00:47:44.827]languages are structured, is in my own struggle
[00:47:48.523]to learn Anishinaabemowin, the Potawatomi language,
[00:47:51.638]one of the real challenges of learning this language
[00:47:55.303]is that it's all verbs, 70% verbs.
[00:47:58.888]And that those verbs have different cases,
[00:48:01.905]not for gender, as in some of the romance languages
[00:48:05.545]but for animacy, and inanimacy.
[00:48:10.477]And you hear an airplane with a completely
[00:48:13.325]different verb than you hear a blue jay,
[00:48:16.720]because one is animate and one is inanimate.
[00:48:19.377]So we speak a grammar of animacy.
[00:48:22.657]Such that, you know if I said, of Dr. Hubbard,
[00:48:28.101]"It's sitting in the front row."
[00:48:33.389]Is that okay?
[00:48:35.209]Would that be okay, if I said that,
[00:48:37.048]"It is sitting in the front row?"
[00:48:39.991]If your grandma was standing by the stove cooking
[00:48:42.309]soup for you and you say,
[00:48:43.694]"Oh it's wearing an apron."
[00:48:46.667]No, we don't do that, we don't do that, right?
[00:48:49.517]Because it would be so disrespectful
[00:48:52.492]to say of our relative, it.
[00:48:55.395]I would rob you of your personhood, right?
[00:48:59.208]But in English how do we speak of maple trees,
[00:49:05.921]geese, rivers, it's all it isn't it?
[00:49:10.970]Isn't it (laughs)?
[00:49:12.819]Yeah, we do not speak a grammar of animacy.
[00:49:15.851]And in English the very fact that we have
[00:49:17.844]a special grammar for humans reinforces
[00:49:20.705]human exceptionalism doesn't it?
[00:49:22.427]That we are somehow more entitled to the gifts
[00:49:24.830]of the Earth than any other species.
[00:49:28.374]That we're somehow different and more special.
[00:49:32.423]As opposed to being a member of the democracy of species.
[00:49:36.404]And this very notion captured in many indigenous languages
[00:49:40.305]of the essential qualities of all living beings
[00:49:44.699]recognized as persons, is an essential difference.
[00:49:49.010]And so I've been doing a little word experiment
[00:49:53.287]as a modest proposal of transforming
[00:49:56.167]the English language and our relationship to nature
[00:49:59.877]with a couple of pronouns.
[00:50:01.166]Who thought that grammar could matter?
[00:50:03.956]But what if, have you ever felt unsettled by
[00:50:06.809]calling the natural world it?
[00:50:10.236]Yeah, as a student of the mosses.
[00:50:14.198]I've spent decades on my knees among the mosses
[00:50:16.786]it hurts me to call them it.
[00:50:18.821]They're not it, they're my teachers,
[00:50:20.636]they're my companions, but English imprisons us.
[00:50:23.675]We can only say it.
[00:50:26.441]And so I asked my language teachers and elders
[00:50:30.172]about could we think about a way to infuse
[00:50:33.725]animacy into the English language?
[00:50:36.565]And if so, what would that word be?
[00:50:38.791]Can we find a word that we can slip in
[00:50:40.703]along he, she, it, and something else
[00:50:43.361]that means a being, an animate being?
[00:50:46.121]Not a thing, but a being of the Earth.
[00:50:48.853]And there is in our language a beautiful word
[00:50:51.561]called bmaddiziaki which means an earth being.
[00:50:56.247]But I'm pretty sure that we can't slip bmaddiziaki
[00:50:59.332]into English language and so one of the things
[00:51:03.344]we've been talking about is think about
[00:51:04.976]that last word aki means the Earth.
[00:51:07.879]Can we use that last syllable, ki,
[00:51:11.261]to sit beside he, she, and it?
[00:51:14.784]So that instead of when we go and tap the maples
[00:51:17.874]the inanimate in the spring time instead of saying,
[00:51:20.343]"I'm gonna go drill a hole in it," we say,
[00:51:24.016]"I'm going to ask ki if she will share her gift with me."
[00:51:27.870]So animating our language.
[00:51:30.871]And of course we need a plural for that too.
[00:51:33.560]And in English we already have it.
[00:51:37.672]We already have a beautiful word for that.
[00:51:40.333]Imagine every time we spoke of the natural world
[00:51:43.760]we spoke with respect, with respect for the animacy,
[00:51:47.426]and the personhood of those geese flying overhead.
[00:51:50.636]Or the trees that are around us.
[00:51:53.124]Conservation biology in indigenous languages and pronouns.
[00:52:01.127]I need to, there we go, we're right on time.
[00:52:03.489]How about that?
[00:52:05.333]And so, with the advent of tools of molecular biology
[00:52:10.794]you've probably heard that there is a movement afoot
[00:52:14.432]to de-extinct species like the passenger pigeon.
[00:52:18.781]To use Martha's DNA to recreate her in the lab.
[00:52:24.008]There's a lot of interest in doing this.
[00:52:28.194]Mastadons too, right?
[00:52:30.021]You probably hear about that a lot.
[00:52:33.138]But I would ask us, didn't Martha's
[00:52:35.207]loneliness teach us anything?
[00:52:38.059]That a species is so much more than its genotype,
[00:52:40.947]that it's so much more than its genome.
[00:52:43.595]And it would really just be an exercise in loneliness.
[00:52:47.621]But if there's anything that we should be investing
[00:52:50.953]our energies of de-extinction, let it be
[00:52:54.694]to de-extinction of a world view.
[00:52:59.110]Because against all odds, unlike our sister species,
[00:53:03.909]omemee, our people are not extinct.
[00:53:08.857]Our people are not extinct despite the Trail of Death,
[00:53:12.086]despite tremendous losses.
[00:53:14.238]They carried something with them that allowed them
[00:53:16.723]to endure through great climate change,
[00:53:19.871]great upheaval, resilient in the face of all odds.
[00:53:25.640]To be resilient may we ought to be thinking about
[00:53:29.199]what that was, what are the tools of resilience
[00:53:32.673]in a rapidly changing world?
[00:53:36.033]And some of our elders say that the reason
[00:53:37.872]that traditional ecological knowledge has been
[00:53:39.964]held by our people for so long against all odds,
[00:53:43.557]it's really a miracle that the fragments exist at all,
[00:53:47.606]is because one day the whole rest
[00:53:48.852]of the world would need it, at that point when
[00:53:51.581]we stand at the fork in the road of the seventh fire.
[00:53:57.098]And if we think about walking back along
[00:53:59.544]that ancestor path to pick up what was left behind
[00:54:03.097]that we could have cultural evolution toward
[00:54:05.460]a livable planet and just human communities.
[00:54:09.421]What would it be?
[00:54:11.342]What might be some of the most valuable resources
[00:54:14.094]from traditional knowledge that are resources
[00:54:16.771]for resilience and conservation?
[00:54:21.003]The one that I want to share with you in closing
[00:54:24.013]is a group of ways of being both practical and philosophical
[00:54:31.048]both material and spiritual because in traditional
[00:54:34.376]ways of thinking we let those dance with each other
[00:54:38.272]rather than vanishing one to the corner
[00:54:40.424]the way we do in Western science.
[00:54:43.237]And this is a group of teachings
[00:54:47.124]that have been shared with me as a botanist
[00:54:49.163]by plant gatherers, berry pickers, nut gatherers,
[00:54:52.159]plant medicine harvesters, and is a synthesis
[00:54:55.593]of many of the things that I have been really blessed
[00:54:58.057]to learn from Native harvesters.
[00:55:02.497]And it goes something like this,
[00:55:06.006]if we really take animacy seriously.
[00:55:08.908]If we really take seriously that all of the
[00:55:11.221]other beings around us are persons.
[00:55:14.698]How do we consume them?
[00:55:17.756]It sets up an ethical dilemma doesn't it?
[00:55:20.035]Of how do you consume your relatives?
[00:55:22.403]But that's the way the world works,
[00:55:23.740]we're heterotrophs, right?
[00:55:25.331]None of use can photosynthesize, we have to eat.
[00:55:29.202]And when we think about the other beings as persons
[00:55:32.495]that means that the way we take from the world
[00:55:35.374]has to be honorable because it's not just stuff
[00:55:39.409]it's our relatives who are giving their lives to us,
[00:55:41.948]so that we can live, how do we do that with honor?
[00:55:45.791]And so, in plant harvesting if we're gonna go
[00:55:48.816]pick berries and we just go into the meadow
[00:55:51.895]we just start picking berries?
[00:55:53.958]Do we just start grabbing and filling our buckets
[00:55:56.220]as fast as we can?
[00:55:58.169]We do not.
[00:55:59.953]What I've always been told is that
[00:56:00.786]you never take the first one.
[00:56:03.438]You look around you, you appreciate,
[00:56:05.628]you never take the first one.
[00:56:07.559]And that self-restraint means you're not
[00:56:08.726]ever going to take the last one, right?
[00:56:13.266]And then you look around and you see how many there are.
[00:56:16.171]Different cultures different practitioners
[00:56:18.168]have different numbers that they'll say,
[00:56:19.501]"Only take if there are four.
[00:56:21.428]"Only take if there are seven."
[00:56:22.932]There are lots of different prescriptions of self-restraint.
[00:56:26.595]But before you take you ask permission.
[00:56:29.896]You greet that plant and you tell it your name,
[00:56:32.106]and you say what you're there for.
[00:56:33.768]That your daughter has a cough,
[00:56:35.388]and you need some of the root.
[00:56:37.021]And you ask that plant, "Could I have some of that root?
[00:56:40.396]"Could you share with me, in order that your gift
[00:56:43.377]"could help my daughter's cough go away?"
[00:56:46.416]You ask permission.
[00:56:49.062]Think about it this way, if that sounds crazy to you,
[00:56:52.727]if you came into a strawberry filled meadow
[00:56:55.310]and found someone talking to the plants,
[00:56:57.674]you might think she was crazy.
[00:56:59.089]But in our way it's just good manners, just good manners.
[00:57:02.855]Because would you go into your grandmother's house
[00:57:05.472]and start rifling through her cupboards to get the cookies?
[00:57:10.055]I see some guilty faces out there (laughs).
[00:57:14.154]You might do it once, right, just once.
[00:57:19.153]But isn't that what we do with
[00:57:20.914]our beloved Grandmother Earth?
[00:57:23.389]We just take what we want.
[00:57:25.621]We need to ask permission.
[00:57:27.491]We need to ask permission.
[00:57:29.215]And if you're going to ask permission,
[00:57:31.070]you have to listen for the answer.
[00:57:33.810]And it might be no, but more often than not it's yes.
[00:57:38.081]Because they have gifts to share with us.
[00:57:40.564]They're generous beings.
[00:57:43.068]You have to listen for the answer.
[00:57:44.668]And science is a great way of listening to the answer.
[00:57:47.628]Of doing species monitoring and species inventory.
[00:57:50.625]Is there enough to share, is this population thrifty
[00:57:53.489]and healthy, that's a great way to listen for the answer.
[00:57:57.395]There are also the intuitive ways to listen
[00:57:59.683]to the answer from those plants,
[00:58:01.666]of whether they're willing to share with you.
[00:58:04.510]Think about it we're also told to always
[00:58:07.642]take only that which we need, no more than that.
[00:58:10.707]Which is why when you introduce yourself
[00:58:12.305]you say what you need it for.
[00:58:13.903]I need it for this, so that sets some limits
[00:58:16.411]on what it is that you're going to take.
[00:58:20.271]And take in such a way that minimizes harm.
[00:58:23.036]The teaching that was given me is don't use
[00:58:24.725]a shovel if a digging stick will do.
[00:58:27.766]That kind of rules out bulldozers,
[00:58:31.399]minimize harm, take in such a way
[00:58:33.819]that is appropriate to your task and only that.
[00:58:39.956]To omemee, was omemee, harvested by Native People
[00:58:43.535]throughout it's range?
[00:58:45.674]Yes they were.
[00:58:47.169]Yes they were in their tremendous abundance
[00:58:49.373]these birds were hunted, and Simon Pokagon
[00:58:53.245]describes his horror at the way the birds
[00:58:56.455]were harvested by the settlers and the colonists.
[00:58:59.975]And he said, "Well the way that we harvest them
[00:59:02.478]"is only in the spring and we only take the young ones."
[00:59:05.503]They nest really early in the year and so when those
[00:59:08.496]squabs would be big enough to leave the nest
[00:59:11.501]that's what they would harvest,
[00:59:12.941]that's who they would harvest is those young ones.
[00:59:15.429]And it turns out that the passenger pigeons when,
[00:59:18.175]if they lost their nestlings early in the spring
[00:59:20.741]they would re-nest, there was time in the season
[00:59:23.273]for them to re-nest and so their population numbers
[00:59:26.168]remained stable and the people
[00:59:28.032]got to eat at the same time.
[00:59:30.629]And they were harvested honorably through these protocols.
[00:59:34.871]And in fact in the longhouses of my Haudenosaunee
[00:59:38.473]neighbors they still do the pigeon dance
[00:59:41.077]which is a dance of gratitude for the birds
[00:59:42.785]for feeding the people, the giving them the gift
[00:59:44.947]of this life even though the pigeons are gone
[00:59:47.807]they still do that dance as a reminder
[00:59:49.753]of what happens when we fail to be grateful
[00:59:52.369]and fail to pay attention.
[00:59:56.542]So back to the honorable harvest.
[00:59:58.775]The honorable harvest continues that use
[01:00:01.507]everything that you take because when a life
[01:00:05.206]is given to you it is so dishonorable to waste it.
[01:00:08.603]And of course we have really forgotten that
[01:00:11.348]the easiest way to have everything that we need
[01:00:13.193]is not to waste what we have.
[01:00:14.819]So this is an important teaching,
[01:00:18.257]and be grateful for what has been given to us.
[01:00:23.292]And gratitude might seem like really weak tea,
[01:00:26.783]given a species loss that we face,
[01:00:28.751]given climate chaos, but gratitude is
[01:00:31.432]a really powerful emotion and a powerful motivator.
[01:00:35.825]Gratitude reminds us that someone else
[01:00:38.955]has given their life for us, that we can live.
[01:00:41.996]It reminds us of our interconnection
[01:00:44.535]and when we're grateful when someone gives us
[01:00:47.114]a gift and we say, "Thank you," what do we do next?
[01:00:53.500]You say, "You're welcome," and if you've given me
[01:00:58.467]a birthday gift when your birthday comes around
[01:01:02.627]I'm gonna give you a gift, we reciprocate, right?
[01:01:05.952]Gratitude opens the door to reciprocity.
[01:01:09.466]And indeed the next teaching in the
[01:01:13.092]honorable harvest is to share what you've taken
[01:01:16.310]and to reciprocate the gift.
[01:01:18.743]That you always give a gift back.
[01:01:20.981]Sometimes, traditionally, it will be a ceremonial
[01:01:24.709]gift of putting down tobacco, which for us
[01:01:27.989]is a sacred plant, a sacred gift but sometimes
[01:01:31.784]it's a song, you give a song to that plant.
[01:01:34.591]Or sometimes it's a very practical thing
[01:01:36.823]of weeding around the plant that you just harvested from.
[01:01:39.783]Or taking those seeds and carrying them to another place
[01:01:42.479]and planting them, you reciprocate the gift
[01:01:44.817]the plant has given to you so you give back to the plant.
[01:01:49.061]And so the world keeps going through reciprocity.
[01:01:54.772]We're also told that the even older harvest guidelines
[01:01:59.863]are take only that which is given to you.
[01:02:03.426]All these other guidelines to me are really quite doable
[01:02:07.034]and they're part of my own practice.
[01:02:10.260]And probably part of yours too.
[01:02:13.665]But this notion of take only that which is given
[01:02:16.211]is for me a bit of a harder philosophical construct.
[01:02:19.010]How do we know what's given to us?
[01:02:22.105]Berries are easy, they are given to us aren't they?
[01:02:25.122]I mean the plant is dangling these little packages
[01:02:27.598]of sweetness right before us, they want us to take them.
[01:02:31.336]In fact did you know in our language,
[01:02:33.311]the word for gift, min, is the same as the word for berry?
[01:02:38.152]The berries are gifts to the people,
[01:02:40.257]and so we take those gifts and do we reciprocate?
[01:02:43.700]Sure we do, by spreading their seeds right?
[01:02:46.329]That's why they want us to take those delicious berries
[01:02:48.790]so we can propagate them and it turns out for
[01:02:51.056]a lot of berry plants the act of picking
[01:02:54.705]is a kind of pruning that shifts
[01:02:56.582]the apical dominance, and the hormone regimes in the plants
[01:02:59.157]so that they make more berries the next year.
[01:03:01.002]So this is good, this is mutualism.
[01:03:03.262]So those kinds of take only that which is given,
[01:03:05.488]that makes sense to me.
[01:03:07.147]But some of it I'm still puzzling over.
[01:03:11.066]But I feel really darn sure that coal from
[01:03:14.008]mountaintop removal is not given to us.
[01:03:17.019]I don't think that tar sands oil is given to us,
[01:03:21.087]given the damage that we must inflict
[01:03:23.379]in order to, I won't say receive that gift,
[01:03:27.411]in order to take that from the Earth.
[01:03:31.002]So what I'd like to think about is that
[01:03:35.130]renewables, the sun shines every day,
[01:03:37.827]is that given to us?
[01:03:39.591]The waves roll every day, the wind blows every day,
[01:03:42.184]that's given to us, not without its cost, but given to us.
[01:03:47.227]And so this honorable harvest that you might look at
[01:03:49.675]and say that's a kind of a quite protocol
[01:03:52.059]for picking berries it's a lot more than that isn't it?
[01:03:55.681]It is a very sophisticated mechanism for thinking
[01:03:59.609]about how it is that we as a
[01:04:01.642]heterotrophic species take from the Earth.
[01:04:04.673]What if we used the honorable harvest
[01:04:06.783]as our guidelines for sustainable energy policy?
[01:04:10.777]What if we used the honorable harvest
[01:04:12.983]before we plow up a virgin prairie for a parking lot?
[01:04:17.531]What do you suppose would happen if we had
[01:04:18.729]to ask permission of the meadow larks first?
[01:04:22.732]It's a restraint isn't it?
[01:04:24.385]What we're looking at here is an ancient
[01:04:26.852]and urgent protocol for conservation.
[01:04:32.579]And to finish up I worked for a time
[01:04:36.244]and continue to work in the field of restoration ecology,
[01:04:39.267]of healing ecosystems like Onondaga Lake.
[01:04:43.480]But what I came to realize is that it's not
[01:04:46.852]just the land that's broken,
[01:04:49.344]it's our relationship to land that's broken.
[01:04:52.101]And traditional ecological knowledge
[01:04:54.284]is as much about healing relationship
[01:04:57.083]as it is about healing the land itself.
[01:05:00.177]Science can be a really great tool for ecosystem restoration
[01:05:05.077]but by the simple fact that it excludes values,
[01:05:08.300]emotion and spirit it is not the tool
[01:05:11.194]for healing relationship to place.
[01:05:13.368]And this is one of the great strengths of
[01:05:15.363]traditional ecological knowledge,
[01:05:17.230]and using all of those ways of knowing
[01:05:19.354]to heal our relationship to place.
[01:05:22.404]So that we can once again engage in the honorable harvest
[01:05:25.643]so that we as humans can once again
[01:05:27.849]view ourselves as givers to the Earth.
[01:05:30.721]Not just as consumers to the Earth,
[01:05:32.975]but as being part of the covenant of reciprocity.
[01:05:37.972]And I think that had we adopted the wisdom
[01:05:41.933]of the honorable harvest, instead of marching
[01:05:45.772]in a way to wither in the dry lands of Kansas
[01:05:50.961]we might this very spring have looked up
[01:05:53.548]to see flocks of omemee passing by us
[01:05:57.350]like a living wind.
[01:06:00.560](Speaks foreign language)
[01:06:03.031]Thank you.
[01:06:04.549](audience applause)
[01:06:09.831]Thank you.
[01:06:14.893]Thank you so much, thank you.
[01:06:19.942]Thank you.
[01:06:21.865]And do we have time for a few questions is that the plan?
[01:06:25.593]Yeah, I'd be happy to take a few questions,
[01:06:28.131]or thoughts, or comments, or songs (laughs).
[01:06:36.121]Yes.
[01:06:37.367]We'll ask that you just wait
[01:06:38.672]until Madeline comes to you with the microphone
[01:06:41.490]'cause we're filming.
[01:06:45.289]Okay do I have to stand up too?
[01:06:47.644]If I do you do (laughs).
[01:06:50.039]You talked me into it, okay.
[01:06:52.248]My name is Sloan Cornelius I'm Oglala Lakota
[01:06:54.980]my people are from Pine Ridge Reservation.
[01:06:56.514]I grew up around here south of here by Beatrice.
[01:07:00.252]I stood up really fast hold on let me catch my breath, okay.
[01:07:05.437]I am a youth assistant, I'm also an activist
[01:07:08.970]and so I work a lot with kids.
[01:07:12.399]My question is with our traditional knowledge
[01:07:17.192]what I see happening as it become commodified
[01:07:21.495]by non-native people, and so then,
[01:07:24.589]our traditional knowledge non-native people
[01:07:26.928]have more access to our traditional knowledge
[01:07:28.874]than say we do.
[01:07:31.320]And so how can we as Native People equalize
[01:07:35.506]the playing field so that like I'm here,
[01:07:39.083]I can take this back to my kids where I work,
[01:07:42.311]but I don't see anybody that I know here.
[01:07:46.568]So how can I equalize the playing field
[01:07:50.496]and make sure that our knowledge
[01:07:53.620]belongs to us first and that we also
[01:07:55.846]have access to it and we don't become
[01:07:57.658]alienated from it in the process?
[01:08:00.030]It's a powerful question thank you for asking.
[01:08:01.905]Yeah, good luck.
[01:08:03.413]Well really, yeah.
[01:08:06.368]And I think that, one of the things
[01:08:10.266]that has been very important and somebody
[01:08:12.756]said at the outset traditional knowledge is receiving
[01:08:15.217]more and more attention for its power
[01:08:16.770]and all of these realms.
[01:08:18.678]But what becomes really important is that
[01:08:21.155]the sovereignty of that knowledge that is
[01:08:23.713]embedded in communities that, that knowledge
[01:08:25.899]can't really, shouldn't really be separated
[01:08:28.647]from communities, right?
[01:08:30.766]And that Native Peoples need to have the control
[01:08:34.948]over that knowledge because it's,
[01:08:37.854]we know that biopiracy goes on all over the world.
[01:08:41.512]Cultural appropriation, and so in many cases
[01:08:45.200]it seems like your work with youths
[01:08:48.487]strengthening our own, do I want to say,
[01:08:52.486]I was gonna use the word ownership.
[01:08:55.213]But I mean that in a broader way, you know.
[01:08:58.429]That strengthening of identity and strengthening
[01:09:02.364]or the way that we use that knowledge
[01:09:05.144]is a powerful tool against commdification,
[01:09:08.643]but the power differential is extreme
[01:09:12.311]and one of the things that we work a lot with
[01:09:15.272]in our centers thinking about this question
[01:09:17.555]of what are the elements of traditional knowledge
[01:09:20.428]that should be held very closely and what
[01:09:22.882]are the elements that can be shared?
[01:09:25.494]And as you notice here we share philosophy,
[01:09:29.307]but not necessarily details.
[01:09:32.717]And one of the things that's really important
[01:09:34.537]is also that for these kinds of relationships to work,
[01:09:41.611]for settler society to use these tools
[01:09:46.241]they have to come from the heart.
[01:09:48.188]They have to come from relationship,
[01:09:50.326]authentic relationship with place.
[01:09:53.056]Not be borrowed and what I'm seeing in many places
[01:09:57.023]is this liberation of loving the land.
[01:10:02.036]Of saying, "Well I love this land.
[01:10:03.406]"This land feeds me.
[01:10:05.160]"This land is the place that I drink from.
[01:10:08.473]"And I owe reciprocity to this land."
[01:10:11.756]So the honorable harvest emerges from that,
[01:10:15.858]from settlers as well as Native People.
[01:10:19.772]Thank you for that really good question,
[01:10:21.791]and that's a hard answer, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:26.821]Other thoughts or questions, yeah.
[01:10:33.344]Hi, my name is Brittany.
[01:10:34.729]I'm a graduate student here at the university
[01:10:36.542]in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.
[01:10:38.882]And I was just wondering do you know of any
[01:10:40.762]global repositories of traditional ecological knowledge?
[01:10:44.349]I know I guess it kind of surprised me
[01:10:46.053]that the last person said that they weren't
[01:10:49.999]sure if their own people knew all
[01:10:53.215]of their traditional knowledge.
[01:10:56.219]I was thinking about peoples that don't necessarily
[01:11:01.944]have communities because they're so broken and lost
[01:11:04.794]that is there a way, or is someone collecting
[01:11:09.110]that knowledge somewhere is there like a global repository
[01:11:12.411]where everyone could look at what everyone knows?
[01:11:16.438]If you know of anything like that, that's going on?
[01:11:19.624]There are many efforts at I guess you would say
[01:11:24.109]documenting and revitalizing traditional knowledge,
[01:11:27.670]but the most successful and really I think culturally
[01:11:31.667]appropriate ones are the local scale.
[01:11:34.626]Within nations, within communities,
[01:11:36.915]where they have the role of protecting
[01:11:40.973]and safeguarding that knowledge
[01:11:42.494]and being sure that the knowledge which is in
[01:11:44.738]such a repository is the knowledge
[01:11:46.717]that they want to have there.
[01:11:48.670]I don't know of any global repositories.
[01:11:52.196]India has done a great job they have,
[01:11:56.160]what do they call it?
[01:11:57.566]I think it's the plant knowledge bioregistry in India.
[01:12:03.660]That they have been using to safeguard their knowledge
[01:12:06.492]and to document it and that really came about
[01:12:09.186]after cases of biopiracy, where companies would come in
[01:12:13.396]like the neem tree controversy that you
[01:12:15.609]probably know about where somebody came in
[01:12:17.450]to try to patent the neem tree which is part of
[01:12:21.070]their traditional, medicine traditional life ways
[01:12:24.313]from (mumbles) memorial and a Western company came in
[01:12:27.642]to try to use it and commodify it,
[01:12:31.957]and so the bioregistry came about as a way
[01:12:34.561]of protecting it to be able to say,
[01:12:36.282]"No, this is our knowledge, this is not your knowledge."
[01:12:39.719]I don't remember what the pharmaceutical company was.
[01:12:43.186]So there are some international registries
[01:12:46.216]of traditional knowledge but most of those
[01:12:48.662]with which I'm familiar are a community and nation-based.
[01:12:53.996]Does somebody have something else to say about that?
[01:12:57.424]More knowledgeable about that?
[01:13:01.813]It would definitely be a tremendous
[01:13:02.997]amount of work so it doesn't surprise me
[01:13:06.042]that there's not a whole lot.
[01:13:08.578]Yeah and it's just as antithetical to the nature
[01:13:11.425]of traditional knowledge which is so embedded
[01:13:14.234]in culture, and in place, and in locality,
[01:13:16.965]and in language, and practice to abstract it and put it
[01:13:21.052]in a repository of some kind would cross
[01:13:25.802]world views it would make the animacy
[01:13:28.428]of traditional knowledge into a thing.
[01:13:31.634]And all the risks that come along with that.
[01:13:36.287]Thank you.
[01:13:37.120]Yeah.
[01:13:39.864]Yes.
[01:13:42.487]I think it's coming to you.
[01:13:50.258]Hi, I'm Anita Cusill
[01:13:52.594]I'm a student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[01:13:56.337]I'm an anthropology major and potentially
[01:13:59.705]a soon to be environmental studies major, hopefully.
[01:14:03.079]I guess this isn't a question it's more of a comment
[01:14:06.094]or announcement on something you said,
[01:14:07.892]you mentioned the fight that's going on
[01:14:11.182]up at Standing Rock, and I just wanted
[01:14:13.506]to make it known to everyone in this room.
[01:14:16.550]Even if it feels like you can't always do something
[01:14:18.860]to help on a larger scale there is a protest,
[01:14:24.375]or not a protest, a march going on this Saturday
[01:14:29.654]at 12 p.m. in front of the capitol building
[01:14:31.901]that's being organized by people who have been up there
[01:14:35.341]and by myself and other people who have
[01:14:39.911]been up there who are in support of the movement.
[01:14:42.958]And it would be wonderful to see any of you
[01:14:45.247]in this room who are here to support sustainability
[01:14:51.810]Native Peoples of this land and it'd be wonderful
[01:14:54.166]to see you up there to actually support
[01:14:55.854]them in person, so thank you.
[01:14:58.743]If you have a comment on that then please.
[01:15:00.663]My comment is thank you.
[01:15:02.757]Yeah, I'm so glad you're doing that because
[01:15:05.147]this is a movement which is at the heart
[01:15:09.239]in Indian country and in everybody
[01:15:11.509]who's coming together at Standing Rock
[01:15:13.308]including allies from all kinds of communities
[01:15:17.214]all walks of life because water
[01:15:19.106]takes care of all of us, yeah.
[01:15:28.087]There's a couple in the back.
[01:15:35.068]Hi, I'm Phyllis Stone.
[01:15:37.012]I am Lakotan, Sitting Bull Lakotan.
[01:15:41.178]I wanted to make a small comment about the Standing Rock.
[01:15:51.974]It's not just for Indian people.
[01:15:55.467]This is for everybody.
[01:15:58.631]The Indian people have just chosen
[01:16:01.240]to put ourselves in front of all of this,
[01:16:04.514]because water is very important to us
[01:16:07.438]and I really feel that our sun dance ceremony
[01:16:12.782]is one of the reasons why it is so very important.
[01:16:17.216]We give up water for a good five days.
[01:16:22.515]We don't touch water.
[01:16:24.493]We don't drink water.
[01:16:26.611]We have nothing to do with water,
[01:16:29.865]and we know how important that is.
[01:16:32.474]I mean if you do that for several years,
[01:16:35.317]and you need to pledge for four years of doing that,
[01:16:39.251]it gets to become you realize
[01:16:43.691]water is very important.
[01:16:46.545]Very, very important, and it's not just
[01:16:49.203]important to Indian people.
[01:16:51.857]It's important to everybody.
[01:16:55.944]And I wanted to make a quick comment to simplify
[01:17:05.162]when they came in to try to take the neem tree
[01:17:08.425]and make it, patent it, it's very much
[01:17:12.152]like that person I'm sorry I don't remember
[01:17:16.647]people's names if I don't like them.
[01:17:19.322](audience laughs)
[01:17:23.618]Probably a good thing (laughs).
[01:17:26.226]Anyway, this man, this (speaks foreign language)
[01:17:30.572]comes into our country and he finds pipestone.
[01:17:36.913]The Indian people, the Lakota people,
[01:17:39.747]have always known pipestone.
[01:17:43.160]But this man found it and chose
[01:17:47.073]to name it after himself, there, there, yes.
[01:17:54.247]I just thought that was a very simple thing
[01:17:58.318]to name something after yourself.
[01:18:00.196](audience laughs)
[01:18:04.777]Thank you, thank you for those wise words.
[01:18:08.245]And in fact one of the greatest examples
[01:18:10.595]of that kind of linguistic imperialism
[01:18:14.496]of renaming things is I think the notion of it.
[01:18:17.875]To say of our relatives that we're not
[01:18:20.516]gonna call them our relatives anymore,
[01:18:22.930]that we have to call them it.
[01:18:24.723]So there's so many examples of that
[01:18:26.535]that we need to reclaim, thank you.
[01:18:34.012]Hi, my name is Kaylee, I'm a doctorate
[01:18:37.770]plant health student in agronomy and horticulture.
[01:18:42.158]I've always been fascinated with plants, fun story,
[01:18:46.562]and I can't seem to run away from them
[01:18:48.454]no matter how hard I try, but I also love people.
[01:18:51.670]And that's something that I appreciate about
[01:18:53.456]what you spoke about, and it's been a concept
[01:18:57.684]I've been trying to struggle with for a while
[01:18:59.245]back and forth as both somebody that's people oriented
[01:19:02.544]and cares greatly about relationships between people,
[01:19:04.812]but then also cares greatly about science
[01:19:07.126]and plants and how that affects our world.
[01:19:12.554]I guess my question is how do we take
[01:19:16.078]someone from multiple cultural backgrounds
[01:19:21.415]how do you get these things to cross these concepts
[01:19:26.396]to cross cultural boundaries and bring people
[01:19:29.858]together instead of divide them more
[01:19:33.672]and get people to see how, just like you're talking about,
[01:19:36.734]integrating science with thoughts
[01:19:40.371]and both emotion and spirit.
[01:19:43.670]Because I think that's very important.
[01:19:45.120]How do you not only teach that to younger generations
[01:19:47.818]but how do you do that to bring people together
[01:19:51.032]and to bring people together to better the world
[01:19:54.079]both scientifically and culturally together?
[01:19:58.204]Like what are some practical ways I guess?
[01:20:00.888]That's a big question.
[01:20:04.990]I think that a piece of the answer
[01:20:08.170]that I would like to give is that when
[01:20:10.381]I'm faced with a weighty question like that
[01:20:16.383]that seems unanswerable because of all of its dimensions.
[01:20:19.841]I try to turn to intelligence that's far greater
[01:20:23.772]than my own, and that is I go to the natural world.
[01:20:28.699]And understand that the nature, the natural intelligence
[01:20:33.589]of the landscape of the plant beings,
[01:20:36.604]of the water beings, of the animal beings,
[01:20:39.304]that they all have a lot more
[01:20:40.882]to say about that than I do.
[01:20:44.161]And I think that one of the most powerful ways
[01:20:47.011]to heal this relationship is time spent
[01:20:50.819]on the land because it's the land that's the teacher.
[01:20:53.877]And when we isolate ourselves indoors all the time
[01:20:56.930]with our digital distractions and all the other things
[01:21:00.609]that we use to separate ourselves,
[01:21:03.683]we cut ourselves off from the teachers
[01:21:05.285]the ones who can tell us how do these things cross cultures?
[01:21:09.269]How do they cross cultures because the plants
[01:21:11.040]will give you their lessons if you pay attention.
[01:21:15.155]It doesn't matter who you are,
[01:21:16.794]if you ask, if you pay attention they're
[01:21:19.424]gonna teach you too, they'll teach everybody.
[01:21:22.092]So I think time on the land is the most important thing.
[01:21:25.515]And when we know that we live in a society
[01:21:27.418]which is plagued by a nature deficit disorder
[01:21:29.990]but the medicine, the medicine is in the land
[01:21:32.964]and it's reconnecting with the land
[01:21:35.297]and that's where we'll learn how to do this.
[01:21:38.063]Because the land feeds all of us.
[01:21:40.222]When you're on the land you can't help
[01:21:42.704]but know these things, and know that you don't have
[01:21:47.026]a bigger piece that the land doesn't feed you
[01:21:51.863]better than it feeds somebody else.
[01:21:55.096]And so it heals the relationship among people as well.
[01:21:59.482]So I think we have to just spend more time on the land,
[01:22:03.340]put your hands in the earth, is a piece of it, so.
[01:22:08.224]I think with that--
[01:22:09.260]Thank you.

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2016 Hubbard Lecture: First Peoples of the Plains

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