INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

What is the common problem of Indigenous communities?

Indigenous Ecological Ways of Knowing 

MIDTERM REVIEW 

WATER 

WATER IS:

Essential, ubiquitous (found everywhere), blood of the earth, properties are anomalous and  unusual

- Women have a great connection to water

o Brings life

▪ Seen as similar to the water in our womb

o VALUED in indigenous society

- Water Carriers

o Usually women who carry water from one source to another

▪ Demonstrating a woman’s role

o Accompanied by a man holding a staff

o Symbol/ceremony to honour water

▪ Raise awareness of scarcity of clean drinking water & water  

contamination

- Indigenous communities

o Struggle with having access to clean water

o Water must be shipped in large jugs

o Do no have access to fresh water from the land

▪ Does not exist, it is all polluted lakes

What is mitochondria?

- MEMORY

o Water is sentient and can carry water

▪ Eg. if a flower is dropped into water, the before and after pictures will be  different.

• Even when the flower is removed, the water will be able to carry  

the memory (aka imprint) on the water

o Connects to the water cycle

▪ Come back and re-fills all our water supply

o Is water the data memory that carries info around the world?

▪ When water is changed/processed, does the ‘water memory’ change? • Will this affect the way it is carried?

- PREGNANCY & BIRTH

o Water is seen as the same as the water in the womb

o Women are water carriers

▪ So they also carry life in birth and as representations

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

o Women are protectors of water as well as of children We also discuss several other topics like chm umd

▪ Water is life and needs protections

o The concept of MOTHER EARTH!

Who is the author of jay treaty?

▪ We are born from the land

• the idea of us being born initially form the stars… star dust!

• We are just star dust!

o MITOCHONDRIA 

▪ DNA only form the mother- maternal line

• Traces back to the eve (original)

▪ Purpose: to convert resources into energy

• Add to symbolism that mothers give life!

▪ Only through artificial means can an egg allow the full paternal DNA to  enter and stay in the egg

▪ Indigenous women go to cities to give birth rather than stay in their  

communities

▪ Umbilical cord ceremony

• Boys: put in a leather pouch with a bow and arrow or fishing rod

o Would have the significance where the boy would provide  

food this his family

• Girls: wrap the cod with needles, threat cloth, leather and tying  

the bundle to a tree, stump or being buried

o Would have the significance that the daughter would be  

able to care for her family

▪ Placenta ceremony

• Usually the father takes the placenta and buries it with tobacco  

and gives thanks for the life they have gotten.

o They are giving it back to the earth & the baby is now  

connected to the earth as well

o Allows the children to be grounded to that place

• However, some hospitals do not allow the mother to get their  

placenta back  If you want to learn more check out prashanth rao usf

o May have to mailed and then given back without blood....  

etc  

- Health and the environment

o Medicine comes form nature

o Environment is our bodies  

o The environment is everything!

o Natural Watersheds

▪ Reductive, compartmentalized, competitive (nestle…)

o Water is meant to be healing and support life. If this can’t happen, something is  terribly, terribly wrong

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

o The gov’t has been known to purposely flood areas to save other (sacrifice the  little for the many)

o River Piracy (when rivers steal another river’s water… icebergs in Alaska) o Indigenous people try to maintain their connection to the land and the water to  keep a balance for the future

- WAI = WATER

o Use of word shows how water is central/crucial to their culture

o Shows that water is the cornerstone of human relationships, agriculture, political social, spiritual world,  

o In the past, land was sold and taken away but water (wai) remained a shared  resource under Hawai’I law Don't forget about the age old question of 35797 feet to km
If you want to learn more check out fauccj

o Now water was controlled on each of the main 4 islands by the sugar  capitalists/productive land- not to be equally distributed amongst agriculturalists  anymore!

o Water has been transformed from a spiritual need to a resources to be used.  

- ‘WAHKOTOWIN’- rainbow spiral- Cree world view

o Relationship between everyone and everything

▪ guidelines to help understand what is your place in each relationship

o When something is taken from the earth, we must give something back o Each rung in the spiral represents a diff level of life, society, etc… represents  interconnectedness

o Water is a part of them

▪ Brings life to their table

▪ Treat it with respect

o Water is medicine

o Water is the blood of the earth

Know:

Mystical, non-hierarchical (hierarchy is capitalism western…individualistic, indigenous is  community based), relational, spiritual, interconnected, stewardship (being a caretaker over the  land), contextual, naturalized systems of knowledge (mothers carry the information-they are  carriers of life), expansive & expanding, power in ritual, responsibility, reflective, tomorrow If you want to learn more check out mbwq

LAND 

- What is land?

o Land is not just a resource!

o It is a part of us!

o It is the dirt, bugs, water, plants, trees...

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

▪ There is no end nor beginning!

o Language and land

▪ Relationship between land and language

• Culture is found in language

• The tie is form culture to language to land!

- 1st Canadian institution signed April 17 1982

o gave Canada authority over Indian peoples

- EUROPEAN ARRIVAL

o Terra nullis

▪ Concept of empty land

o Made assumption aboriginals were heathens

o Polices:

▪ Royal proclamation of 1763

• Placed aboriginal ppl under the protection of the British crown

▪ 1850

• took away right of the aboriginal people to take away  Don't forget about the age old question of What are the available alternatives?

membership

▪ 1876

• Indian act was passed

o aboriginal ppl now dependent wards of the state

▪ 1884

• Indian act emended

• protected Indians from their own culture from engaging in  

ceremony

• ppl would be jailed if taking part or doing ceremonies

▪ residential school system

• to remove children from their families, assimilate them, and be rid  

of their tribes and culture, and identity!

• Every effort made to kill the Indian and the child

• 1 out of 25 children died ins the residential school

• taken because they are seen culturally and ethically inferior

o JAY TREATY

▪ How aboriginals though of aboriginal rights

▪ For commerce between Canada and US

o TREATY

▪ Contractual/reciprocal relationship  

• Give & take

▪ 3 categories:  

• 1. Historic

o from ‘back in the day’

o before confederation (1867)

• 2. Numbered

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

o treaty 1, treaty 2, treaty 3, etc…

o numbered 1 to 11

o happened between 1871 and 1921.

• 3. Modern (AKA comprehensive land claim)

o James Bay and Northern Quebec Land Agreement

o Nunavut was established because of a modern treaty

- PIONEERS

o The colonisers began to create settlements to take minerals and oils from the  earth.

o First began with the gold rush in the Rocky Mountains

o Sole perspective was geology… not the habitat of the indigenous people they  saw

o To them, Canada was seen as simply geology and resources

o They took and took and took that ultimately, the indigenous people living there  paid the price

- RELATIONAL ONTOLOGY

o “Things are materially and spiritually connected through interactions with each  other” p. 102 of the reading.  

▪ Ontology: study of what exists, in general

• Use ontology to build theories and understand the word

• Why are things the way we are, how do we relate to each other…

- AUSTRALIA

o Ppl’s lands were stolen

o They believed in the concept of living on the land, not owning it

o Land became the image of a woman/granny… granny law

▪ Resonates with the indigenous people in Canada

▪ Land is the woman and it’s the older woman that takes care of you

• ‘granny’ sets all the rules… mother earth… granny

- CANADA DAY CELEBRATION

o Canada day is simply a symbol for Europeans to celebrate their arrival o But Canada day in its core does not exist

o There was a lot of history before they colonised Canada

- Trudeau address to the UN

o Explains that what the aboriginals have experience is not acceptable

o He acknowledges what was done to the indigenous population

o No real push for reconciliation

▪ Only the truth and reconciliation report was created… with some  

movement and some ‘call to action’

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

- ETHNOLOGY

o study of how the environment affects us

o The land has healing properties

▪ Plants from the land are really important

▪ Piece of the puzzle for their health sovereignty

o Reclamation

▪ Ways that indigenous people are reclaiming their land, seeds, plants

• Building the seeds for future generations

o Reconciliation

▪ Rediscovery of the origin story

▪ Interspecies relationship

▪ Reconciling relationship internally and with the environment

▪ Looking at ancient wisdom for modern application

▪ Can learn form social innovations that ancestors brought to the table and  continue to bring today

TREES 

- Trees are the foundation of forests

o They are complex systems of hubs & overlapping root networks

o Makes the forest resilient

- Forests are more than what you see

- Underground- the foundation of the forests  

o Infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate ▪ Scientifically pine seedlings can transit carbon between each other (info) o Allows forests to act as one single organism

- Birch & fir trees have similar root systems and can send carbon info between each other o LANGUAGE: Also sent nitrogen, phosphorous, water, hormones, …info!

- MOTHER TREES

o Nurture the young trees through the roots

o The mother trees are connected to other mother trees

o LANGUAGE!

▪ Will send their excess carbon to the seedlings for survival of seedlings o Recognize their kin

▪ Send their kin more carbon below ground and reduce their root

composition to make more room to their kin

o When they are dying, they send info to their seedlings

▪ Not only carbon, but defense signals as well

o Remove too many hub trees, and the whole forest system collapses!

▪ Lack complexity & vulnerable to infections/bugs

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

- CLEAR-CUTTING

o For commercial harvest

o Cut away the less valuable trees (aspens, birches) to plants those that are worth  more $$ (pines, firs)

o Canada, in the past decade has had the most forest disturbances in the world! ▪ Affects hydrological cycles, degrade wildlife habitat and emit greenhouse  gases into the atmosphere

• Eg. wildfire in Albert…

- CEDAR

o Holds special significance to aboriginal ppls

▪ Powerful symbol of strength and revitalization

▪ Provided shelter, transportation, clothing, tools, art

▪ Considered sacred

▪ Bark & roots used for baskets & art

▪ Made into totem poles, marks, longhouses, canoes, paddles, spears,  fishing floats

▪ Medicine (anti inflammatory, tourniquet, ward off evil,  

o Resistant to decay & rot (lasts 8x more than pine)

o Natural insect repellent

o Strong, lightweight, straight grained

o Can only be gathered during a certain time of year

▪ Bark can be stripped to leave the tree healthy

o When a cedar is cut down, prayer is said to express gratitude of tree spirit o SPIRITUAL

▪ Aboriginal ppls believe cedars have their own life and spirit

- Three core First Nations principles:

o 1. Nutshimiu–Aitun (identity–territoriality)

o 2. Mishkutunam (sharing–exchange)

o 3. Pakassitishun (responsibility–autonomy)

- What is a place?

o Where ppl live

o Identity

o Land, trees * identity related to indigenous ppl

▪ They are part of the land &have an identity with the land & trees

o Ownership

▪ Are the trees also owned by people?

▪ Can the land own the trees?

INDG 2015 Paola Ayala Perez

********* EG exam question:***********

Why might consumerism be problematic for indigenous peoples? (5 marks) - Natural resources are being taken from the land to consumerism then capitalism o Consumerism is the consumption of the land…

▪ Prioritizes the industrialisation

▪ Politicians and whites use Indigenous knowledge/elders as help to “how  do we get the MOST out of the land”

o Depletes the natural resources and robs indigenous people of their food and  land

o As people take more and more for consumerism, then the land is destroyed with  mines, digs sites, etc.  

o You are MEANT to take as much as you or your community needs… however  consumerism is the total opposite as you take all of it!

- As more and more resources are needed for consumerism, then the indigenous people  loose their land

o Violent yet passive structure that eats up all the resources and takes ALL rather  than simply what you need

- Consumerism has no culture… and so if you buy into someone else’s culture, then you  don’t know their culture… you just pretend to

o Eg being Pocahontas for Halloween

o Ceremony and symbolism... feather are directly related to honouring and linking  to the land

o Not taking indigenous knowledge into consideration…