Doctor Lynn Fletcher completed her BA in Biological Sciences at Mount Holyoke
College.
She went on to complete her PhD at Cornell University in the Department of
Neurobiology and Behavior.
The dissertation title was Group Living and Vibrational Communication in Larvae
of an Australian sore fly.
Very benefit.
After I stuck at Cornell and a visiting professor position in Indiana,
she came and joined us here at State and State.
She teaches entomology, behavioural ecology,
ecology and the environment as well as the non majors course Human and social
biology, the course that developed this festival.
I don't know why I'm out of breath.
Doctor Fletcher is passionate about the living world.
All the specialty letters with six legs, I think they're called insect.
And she's committed to envisioning a positive future where humans can reclaim
our position as stewards rather than dominators of the world around us.
The talk today is entitled Evolving World Views and their Impacts,
bringing an Indigenous perspective Welcome about the flesh.
Thank you very much for that introduction.
And I just want to make sure can everybody hear me and other part OK,
excellent.
Well, it's a real honor to be speaking at the
Darwin Festival.
And I want to thank everybody that's put in so much effort in creating this
festival from Virginia Kevill, who started it and Suitcase who ran it
for 19 years, amazingly.
And then everybody who stepped up since to help run the Darwin Festival.
And this year, Jason Brown and Ethel Gordon being Co
chairs and everybody else who helps to set this up.
This is a big, it's a year long project getting the
Darwin Festival going.
And so it's a real honor to be here.
And as you can see, I'll be speaking about world views and
their impacts and indigenous perspectives.
And I also have some nice turtles on this slide.
And I do love turtles, but there is a reason why I have turtles
and that is because the perspectives from which I'll be speaking with today are
predominantly North North America, Indigenous peoples and many indigenous
tribes and nations in North America refer to North America as Turtle Island.
And so hence most of the artwork that I have in here are is from indigenous
people's artwork.
And here's some artwork of Turtle Island.
All right, so, and I will also start with a land
acknowledgement.
Just saying that, you know, Salem State is occupied by part of non
Keg, which is the ancestral and traditional
homeland of the Pawtucket, which are part of the Massachusetts tribe.
And so most of us here are probably of the settler community, you know,
on this land and just acknowledging that this land was inhabited before the
settler community arrived.
I also start with an introduction of myself.
I know many people in here, but not everyone.
And I am a a lover of the natural world, so my happy place is being outside in all
seasons.
And yeah, I love insects, as has been said,
but I just love observing.
There's so much beauty out there, even when it's cold.
So we have some winter, winter pictures there too.
There's just so much to explore.
And that's really why I went into the field of biology,
for my love of the natural world.
And it's a great honor to be here at Salem State teaching what I love and also
working with the students here.
It's a real honor to work with the Salem State students.
I also feel humbled and honored to be asked to talk today.
I am clearly a white woman of settler origin,
so I am a student of Indigenous knowledge and it is a real passion of mine.
I was first introduced to this when I was an undergraduate.
So in your shoes, I had read a book that was about
Aboriginal peoples and their culture in Australia.
And honestly, I hope it's different today.
But in my day, I hadn't learned about any of these
thoughts and ways of living and, and societies in my, you know,
K through 12.
And it was really moving because I was being introduced to a worldview and
societies that that had, you know, these incredible, like,
a relationship with the world around them that was full of respect and reciprocity
and who cared.
And it was very different from the worldview that I felt that I was living
in.
And I didn't realize that there were whole societies that shared this
worldview.
So from that time it's been some of interest of mine.
So this is like, clearly I love our planet and I share
this with my students.
And because we all we, I mean, I think we do live on amazing planet.
It's the only one we know where there's life, at least life as we know it.
And there's so much of that life, like it's so diverse,
right from the insects of the six leggeds, the two leggeds like us, 4 leggeds,
8 leggeds.
But then there's, you know, finned everything living in the water,
single celled organisms, things underground trees which span
ground and air.
I mean, and then, you know, we have terrestrial and aquatic and I
just, you know, we are privileged to share this journey
of our life on a planet full of such diverse beings.
And, and, you know, wherever you go, I just, you can,
whether it's like looking at little things, like I had the,
the picture shared the bud of a red horse chestnut.
I mean, it's beautiful.
It's, it's small.
So the macroscopic and, or the microscopic and macroscopic,
you can get, you know, feelings of awe in our world And,
and it's this feelings of expansiveness.
And, and yet at the same time, we live in this world of incredible
beauty, incredible abundance.
We are also cognizant of today's ecological crisis, right?
And, and kind of there's this diminishment of
life occurring and that leads, you know, there's a lot of terms and things that we
know that are going on and it leads, you know,
we go from the state of expansion to kind of a contraction because it's like,
it's sad, right?
And it's overwhelming.
Like there's all these things happening and it's like, but,
but I love our planet and I don't want this to be happening and it's happening
and but why is it happening, right?
So we might be asking ourselves, like, how did we get here?
Like we haven't even been on the planet that long, like as a species, right?
So like, why is this happening?
And, and, and then, you know, so we're already kind of in the state of
like, Oh my God.
And then we hear like, Oh, well, we're in the Anthropocene.
And this is, you know, geologists around the world have agreed
that we are now in a new era, the Anthropocene.
And it's, you know, defined as a period in which human
influence is dominant both on the climate and the land and the water,
right in the environment.
And as you can see from the picture, it's not in a positive way, right?
So again, we can still get smaller.
And it's like, but my, my main message today is like,
this is not what it has to be, right?
Human, this is, we think of humans because we see this
like as having a negative impact and we have been having a negative impact,
but not all humans have a negative impact and not all ways of living have a
negative impact.
And so this does not have to be our legacy.
Like it's a current trajectory that if we don't change anything,
but we have choices and but we may not be aware of these choices.
And I-1 woman who is a great, I respect her tremendously.
I bring her into my classes.
Robin Well, come here.
She's well known, but she is a citizen of the Potawatomi
Nation, part of the larger Anishinabe people.
And she is also a scientist and botanist.
And so she bridges both worlds of Western science and Indigenous knowledge.
And she speaks and writes prolifically.
And one of her famous books is Braiding Sweetgrass.
But she also teaches.
And this is a quote from her, as you know, she also asks her students about like,
well, what do you what kind of impacts do
humans have on the planet?
And they all think of negative ones.
And she's like, how can we begin, you know,
to move towards ecological and cultural sustainability if we don't know what it
looks like, right?
If all that we see around us, all we've ever known is this idea of
humans having a negative impact, it's hard to envision something different.
And, and so that's where we're coming in today.
So my main goal for today's talk is that humanity has a choice in our legacy and,
and yes, we have a choice, we have agency and,
and then we'll be looking at kind of a comparison of different world views.
So looking at the Western world view and indigenous world view.
And then we'll be delving into the indigenous perspective and world view,
which is also referred to as traditional ecological knowledge,
giving some examples of stories and some examples of their teachings in action and
then pathways forward.
So that's the trajectory of the talk today.
All right.
So I thought we'd start off with a historical perspective back in the 1500s.
And you can see we're looking at North America and Europe.
And at that time, we had about 40 million people living in
North America and 50 million people living in Europe.
And in both places you see nations, complex economies and societies,
governments, you might not have heard about that
happening in North America, but they were here and existing just like
they were in Europe.
And so this is happening in both places.
Yet the natural world was very different in both places.
So again, this is just an example of of one of the
descriptions of, you know, prior to Columbus,
so a little before the 1500s, Europe was experiencing extreme wood
scarcity.
And if you're experiencing extreme wood scarcity,
you're probably experiencing scarcity and a lot of other things because many things
rely on plants.
Whereas when settlers, right.
So in this time you have European people starting to explore North America.
When they came here, they I could not believe the abundance
here in North America.
And we're literally dumbfounded.
Like that's some of the vocabulary used to describe it.
And they would write back to their friends and family in Europe to describe
what they were seeing.
And I'll just give some examples of some of these quotes.
So here we have about fish and oops.
So the abundance of sea fish are almost beyond believing.
Sure, I should scarce have believed it except
that I had seen it with my own eyes, right.
And it's true that people, when they wrote to people in Europe,
they did not believe them.
They could not send pictures, right?
Or videos or whatever.
So like, I can't believe you.
And but you know, the accounts kept coming.
And here's another one, somebody saying that the fish were so
thick that they might be able to walk on their backs, right?
And they said the same thing about birds, like passenger pigeons were alive at the
time and they could blanket the sky and block out the sun.
I mean they're just, they also talked about larger animals,
so beast bears, deer, wolves, foxes, Beavers, Anders Martins, wild goats,
moose, etcetera, 100 years in the space of a mile.
So a lot more diversity and abundance.
And they also were interested in trees, given that they had the scarcity of trees
and noted that there was an abundance of this resource right from Maine to the
Hudson woods.
And this other thing showed up in several correspondences that they were remarkably
open and park like.
And even we have another explorer here, Verrazano in Narragansett Bay wrote kind
of a similar thing, that the forests are so open in the
undergrowth that they could be traversed easily by large armies.
You know, little did they realize that they were
actually, these were examples of managed ecosystems,
right?
So indigenous people would use fire to manage the undergrowth.
This would help.
It would basically stimulate the growth of of some plants that would help bring
in prey animals.
But you could see the prey animals.
So it was like it was like a win win.
You know, it helped some other species survive and
it was also helping them to collect prey.
But you know, the European eyes did not see that.
So the point here is humans can be benefactors right,
of the land and we see this in this historical setting.
So the abundance that we saw is not due to the lack of humans but due to the
relationship they had with the land, which is different and right.
So again, this is from Cronin and he wrote book
Changes in the Land.
Like we are not comparing 2 landscapes, one with and without humans.
We are comparing two ways of living, right?
One, whereas one, you're belonging to an ecosystem.
So so yes, humans can have a positive impact.
All right.
And so just introducing the traditional ecological knowledge as what is this?
So it is a very large body of knowledge, right,
of practices and beliefs and relationships with living beings and the
environment.
These are built over long periods of time.
So it's empirical place based knowledge built over millennia.
And it's very detailed, right?
Because if you've lived in an area for a long time and you're passing on this
information from generation to generation, there's a lot of information that builds
up over time.
And meant much of this information was transmitted via stories.
And I mean, if you look at, I mean, social media is basically telling stories
and it's another way of telling stories, but we are built for stories.
We remember things more with stories.
And you can pack in a lot, you can pack values,
you can pack ecological information, just a lot that can be packed in.
And I want to acknowledge, right, there were so many different nations and,
and so there's a lot of diversity.
But despite the diversity, the traditional ecological is
archaeological knowledge is united by shared philosophies and concepts.
And this is not some Western anthropologists saying this,
but these are indigenous people themselves saying that they, yes,
they share core values.
And that's why, you know, in this talk I can talk about they create
a similar worldview.
So I can talk about a kind of an indigenous worldview compared with a
Western society worldview.
And again, worldviews are important because they
shape our values, actions, and how we relate to each other.
And they're often invisible, right?
If you haven't been exposed to another worldview,
you might not really know that you're operating within one.
Just like if this goldfish has lived a good life and has always been in water,
then it is not might not be aware of the water per SE comparison to air like
another type of environment.
And so you could think of world views being the same you, if you live in one,
you might not be aware of others unless you've travelled or met, you know,
other people.
And so we'll talk just a little bit about some of these differences.
I mean, again, just from that history, I think we know the traditional,
the indigenous worldview on one side, you could say is more biocentric
concentric.
And we'll talk about some of the values held where is the Western society
worldview is more anthropocentric, hierarchical, as you can see.
So where when I talk about biocentric concentric,
I'm talking about the indigenous worldview and Western society worldview
and relating to anthropocentric.
So they're kind of synonymous.
All right.
So there are some differences that I want to highlight and I'll start here.
So again, in a biocentric, as you can kind of just see from the
visual, humans are part of a larger whole.
And you know, Western science also recognizes we are a
young species, right, 300, 000 years old compared to others.
But in the biocentric or kincentric view, that leads to humility,
which we don't see on the other side at all.
There's really a culture of assumed superiority as well as domination.
And it's it is very hierarchical.
The other another thing is that you know there's respect and with respect and
responsibility with the world around right?
So there's this idea of the the land as well as other not more than human beings
being relatives and and hence, and you would treat your relatives with
respect and and also with responsibility, especially if you have to use, you know,
consume some of them or use some of them for food,
you're going to be more respectful.
Whereas on the other side, right, If you're seeing land water in animals,
including humans, I want to add right, it depends are seen as resources and are
more commodified then right.
So this is this side is kind of leading to reciprocal life sustaining
relationships.
These are with the animate world.
So it's with with the people in the world, but with the also the more than human
animate world.
And you're going to be guided by ethics as well as gratitude for what you're
being given versus an extractive relationship, right?
If things are if, if.
The world around you are objects and things you can take, you know,
take what you what you can without really thought of what you give back, right?
So it's more extractive.
And then again, one is more very deep place based
knowledge, ancestral ties to the land, which is cultivated over long periods of
time.
Whereas on the other side, if you don't have that, I mean,
some people stay in the same place for a while,
but it really is rooted in colonialism, right?
You're going to more places and that's part of extractivism.
You can't extract in one place forever.
You have to keep going other places and you're not going to develop that tie over
long periods of time.
So just I have one more to add, but I'll just say from right here,
you can see the this, I guess it's your right, but but this is,
this is more control based, more centered in the mind.
This there's, there's more heart in here, it's more relationship.
I mean, they're an indigenous people.
They talk about four ways of knowing, which includes spiritual, emotional,
intellectual and physical.
And they're all equally valued.
Whereas we certainly have those things in our society,
but we really highly value intellect in the mind and sometimes to our detriment,
right, where we we aren't really letting the
heart shine as much.
All right.
And then my last bullet point in comparison is again,
this is kind of a summary, right?
Seeing you see yourself as part of more of a community, right?
And so again, cooperation and reciprocity will be
emphasized versus in Western society.
And it varies, you know, it varies, but we are more focused on individuality,
right?
And and this does then bring out more competition as kind of it's,
it's more common.
It's a it's, it's highlighted.
I guess that's what I said.
That's what I said.
I guess that's what I meant.
Yes, it's highlighted.
And because we're at the Darwin Festival, I want to just say a little bit about
that last one in relation to right, this is the Western world view.
But then in Western science, so in there is an emphasis on competition
in Western scientific thinking.
And you know, Darwin, who we're celebrating today,
happy birthday, right?
He, he wasn't the only one who came up with
this theory of natural selection, but he was a great proponent of it,
you know, Alfred Wallace as well.
But it, you know, it is a wonderful concept.
It helps us unite or it's like the umbrella of understanding the diversity
of life And natural selection is an excellent mechanism for evolution.
And you know, Darwin and Western science all came about
within a particular worldview, the Western worldview.
And there, there does tend to be an emphasis or a
focus on competition.
And competition is important, right?
It is, it does shape a lot.
Yet my I want to point out that cooperation is very important too.
And I'll just give one example from a Western framework and then we'll get into
traditional values, ecological values.
But some of you may have heard of Suzanne Smart.
She became more well known with her book published in 2021,
Finding the Mother Tree.
But she came from a family of foresters and she became a forester herself and
then an ecologist and an academic.
When her grandfather and father forested, they would take down a tree here or there.
But by the time she was in forestry, and unfortunately this practice is what
is still done today, it was clear cutting.
And not only clear cutting, you then spray the ground to get rid of
any other plants so that in herbs and stuff that will come up and then you
replant.
But you replant monocultures of the trees you want.
And then they're growing in like sunlight and they dry out and they die because
there's nothing to shade them and and it just doesn't work very well.
But but the reason why they're doing that is because we don't want any competition,
right?
We don't want other herbs and species competing with the plants we want in our
forest.
Whereas Suzanne Samard, her work is really like this finding the
mother tree is that these large trees?
I mean, there's so much she's done in other
people since.
But you know, they actually support their their kin,
their younger trees as they're starting to grow.
They send carbon.
They do that through fungal networks underground,
but not only their own kin and species, they help other species.
So there's interspecies cooperation going on obviously with the fungi.
It's a different species, but other species of trees and it's an
incredibly complex network of that helps the whole forest survive.
And and she has also worked with indigenous people who have, by the way,
noticed these relationships before.
And now they're being, you know, recognized with Western science.
But she's like, OK, this was knowledge that was known before.
So my point with this then is just that we in general,
we find what we're looking for.
So if we're focused on competition, that's what we're going to see.
But cooperation is out there.
And and so we we benefit by expanding perspectives, including perspectives.
All right, So back to our biocentric and Indigenous
worldview.
And I just, I had mentioned that stories are
important and they again contain tremendous amount of information,
ecological information, but they can also transmit values.
And so I'm just going to share there's so many stories, but to keep it short,
1 today, and I've shared this with my students,
is one story that kind of encompasses the values of this worldview.
And this was shared by Robin Malcolm Mirror.
It's a creation story of her people and it's called the story of Sky Woman where
again, creation stories give these, you know, the values provide values.
So in the story of Sky Woman, the idea is that there's this world and
it was a Dark World full of water.
There were animals that lived in the water and on the water.
And then one day there was a hole in the sky and light came through,
but not only light.
There was a woman who was falling and, and as she was falling to the water,
the animals were like, Oh no, like we have to help her and she can't
just fall to the water.
So it was the geese who came and offered to basically help her fall,
more like catch her and bring her to the water.
So this is another piece of artwork that shows sky women being held by the geese
as she is coming to the water.
But the animals realized she cannot live in the water.
And so this turtle arrives and says, well, she can,
we can use my back and create land, but to create land, we need mud.
And, and so we need to get mud from the bottom
of the water.
And so there were a bunch of animals that volunteered to dive and they,
but it was so deep, they couldn't make it.
But the lowly muskrat, or I shouldn't say lowly,
but I should say the humble muskrat.
And you know, the answer is through really adopting
following the guidelines of the honorable harvest,
which basically engenders all of these values.
But it's an oral tradition, just like you don't take more than you
need.
Only, you know, ask for permission, you know, give back, right if,
if there's only one left, like there's not enough to take grade and
so forth.
So it's just really kind of taking with respect and getting giving back.
So first example, I want to talk about our in relation to
coastal nations and, and also people that live near other
waterways, so fresh water and, and look at one of the ways that they
would cook, right?
Because we we are kind of tropes.
So they would eat fish, but they did so in a way that was a
really ingenious message with fishing weirs.
And I just want to also highlight that this is,
this requires really intimate knowledge of both the fish and the tides.
So, you know, in Western science, like you can get a PhD and study for six
years of something, or maybe you have a whole career of 30
years, you're studying something, but that pales in comparison to like
generations of place based knowledge.
And and that's what, you know, these people had and have.
And we have examples of long, you know, really old examples of fishing rear
infrastructure that date back, you know, many thousands over 5000,
almost 6000 years old in some places, including in Boston.
And this is based on research done up in the Vancouver area of the Kamoke people.
And I'm just going to show you an example of how a tidal fishing mirror would work.
This video works.
The comas built the frame of the fish traps by pounding long poles.
Douglas first applins, for instance, into the tidal flats.
They lashed woven panels to the poles to act as fences and designed to leave the
fish into the traps at high tide.
Once inside, fish couldn't find the exit.
As the tide receded, fish would see deep water which kept them
inside the trap.
Once the tide was out, fishers could walk inside.
And pretty cool method.
So it makes it easier on them.
I mean, you have to build it, but you but you're also not, you know,
you take what you need and then you let the rest go.
So this really does, you know, emphasize the horrible harvest and in
that they are again taking what they needed and they're not harming the fish.
I mean, obviously the fish, the catch they're going to eat,
but there's not a lot of there's not harm to other fish, you know, bycatch and,
and trawling and so forth.
And, and also you can have mirrors.
So this is one there, there are lots of different varieties of
mirrors, but you can have mirrors where, you know,
smaller fish would be able to go through.
So you can only be catching like the larger fish.
And I just want to mention that this is a the Massachusetts tribe lived lives on a
coastal area and they used fishing mirrors and continue today to revitalize
this technology through outreach and education.
This is Thomas Green this interview of courting CPU is here in Indigenous
Peoples month and November.
Great person and advocate for, you know, the,
the knowledge of these people and it's wonderful that he shares it all right.
Another example are the Menominee and they're considered a people of trees are
three examples #2 and they are known even by other tribes as the ancient ones.
They've been along around for in this area of Wisconsin for over 12,000 years.
Obviously there was ice there during the glacier glaciers,
but once the glaciers receded, the trees became really important to them.
And so the trees were important infrastructure for their housing.
They lived near Wisconsin.
Is that the one with the Land of 1000 lakes?
I was getting confused.
But then there's a lot of water, right?
There's also the Great Lakes.
So they used canoes and, and then they get their food right in the
forest.
So the forests are very important to them.
And, and they sustained the forest for, you know, thousands of years.
But like many indigenous people there, most of their land was taken away from
them except for a small piece.
And this was in 1848, when Wisconsin became a state.
So for thousands of years they had lived on this land using the wood,
and it was forested.
In less than 30 years, the land that had been taken from them
was completely deforested, right?
So you have the settlers coming in and using the land and the wood,
but in a way that is very, very different.
The good news is that you know, they, they, well,
this is a quote from the chief at the time when it became,
when that was living at the time when Wisconsin became the state.
But he said the Menominee know how to harvest forest.
The trees last forever, right?
So again, you had to live and maintain this
ecosystem as well as make use of it.
And the good news is that, you know, the Menominee still live there.
They they did retain some of their land and they are a shining example of right
they they are still harvesting the way they've harvested over 2 billion four
feet in the less than two years and yet right 90% of the land is still forested.
They are healthy.
They still have old Grove trees.
They're not a monoculture.
They have diversity and there's more trees there than others were in 1854.
Very different, right.
So clearly you can make use of trees and have a positive impact at the same time.
And therefore they become very people are like, how do you do this?
We would like to do this.
But but again, they're, they're clear that it's not a silver
bullet or a magic bullet, right?
So people come here looking for a magic bullet.
It's, it's, it is, it's not like you do one thing, right?
It's, it's how they're living with the land and
their relationship with the world around them, right?
We believe that we are part of the land, whereas others, right,
they own the land and that leads to very different health funds.
Again, trees are just trees.
We have a relationship with our world.
And so and so it's, it's really taking the seeing how that
perspective leads to a very different outcome.
All right, One last example is again just the using
use of resources is sweetgrass, which is used by many indigenous people
and ceremonies and create baskets.
It's the anashinabi is a large area.
This goes up into Canada with the Anashinabi people.
It's about sky.
Then some of the seeds from sky women and again used in ceremonies and baskets.
The Mohawk people noticed that their their population,
there were populations of sweetgrass that were declining.
However, the population that were close to their
settlement were really healthy and they thought this seems to reflect one of our
sayings, which is that if you don't use it,
it will go away.
If we use it respectfully though, it will stay and flourish.
And Kamira, who is also an ecologist and decided to
study traditional harvesting methods and see if this was an issue.
So they looked at the effects of two harvesting methods and we compared it
with control.
Control where there is no harvesting, right.
So two different methods, but in both cases, right,
they never removed more than 50% of the plants and they looked at the results.
So the harvested plots fared much better than the controls.
So they had 80% more sheets, whereas the control plots declined.
So it's like they were stimulating growth through their harvesting and they weren't
over harvesting, right?
So they got the sweet grass, the sweet grass did well and if they
weren't there, the sweet grass was not doing so well.
So the emphasis is right, people and traditional methods can have a
positive effect on Nietzsche.
Another example of that and just some implications of this is that, you know,
and we've set up national parks in the United States which are great resource,
but in the process the federal government has often made it so that Indigenous
people do not have access to these lands, even if they were their traditional lands.
So Canada National Park used to be part of the lands of the Wamanaki and they
used that for resources as well as getting sweet grass.
And and they an axis is now being restored, you know, for that to,
to be able to harvest the sweet grass.
So that is great right there.
Some it's unfortunate sometimes that it takes scientific study to show what they
show millennia, but at least you know, they're getting axis all right.
So ways of moving forward, right.
So you you see this one this, you know, indigenous world view by architect
concentric world view.
How do we move forward and we live in society that is more a western focus,
But are there ways that we can bring in what is being referred to AS2 wide scene.
So bring in kind of the best of of both and how they might work together.
One of the metaphors that is used in this is involved with Three Sisters,
which is a, a traditional planting method in
indigenous cultures where instead of monocultures, you plant corn,
beans and squash together.
And they all help each other because the corn provides a stock for the beans to
grow, because they like to grow on something.
And the squash provides shade and moisture,
keeps the moisture in the soil and blocks out weeds.
And, and so all three of these like help each
other.
And the idea is that in this, the analogy then,
or metaphor would be that corn could be like indigenous knowledge, but it, it's,
it provides the stock of morals and ethics and guidelines,
whereas Western science is full of curiosity and has all these amazing tools
to explore the natural world.
But we can be guided right in how we do that and do it ethically.
And the flash could be, you know, institutions of support,
learning and so forth.
So, and this isn't just hypothetical, which is exciting.
And that UMass Amherst in 2023 got a $30 million grant.
To create the Center for Braiding, braiding, braiding,
Indigenous knowledge and science.
So.
And it's not just at UMass.
So they have hubs throughout the United States as well as in other places around
the world.
And I did check in with them before this talk.
And I was like, how's it going for funding?
And they said, we are still funded.
So, yeah, that's really good news.
And with all of this, you know, we know, OK,
this is this is just a statistic that I show also in my classes.
But Indigenous people, unfortunately, you know,
their numbers have have gotten smaller as through colonization and yet they persist
like they have for long periods of time, incredibly resilient.
And, and despite their smaller numbers, right, 80% of the world's biodiversity is,
is safeguarded by Indigenous communities.
I mean, that tells us they're doing something
different.
Like if nothing else is said that right, like history tells us they've done
something different.
This tells us they've done something different.
All these examples like there is a lot for us to learn here and just end with
this idea of the 7th fire prophecy which is also highlighting the main message
that humanity has a choice for a legacy.
So in, in the Potawatomi as well as the
Anishinabe peoples, the Potawatomi are, are,
are part of a smaller group within it.
There have been what they call different fire prophecies.
And these have been prophecies of things that have happened and they've happened
and they're, they end up being kind of errors of time.
Like so you know, the eternal island, which is when they started.
But there have been many different fire prophecies.
And like the the 4th fire prophecy was the prophecy which is this is a mural
where they gave an animal for the different fire prophecies.
The 4th part of prophecy was that a light skinned people would be coming and it was
unclear if that was going to lead to a more flourishing of ideas and
collaboration or deception and, and disease and and misfortune.
We all know what happened at that time, right?
And then you have the bear and the muskrat in this,
these were times of really hard, right?
The bear is, is, is the sign of the clan of the family,
like staying together to survive.
The muskrat we know is the symbol of sacrifice.
And this is the time when children are being taken away from their families.
And, and now we're in the 7th fire and they
chose an eagle to represent the 7th fire.
An eagle is a symbol of hope.
And the idea of the privacy of the 7th fire is that there will come a time where
ancient wisdom will be revitalized.
People will go back to learning their language.
People will start getting an interest in ancient wisdom.
And at that time, people have a choice, right?
Like to go back and learn from this wisdom and find a, a new way forward.
And if not like you know where that goes.
But this is that's the 7th fire proxy that we are in that area where era where
we can choose this pathway and this revitalization.
And honestly, we are seeing it.
I mean, the outside world may tell you one thing,
but if you look closely like this is happening and the cool,
the other cool thing is that there is an eighth fire.
And if we get there, the 8th fire is the Rainbow tribe.
It is a time of peace.
It is a time of unity.
And we have to go through the 7th fire to get there.
So I hope this gives me a sense of hope.
I hope it gives you a sense of hope.
Like we really, we can do this.
Like we can come together.
We can, we can learn from ancient wisdom and work
together and find pathways forward and create the future that we all want.
So with that, I will thank you and offer tremendous
gratitude to the Indigenous people who have offered their wisdom and shared it
with colonial or, you know, settler people like yourselves.
And thank you very much for coming.
Hello.
Thanks so much for Utah.
I was wondering how how we can all as individuals do something to help.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think we underestimate what we can do as individuals and I do.
I honestly feel like living more heart centered and caring about the world
around you.
That includes your family, but and it includes the more than the
human world and it doesn't take a lot to make a difference and noticing the beauty
around you.
And it may seem little, but these are it spreads and also
learning.
I think we can all do more to learn about the Indigenous people who who lived and
and continue to live in areas where settler communities live now.
And you know, they have a lot to teach us what they're
willing to teach us.
You know, I in the Newbury Court, they've been having an Indigenous people
celebration.
I went two years ago and I was honestly almost brought to tears by the the
generosity.
We there were people that came from Maine, indigenous people that came from Maine to
share their culture with predominantly settlers like white settlers like myself
and and other, you know, people of the settler community.
And it was, it's just so generous, you know, and,
and let's make use of that opportunity and really value what they are sharing
their the resilience that these people have shown is tremendous.
And, and they come with open hearts despite
everything they have gone through.
So thank you, wonderful talk.
Thank you so much.
I recently read a book When it All Burns.
It was written by a man who had gone into the Forest Service as a fire fire jumper.
And so they were fighting all of these horrific fires.
And he has come to the realization that we need to learn from Indigenous people
on how to use fire to prevent all of these things.
It's horrible conflagrations because fire can be beneficial.
And you were pointing it out with the the stewardship of the forest.
Yeah.
Excellent.
That's that's a great point.
Yeah.
There's so much we have to learn.
It was a great talk, I really appreciated it.
What role do you think Indigenous people should play in research?
I know a lot of people travel and attempts to like get pH,
DS and doing research and often they're going into local communities and
indigenous peoples areas.
Should they leave and respect their land?
Should they cite them as references?
What do you think the role is for them in our research?
I think it should be a collaboration definitely.
And it should always be a choice like their choice, right?
You know, again, there is we bought this like you don't
want a preparation of knowledge.
So if the thing when you mask, it's all kind of centered around climate
resilience and how can we bring Western science and Indigenous knowledge together
for in climate resilience and anybody that's participating are both on board
and all will be acknowledged and that is hugely important.
So I think yeah.
And the other thing like the in the Acadia National Park,
Indigenous peoples were were invited to be on kind of the management level of
what we're going to how we're going to manage the park and their voices need to
be heard.
And that was happening under a different administration and but we need more of
that, right?
And, and we're one country in this whole world.
So, yeah, we need more to be truly collaborative
and to really their information is tremendously valuable, right?
We again come from like Western science being the pinnacle, but it's, you know,
we have to come at equal as equals.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Hello.
And thank you so much for your talk.
I, I really enjoyed it In my previous career,
I studied the social and political implications of behavior change.
And my, I was curious about what what you thought
of the scientists role in in that, because it turns out it's really
politically for me to tell people to behave, change their behavior.
And what we eat turns out to be the biggest factor in altered biogeochemical
cycles and land use to change our burgers, our meat is the number one driver of land
use.
I love that field, partly because I was so disheartened by
my research and what it showed about kind of the implications of people going
around informing other people of those of those things.
So yeah, I'm curious what what you think the
scientists role is, what you think behavior change could look
like for society if it's necessary.
But yeah, thank you.
I mean, I mean, science provides data.
It doesn't always change hearts.
So I really, I do like we have a lot of data and it's,
it's the change of heart that we need and that happens organically.
And I do think stories are, are great.
I mean, I, you know, Jane Goodall was someone I really loved
and but since she passed, I've been reading more of her stuff,
which I'm sure a lot of people have, but she uses stories all the time.
Like I've and she and then some of the stories she tells of how she she she
could have conversations with people who were dead 180 from her about like,
you know, we're going to use chimpanzees and
research and she will just have a conversation with them.
But she comes with it comes to them from not a point that you're wrong and I'm
right, but like getting them to see that
chimpanzees are are organisms that feel that are social,
that feel pain that like anyways.
And they would be like, Oh my God, we're we're changing this, you know,
So I think it's it's building relationships, honestly.
And in science, you know, we can have the data is still important,
but let's work on our relationships and creating those connections, I think.
And it it'll happen kind of on the grounds up for me.
Yeah.