The Land’s First Caretakers

YESSENIA FUNES

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Thanksgiving?

JONATHAN FERRIER

The first thing that comes to mind is all my relations of the land and how they’ve been transformed and misinterpreted by colonization.

YESSENIA

I know that encapsulates the relationship that Indigenous peoples have with each other—but also to the ecosystem, right? Can you elaborate a little bit more?

JONATHAN

My point of view comes from my father. When he raised me, he taught us that all of our relations were sacred—and that’s a lot different from the person growing up in front of a forest or a wetland who’s taught that these relations are resources to be managed for monetary reasons. Respecting all of our relations is an ecological blueprint that many Indigenous people share. It’s part of the way of life that the Anishinaabe call Mino-Bimaadiziwin.

This way of life is circular: It connects to the physical, the mental, the spiritual, and the emotional—the four directions. Appreciating these energies of the relations… those energies are spirits, and that’s why we’re spiritual. Keeping that connection with those relations keeps us in ecological balance. Mino-Bimaadiziwin is all about balance, balancing those energies, and those energies are those spirits of all our relations.

So this way of life—harmony, honoring those spirits—is a circular thing for us. Appreciating Native ecology is the blueprint for sustainability for all inhabitants of Turtle Island.

YESSENIA

When you think about public lands, biodiversity, wilderness, what’s the first thing that comes to mind there?

JONATHAN

You know, a lot of our treaties were written to put these “public lands” under the control of the state. The state is not circular; it’s linear, and it’s a management system. The state typically values 13, 14, 15 species of wildlife that should be protected. If they’re protected, the public lands can be clear cut, mined—all of these things—for profit. When settlers first got here, a lot of us were hesitant to open up the territory, but it happened. Everybody got the cedar tea, but these treaties came with a lot of violence. What a lot of people don’t realize is that we had treaties with all of our relations before the man-to-man, the Indigenous-to-non-Indigenous treaties started. We had treaties to honor with all of our relations.

YESSENIA

How do you try to honor those relations in your scientific work? How do your identities as a scientist and as an Anishinaabe inform your work?

JONATHAN

I get this question a lot. As a scientist, I’m holistic. I bring social sciences, earth sciences, music, dance, culture, ceremony, all into my science. Ceremony leads my science. Indigenous people are scientific. We make observations and predictions. We have medicines that are safe because we’re applying observations and research to our medicines. We have scientific inventions. You know, our creation story documents the big bang. We have star blankets with incredible symmetry and shapes. If you look around the world, there are Maya temples. Indigenous people are very scientific—it’s just that our science includes the heart.

Western science has a certain way of seeing things, but Indigenous science is definitely quantitative and, of course, qualitative. After 500 years of colonial abuse, some of our knowledge has gone to sleep. It’s not dead or extinct, as some people like to say, but it is dormant.

There have been some helpful things from Western science. One of the popular terms for blending the two—Indigenous and Western sciences—is called etuaptmumk. That’s a Mi’kmaw word for “two-eyed seeing.” It’s using the best of both worlds for the benefit of everyone. From my childhood with my dad, and learning that traditional respect, and then moving into Western science, it’s been a two-eyed seeing life for me. And as an ethnobotanist, I’ve always been quite holistic, working to tell stories with our community and other Indigenous communities around the world about our health and well-being, and the way we relate to the land and our relations.

YESSENIA

Because Indigenous people were the first caretakers of our lands, they remain the best caretakers of the land. What do you think that means for the environmental movement? How can Western society show appreciation and gratitude for all that Indigenous peoples do, globally, to protect all of their relations?

JONATHAN

Well, our elders teach us that before Anishinaabe proliferated, we had to understand how to have a balanced relationship with all of our relations. And only after we understood that balance could we proliferate. That’s very important because we have a seasonal way of life that’s a blueprint for living on Turtle Island. Every nation or Indigenous group has these natural ways of harmonizing with the land and this relation. The problem is that it’s not respected or understood or given the spotlight as often as it needs to be. What gets the airtime is a scientific invention for pulling carbon out of the air. Well, you could plant trees, and we could make maple syrup harvesting a staple of the economy within an Indigenous territory.

So, it’s following these traditional ways of life—these traditional blueprints—that will give us the answer for sustainability.