Indg 2015 week 3 slides 2020 public

INDG 2015
Week 3: Indigenous ecological ways of knowing,
North America
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission from the author

Week 2 Recap
§ Environmental racism
| What examples did we explore last week?
§ Kimmerer:
| Skywoman story (a Haudenosaunee origin story -- how
North America was formed; relationality, reciprocity),
Council of Pecans (collectivity), Gift of Strawberries (gift
economy), An Offering (giving thanks), Asters and
Goldenrod (complementarity)
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission
from the author

Week 2 human-environmental relations,
environmental racism, colonization, and
Indigenous Studies,an introduction
§ Objectives for Today’s Class
| Watershed activity to place yourself
in relation to watersheds
| Kimmerer: relationality and
reciprocity, continued
| Vanessa Watts, Nicholas Reo:
ecological ways of knowing,
relationality
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission from the
author

Watershed Activity
§ To sensitize participants to the waterscapes of the
territory Carleton is situated in
| Expand awareness of Indigenous territories beyond
the abstract to more concrete/tangible factors
| Consider relationship to space and place and its role
in principles such as ‘nature’ and ‘culture’
author

Professor Todd’s watershed
activity*
§ Normally, over the last five years, we would
do this in class, as a group, but this is
adapted to pandemic realities!
§ Supplies: pens/pencils, post-it notes or paper
and tape
Step 1:
§ Take five minutes to write down the names of
three or more waterways that are important to
you (whether a creek, pond, lake, river, delta,
ocean)
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without written permission
from the author
*Please do not recreate this activity without credit and permission from Dr. Zoe Todd

Professor Todd’s Watershed
Activity
§ Label the waterways
| Place post-it notes
on the walls that
correspond with the
direction of the
waterways around
us (in relation to the
room you are in)
author

Professor Todd’s watershed
activity, Part 2
§ Further explanation: tape
the post-it notes or
pieces of paper onto the
walls of the room you are
in, corresponding with
the direction that this
body of water is to where
you are (for example, if
the Ottawa River is north
of your house, tape its
name on a north wall of
your room)
author

Discussion
§ Take a few moments to contemplate the
waterways – what do they mean to you?
§ Do you ever think about where these water
bodies are in relation to where you are as you
go about your day?
§ If you have time, try the following activity for the
next week: pause once or twice a day and orient
yourself towards the nearest body of water and
any bodies of water significant for you. How
does this change your relationship to the lands
you are in?

Activity: debrief
“[T]this territory that we’re all on today is the territory of my
ancestors. And this particular place that we’re all gathered
on this evening used to be the gathering place of my
ancestors, and the river that you see behind us used to
be their travel-ways. And that used to be their
traditional highways. So I wanted you to think about that.
Think about the Algonquin people who traditionally
inhabited this territory, think about the fact that this is on
unceded and unsurrendered traditional Algonquin territory,
and that we as Anishinaabek people still have a lot to
discuss with Canada.”
–Caitlin Tolley, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
Conference, Ottawa, November 2015
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share without
written permission from the author
Land is often emphasized in conversations about homelands,
territories, however:

How did we do?
Source: maps.google.com
Maps for Ottawa – did you include any local waterways?

How did we do?
http://www.ottawariverkeeper.ca/map-gallery/
Did you consider the direction of flow in these waterways?

• How do waterways and Indigenous
homelands in Canada correspond to
one another?
• Are they connected?
• Why would that be?
Watershed activity, continued

https://equitableeducation.ca/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/Map-Ottawa_watershed-Mar23_2014.jpg
How do the
communities
listed here
correspond
with the Ottawa
river watershed?
Whose homelands
does this map
represent? (click
on link for higher
resolution image)
Watershed activity, continued

Some final thoughts
§ http://www.canadiangeographic.com/educational_products
/activities/tiled_lake_winnipeg_watershed/lake-winnipeg-
watershed.pdf
§ As Metis scholar
Darren O’Toole
points out
(personal
communication),
the Red River
Métis nation’s
political formation
is closely tied to
the Lake Winnipeg
Watershed.

Kimmerer: The grammar of animacy
§ As Kimmerer explains - Potawatomi (and
many other Indigenous languages in the
US/Canada) are verb based not noun based
§ What does this mean?
| Locus of of a verb-based language is action, being vs owning,
possession, ‘things’ in noun-based language
| “1) There is a lot of verbal morphology in this language (prefixes,
suffixes, conjugated tenses, and a wealth of other information
encoded into verbs,) but very little for nouns,
2) Base words or root forms are typically verbs, and noun forms
often have to be expressed by adapting a verb or using a
phrase.” (source: http://www.native-
languages.org/definitions/verb-based.htm)

The Grammar of Animacy
§ “I come here to listen, to nestle in the curve of the
roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my
bones against the column of white pine, to turn off
the voice in my head until I can hear the voices
outside it: the shhh of wind in needles, water
trickling over rock, nuthatch tapping, chipmunks
digging, beechnut falling, mosquito in my ear, and
something more—something that is not me, for we
have no language, the wordless being of others in
which in which we are never alone. After the
drumbeat of my mother’s heart, this was my first
language.” Kimmerer 2013, p. 46.

What does it mean to ‘be a bay’
§ Take a moment to consider this action
§ What does it mean to ‘be a bay’, as the
word for bay (wiikwegamaa) denotes in
Bodewadmimwin (Potawatomi language)
§ How do you come to know how a bay is
| Sound, sight, smell, feel – by visiting a bay, by moving
through it
| A verb based language invites you to invoke place,
relationships in order to understand concepts, words,
worlds

The Grammar of Animacy
§ Kimmerer invites us to consider how our
relationships to place and being shift if we
use a verb-based language -- an ontology
(reality/being/existence) that is rooted in
reciprocal relationships vs an ontology
rooted in the possibility of ownership. You
cannot own land if your entire
cosmology/worldview and language centres
always co-constituting relationships to
something/someone vs owning and
commanding inanimate things (ie: English)
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd please do not reproduce or share
without written permission from the author

§ How can you apply a grammar of animacy
in how you approach environmental issues
in your own life?
| How would you speak differently about more-than-human
beings or environmental relationships if they were no longer
things but actions/beings/agents in their own right?

Maple Sugar Moon
§ How did humans come to learn about
maple sugar?
§ Why is access to maple sap so important
at the particular time of year that it runs?
| Who benefits from access to maple sap? Make a list of
creatures (human and nonhuman)
| Why did maple sap become watered down, according to
Anishinaabe or Potawatomi oral history?
| What key concepts are invoked through relationships to
maple sap?
• Reciprocity, nonhuman agency, animal teachings (squirrels
and maples have things to teach us), gift economy

Witch Hazel/Hazel Barnett
§ “There ain’t
hardly no hurt
the woods don’t
have medicine
for.” – Hazel
Barnett quoted
by Robin Wall
Kimmerer’s
daughter, p. 77

§ “Land sakes, flowers in
November. The good Lord
gave us witch hazel to
remind us that there’s
always somethin’ good
even when it seems like
there ain’t.” – Hazel
Barnett, quoted by Robin
Wall Kimmerer’s
daughter, p. 77

Week 3
§ Vanessa Watts
| Indigenous Place-Thought
| “habitats and ecosystems are better understood as societies
from an Indigenous point of view; meaning that they have
ethical structures, inter-species treaties and agreements, and
further their ability to interpret, understand and implement.
Non-human beings are active members of society. Not only
are they active, they also directly influence how humans
organize themselves into that society...Human thought and
action are therefore derived from a literal expression of
particular places and historical events in Haudenosaunee and
Anishnaabe cosmologies” (Watts 2013: 23).

Watts: Indigenous place-thought
§ Take a moment to write out a short
summary of this article for yourself
§ What key concepts stood out for you?
| Place is sentient
| In an Anishinaabeg/Haudenosaunee perspective (such as
Watts’): “human beings are literal extensions of territory’
(Watts, Common World Childhoods Talk, 2015)
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd
please do not reproduce or share

Vanessa Watts
§ Supplemental
Material: Dr. Watts’
talk
§ “Indians, Animals,
Dirt: Place-Thought
and Agency”
§ https://www.youtu
be.com/watch?v=0
G_5HzzA_vk&ab_c
hannel=CommonW
orldChildhoods

Land as a sentient being with
agency *Styres, 2019
§ Sandra Styres: “Placefulness is not something
independent from Land but exists within the nuanced
contexts of Land. Land reaches boundaries of place by
embodying the principles, philosophies, and ontologies
that transcend the material geography of land and the
making of place or placefulness. With this
understanding in mind, Land is more than the
diaphonousness of inhabited memories; Land is
spiritual, emotional and relational; Land is experiential,
(re)membered, and storied; Land is consciousness -
Land is sentient.” (Styres 2019: 27)
§ Styres, Sandra 2019 Literacies of Land: Decolonizing narratives, storying and literature in Tuhiwai Smith, Linda,
Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne (Eds) Indigenizing and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long
View. New York and London: Routledge. 24-38.

§ Nicholas Reo
| Reciprocity with
nonhumans
shapes our
research
methodologies
| Reciprocity is
key to
Indigenous
research
methodologies
Reo: Inawendiwin

Week 3
§ Reo (2019):
§ “When researchers focus their attention on building
and maintaining relationships, the connection
between ontology and epistemology in ethnobiology
becomes more clear. Rather than pondering what
plant ontologies might look like, we can speak to
plants. Whether or not as individual researchers we
are ready to speak and listen to plants (or animals)
directly in our work, we can set up our research
collaborations, professional meetings, and classes in
ways that make room for and value Indigeneity.” (Reo
2019: 68)

§ Supplemental
material on Dr.
Reo’s work:
(read/listen)
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unrese
rved/earth-day-indigenous-
scientists-academics-and-
community-members-take-the-
lead-in-environmental-causes-
1.4605336/every-plant-and-
animal-is-useful-to-us-
indigenous-professor-re-
thinking-how-we-deal-with-
invasive-species-1

Week 2
§ In-Class reflection
| How does reciprocity with more-than-human beings relate
to your own work?

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