ECOPOETICS AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE: INTERPRETING INDIGENOUS AND LATVIAN ANCESTRAL ONTOLOGIES

ANDREJS KULNIEKS

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1+1 Canada ECOPOETICS AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE: INTERPRETING INDIGENOUS AND LATVIAN ANCESTRAL ONTOLOGIES

by Andrejs Kulnieks a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

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The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. iv Abstract

ECOPOETICS AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE: INTERPRETING INDIGENOUS AND LATVIAN ANCESTRAL ONTOLOGIES

Doctor of Philosophy 2008

Andrejs Kulnieks

Faculty of Graduate Studies in Education

York University

Although the importance of a culture of literacy dominates educational research, Oral

Traditions have resurfaced with renewed interest in the correspondence between

landscape and language. Singing, dancing, and living in the recognition of the continued

relevance of ancestral songs is a (re)construction and (re)conceptulization of Latvian

culture which encompasses teachings and traditions embodied in dainas, teikas, tautas pasakas and tautas dziesmas, which could be translated as stories and songs of the people. My exploration of the question "Is all land sacred?" includes a critical

examination of photographs, travel logs, and poetic writing that have developed as part of V

my fieldwork. Through an investigation of teachings of Latvian and Mohawk Elders, I explore the cultural process characterizing the spiritual connection and eco-poetic response to Australian, North-American, and Latvian landscapes. In their totality, these foci offer a plausible answer to central questions about culturally restorative practices within environmental education. VI

Dedication Page

For Janis, senior and junior, Mara, Indulis, Zelma, Viktors and other family members

who have strived to uphold a responsibility of developing a relationship with the places

they live. I would also like to dedicate this work to the North American Latvian

community in the hope that the work of our Elders does not become forgotten in processes of becoming naturalized in the places they now live. I would especially like to thank my family and friends who have walked with me along paths of complex forms of

inquiry that these dissertational practices have inspired. vii

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my Elders which include teachers and professors who have

helped me through this process of finding the language and energy to develop these ideas

into print and towards their Oral form. In particular, I would like to thank professors Joe

Sheridan, Jamie Scott, Harry Smaller, Leesa Faucett, Rishma Dunlop, Margo Swiss, and

Warren Crichlow for their guidance during and throughout the work of this journey. I would also like to thank Dan Longboat and other Elders for their support and guidance over the years. It has been an honour and a privilege to work with this group of thinkers and scholars. In particular, I would like to thank my friend and colleague Kelly Young for the thought provoking discussions, from focal practices to poetic insights.

I would also like to thank research informants and participants who helped make this work possible. Paldies Edgar, for years of listening and providing me with pedagogical insights from a lifetime of working within the Latvian community, Laimon, for convincing me to stay in the Toronto Dizskauts, Daina, for having the right words, Zigs, for asking me to dance, Ariana, for nurturing our love for the Latvian Mythopoetic,

Mirdza, for helping me develop an understanding for the Latvian ethic, Mr. Briedis, for providing invaluable insight in my translations, and my friends who have been beside me all along. Although bibliographic information may suggest a predominantly male influence, I would like to acknowledge that although the knowledge that has been viii bestowed upon me by women thinkers and Elders that has been so essential to the development of this work. ix

Table of Contents

Copyright page 2

Certificate or authenticity page 3

Abstract iv

Dedication Page vz

Acknowledgments vii

Table of Contents ix

List of Figures xii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

CONTRADICTIONS OF ORAL AND LITERARY TRADITIONS 3 WHY ENVIRONMENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY? 7 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY 14 How ARE COLONIALISM AND ORAL TRADITION RELATED 16 MAPPING A CURRICULUM OF LATVIAN LANGUAGE 18 LANDSCAPES OF CURRICULUM: THE CURRERE OF LANGUAGE LEARNING 22 TRANSLATING PATHS OF STORIES AND ECOLOGY 24 RE-CONCEPTUALIZING LATVIAN MOVEMENTS OF DIASPORA 31 DATA COLLECTION: INTERPRETING MUSICAL LANGUAGE OF POETIC CREATION.. 35 ENVIRONMENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY 41 CHAPTER SUMMARY 46

CHAPTER II: ECOLOGICAL LITERACY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY: A REVIEW OF VANISHING VOICES: THE EXTINCTION OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES. 52

CONTEXTUALIZING POINTS OF INFLUENCE 52

CHAPTER III: LATVIAN ANCESTRAL SONGS, STORIES AND DANCES: A HERMENEUTIC INQUIRY. 65 X

AN ECO-HERMENEUTIC LENS 65 ORAL TRADITION 68 DISCERNING A PROCESS OF MEANING-MAKING 72 ENVIRONMENTAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: REMEMBERING ROOTS 78 NORTH COUNTRY 84 THE COTTAGE 90 THE FARM 92 GRANDFATHER STORIES 98 GRANDMOTHER WISDOM 105 GAREZERS 108 SCOUTING ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION 114

CHAPTER IV: REINTERPRETING ANCESTRAL STORIES: TRACING LANGUAGE LEARNING TRADITIONS THROUGH THE LATVIAN SCOUTING MOVEMENT 123

METAPHOR AND LANDSCAPE 125 MEDIATING A CULTURE OF CONSUMERISM 132 ECO-LITERACY: A PATH TOWARDS ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE 136 FOUNDERS OF THE MOVEMENT 141 IMPLICATIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION 145

CHAPTER V: DISCERNING A PROCESS OF MEANING-MAKING THROUGH FOCAL PRACTICES: BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH THE LANDSCAPES OFSAULAINE THROUGH LATVIAN TRADITIONS 149

MERGING MODERN AND ANCESTRAL FOCAL PRACTICES 149 LOCAL INTERACTION WITH PLACE 155 CHANGES IN PLACE AND MIND: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 156 THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY 158 ECOPOETRY 164 FOCAL PRACTICES IN SAULAINE-A SUNNY PLACE 166 THE PEDAGOGY OF ANCESTRAL FOODS 171 THE SACREDNESS OF TREES 173

CHAPTER VI: REDISCOVERING TRADITIONAL TEACHING AND LANGUAGE LEARNING: INTERPRETING A JOURNEY OF STORY, SONG, AND DANCE A T CAMP GAREZERS 178

DANCING BETWEEN LANGUAGES 178 XI

MAPPING THE COURSE 184 PEDAGOGIES OF SONG 188 INTERPRETING MOVEMENT AND DANCE 192 RECREATING TRADITIONAL ARTS 195 A PEDAGOGY OF LANGUAGE BEYOND THE VALLEY OF SONG 199

CHAPTER VII: LANDSCAPE AND ORALITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY.. 203

TRANSLATING ECO-POETIC STORIES AND LITERACIES: ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 203 ETHNOGRAPHIC LITERACIES AND PRACTICE 207 ECOLOGIES OF STORIES 210 TRANSLATING LITERARY AND ORAL TRADITION 214 POETRY AS ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION 218 IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY 223

CHAPTER VIII: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH.. 228

INTERPRETING A LATVIAN ECO-POETIC JOURNEY IN AUSTRALIAN, EUROPEAN AND NORTH-AMERICAN LANDSCAPES 228 TRAVEL TALES 235 MOVING BETWEEN THE LANGUAGES OF MUSIC AND POETRY 238 A PEDAGOGY OF MOVING BETWEEN ORAL AND LITERARY TRADITIONS 244 MOVING BETWEEN ORAL AND LITERARY ARCHIVES OF POETRY AND SONG 246 LATVIAN SONG FESTIVAL CONCERT 256

References 262

Appendix A 273

Appendix B 275 GLOSSARY 282 xii

List of Figures

Figure 1: Critical Instigating Events 21

Figure 2: Lusts Album 2 36

Figure 3: Lusts Album 3 38

Figure 4: Collage Photo 1 (by Aldis Sukse) 40

Figure 5: Northern Clouds 78

Figure 6: Mirrored Sunrise 85

Figure 7: Northern Island 145

Figure 8: Foggy Cottage Sunrise 148

Figure 9: Bear Walking Through Farm Field 151

Figure 10: Northern Sunset 161

Figure 11: Mirrored Serenity 176

Figure 12: ("Medicine wheel") 221

Figure 13: Broome Sunset 228

Figure 14: Collage Photo (by Aldis Sukse) 244

Figure 15: Fishing Falls 246

Figure 16: Song Festival Photo (by Kristjans Silins) 256 1

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

We owe many things to David Abram, not the least of which is the rallying cry, The rejuvenation of oral culture is an ecological imperative.

Why is oral culture a key to our continued coexistence with the world?

Because oral culture means much more and less than simply talking. Rekindling oral culture means rejoining the community of speaking beings - sandhill cranes, whitebark pines, coyotes, wood frogs, bees and thunder.

Oral culture also means much more than telling stories. It means learning how to hear them, how to nourish them, and how to let them live. It means learning to let stories swim down in yourself, grow large in there, and rise back up again. It does not - repeat, does not - mean memorizing the lines so you can act the script you've written or recite the book you've read. Oral culture - and any culture at all - involves, as nature does, a lot of repetition. But rote memorization and oral culture are two very different things. (Bringhurst, 2006, p. 175)

The literature on environmental education is chronologically dwarfed by the antiquity of the wisdom of its mostly bio-cultural practitioners. It is the contention of Abram (1996),

Basso (1996), Bowers (2002), Bringhurst (2006), Cajete (1994), Egan (1997), Kane

(1995), Longboat (2007) and Sheridan (1994), that the Oral Tradition is an environmental issue. The development of environmental literacy as an academic concern flourishes in 2 the comparatively minute realm of environmental education. Throughout the world, native languages are quickly disappearing. One example is the recent exodus of Latvians from ancestral territories as they migrate to different parts of Europe in search of employment. The shift from a communist to a capitalist economy is another step towards linguistic and biocultural loss in Eastern Europe. Biocultural loss includes a disconnection between people and the place where Indigenous languages grow and thrive. In Vanishing Voices, Nettle and Romaine (2000) write: "A small change in the social environment, such as the loss of control of resources to outsiders, can have drastic consequences which pass right through the domains of culture and language" (p. 79). My review of their book serves as a beginning of my dissertational research as it moves me towards understanding that language loss is one of the greatest problems facing humanity. My research attempts to correct that imbalance with a focus on the folk practices of environmental education at a time when biocultural diversity is waning due to the global reach and practices of conventional education and the associated increase in

size of ecological footprint as Orr (1992) among others describes, that is also concurrent

with anthropogenic ecological decline. In addition to the autobiographical nature of my

work, I draw on educational criticism, environmental thought, traditions illustrated by

biocultural examples of learning in landscapes, and I represent that knowledge in the

form of a story interpreted through a hermeneutic lens. This interdisciplinary research

posits a biocultural ethic for environmental education and the naturalizing of a settler

culture in the North American continent. 3

Contradictions of Oral and Literary Traditions

Did you know that Trees talk? Well, they do. They talk to each other, and they'll talk to you if you listen. Trouble is, most White people don't listen. They never learned to listen to the Indians, so I don't suppose they'll listen to other voices in Nature. But I have learned a lot from trees. Sometimes about the weather, sometimes about the animals, and sometimes about the Great Spirit. (Lake-Thorn, 1997, p. 191)

The preceding communication from Stony Indian leader, Tatanga Mani (Walking

Buffalo) during the 1960's illustrates the same philosophy that Viks (2005) outlines in his work Sarunas ar Putniem un Kokiem which can be translated as Talks with Trees and

Birds. Ecological orality, the state preceding what Orr (1992) defines as ecoliteracy, is a way of connecting personal experience and stories with environmental learning.

Ecoorality is the condition of biocultural consciousness in North America and as such, should involve learning ancestral stories that involve a deep understanding about local habitats. Re-telling stories that share intergenerational knowledge as well as communicate and interact with local places that Abram (1996) defines as the more-than- human world, is a way of fostering the realization that people have a responsibility to the

Earth because she sustains human existence.

As a child chosen to perpetuate Latvian Oral Tradition, I have a lifelong familiarity with the teachings and ceremonies of retelling the corpus of the Latvian Oral Tradition.

That perspective allows me to examine other Oral Traditions that are significantly invested in their traditional territories. As a culture in exile, Latvian Oral Tradition has had to seek modification to fit the North American landscape as well as remaining true to its fit in its European homeland. That modification of tradition to fit a new landscape bespeaks an environmental and cultural ethic about the importance of land that can be distilled in the principle that all land is sacred. Following the work of Borgmann (1992a) and Sumara's (1996) work regarding focal practices, I suggest that focal practices can help diminish and resolve differences between literacy and orality because they set the stage for sharing information.1 Indigenous focal practices are ecologically-minded practices that require participants to engage with a series of tasks from a beginning point to a state of completion throughout a course of time. These practices are a gateway towards re-conceptualizing the interconnectedness of natural places and spaces because they involve learning about the relationship of human language as expressed in

engagement with local places. Examples of ecologically relevant focal practices range

from being part of eco-poetic processes commonly associated with Oral and Literary

Tradition, to growing, harvesting, collecting and preparing foods that one has contributed

to or engaged with in some way, shape or form.

Sumara writes: I include this definition here although I take in up in greater detail in the chapter on focal practices: "Inspired by both Borgmann and Franklin, I have combined the phrases "focal reality" and "holistic practice" into the term "focal practice." For me, a focal practice is a particular activity which functions to render visible usually-invisible interpersonal and intertextual relations. As well, a focal practice announces a location of inquiry into personal and cultural histories that have preceded our involvement in any focal practice. As Rebecca Luce- Kapler (1995) suggests, poets must read poetry to become better readers of poetry" (Sumara, 1995, p.23). 5

Although I cannot understand Indigenous languages of North America, I understand the ecological implications embodied in a relationship with landscape that echoes the

Latvian Ecopoetic Tradition. Performance of the ethic of the Latvian Oral Tradition, honours the traditional territories of the Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee and it is with their input that I compare the methodologies of landscape representation as spiritual work whose ultimate sacred and biocultural expression takes both the form of ecopoetics and the preservation of intact ecosystems. Latvian is one of the oldest spoken languages

(Chatterji, 1968; Lazdins, 1954; Viks, 2001). Learning ancestral songs through the Oral

Tradition at summer camps, scouting activities and in preparing for Latvian Song

Festivals is a way of maintaining these traditions and learning within them an aesthetic methodology and imperative of landscape representation.

In this sense, the principal research is in the determination of the cultural apparatus of landscape representation whose success exists in the authority, legitimacy and validity of its Ecopoetic fit within the locales of its presence, while maintaining the importance of remembering the pedagogical nature of ancestral homelands. That is to say that the cultural craft of meaning-making is symmetrical with the stewardship of ecosystems.

Health in one domain equals health in another. Ecosystems create knowledge in their image and it is the task of the storyteller to embody and express that knowledge in all of its numinous and practical forms. The compelling dimension of this research is in the correspondence between intact ecosystems and cultures that embody those traditional territories, for if one was to make a comparison between the health of ecosystems and 6 cultures, one would find that those that embody one another have the most sustainable presence on land and through time.

My contention is that making a sustainable culture requires a very large component for storytelling as the best apparatus for articulating human belonging to natural systems because storytelling is the most natural Biocultural meaning-making system for articulating one's place in the natural world. Latvian Oral Tradition can be used as a model for understanding how undertaking an engagement with the numinous qualities of unfamiliar landscapes can create a spiritual tradition in keeping with Indigenous pedagogies of intact ecosystems. In so doing, language and storytelling naturalizes Oral

Traditions to those landscapes. Learning the story of the plants and beings that live within a particular place can foster a condition for inhabiting these unfamiliar lands that is consistent with their care and so develops an environmental ethic. In keeping with ancestral practice, the health of ecosystems is in part an expression of the health of cultures. To illustrate this symmetrical relationship, I will make reference to North

Americas first treaties: the Two Row Wampum and the subsequent Friendship Belts and

Covenant Chains of the Haudenosaunee, as a way of understanding and eventually measuring or describing settler progress toward the making of an Ecopoetic belief system adapted to the landscapes of their belonging and beginnings. Ecopoetics may be constructed as the cultural fulfillment of settler obligations and so represent a manifestation of compliance and resonance at a populist level. 7

Learning the pedagogy of natural environments through engagement with non-urban landscapes is demonstrated through analysis of my participation in the Latvian Scout

Movement. As research participant, I re-conceptualize Latvian scouting activities in relation to their shift from Indigenous landscapes to Displaced Persons Camps in

Germany during World War Two. Theorizing scouting movements in terms of Jeal's

(2001) description of the militarization of the Scouting movement under Baden-Powel makes me deconstruct these far removed activities from what I witnessed from the 1970's to the present. Re-reading the literature of scouting that arose from movements of scouting around the world is an opportunity to consider the fate of naturalization within long resident places by examining the role of Indigenous protocols as the original focal practices employed by movements of scouting. More particularly, my work involves looking at the scouting movement as it is taken up as an ironic relationship to colonization on one hand, and the adaptation of Indigenous focal practices on the other.

Why Environmental Autobiography?

This research process involves developing and re-interpreting my environmental autobiography as research data. Following the work of Cooper Marcus (1978), Cobb

(1959), Hester (1985), Wyman (1987), I investigate how the process of writing an environmental autobiography can alert the participant to re-evaluate how outdoor experiences and engagements with a particular place. These experiences are an integral aspect of identity formation that can inspire a deep relationship of reflections that 8 heighten ones awareness of engagements with intact and partially intact ecosystems towards a healthy relationship with these places. I include my own identity-formation by writing at the site of a family farm near Timmins, Ontario as well as a family cottage near

Barry's Bay, Ontario as a way of exploring the relationship that I have developed through seasonal pilgrimages to these particular landscapes over the course of my lifetime. I explore what it would be like to live in transit as I concurrently immerse myself in theories of place that are described by Abram (1996), Berry (1995), Capra (1996),

Lovelock (1995), Sheridan (2002) and Solnit (2000). The inquiry that occurs through processes of movement and camping over a course of many years deepens my understanding of the plants and animals that live within the places that were of particular significance in my multi-lingual development. I revisit cultural understandings that are ecologically in tune with the places where I learned the Latvian language through paying particular attention to ancestral songs and dances. Listening to and reading the work of

Indigenous scholars and scholars of Indigenous Tradition including Basso (1987, 1996),

Bringhurst (2006), Deloria (1973), Kane (1995), and Longboat (2005), among others, leads me to re-evaluate my experience of engaging with a literary culture that had no interest in the development of a sustainable relationship with landscapes.

Participation within the overall diaspora community is an important aspect of my multi-lingual development as well as my identity formation as they engage with the ecology of place. By writing an environmental autobiography, re-visiting landscapes that are integral to my linguistic development, singing and dancing the Latvian Mythopoetic 9 representations in various communal gatherings as well as listening to and reading the work of Aboriginal and Latvian Elders and scholars, I demonstrate the depth of the relationship of Oral Tradition and landscape. A continued re-evaluation of my understanding of place is influenced by paying particular attention to Tautas Dziesmas or ancestral songs that I have learned throughout my life and also, by a return and re- interpretation of places in light of Indigenous teachings that are particular to North

America. The bias in environmental education has always been based on space rather

than time. This is because environmental education has been practiced by settlers to

acquaint themselves with Turtle Island. Space won in that curriculum. Cultures that know

their territories and know why they need to know their traditional stories can move

towards spiritual knowledge that is connected with ancestral places. The knowledge of

time arises in cultural practices to assure that Creation and Creation story protocols return

to the beginning and walk into or back to the future from there.

Cultures that have been displaced from the places of familiar ancestral experience, the

condition of settler culture in modernity, are also characterized by alienation from natural

environments. Simultaneously, the thinking about nature has long been left to Indigenous

Peoples (Sheridan, 1994, 2001). My examination of the intentional internalization of a

2 Mythopoetic songs and stories have their roots in the Latvian Oral Tradition. They have been passed down through generations as a way of sharing intergenerational knowledge and beliefs. Information about the Skyworld that has been passed down through sharing intergenerational knowledge in ancestral practices and traditions differs from eco-poetic work in broadness of scope. Ecopoetic work includes sustainable quotidian interaction and interpretation of self and the land that provides us with the means to survive. 10 dimension of thought normatively understood to be Indigenous methodologically characterizes a process that naturalizes me to the places that I live. Cultural exploration is a way to integrate land and culture and in so doing, solve the chronic ennui that characterizes settler culture's relationships with the natural world in North America.

Prescriptions found within eco-literacy for overcoming the environmentally destructive habits of Western culture abound. Albert Borgmann (1992a) writes: "People engaged in focal practices gratefully acknowledge the immediate centering power of the focal thing they are devoted to" (p.122). Sumara (1996) takes up this notion of combating the postmodern condition of an absence of focus through reading and writing practices.

Despite the benefits that come through the ability to read and write, the severity of the ecological footprint of cultures with the highest degree of mastery over literacy is of critical importance and of note in the correspondence of conditions of education and environmental alienation characterizing modernity. In my research I investigate ways in which focal practices are a way of developing a deeper relationship with place.

The ecological footprint of the most literate cultures around the world has had devastating effects on the life that exists in pristine (non-reconstructed) environments.

Environmental education taught in the context of university education prides itself on knowing a place by gathering information about a place that can be written down. The problem with this type of engagement is the self-replication that takes place through the counting and mapping of place and the conceit that what is experientially knowable can

also translate into print and be of equal pedagogical value to its biological and cultural 11 heritage as spoken and lived. Hugh Brody (1988) provides a graphic description of ways in which the experiential engagement with tradition and place is an essential aspect of

Indigenous understandings of place. The implication of Brody's work can be described as a principle which is that sustained interaction between experience and place is required for discovering the language of stories that is resonant with understanding environments.

Nature is the ethos that informs language and engaging with Indigenous knowledge makes being in local places symmetrical with ecology.

Activities that damage ecosystems have an effect on the way people perceive their relationship with the places they live as Orr (1992) and Bowers (2006) describe extensively throughout their work. The medium most consistent with these territories is oral, though orality itself has to be seen as the way to describe nature and Creation that is resonant with the oldest nature traditions possessed by humanity. Those with the most developed environmental ethics are those most likely to be conscious of how those cultural and intellectual imperatives are preserved in and by Oral Traditions that are required to walk into and out of Creation stories. In so doing, these Creation stories keep with the place of humans in nature. That cosmology is the intellectual content of stories referential to Creation.

Narratives are an essential aspect of education that includes landscapes as they allow the development of understandings that evolve through paying attention to the particularities of place. For Keith Basso (1996), the development of an ecologically centred self occurs through a mediation between old and new stories that inhabit the 12 landscape of the Western Apache. The ancestral stories, songs, poems, and dances that I learned from birth were a cultural connection that could be exported from the traditional territories my ancestors had to leave. Through paying particular attention to ancestral stories that at times take a metaphorical form and singing ancestral songs known as

Tautas dziesmas or songs of the people, is a way of merging identity formation and intergenerational knowledge. The gift of time to live in largely wild, northern places as well as urban and developed cities deepens ones understandings regarding the sacredness of place. Human life is the focus of urban landscapes whereas in northern, intact ecosystems, the grandeur of natural (non-reconstructed) places is much more evident.

Mediating understandings about the Precambrian Shield as well as a displaced sense of ancestral teachings and traditions is part of a process of my naturalization to local Ontario landscapes.

The word sacred is deep with Christian imagery. Throughout the colonization of

North America, there has been a gradual shift of beliefs that define what makes a place sacred due to processes of secularization. The etymology of the word sacred is something set apart for a specific purpose {The Oxford English Dictionary, 1971 p. 2616). Turner's

(1980) research and subsequently Gatta's (2004) investigation about how settler culture has conceptualized and developed the notion of sacred helps clarify how systems of belief can negatively shape cultural attitudes about human relationships with local as well as unfamiliar territories. Advocating buying, selling and "developing" land is a stark contrast to understanding Earth as being alive as Indigenous cultural authorities and eco- 13 theorists postulate alike. Mythopoetic engagements with place produced, recorded and living in the Oral Tradition can help recover the idea that all places are, to some degree, sacred. The particular location of some places contributes to the ancestral conviction of their sacredness. Basso (1996), Bringhurst (2006), Cajete (1994), Devereux (1996), and

Viks (2004), among others, suggest that these places are sacred to people because of engagement and the opportunity to develop experiences with(in) them. Wilson (1993) suggests that these memories resonate with us beyond our own lives and that living bodies carry with them the memory of ancestral experiences. Cajete (1994) postulates that the spiritual component is an essential element of developing an understanding of place and that taking part in ancestral activities is an important way of developing an appropriate and good relationship with Mother Earth.

Similarly, Borgmann (1992a) explains that focal practices include taking part in activities from their beginnings to a state of completion as a way to remedy the postmodern condition of unnatural realities that machines of modern technology inspire.

Although Borgmann (1992a) uses this term to move beyond urban ways of engaging with the world, Sumara (1996) applies this concept of focal practice to reading and writing practices. Engaging with various ancestral focal practices throughout the course of my training in the Latvian Oral Tradition, I realize that those practices are a way of developing deep linguistic relationships with place. This is because, as Bringhurst (2002) suggests, every place has its own literature. Learning to listen to languages inherent in their natural settings makes it possible to move beyond linear ways of thinking that 14 monolingual cognitive influences perpetuate. Learning different ways of translating and representing places can contribute profoundly to the relationship that learners can develop with the places they live.

Specifically, my research involves re-conceptualizing Oral and Literary Traditions that I have engaged in throughout my life. My work demonstrates ways in which a relationship with landscape can be developed through a cultivation of ancestral practices through shifting dominant systems of socialization in globally established systems of schooling. By re-visiting traditional cultural ways of engaging with local places in part through the Latvian scouting movement, Latvian camps in North America, as well as urban communal cultural gatherings, I critically examine how walking, as Solnit (2000) among others would agree, is the right way to develop a relationship with the natural world.

Background of the Study

Ecological Literacy is becoming more difficult, I believe, not because there are fewer books about nature, but because there is less opportunity for the direct experience of it. Fewer people grow up on farms or in rural areas where access is easy and where it is easy to learn a degree of 15

competence and self-confidence toward the natural world. (Orr, 1992 p. 89)

As Sheridan (1994) among others postulates, Ernest Thompson Seton sought to question colonization through activities developed in a curriculum of scouting. In order to comprehend the complex ethics of landscape and language, I draw on the work of Abram

(1996), Basso (1996), Bowers (2002), Bringhurst (2006), Cajete (1994), Egan (1986),

Kane (1995), and Sheridan (2002). In my research I investigate the way in which Oral

Tradition has been used by the Latvian Diaspora community in scouting and other organized camps located faraway from mainstream society as systems of maintaining

cultural traditions. In effect, the opportunity to develop relationships with camp

environments becomes a method of resilience and resistance against forces of

globalization and assimilation that work against ecological sustainability. I include my

review of Nettle and Romaine's (2000) work regarding the devastating effects of

globalization and the loss of language diversity as their analysis has helped me

understand the ramifications of the Latvian shift from a communist to capitalist mindset.

Focusing on the global epidemic of buying into consumer culture and investment into the

latest technological devices provokes an insight into the most essential process of

learning; to become naturalized to a particular environment. In addition, this research

explores the gift of time and having the opportunity to live within a community that

values and respects the gift of life that unpolluted and undeveloped places provide, which

are dwindling at an alarming rate. 16

How are Colonialism and Oral Tradition Related

Pedagogies of place in the form of teachings and traditions have been forgotten through processes of colonization. Due to the extensive ontologies imposed by colonial powers that swept over Latvia for approximately 800 years before gaining independence in 1918, many local languages were lost as tribes people were assimilated or perished in the tides of war that swept over this tiny geographic locale in Eastern Europe. Currently,

Latvian, Latgaliski, and Libieski are living Indigenous languages still used in their traditional territories. However, the displacement and murder of countless families and the current emigration of the younger generations of Latvians can be seen as a signal for the possible loss of cultural continuity in the forseable future. As Eksteins (1999) describes, there have been many times Latvian landscapes have been devastated b y colonial powers with little regard for the wellbeing of human life. A question of how many people have been assimilated is not as essential as how and why those that remain

continue their cultural and linguistic perseverance. The displacement of people from these landscapes during World War Two provided immediacy to the necessity of understanding cultural stories and traditions that Communist occupiers were concurrently

attempting to erase. Looking to Indigenous cultures in Canada who have been able to maintain a continuity of their Oral Tradition is a way of engaging the reconstructive work

of developing a deeper awareness of Latvian cultural traditions.

Exploring cultural systems of learning as a research participant, my interviews with

Elders helped me uncover eco-theories and teaching methodologies that enable an 17 understanding about how an ecological ethos that pervaded Oral Tradition changed into what is current praxis in Folk schools of the Latvian diaspora community. Reconstructing traditions that inform contemporary practices of biocultural habitats involves comprehending some of the residual effects of being displaced from traditional spaces and places. The process of walking through activities with the Latvian Scouting

Movement, summer camps, schools, choirs, folk-dancing groups and other systems that were designed as opportunities for cultural restoration inevitably became places of healing and naturalization as well as learning. Ancestral practices common to all of these institutions are Tautas Dejas translated as folk-dances or dances of the people as well as

Tautas Dziesmas translated as folk-songs or songs of the people.

Dziedot dzimu dziedot augu I was born singing and singing I grew dziedot muzu nodzivoju singing I lived my life skaista mana valodina my language is beautiful vel skaistaki tikumini though more beautiful are the ethics (Kulnieks, 2008)

Singing Tautas Dziesmas is a way to share intergenerational knowledge. In many

Latvian territories these practices continue to be interwoven through daily chores as well

as special cultural gatherings including birthdays, marriages and funerals. Bringhurst

(2006) states that "The oral literatures of paleolithic and mesolithic Europe are lost" (p.

228). I have an immense respect for ideas and theories embodied by Bringhurst's work, though it may not be informed by the over three million verses of Latviesu Tautas 18

Dziesmas collected from the Latvian Oral Tradition, Although I cannot carbon date these songs to know definitively if the songs are or are not from a primordial state, Devereux

(1996) Longboat (2007), Sheridan (1991, 1994) among others likely would agree, the validity and meaning these songs represent could be measured against the landscapes where they were conceived and in that regard, provide evidence as to the conditions of the landscape they embody to thereby synchronize with ecological conditions as far back as the Paleolithic. These songs are a historical record deemed important enough to sing into the future. An accurate translation and continuity of the understandings they contain is a difficult task in modern times because an accurate interpretation requires a thorough knowledge and immersion within intact ecosystems that inspired these songs and stories.

However, tuning into the natural sounds of traditional Latvian territories reveals many of the sounds embodied by the Latvian language.

Mapping a Curriculum of Latvian Language

Educators must again teach for "living the sky," "living the plain," "living the desert," "living the mountain." We must again "look to the mountain," climb it, and after that struggle and journey of understanding, complete the pilgrimage to our higher selves. We must look with new vision upon where we have been, where we are, and where we wish to go in the evolution of education as a process within natural community. (Cajete, 1994, p. 114)

This epigram is also the recurrent ethos of the Latvian Oral Tradition and points to the

equivalent principle in Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe cultures wherein and whereby

Father Sky and Mother Earth figure prominently in Origin Stories. In this ethos, all three 19 cultures invariably walk back into or walk out of Creation Stories in order to recall all that can be remembered so that Oral Tradition always accounts for how we, as humans, came to be, where we are, and hence is eternally referential to the circular path into and out of Creation. The following folk song illustrates the strong tie of Mother Earth and the language of song:

Teic man dziesmas, meza mate Tell me songs, forest mother tev pateica lakstigala the nightingale told you Tu dziesminas daudz zinaji you knew many songs Kruminai sededama sitting in the underbrush (Kulnieks, 2008)

Finding the language to describe my journey through the Doctoral Studies

Programme in the Faculty of Education at York University has required a birds-eye view of the multi-locational nature of the Latvian Diaspora community. Traveling to Latvia as well as various Latvian diaspora communities in Australia, Brazil, and North America inspired the multiple eco-poetic directions of my research. The story re-worked here begins with William Pinar's (1995) translational and interpretational insight of curriculum as currere, or a running of a course. The curriculum I explore allows me to return to and examine cultural practices that have helped to develop my awareness of the discrepancies between ecological knowledge taught in systems of public education and teachings of Elders versed in the Oral Tradition. Elders versed in Oral Tradition have a desire to connect learners with vital ancestral information and knowledge whereas systems of public education increasingly follow the rules and direction of economically 20 motivated powers. Discussions that broaden my understandings about Ecopoetic ancestral knowledge embodied in Latvian ancestral songs help demonstrate the relationship of landscape and language learning. An eco-hermeneutic lens defined as a tracing of the language of a text to its ecological roots is essential to my research methodology. This interpretive inquiry helps me clarify how Latvian traditions have influenced who I am becoming as an educator, a performer, and what Tom Barone (2000) refers to as "strong poet".

In the following diagram, I visually conceptualize the three events that collectively moved me to enter a hermeneutical circle of critical inquiry that includes ecological teachings:

Figure 1.

Investigation of Ecotheories to explore the relationship of Oral Tradition, Indigenous Connecting with unfamiliar Knowledge and place territories and considering these in relation to ancestral teachines.

Indigenous Teachings

Doctoral Comprehensive Examination discussion 21

Figure 1: Critical Instigating Events

The relationships among these three instigating events inform my (re)interpretation of the ways in which my participation in researching the Latvian diaspora community has contributed to my understanding of the places in which I live.

Seasons and weather cycles are changing due to human practices. Ecosystems that possess integrity are desperately attempting to counteract the effects that destructive activities have on them. Weather patterns are part of nature's way of counteracting human practices that are harmful to ecosystems that encompass the earth. Participation with the Latvian diaspora community is a biocultural methodology for developing a relationship with landscape. This biocultural methodology fosters consideration about how human movement in non-reconstructed environments is an essential aspect of traditions and protocols symbolized in and by ancestral stories and songs. The data that arises from engaging with particular places, and with the Elders who have devoted their lives to knowing these places, leads me to re-conceptualize identity formation as embodied in what Nanson (2005) and Sheridan (in press) among others, would understand to be the ecology of telling stories. 22

Landscapes of Curriculum: the Currere of Language Learning

... to run the course: Thus currere refers to an existential experience of institutional structures. The method of currere is a strategy devised to disclose experience, so that we may see more of it and see more clearly. With such seeing can come deepened understanding of the running, and with this, can come deepened agency. (W. Pinar, Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., Taubman, P., 1995 p. 518)

Thinking about this epigram found originally in Pinar and Grumet (1976 p.vii) and their re-conceptualization of the term curriculum, the Latin Infinitive of currere, moves me towards better understanding what curriculum means in relation to theories of language learning. Attempting to find the language to initiate and complete a journey becomes an investigation into the ways in which curriculum is a course to be run. Questioning how I work provides a window into understanding processes of language learning. The following is part of my journal dated June 23, 2003, which traces my language and landscape learning:

I trace my English language learning back to my Ontario urban Kindergarten classroom. I remember feeling awkward during these first experiences of public schooling. Part of this discomfort stemmed from having to shift between Latvian and Canadian cultural practices. Latvian was the language I used to communicate with my grandparents and parents, whereas English was the only language most of my peers knew. Through engaging with Canadian culture, my grandparents learned enough English language skills to communicate with employers in quotidian situations of economics and necessity. However, ontologically and epistemologically, they mediated the world through Latvian language skills. When filing official documents, I often question whether to submit my first language as English or Latvian. Trying to "fit in" to Canadian culture conditioned me to respond, "English", regardless of the fact that Latvian was my primary language of communication. (Kulnieks, 2008) 23

My inquiry regarding the relationship with landscapes of my journey includes an investigation of the etymology of words chosen to think through this experience from an interpretive initiation towards a multilingual understanding. Often this translation includes scanning a well-weathered copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971) with the magnifying glass that sits in the box of this set. I realize that most words I investigate come from places and languages far from traditional English landscapes. In addition, I consider how the spread of a language is a way of instilling similar ways of looking at the world on societies around the world. The role economy plays in the way in which people think about language learning is outlined by David Block and Deborah Cameron (2002).

Some questions arising from my research are: Does understanding the linguistics of literary anthropology begin with understanding what a single word might mean or are words learned in relation to other things? Has learning the English language, regardless of which country people live in, become a necessity for the purpose of prosperity?

The roots of environmental education can be traced to Indigenous education

(Sheridan, 1994; Young, 2006). Ecological literacy as outlined by Orr (1992) suggests

that "all education is environmental education" (p. 90). Abram (1996), Basso (1987),

Cruikshank (1990), Kane (1995), and Sheridan (1994) elaborate the relationship between

language and landscape. I investigate how language learners from a Latvian cultural

background learn about the places they live through engaging the Latvian Oral Tradition.

Immersed in North American cultures, natural camp settings provide an opportunity to

translate Latvian and English as an exploration of the deeper meanings that languages can 24 represent. Language learning becomes a means to expressing the numinous nature of landscape and mindscape as well as the development of a particular form of cognition.

Large, sustained periods of time are an essential aspect of the gift of participating in cultural practices such as folk-dancing and singing. Moving and singing together models understanding the interconnectedness of being immersed in the ecology of a particular place. The circular movement of dance and song resonate with the cyclical nature of time and the universe. Being in tune with each other is also symbolic of the health that results from the human desire to engage their innate skill of movement.

Translating Paths of Stories and Ecology

However, beyond the corpses, beneath the rubble, there was life, more intense than ever, a human anthill, mad with commotion. A veritable bazaar. People going, coming, pushing, selling, sighing - above all scurrying. Scurrying to survive. Never had so many people been on the move at once. (Eksteins, 1999 p. x)

It seems like yesterday that my grandfather turned ninety. I fondly remember our

talks in a house he bought in North Toronto during April of 1954. Prior to that, my

grandparents and their children lived in Cheltenham, the location of his first Ontario work

placement after relocating from a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. During World

War Two, they abandoned what they could not carry and set off to escape the Soviet

occupation of Latvian ancestral lands. On one of my research days at their house, my

grandfather greeted me with the phrase, "policists ir klat, " as I walked toward his porch.

He smirked as I evoked associations with these words, "the police are here." A playful 25 reply, "not so good, the police were here, " became a suggestion that it is time for me to help him organize his surroundings. My own associations with these words shift as I think about what the words might have meant to him. My grandfather's desire to keep his

surroundings organized led me to feel that not everything is as I thought it was or wanted to believe it is. His idiomatic expressions remind me of ancestral stories he shared with me. He felt that stories are the gateway to learning about the past, present as well as the

future. Part of my development as a storyteller embodies personal experiences entwined

in ancestral knowledge contained in stories that stretch back to his life in Latvia, as well

as the teachings of other Elders who embraced the responsibility of my training in the

Latvian Oral Tradition.

Talking about Latvian traditional songs with my grandfather evokes memories of his

work which included overseeing the division and rationing of incoming food in a German

Displaced Persons camp. He is reluctant to talk about stories outside of quantitative

answers or information. I want to hear the stories behind his immediate answers. I think

about my other grandparents' work at the Latvian camp Saulaine near Barrie, Ontario

where my mom lived for part of her childhood. Through the process of my research, I

find ration logs of the camp in Germany. My mom's dad also kept writing logs that

illustrate some of his engagements with the places he lived; adventures of a life story

which began before the turn of the last century. Reading these memoirs fosters my

interpretations about of the city of Liepaja, Latvia, that was part of his earliest writing

and by subsequent learning in what were, for him, unfamiliar territories of North 26

America. To read these stories in Latvia enabled a connection with previously unfamiliar places. Solnit (2000) writes:

A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do. To walk the same way is to reiterate something deep, to move through the same space the same way is a means of becoming the same person, thinking the same thoughts, (p. 68)

Walking and camping along paths local to my ancestors helped me realize that the deep connections that were evoked carried me far beyond overcoming the impossibility of walking these paths behind the Iron Curtain. Cree scholar Stan Wilson's (1993) address explains how ancient memories are embodied at a molecular level. Carried by the body, memories can be accessed into future generations. The knowledge of these ancient memories was clarified by one of my Latvian relatives who explained: "You are home now" when I returned to camp and fish in the places generations of my ancestors moved throughout the courses of their lives.

I consider the fact that my childhood stories were not the dominant stories that were

shared in Ontario Public Schools when I grew up. However, learning English as a second

language has become increasingly common in the Toronto Public School System. My

epistemology of non-urban environments is of an Oral Tradition and not represented in

history textbooks that I read as a young student. On the difference between orality and

literacy, Postman (1986) developed the theory of media ecology and therein defined how

media are part of our epistemologies. He writes: 27

Epistemology is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned with the origins of nature and knowledge. The part of its subject matter that is relevant here is the interest it takes in definitions of truth and the sources from which such definitions come. In particular, I want to show that definitions of truth are derived, at least in part, from the character of the media of communication through which information is conveyed, (p. 17)

Postman (1986) agues that "epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist" (p. 27). "Media as epistemology" lacks human interaction with place. Human ecological interaction is pertinent content of Oral Tradition. Ecologies of place hold a vast amount of information.

Thus, developing an understanding of this information is best gained through an engagement with place.

Reviewing the Language component of the English grade nine through twelve curriculum, (Curriculum, 1999) it becomes evident that the process of teaching in public schools is expected to follow a specific textual course. Expectations fail to make the connection between language and place. The exclusion of place-based learning makes it clear that local knowledge is irrelevant as are methodologies that include Indigenous ways of understanding that are the oldest and most in tune with ecologically sustainable ways of living.

The lived oral stories Elders tell me, can be seen as aspects of Original Instructions or teachings that are the basis and ethos of cultural activity. Developing a research methodology that includes Ecopoetic understandings can enable educators to re-

conceptualize the intersection of cultural and environmental relationships. To define 28

Ecopoetics I explore Gallager's (1992) assessment, that philosophical hermeneutics is: "a discourse which learns from other discourses" (p. 352). He traces the Western etymology of the term to Hermenes: "The relationship between the interpretation of poetry and the acquisition of knowledge in ancient Greek sources shows that the educational value of poetry did not hinge on learning to author it, but on learning to take wisdom from it, that is, on the process of interpretation" (p. 1). Ecohermeneutics includes an analysis of

Indigenous knowledge that is grounded in the ecology of place. Focusing on the ecology

of textual interpretations that expand understandings about particular places inevitably bring with them a necessity of Indigenous understandings. Tracing Ecopoetic works that

ultimately rely on natural environments as their source is the same as any other search for

knowledge in that any hermeneutic source relies on the contextualization of place. An

exploration of Mythopoetical stories brings with it interest in the seen and unseen, as well

as the near and far-reaching understandings of realities that accompany spending time

within natural environments.

The International Encyclopedia of Education Research and Studies states: "the

interpreter understands himself or herself in a new way when faced with the world of the

work. The hermeneutic circle is moving between the interpreter's way of being that is

disclosed by the text" (Husen, 1985, p. 2166). My inquiry moves beyond conventional

literary data to investigate the ways in which environmental theories of language can

move North American societies towards re-envisioning or recovering the sustainability of

a peasant culture whose Oral Tradition grounded them in an environmental ethic 29 concerning sustainable presence in their landscapes. Understanding Oral Tradition as data is a way of moving beyond the solipsism that a historically linear inquiry inspires.

Moving beyond textual interpretation provides an opportunity to expose scientific paradigms and methods of inquiry as spiritually diminished ways to learn about natural places. The current political barometer responds to climate changes resulting from a lack of respect held by humans engaging with the land, demonstrates the fact that Western models of environmental education have failed. Ecologically centred research involves an exploration of stories as told by community Elders regarding circumstances that led grandmothers, grandfathers and other ancestors to become experiential researchers whose knowledge was embodied in stories as the most appropriate medium for the content of those ecologies.

My research centers around language, translation, oral and aural literacies building on

stories shared from The Sacred Tree (Bopp et al, 1989) as outlined by Abram (1996),

Bringhurst (2006), Kane (1995), and Sheridan (2001). My theoretical, poetic, and musical writing concerns the cultural literacies of the primary experience of landscape and the methodologies of its oral, Ecopoetic representation. My research question: "How have

eco-theories of language and literacy influenced (and continue to influence) curriculum

theory and pedagogy?" examines how new literacies justify and rationalize technological

innovations that continue to increase the amount of time humans spend indoors. During my lifetime that is consistent with the period of humanity's greatest cultural distance from the natural world, I continually return to the measure of loss and significant survival of 30 vital aspects of the oldest Oral Traditions. Interviews with Indigenous North American and displaced Latvian Elders demonstrate the role that remembering and re-telling stories of culture and environment plays in identity formation that is in tune with place. The disappearance of Indigenous languages is an essential aspect of my work as the interpretation of language and culture are implicit in creating a holistic philosophy of literacies grounded in traditions and protocols that are in line with equitable, ethical, cultural, and ecological practices.

Expanding a literary anthropological framework as Iser (1989) and Sumara (1996) postulate, I suggest that it is essential to include Bringhurst's (2002) notion that non- human languages also have a literature. These literacies have a place in academic research because they are an integral aspect of moving beyond anthropocentric

frameworks that demand the use of human technologies and scientifically generated data,

in order to learn about Mother Earth. My data includes storytelling embodied in ancestral

songs, dances and narratives. Through performing at gatherings that correspond with

celestial observances, I realize that these seasonal celebrations help naturalize Latvian

communities in North American landscapes. Juxtaposing Ecopoetic stories with aesthetic

response, poetry, interpretive writings, environmental autobiography and songs

performed and recorded by Latvian rock-band, "Lusts," offers a methodology for how

education can preserve, perpetuate and recover a cultural diversity complementary to

biodiversity, that has been the essence of oral, nature cultures. 31

As Nettle and Romaine (2000) contend, biodiversity and cultural diversity are interrelated concepts to the world's oldest cultures and languages and that correspondingly, literacy has become a practice forced onto all cultures. My research suggests a (re)creation of the cultural ethic of sustainability can be accomplished by interrogating literacy, orality and media literacy through re-envisioning Indigenous traditions that continue to resist Western forces of assimilation. I consider how this

(re)creation can fulfill the multiple purposes of contextualizing literary theory and practice within the paradoxes and contradictions of my own human subjectivity and identity.

Re-Conceptualizing Latvian Movements of Diaspora

Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world. (Solnit, 2000, p. 29)

As writers know, it takes a great deal of time to accurately represent experiences in printed forms. Much of my writing practices take place away from my computer.

Planting and maintaining a garden provides me a space to reinterpret Latvian stories and songs I learn during my childhood and beyond. These activities become part of the writing process. Similarly, moving from human-constructed places to open spaces as well as not writing but thinking through and (re)conceptualizing the Latvian Mythopoetic world is also a major part of my research. 32

Walking inspires different trains of thought to bubble through self referential systems of thinking that public systems of education perpetuate. On the move, new thoughts form an awareness of how to symbolize landscape. The seclusion that cold winter months foster inspires me to walk snow covered paths, think about and re-envision my surroundings. Walking the land influences the questions that lead me to develop a deeper appreciation for what I am able to learn about them. Furthermore, humming familiar songs in both languages as I work outside and interact with landscapes contributes to my cognitive abilities. Understanding what it takes to survive outside of urban settings, a skill that was until recently possessed by settler culture, is an example of alienation from the landscapes that has occurred where post-modernity thrives. This becomes increasingly evident as I move through both familiar and unfamiliar places in my travels.

The following poem illustrates a moment of observing my cat engage with the landscapes of our Northern farm that are unfamiliar to him:

Ziemelos In the north

Kakis sez un ed Berry chews at meat morcels Viena krakstinasana Crunches crispy star shapes Lur zern skapjiern peers under cupboard curtains Tausta udeni pecks at water

Kepa drazas zem lupata paw jolts under curtain Izraun melnu peliti no saprasanas mouse flicked between hunt and play Spele caur ir... neatstaj ne kumosu last bite devoured Asinaina rindina paliek atminai maroon streak signifies memory 33

Mes so vietu izpetam we explore this place together Seit viss parmainijies shifting in seasons Nak kad sauc Here he comes when I call Nelukojas tali strays short distances

Gaisma kustas nezinamos spekos unseen realities flicker light shades

Ka veja lapu deja sacelas Wind and poplar leaves dance Drazas par lauku un cop, zem masinas sprints across the field, underneath car Zars nokrit skaist-krasainas lapas branch falls among bright swirling leaves Silts vejs pus caur spraugam warm wind blows through cracks in the wall

Saules pirma ausma sadrosinas kapt near dawn risks climbing on my bed Mana gulta par visam citam beninos more beckoning than all other beds Prasa vai tamdel braucam majas questions if that's why we head home Lidz sapni to parspej until overcome by naps

Pedejas dienas peldet, staigat plikas kajas last days of swimming and walking barefoot Pedejas melenes, senes, kukuruzi last blueberries, mushrooms, corn Pedejas studentu dienas last student lifestyle days Gribu but seit but lapu burviguma inspired to witness autumn colour brilliance (Kulnieks, 2008)

Throughout this process of writing, I engage in a dialogue with Elders that moves my understandings beyond textual analysis.

It has been several years since I had the opportunity to live in Latvian landscapes. I translate words and phrases imagining how differently I would think if I lived in the

ancestral Latvian landscapes I now have an opportunity to revisit. I wonder what my understanding of the world might be like if my grandparents had remained in ancestral

territories in spite of the terror and devastating events of World War Two. I realize that 34 their shared experiences through stories, especially the particularly intense ones, will echo throughout my own life's journey. Moving from the Toronto cityscape to different intact eco-systems I visit annually, the lyrics I write in conjunction with our Latvian album project inspire a re-evaluation of my experiences. I tune into the sound-scapes of the more-than-human world that reside in the intact ecologies of traditional territories.

These ideas become part of my identity formation as well as my research.

Understanding what folksongs presently mean to me culminates within the pruning of

my grandfather's plum trees. In my journal dated May 23, 2003, edited July 20, 2008, I

wrote the following:

I wonder in what direction these branches will grow. Which branches will impede the growth of future plums? Planting carrots my body remembers seasonal weather shifts and moments shared with my grandparents. Pruning the two strains of raspberries, I remember my grandfather teaching me how to trim and maintain the atvases, translated as young shoots, to ensure a plentiful yield. (Kulnieks, 2008)

These experiences were among the first times I was asked to estimate the amount of time

it would take to complete a task and to imagine temporal values. Looking back, I realize

that these meetings and the stories that followed were not about garden-work or my

ability to landscape the grounds. More so, they were an opportunity to spend time with

my grandparents, and for them to be a part of my life. Furthermore, through my maternal

grandfather's journals, I gain a glimpse into their relationships with the places they lived.

Writing about these experiences is an opportunity to remember and re-conceptualize

moments of our shared days. My research becomes embodied in the writing process that 35 takes place in creating a work of memoir in my journal entry dated May 28, 2003 and revised March 15,2007:

Much of my written work occurs at night when my creativity, unrestricted by stresses of the day, is at its peak. It is 5:58 a.m. and I am inputting the changes I made on the latest hard copy of this paper. Thinking about my learning experiences I associate with the Latvian Movement of Scouting takes me into landscapes that I have had the honour and the privilege with which to develop a relationship. I also think about my participatory research currently taking place in other Latvian meeting groups for example Dizdancis folk-dancing group and Dziesmas Svetku or Song- festival choir, as well as my role as koklesana or psaltery class facilitator. As I prepare to participate in Latvian Song festival this summer, I write journal entries to document my journey and process of learning traditional as well as newer Latvian songs and dances. I envision my return to these places as I theorize my poetic work. (Kulnieks, 2008)

Data Collection: Interpreting Musical Language of Poetic Creation

Slowly, I re-organize my room into a creative research workspace. Throughout the year I label files, build bookshelves and add new filing cabinets. I realize how privileged I am to follow this routine that has become my journey through academia. Most days I try to devote an hour towards eco-poetry, songwriting and practicing the bass. Here is an entry dated August 11, 2003, that demonstrates my plan of action to complete the album:

Today I play the bass and sing as my brother plays the guitar and Aldis moves as he drums the rhythm of songs we play. Mike's keyboard playing mediates the mood of the songs. Discussing instrument changes and set-lists, we think about how we might improve our performance. Interests shift and we experiment with new sounds and chord variations. We decide to work on a new album this summer up north as my brother will be in France by August. Planning writing days as well as recording days gives us an opportunity to bring our thoughts together and develop songs and performances. (Kulnieks, 2008) 36

The following is our second album recorded as I began working on my dissertational research:

Figure 2: Lusts Album 2

Playing the songs of other artists is not the same as playing our own songs. In addition, playing ancestral songs provokes a connection with those who taught us those songs as well as the original teachers. Playing songs hundreds of times continually stirs powerful emotions from distant places and usually un-thought about aspects and journeys of our lives. As we perform these songs at celebratory events, they seem to take on a life of their own. Temporal shifts occur through transformations of harmony and melody, as well as the meanings these combinations can evoke. 37

Evoking the story of the Latvians moving to North America and becoming familiar with these landscapes is a responsibility given to me as a child though I did not understand the ramifications until recently. Cajete (1994) explains: "Story is the way humans put information and experience in context to make it meaningful. Even in

modern times we are one and all storied and storying beings" (p. 138). My responsibility requires me to tell another story, which is of my Elders and grandparents. Philosophical

questions they asked me to think about as a child, inspire me to re-evaluate my

experiences of developing a relationship with the places I encounter on a seasonal basis.

Thoughts and experiences that trickle through my research move me towards a deeper

understanding regarding these experiences. The following compellation tells the story of

the Latvian journey to new landscapes. I include this disk as a demonstration of sounds

rather than lyrics, as the bass-lines are a temporal rhythmic pattern that maps particular

ways of moving and engaging with place. This music serves as an example of the ways in

which movement and singing affect emotions that are evoked through a humming of

melodies. 38

Figure 3: Lusts Album 3

Photographs become representative of band member's experiences. Moving from visual images to written representations of these places are departure points for song- writing. Focusing on photographs from unrelated events and merging sounds with poetic writing, I consider what I choose to leave from the original work, making distinctions about what I choose to focus on. Photographs that represent some of the places our band plays becomes part of some of my collage work. This work is later entered as an art exhibit at the Latvian art gathering SMIJ (Si maksla irjauna), an art festival for the youth segment of the Latvian diaspora community. I understand this process of creating a collage as a focal practice because I am continually involved in the process of focusing on the places depicted in these photographs. Shaping them into an art form in the process 39 of developing a book of poems deepens my understanding of the places these photographs represent because this process of return, creation and polishing asks me to ruminate in my memories and understandings about these particular places. Finding the language to describe this experience, what remains in the finished product and what the maker tries to show through the work of art, become as important, or even more so, as the original photographs. Using pictures that are ecologically in tune with place provides a song-space that is meaningful for band members to engage with as these places are from their personal photograph repertoires. The following collage is a photographic record that merges some of the places the songs recorded in the preceding album were conceived and performed: 40

Figure 4: Collage Photo 1 (by Aldis Sukse)

This example of a focal practice helps me develop ideas to juxtapose particular areas of landscape with other aspects of landscape as an arts informed inquiry. Developing poetry as an aesthetic practice helps to expand my understanding of how Mythopoetic poetry can be formed into song. This is a further example of lived experience with the Latvian

Oral Tradition. I outline the difficulty and the level of artistic ability required for a poem to move beyond its textual representation and towards the Oral Tradition. Gallagher

(1992) writes: 41

The relationship between the interpretation of poetry and the acquisition of knowledge in the ancient Greek sources shows that the educational value of poetry did not hinge on learning to author it, but on learning to take wisdom from it, that is, the process of interpretation. According to Plato, for example, not only did poetry require interpretation, but poets themselves provided educational value only by being the "interpreters (hermenes) of the gods" (Ion 534a). (p. 1)

Pedagogical possibilities that landscapes provide, combined with a process of self discovery that occurs through an immersion in land-based learning, influences my

exploration of how poetry can become an integral part of a currere of ecological learning.

Tom Brown (1987) sheds light on the difficulties Western minds associate with understanding the deep tapestry of Indigenous teachings. He lays out the complex nature

of living in harmony with land that involves a deep awareness of understanding how

environments react in relation with human engagement. Cajete (1994) explains that

although there is no exact translation of the word art in "Indian" languages (p. 40). "Art was as an expression of life and was practiced, to one extent or another, by all the people

of a tribe" (p. 154). Exploring one's own engagement with the places they are through

shifting prosaic work to a poetical form can foster a deeper awareness of the way in

which language holds a multitude of implied understandings and associations.

Environmental Autobiography

My research can be traced to writing an Environmental Autobiography. This

autobiography is important data for this work as it traces my relationship with familiar

and unfamiliar landscapes. Personal stories that developed through these encounters lead 42 me to reinterpret childhood experiences. Camping experiences and learning the geography of intact ecosystems I have been immersed in since childhood inspires me to think more deeply about finding language to describe experiences within these particular places. Nocturnal and daytime explorative activities, like sitting by campfires and listening to Mythopoetic stories help me evoke paths and exercises towards understanding the ecology of place. In Latvian Oral Tradition, these stories are typically short and teach something about events that took place long ago.

This research embodies my own learning and transformation through the act of translating Latvian stories. Ecopoetic engagements require me to deepen my relationship with unfamiliar landscapes. Part of my current participation in the Latvian scout organization known as the Vecskauti or old scouts involves learning and interpreting

Latvian ancestral songs throughout different phases of life. There is no North American synonymous upper level of scouting. However, a translation of this term is old-scouts of which there are only a handful of members worldwide. The theory behind this segment of the Latvian organization is that there should be a way to participate as a lifelong member of the organization without necessarily being a current leader or Elder (Celms, 1947).

This tradition is an example of the way in which Latvian scouting follows the understanding, that not all old people become Elders. However, they often continue to participate within community life (Longboat, 2002).

Speaking with Latvian spiritual Elders who are also past teachers, evokes memories

of Latvian camp experiences. They share their work as well as research with me as we 43 eat. Two of their manuscripts (1947) were written at a Displaced Persons camp at

Watenstedt, Germany in 1947. My translation and interpretation of these handbooks leads me to discover new clues that help me understand how Latvian traditions maintained though these movements can be employed as paths toward environmental learning. These historical documents shed light on the way in which the participants of the Latvian

Scouting Movement conceptualized the continuity of the movement at the end of World

War Two so that younger members would have the opportunity to develop their understandings of Earth through ancestral teachings. An essential part of Latvian scouting training here in North America is to cultivate an understanding of community as well as the teachings of ancestral stories and songs that sustain their ability to survive. Reading these texts and re-interpreting my own story in light of Indigenous stories enhances the development of my environmental learning. Understanding my Latvian history connects me with the ancestral journey that brought me here. Learning landscapes of North

America is an intergenerational journey of learning about the plants and animals living in this place. This learning implies the loss of not knowing many of the places my ancestors lived. However, this adventure is a journey towards understanding what it means to be naturalized to a particular place.

Each year my dad, his closest friends and their sons, many of which now have children of their own, go on a three day canoe trip several hours north of North Bay,

Ontario. As it is for many Canadians, the Victoria Day weekend begins a sequence of journeys abandoning cityscapes for the lure of moments sequestered in the beauty and 44 awe of natural surroundings. Knowing a particular locality requires taking the time to understand the intricacies of place. Turning on water-systems in anticipation they will not freeze overnight as fires burn along the coasts of rivers and lakes signals a seasonal shift throughout Northern Ontario. At this time of year, mosquitoes and black-flies are on the verge of becoming a formidable vibrato, pushing us towards our journey of survival learning.

For me, this seasonal journey is a time to mediate the gap that occurs between paper maps and mental maps as Brody (1988) outlines in Maps and Dreams. This voyage is a right of passage into the near north of Ontario. I have been reliving this course for over

30 years. Finding language to describe this course of currents is part of a journey to glimpse healthy ancestral ways of being. They too lived near the water, however, they were accustomed to nourish themselves with the fish that the local rivers and lakes provided. Finding language to describe these experiences of trapping fish develops my interest to know more about traditional territories. I realize that the stories my grandfather tells me about camping and being outdoors has become part of my keen interest toward what Abram (1996) refers to as the more-than-human world.

Weatherford (1988) gives a deep discussion about traditional travel routes across

North America and their history. He explains that these are not a new phenomena invented by settler culture. Rather, these roads were ancient walking paths and have a deep history of movement and travel. These paths "built for human passage" were often 45 destroyed when they were trampled by horse hooves as well as heavy machinery (p. 247).

Solnit (2000) describes the process of walking as a process akin to reading:

To walk the same route again can mean to think the same thoughts again, as though thoughts and ideas were indeed fixed objects in a landscape one need only know how to travel through. In this way, walking is reading, even when both the walking and reading are imaginary, and the landscape of the memory becomes a text as stable as that to be found in the garden, the labyrinth, or the stations, (p. 77)

Moving and walking to ancestral songs is an attempt to become in tune with them.

Indigenous people have journeyed along the Precambrian shield since time immemorial. When I began to travel along particular rivers and lakes near Temagami,

Ontario, there was a grandmother who lived mostly from the local land year-round. Each year, during this twelve hour journey north to visit the mouth of the river she lived beside, I am reminded of many stories of previous journeys. My brother and I have merged these stories into poems and songs about adventures and the thoughts that have accompanied some of these experiences. As Bringhurst (2006) writes:

Sun, moon, mountains and rivers are the writing of being, the literature of what is. Long before our species was born, the books had been written. The library was here before we were. We live in it. (p. 143)

Latvian folksongs are a gateway to history and pre-human history. They are a record of the most important ancestral teachings as they were deemed worthy of being passed down from generation to generation. The oldest collected verses can be closely read in particular landscapes to reveal a resonance with those places in which they were first sung. 46

In Latvia, many of these songs were collected by the now famous teacher Krisjans

Barons. However, they were not written down or otherwise recorded in the order that they were created. Rather, they were collected and organized according to various themes. This dis-order is problematic because of the fragmentation that occurred through his style of organization. In the Oral Tradition, stories were never retold exactly the same way. It is, however, almost magical that he had the vision to collect these verses during

summer months when he was not teaching, as they are now part of the dowry all Latvians posses. Since they have been collected and can be read as part of a larger story, original

intentions can be reconstructed. The proof of the correctness of their order is their resonance with particular landscapes and the activities people have engaged within these places.

Chapter Summary

The subsequent chapters are organized as follows: In the second chapter, Ecological

Literacy and the Construction of Identity: A Review of Vanishing Voices: The Extinction

of the World's Languages, I outline the problem that the world's smallest languages are

quickly disappearing. In this chapter I use Nettle and Romaine's (2000) work to shed

light on the problem, that due to forces of globalization, people who still know how to

communicate with their land are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate. The concept

of a common global language of communication is a very dangerous concept. Along with

other very powerful forms of media, economic pressures are in effect, stamping out 47

smaller languages as insignificant. The mass exodus of Latvians to other parts of the world due to the desperate economic conditions in Latvia makes this an important beginning point of my dissertational research because it illustrates many of the problems

that Latvia has faced through generations of colonial oppression and influence.

In the third chapter, Latvian Ancestral Songs, Stories and Dances: A Hermeneutic

Inquiry, I outline the methodology of my research informed by a hermeneutic lens. I trace

the etymology of the term hermeneutics and the corresponding field of study to the Oral

Tradition that is synonymous with ancestral methodologies of landscape learning.

Specifically, my environmental autobiography is data that demonstrates the re-invention

and embodiment of cultural-curricular characteristics such as learning traditional dances,

stories and songs as a way of naturalizing youth through re-inventing and remembering

traditional ways of knowing by building a deep connection with environments not

(re)constructed by humans. In addition, I investigate how remembering and re-telling

stories of culture and environment are an integral aspect of identity-formation and

language learning.

Speaking with Elders has played a very important role in the process of my research. I

have learned a great deal by having an opportunity to gain the knowledge and wisdom

that has been shared with me through a series of interviews as well as Elders conferences

at Trent University. Some of the information was shared with the request that I not quote

specific sources. In keeping with the ethical aspect of this work, I did not transcribe a 48 good deal of what I have leaned into the literary tradition by the request of informants who suggested that what they have explained to me should remain in the Oral Tradition.

In the fourth chapter, Reinterpreting Ancestral Stories: Tracing Language Learning

Traditions Through the Latvian Scout Movement, I describe my involvement with the

Latvian movement of scouting as a way of developing a relationship with landscape and consider how movement in non-reconstructed environments is an essential aspect of fostering traditions and protocols symbolized in ancestral stories and songs.

In the fifth chapter, Discerning a process of meaning-making through focal practices:

Becoming familiar with landscapes of Saulaine through Latvian traditions, I investigate the way in which Oral Tradition is employed by the Latvian diaspora community. I compare the different landscapes the Latvian Diaspora community employed to develop a relationship with traditions as well as with unfamiliar places. Writing memoirs during the primary phase of my doctoral programme I wrote travel tales and photographed landscapes as a way of exploring "a pedagogy of landscape."

In the sixth chapter, Rediscovering Traditional Teaching and Language Learning:

Interpreting a journey of Story, Song and Dance at Camp Garezers I examine ways of learning about new landscapes as taken up by the North American-Latvian community after migrations to North America after World War One. I draw on "ancestral focal practices" including storytelling, singing and dancing to examine traditional teachings and the biocultural compositional ethic represented in these cultural productions as a process of familiarization with non-urban environments. A dialogue between landscape 49 and traditional ways of learning become segue towards developing a relationship with

North American environments. Re-inventing and re-discovering ancestral ontologies and epistemologies, I concurrently deepen my awareness of diaspora relations with places they spend time within. Activities situated in non-urban environment of Camp Garezers and other North-American Latvian camps become pedagogical sites to connect with ancestral ontological investigations. Oral Traditions merge with literary traditions as learning about landscapes are embodied by learning in non-urban environments and finding the language to describe these in both urban and non-urban cultural settings. This research is informed by the structure of Anishnaabe and Haudenosanee Traditions and considers ways in which natural landscapes inspire data that can enable settler cultures to develop an epistemology of place inherent in Oral Tradition. Learning to sing ancestral

songs and dances as well as inventing new ones is a way of developing my awareness of the sacred nature of Camp Garezers. Part of the experience of returning to the shores of this particular place year after year involves an inquiry into what it means to be displaced

from ancestral landscapes as well as developing methodologies for becoming naturalized to non-urban places.

In this chapter I examine ways of learning about unfamiliar landscapes as adapted by

the Latvian diaspora community in North America after World War Two. I draw on

ancestral focal practices including storytelling, singing, dancing, and the creation of art

forms to examine a process of familiarization with the non-urban environments of a

Latvian summer school—Camp Garezers, near Three Rivers, Michigan. A dialogue 50 between landscape and traditional ways of learning is part of my relationship with places

I live and to which I seasonally return. Rediscovering ancestral ontologies (ways of being) and epistemologies (ways of knowing) in non-urban landscapes are a method of deepening understandings and involves an inquiry into what it means to be "dis-placed" from ancestral landscapes. Learning to sing ancestral songs and dances, as well as inventing new ones, is a way of developing my awareness of the sacred nature of

Garezers.

In the seventh chapter, Landscape and Orality: Implications for Pedagogy, I return to the concept of ecological literacy and expand what this form of literacy could mean through an application of a concept of sustainable cultural understandings. I look at my own eco-poetic that is informed by Mohawk (and other) Elders whose cultural traditions mature eco-leadership. Through translating one of my poems I investigate how my interpretation of this work evolved through making connections with the place that inspired this poem, as did discussions with Indigenous Elders who helped me develop a deeper understanding of the place I was in by re-immersing myself in Indigenous Oral

Tradition. One of the key things that various Elders asked me to think about is that concept of Oral Tradition as being alive and the losses in interpretive skills that take place when stories are no longer told orally. Storing stories in print, whether on a shelf or in cyberspace, detracts from the immediacy and understood necessity of knowing those stories and having an ongoing discussion about and with them. In this chapter I describe 51 how eco-literacy can be employed in pubic systems of education beyond the contradictions of Ecoliteracy.

My final chapter, Conclusions and Future Suggestions for Research, involves the re­ writing and reinterpreting of travel tales including Ecopoetic work which is becoming my poetry manuscript. I re-interpret these travel tales that were composed as I traveled through unfamiliar Australian landscapes in correspondence with ancestral stories, as well as to discover how this process can be guided through discussions with Elders that follow protocols of Oral Tradition. In this interpretive chapter I juxtapose my work with the writings in my maternal grandfather's travel journal as well as other Latvian thinkers and writers with regards to how they developed relationships with the places they lived. 52

CHAPTER II: ECOLOGICAL LITERACY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY: A REVIEW OF VANISHING VOICES: THE EXTINCTION OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES

Contextualizing Points of Influence

A version of this chapter has been published as Ecological literacy and the construction of identity: A review of Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. Educational Studies, 56(1), 123-130.

As an educator and researcher interested in theories of reading and writing, I investigate ecological relationships between second language learning and unfamiliar landscapes.

With global systems of education moving toward an increasingly standardized curriculum, I believe that it is important to consider how ecological literacy mediates identity-formation. For this book review, I highlight the content of Vanishing Voices: The

Extinction of the World's Languages by Nettle and Romaine, juxtaposed with readings that centre on the ecological crises and issues of sustainability. As such, this review also

serves to illustrate developing a relationship with this text as it relates to the cultural and

ecological significance of maintaining an understanding of traditional Latvian territories.

Ecological literacy involves a development of identity as well as a relationship with the place it occurs within. The form and structure of Vanishing Voices does not focus on

a particular place. Rather, Nettle and Romaine venture worldwide and contribute to a body of research on language diversity. They uncover several ways in which languages

and traditions have evolved through deep relationships with the ecology that they are part

of. They explore themes such as globalization and displacement from traditional 53 epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (ways of being) as a major aspect of language loss. Moreover, they evoke an illusionary distancing of societies from the landscapes that give them life. This estrangement is reminiscent of Lakeoff and

Johnson's (1980) Metaphors We Live By. For example, societies can undergo rapid changes by creating new metaphors that desire to be modern as explicated by Norberg-

Hodge (1996) through her case study of Ladakhi culture. Often, perceptions of greener grass on the other side become a driving force away from ancestral ways of being.

Vanishing Voices draws on some of the reasons language diversity is such a rich resource

for language learners to hold on to. In addition, they emphasize the role educators can play in fostering and understanding of the importance of ancestral language in other

language learning. Drawing upon the community and family resources can move learners

toward understanding themselves and taking ownership of language learning. The stories

in this book serve as a useful guide to explore reasons for language preservation beyond

economic motivation of language learning.

In the first chapter, "Where have all the languages gone," Nettle and Romaine (2000)

grapple with the concept of "languages as resources," and describe factors that contribute

to Indigenous language loss. Although some classrooms may be more diverse than others,

the English language is one that incorporates and influences understandings about the

world through cultures that are inspired to learn this language. Local vernacular that is

specific to a particular place embodies epistemologies and ontologies centuries of

language users have mediated their world through. Knowledge of ancestral languages 54 opens windows into past ways of knowing and being in the world. The authors stress a connection that cultures once had with their landscape. These connections are being lost and forgotten due to a desire to acquire language skills that are perceived to be most profitable. Berry's (1995) example, of tree harvesting illustrates several ways that harvesting can take place but does not because of a lack of care. He outlines the way in which greed is a motivating factor behind destructive behaviors associated with land stewardship that accompanies land learning without a responsibility to future generations of living beings. According to these authors, the desire for personal wealth and a distancing from place have led to a devastating loss of the ecology of Indigenous languages.

Power relationships are central to the language loss predicament that most small

languages around the world are currently facing. Language loss is not a new phenomenon. However, there is no precedent for the rate language loss and extinction

currently taking place. According to Nettle and Romaine (2000), the increase in loss is

closely related to the massive changes that are being imposed on non-reconstructed

environments throughout the world. Perhaps the most valuable element of their work is

the wealth of statistical data. It is devastating, for example, to realize that 90% of the 250

Australian languages are on the verge of extinction (Nettle and Romaine, 2000, p. 9). A

major cause for the disappearance of smaller languages, symbolic of the loss occurring

throughout the rest of the world, is the disconnection from particular landscapes that

sustain life into the future and Cartesian inspired notions that the world is ours to use as 55 we see fit. This tradition slips back to Biblical documentation as outlined by Gatta

(2004), which suggests that humanity is here to rule over lesser (animal and plant) beings of our world.

It is difficult to fathom the fact that 90 % of the world speaks the top 10 languages and that 6000 languages are spoken by 10% of the world's population (p. 8). Vanishing

Voices conceptualizes language as a living museum and as a window into the world. To preserve languages moves beyond the realm of rights. It moves towards the realm of duty to generations not yet born. A loss of understanding the diversity of natural environments furthers language loss.

In the second chapter, "A World of Diversity," Nettle and Romaine (2000) outline a connection between the diversity of multitude of languages that are spoken in the world and biodiversity. They estimate that there are between 5000 and 6000 languages spoken of which around 4000 have not been adequately described (p. 28). They suggest that there are on average 25- 30 times as many languages as there are countries and that 83 percent of the world's languages are spoken in one country (Ibid.). The picture painted of biculturalism and multilingualism is vivid compared to the seven languages of the United

Nations (p. 31). Most languages are local and unwritten (p. 32). If languages continue to be marginalized and not allowed to be acknowledged as being important and having an inherent value far beyond official recognition, there is a high probability that they will be lost. Because languages are specific to the place of their origin, they hold stories and teachings that stretch back to the beginnings of language. The gaps in ways of knowing 56 the world, caused when ancestral languages are not passed on, can not be replaced.

Languages that live within a place are a living record of un-catalogued biodiversity. For educators, this text is a valuable resource because it asks readers to consider the importance of ancestral language learning and how that learning contributes to identity formation.

In the third chapter, "Lost Worlds," Nettle and Romaine (2000) explore how languages conceived through hostile environments can disappear because of the encroachment of other languages and cultures. It is important to question the devastation settler culture has on aboriginal cultures. Nettle and Romaine (2000) recount the extermination that occurred during the last century throughout Australia. Their language investigation inspires readers to think about the purposes and levels of language continuity. For example, "Are they used spontaneously or is their use more rigid or formulaic?" Being able to play within a language is an essential part of mastering a language. A lifetime of knowing the world through a particular language leads to the ability to be able to describe a landscape more specifically and descriptively. However, finding language to develop a deep relationship with place requires the understanding that there are different ways of understanding language. Joseph Epes Brown (Cited in

Dooling & Jordan-Smith, 1989) writes:

In Native languages the understanding is that the meaning is in the sound, it is in the word; the word is not a symbol for a meaning which has been abstracted out, word and meaning are together in one experience. Thus, to name a being, for example an animal, is actually to conjure up the powers latent in that animal, (p. 13) 57

Peripheral use of language and the use of general terms weaken the communicator's ability to converse with the past rather than technical speech. Preserving language of landscape through proverbs and other stories fosters the question: "What takes place during the process of learning to translate the experience of physical realities of being in a particular place to remember the teachings embodied in the languages of their origin.

Remembering these physical and mental boundaries raises the question of how to maintain ancestral knowledge in light of processes of global economics.

Vanishing Voices invites a consideration of the debate regarding what happens when languages are moved from their original location? Although there are around half a million English words, only 16, 000 of these are used in everyday conversations (p. 59).

To juxtapose local knowledge within traditional languages, new words are incorporated within the language for the purpose of professions and more specific descriptions. Are

concepts and meanings lost through developing a scientific language that can help us talk

about the world rather than talk with the world as our ancestors may have been able to

do?

In the fourth chapter, "Ecology of Language," Nettle and Romaine (2000) write: "A

language is enmeshed in a social and geographical matrix just as a rare species is

enmeshed in an ecosystem" (p. 79). They provide an analysis of landscape as an essential

element of language learning. The correlation between settler culture and the loss of

language and ecosystem diversity changes how societies accumulate knowledge. Change,

whether from a social upheaval, environmental, economic or political shift effects what 58 learners are capable of conceptualizing. Movement between places explains shared similarities of understanding regarding harvesting, trade, alliance and warfare that contribute to a multiplicity of knowledge. Nomadic ontologies do not, however, detract from the importance of specificity of oral cultures. Nettle and Romaine (2000) point out a wealth of social networks rather than an accumulation of personal capital as some of the survival strategies employed by cultures living in harmony with their surroundings. Local languages also create a relationship based on identity and solidarity within a particular ecology. The desire to maintain traditions that pay attention to ancestral landscapes is well documented by A. Kawagley and R. Barnhardt (1999) in "Education Indigenous to

Place: Western Science Meets Native Reality."

Ecology was often responsible for the prevention of many Indigenous cultures to

expand. Imposed languages by dominant cultures that sought to expand also brought with

them unpredictable ways of defeating Indigenous cultures. For example, Euro-diseases were introduced. Although some language shifts may have been voluntary and moved

from bottom up, it was more likely experienced as a top down approach by those who

were in the business of expansion. Systems of farming contributed to the possibility for

cultures to grow. However, contrary to the shift from subsistence living as a way of

increasing the quality of life, Nettle and Romaine (2000) suggest that the move toward

monocultures, combined with personal greed and the destruction of traditions, often led

to a decrease in the good of many (p. 93). Taxes and contract labor usually became a

story of turning families against each other for personal gain and the benefit of the ruling 59 elite. Hierarchical systems that may have started for the benefit of society often lose their vision. In Snyder's (1990) discussion of "the commons," many societies had peripheral areas that were intended for all to use. It is through population growth, as well as greed, that these areas likely became developed and privatized. As well as fostering environmental changes, forced homogenization was sold to populations in the name of progress. Development is again and again shown not to increase the quality of life for most of the world's population.

In chapter five, "The Biological Wave," Nettle and Romaine (2000) struggle with the question of why 50 % of the world speaks 10 languages, 90 % of the world speaks 100 of the largest languages. They consider why 10 % of the world speaks the other 6000 languages still spoken and attribute these disparaging statistics to the uncontrollable and unforeseeable adaptability of certain plants and their relationship with agriculture (p.

100). The authors argue that ecology (the most adaptable plants and animals) in a particularly well suited region are a "biogeographical fluke", to suggest a reason why some larger languages have been more successful in their development (p. 101).

Nettle and Romaine (2000) describe the effect people have on their ecology. By burning undergrowth to clear competitor species as well as deliberate production of certain types of plants through sewing of seeds, people also contribute to the evolution of the plants themselves. The discussion of stories by Basso (1996) in Wisdom Sits in Places would greatly contribute to the work of how landscapes have changed. Thinking about the changes that have been documented orally extends far beyond what has been written. 60

Similarly, what has been recorded in print is likely to be guided by the author's intent rather than generations of stories intended to teach into the future. The problem of profit and farming to pay off bills and debts without regard for a sustainable relationship has created the unacceptable disrespect for land that is now a global epidemic.

The devastation of Euro-diseases wiping out 95 % of all Native Americans is one that continues to be felt today. The idea that the Indigenous population of the Caribbean fell from 25 million in 1519 to 2 million by 1580 shows the extent to which diseases can destroy human life. Societies have been forced into nontraditional economies by such methods as mandatory taxes (Nettle & Romaine, 2000, p. 118). The worst forms of atrocities occur when ruling cultures do not even take into account the humanity of the populations they displace. The example of Australia shows the devastating effects with regards to Aboriginal populations. Similarly in North America, English language schools practiced genocide tactics that tried to distance Indigenous systems of traditions and beliefs. Stories from the last century of disease, removing children from their parents and

sterilizing women are only a few examples of Colonial atrocities. The devastating effects of these inhumane behaviors are only beginning to be brought to the general public of

settler cultures.

In chapter six, "Economic Wave," Nettle and Romaine (2000) outline why people are

drawn toward learning the big languages of Europe known as the seven languages of the

United Nations. English took over as part of a demand for a reevaluation of perceived notions of history and domination in a "common" language. They make suggestions for 61 how peripheral languages might retain some resiliency. Reading about the deconstruction of metropolitan languages of the elite in terms of productivity - surplus - increased life expectancy and expansion, clarifies for me, that the point they are making regarding the privilege that being in a particular "lucky" space determines the success of language, rather than the possibilities the language itself offers. Languages that are only remembered in stories are often lost not because they are not valued. Rather, there are often economic circumstances that push learners to learn English. The fact that bilingualism can be lost within a generation emphasizes the duty of educators to provide opportunities for students to investigate ancestral epistemologies.

The Welsh story is given as an example of imposed rules used to slowly chip away at the resistance of the populations larger powers wished to dominate includes: no arms,

fortification, holding of public office, freedom of assembly without a permit (p. 140). If

these rules were not obeyed punishments included flogging, imprisonment, the refusal to

issue birth certificates and even death. In some places, these kinds of practices are still

taking place.

"Why should something be done?" could be seen as a culmination of what is outlined

in previous chapters. The authors make a convincing argument that, indeed, something

should be done. Although language survival is partly a fluke of biogeography, acts of

human intent do intervene. Colonialism is clearly a factor in language growth. Although

some languages do become extinct through natural causes, pointing out that in 1914

Europe held 85 % of the world as colonies, attests to the fact that the way things are in 62 the world is not a natural phenomenon. Another startling statistic is that in 1992, the richest 20 percent of the world population earned 150 times the income of the poorest 20 percent (p. 156). The level of analysis around these figures makes it difficult not to reconsider the lives North American societies are willing to live. To destroy places for the purpose of making money is to neglect the necessity of developing a healthy and sustainable relationship with the land on which all life depends.

Deforestation is also a loss that contributes to the changes that take place to the ecology of place. To think about the "sharp increase" of the 150, 000 square kilometers that are were lost on a yearly basis during the 1980's is astounding (p. 157). How many of these forests are logged in an ecologically acceptable way? The 600 - 1000 years that it takes for full generation of a forest that has been ravaged by large-scale logging is not included in the prices societies around the world pay for the wood they use (p. 150).

Berry's (1995) writing in Another Turn of the Crank describes the role foresters could play if the right way of harvesting trees took place (p. 26). His suggestions of the possible relationship between farmers who know their land and harvest trees is not practiced due to the fact that something must be done to stop the bio-terrorism that is considered

acceptable in a global system of non-sustainable consumption.

Failures are a part of learning but we must take care to learn from the mistakes of the past. Nettle and Romaine make the point that societies must begin to think about long

term sustainable ways to function rather than short term gains. The challenge of future

educators may include teaching children in spite of systems of education. Failures like 63 mechanized farming in Africa to educating the tropics in Eurocentric ways need to be considered as we begin to move through the new century. Although teachers in the tropics believed they were educating students for better economic opportunities, the reality is that more learning has resulted in less earning (p. 164). How will we be able to facilitate changes if we do not work for a common good? Practices based on outside knowledge are not the answer.

In the final chapter, "Sustainable Futures", Nettle and Romaine (2000) outline possible strategies that may lead to saving languages. The message is that languages are

saved by use. A bottom up approach of language maintenance is essential. Languages

need to be used and taught to future generations if they are to survive. Helping learners

understand the importance of knowing their language is to maintain the living cultures

within them. Simply put, languages that are not taught are in decline (p. 186).

Overall, Vanishing Voices is a book to be savored over an extended period of time.

The wealth of ideas contained can lead to an extensive re-evaluation of the state of crisis

we presently find ourselves in. Although it may not be possible to know the world

through one language, the authors suggest that bilingualism is a more realistic goal (p.

191). They write, "Land made the language, in other words, and language made the land

(p. 188).

Part of the role of education is to also understand how language acquisition works.

More importantly, it is our duty as educators to provide opportunities for our students to

realize the importance of knowing where they are from so that they may develop a sense 64 of identity that embodies ancestral epistemologies and ontologies. Nettle and Romaine understand how we mediate the world through language and that landscape is vital to understanding identity. Just as ecological diversity is essential to the survival of humanity, Vanishing Voices makes the same case for linguistic diversity. Aural ecologies that are symmetrical with what we know as natural systems are essential for our relationship with the life-giving earth. 65

CHAPTER III: LATVIAN ANCESTRAL SONGS, STORIES AND DANCES: A HERMENEUTIC INQUIRY

An Eco-hermeneutic Lens

A second requirement for hermeneutical explorations of human life-world is a deepening of one's sense of the basic interpretability of life itself. This is a matter of taking up the interpretive task for oneself rather than simply receiving the delivered goods as being the final word. (Smith, 1991, p. 199)

The term hermeneutics finds its roots from the Greek god Hermes who was the son of

Zeus and Maia, often represented as a messenger for the gods. The OED states: "The meaning of all language, written or spoken, is developed by the application of general laws, usually termed Hermeneutics" (OED p. 243). Initially, the field of hermeneutics was reserved for the interpretation of the Bible. Later it was adopted for theorizing and interpreting the law. Gadamer (1994) writes:

It is the task of a philosophical hermeneutics to reveal the full scope of the hermeneutical dimension of human experience and to bring to light its fundamental significance for the entirety of our understanding of the world, in all the forms which that understanding takes: from interpersonal communication to social manipulation, from the experience of the individual as a member of society to his experience of that society itself, from the tradition comprised of religion and law, art and philosophy, to the liberating, reflective energy of the revolutionary consciousness. (Mueller- Vollmer, 1994 p. 274)

For Smith (among others) hermeneutics suggests researching the self. My research

methodology involves my experience of being participatory researcher within the

Latvian diaspora community but also includes traveling to Latvia and other parts of 66 the world to gain a deeper understanding that ecology and place have on this diaspora community.

I use a hermeneutic lens as I mediate and interpret my relationship between self and the more-than-human world. Hermeneutic Theory helps me consider the relationship between place and the tracing of ancestral songs which are a window into ancestral ways of living in sustainable cultures. Eco-hermeneutics involves tracing text back to the places that inspired it. Remembering places through associations of sounds and songs also evokes the memory of my experiences in those places. The following journal excerpt dated May 25, 2003, revisited July 25, 2004, and revisited again October 17, 2005, describes part of this research process documenting our bands re-emersion into the places this album was originally conceived.

Tomorrow we will pack a rented van and head up to what was once my grandparent's farm. Along with my brother and fellow musician Aldis, we will record tracks for our new album over the course of the following week. Our band prepares for the eight-hour voyage that will take us towards the farm near Timmins, Ontario. Much of my research regarding Solnit's (2000) conceptualization regarding the importance of walking is done in transit. This work has taken me to Eastern and Western Europe, across North America as well as Australia and Brazil. Thinking about the sounds of these places has required me to learn, re-learn and reinterpret how to play the bass, the guitar, the cello, the piano and the kokle, a stringed musical instrument that has been played in Latvian territories for a very long time. I realize the research I engage began years before my academic career at York University. I am realizing that it began before childhood and really has no definable beginning point because it's conception is inspired by ancestral epistemologies and ontologies. (Kulnieks, 2008) 67

Heeding warnings about the limitations of hermeneutic inquiry as Smith (2003) and

Young (2007), among other theorists have suggested, the hermeneutic aspect of my multi-dimensional research methodology builds on the work of hermeneutic researchers but also Elders who use the land as a primary resource for their understandings. The complex nature of this research inquiry inspires the term eco-hermeneutics. An eco- hermeneutic lens goes beyond an interpretation of text to include Indigenous stories that stretch back to time immoria .

Although I now know the world much differently than I did growing up, family gatherings help me evoke many memories from the house where I began to learn the difference between being indoors and outside. I recall experiences through smells, tastes and by engaging with focal practices coached by family members and Elders. Borgmann

(1992a) explains: "People engaged in focal practices gratefully acknowledge the immediate and centering power of the focal thing they are devoted to" and takes up this notion in relation to gardening (p. 122). Sumara (1996) discusses this concept in terms of writing and reading processes. Ancestral focal practices require moving through the motions of a task and a return to the locations of that activity in an effort to create or transform something. Through focus on a particular process, transformation, learning and discovery inevitably take place. Focal experiences shared with others can foster relationships of language and place because participation in a discussion can inspire finding the language to describe a particular place. Immersion in ancestral focal practices 68 is a hermeneutic inquiry that moves beyond textual interpretation towards an investigation of ancestral ways of knowing the world.

New understandings are also embodied within familiar artifacts that come to represent and hold meanings. My interpretation of books, articles, poems and songs involves a tracing of the language of stories. These hermeneutic practices include returning to Oral Traditional to explore different meanings my grandfather and I evoke from the stories we discuss. Reflective writings that describe place are the seeds of thoughts that are a crucial part of my writing process because they infuse a personalized inquiry as a method of developing a broader, more informed understanding.

Oral Tradition

As Brody (1988), Bringhurst (2006), Cruikshank (1990), Kane (1995), Longboat

(2007), Ong (1982) and Sheridan (1994) contend, Oral Tradition is based on the practice of remembering precise information. When ancestral songs are sung as part of everyday

life, the stories they tell are partly for medicinal purposes. Anybody who has walked

along a forest shore, path or a road will have observed that through the act of singing a

song, the trek becomes easier. Similarly, work becomes less arduous through a humming

and re-humming of a melody. They are preventative medicine when the message a song

tells is heeded. A resonance of important information and instructions is evoked from

Indigenous knowledge recorded in Oral Tradition through the performance of song as well as communicating teachings recorded in rhyme. 69

Ancestral songs are intended to be sung throughout the course of a lifetime. The focus of a story can remain in flux as the way in which it is told depends on the information the teller decides to convey. Heard at different times of life a story can represent different meanings. The message the storyteller is trying to convey is understood in particular ways depending on the previous knowledge of audience members. Understandings are not intended to be the same for everybody. For example, one can expect that adults will interpret stories much differently than children will. The amount of detail included in stories told to children differs from the same stories when they are shared with adults.

Similarly, the tale a storyteller spins can be disguised, depending on the audience and the story-tellers intentions.

In Latvian culture, Tautas dziesmas (Songs of the people) continue to be part of quotidian life. Thoughts that have made their way into language and vive-versa are an embodyment of place. At one time, speaking and singing were considered to be the same thing. As Viks (2001, p. 252) points out, there are still places in Latvia where grandmothers who continue to live in numinous environments have not forgotten the skill of singing landscapes as they were sung during the beginnings of the Latvian language.

Communicating with a wide range of tonalities is kin to the act of speaking. This way of communicating information was not only employed as part of ceremonial events. In addition, language was not seen as a human invention as Olson (1994) explores.

According to Longboat (2002), language is a gift from the Sky-world and as such, a gift from Creator, consistent with life on earth. Singing contemporary songs continues to be a 70 pleasurable act but the lessons and teachings embodied by Mythopoetic songs spans back long before human-time. They contain knowledge about the world as it was and continues to be. Beings and an evocation of their instructions deemed of essential importance through distant time are alive within these ancestral songs. These tell us pertinent historical information about where we were and give us a blueprint of aspirations or directions towards healthy ways of thinking and living that were reliant on a deep understanding of their connection with local ecosystems.

The practice of engaging with different poetic forms is a good way of developing an inquisitive relationship between landscape and language learning. Ecological learning and inquiry requires the privilege of spending time within non-reconstructed or redeveloped landscapes. I learn to understand landscapes by walking through them not with a desire to change, re-develop and work on the land but to understand how students who are part of settler culture might begin to realize the gifts of life that Mother Earth

gives us to explore.

According to Mohawk, Anishnaabe and Australian Aboriginal Elders I have

interviewed, the most essential aspect of learning the ecology of a place does not begin with empirical facts and figures. More so, this learning involves paying close attention to

one's surroundings that enable a development of understanding the intricacies of skills

that are essential to sustaining human life. Today this attention to detail is considered to

be a form of art. Tools designed to make life easier also helped to connect teachings in

stories representative of ancestral ontologies and epistemologies. Understanding the 71 geography, history and language of a particular place involves investing a great deal of time. Basso (1996) states:

Consider, for example, the following statement by Leslie M. Silko, poet and novelist from the pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. After explaining that stories "function basically as makers of our identity," Silko (1981:69) goes on to discuss Pueblo narratives in relation to the land:

The stories cannot be separated from geopolitical locations, from actual places within the land.... And the stories are so much a part of these places that it is almost impossible for future generations to lose the stories because there are so many imposing geographical elements... you cannot live in that land without asking or looking at or noticing a boulder or rock. And there's always a story, (pp. 63-64)

Addressing the importance of place in relation to identity formation is an extremely complex task. It is very difficult to help learners understand place if educators have not had the opportunity or taken a lengthy temporal interest involved in coming to know the places they inhabit. In an age of destruction of land and thinking about land as a development opportunity rather than as a place borrowed from future generations compounds the difficulties of developing an understanding about healthy sustainable relationships with places, as do elements of globalization that are becoming infused in all areas of modern life. The word development suggests that the land is better after human contact, change and re-construction. Clearly, this is a very ironic term. Part of environmental education should include learning the traditional stories of places which are embodied in Indigenous Ecopoetic traditions of those who know them best because they have lived in relationship with the land since the dawn of human time. 72

Discerning a Process of Meaning-Making

The word "intelligence" derives from the Latin term for discernment - and in terms of current usage, the ability to discern essential features of a situation is one of the few indicators of intelligence for which there is general agreement. Other suggested characteristics include memory, adaptation, wit, judgment, reason/logic, problem-solving, and understanding. (Davis, Sumara, and Luce-Kapler, 2000, p. 120)

The thinking process continues through focal practices, as do the melodies of lyrics and songs I practice for a performance at the Latvian Song Festival in Toronto this summer. Conceptualizing ancestral stories and songs with my grandfather, I realize that there are endless historical questions we can engage. Cruikshank (1981) explains: "Oral tradition tends to be timeless rather than chronological, to refer to situations rather than events" (p. 72). My grandfather returns to certain situations to suggest why it is important to be attentive to looking at the broader implications of one's actions.

Returning to familiar stories is a way of expanding meanings they help us evoke as well as the memories they inspire. This return becomes a rejoining of time and space. In late

December, we prepare to celebrate winter solstice. I reflect on my grandparent's tutelage of developing a sustainable relationship with place which includes trimming fruit trees, planting and attending to plants and vegetables in the garden, mixing fertilizers, collecting mushrooms, berries and other tea ingredients, as well as learning the intricacies of the apiary. Acquiring a mastery of these tasks can be transferred to the mastery of other learning. Similarly, the repetitive nature of these moments creates an opportunity to 73 move beyond the task at hand and while participating in menial tasks, provides an opportunity to reflect, imagine, and to think.

During the autumn and winter months we dry apples. To do so in natural surrounding is to see the world through an ancestral lens and to interpret and grapple with ideas in similar ways. I participate in this regiment as grandfather mediates complicated daily tasks that make up some of our time together. Our conversations require me to pay particular attention to the ambiguity of language because he communicates with me primarily in the Latvian vernacular. His ability to live in that language was maintained by

finding other Latvians to work with as well as maintaining strong ties with other

expatriates. Communal ties facilitated an opportunity for him to live within the language

of his birth. Maintaining the freedom to communicate in the language brought from

ancestral places is a way to evoke the memory of the places his language skills were

developed. For my grandfather, the connections with places embodied in the Latvian

language is akin with hearing the sounds of natural spaces echoing and resonating with

his memories. Speaking the language of his ancestors he was able to rebel against

globalizing forces of monolingualism that colonialism strives to achieve. With cultural

continuity comes cultural responsibility which meant living within the ethos inspired by

the ancient words that connect the ecology of stories with place. The following passage is

a song {tautas dziesma) sung at gatherings, often as the last or second last song of the

evening around the campfire: 74

Put Vejini Blow winds

Put vejini dzen laivinu Blow winds drive this boat Aizdzen mani Kurzeme take me to Kurland

Kurzemniece man solija A mother there promised me Sav meitinu malejin I could marry her daughter, worker of loam

Solit sola, bet nedeva Promised, promised, but did not give teic man lielu dzerajin Accused me of being a big drinker

Teic man lielu dzerajinu Said I was a big drinker Kumelina skrejejin And that I liked to race horses

Kuru krogu es izdzeru Which time did I drink all there was to drink Kam noskreju kumelin Whose horse did I race?

Pats par savu naudu dzeru With my own money I have drank Pats skrej savu kumelin I have have raced with my horse

Pats preceju ligavinu I married with my fiancee Tevu matei nezinot Dad and mom not knowing (Kulnieks, 2008)

There are some who say we should not teach our children to sing this song. Tracing this text to the places it was conceived inspires an inquiry into origins and interpretations of the song. Some might say that this song is not very old because it contains relatively modern invention of wind power and is merely a story about drinking alcohol and rebellion.

A hermeneutic inquiry of this song moves me beyond the places named therein as these may have changed through time. However, the situation explored can be traced to 75 place. Learning about the nature of repetition and the older a song and simpler the core melody, the older the song (Liepins, Dec. 27, 2004). It would have been possible to play this song which contains six notes. Although it is very simple, the melody is very beautiful and can be easily harmonized as is the case with many songs in the Latvian Oral

Tradition. It is one of the songs that I would suggest that almost all Latvians sing. The question of why they know it moves beyond the allusions to drinking and rebellion.

Stories connected to the making and drinking of alcohol have been a part of culture.

Small amounts of alcohol were considered a therapeutic form of medicine throughout over 800 years of domination. Not being able to leave a place of birth without permission or whim of a land baron, alcohol provided the opportunity to think in different ways.

To suggest that this song is very old is not to say that the words are pronounced exactly as they were even several hundreds of years ago. Nor is this to say that the words were pronounced the same all over Latvia even today. The deeper meanings of this song are within the story it represents and the questions it helps audience members evoke. The story that Eksteins (1999) describes is part of the metaphor outlined in the last stanza:

As for the Baron, even if serfdom had been abolished in Kurland in 1817, and even if the feudal ius primae noctis - the right of the lord to deflower the bride of a vassal - no longer functioned in literal terms, a related ius dominorum - the master's right - still obtained in judicial and police matters in the Baltic provinces... Sons of the nobility and even of the upper bourgeoisie were encouraged to have their first sexual experiences with servant girls, (p. 30)

The father and mother not knowing would mean that the master would not know either. 76

Understanding the wind's ability to "drive" the boat is an evocation of the power of nature. This evocation helps the singer imagine what it would be like to move beyond being stuck in a particular circumstance. Beyond metaphorical implications, it is widely acknowledged that people have used the power of wind for many purposes including traversing waters in ancient times. Along with the symbolism of wind as a way of moving, perhaps as far as oceans extend and home again, it is an evocation of the spiritual realities of the Mythopoetic world. To call the wind is to communicate with the

Sky-world.

Singing these songs around a campfire, arm in arm connects participants with each other. Singing and moving around a fire is a reflection of the energy fire provides. To sing is to move the air. The vibration of human muscles touches leaves, trees, Earth and sky. The act of communally singing about shared situation, for example, going home, is a shared meditation beyond what can be seen. The emotions conveyed by the stories are also a communication with each other, as if to say, we know how this feels.

The experience of singing the language that comes from ancestral places is to think about what remains of memory and life there. Speaking about Latvian ancestral songs in relation to identity formation with one of the Elders charged with the continuity of the

Latvian Mythopoetic, she explains that we continue to sing these songs because they are what remains of our ancient beliefs or original instructions (Liepins, Dec. 27, 2004). I realize that the songs of the Latvian Oral Tradition that Latvian communities sing have not survived due to a desire for financial gain. These songs contain what is left of a living 77

ancestral history. Memories they help us evoke include personal and cultural engagement with places where the songs were lived. They resonate with spirits of the land in which

they were conceived. Singing Mythopoetic songs is to communicate with landscapes

because to sing these is to acknowledge, engage with and give thanks to the Earth that

allows us to live.

Tracing stories to the places they are from moves the circle of hermeneutic inquiry

beyond solipsism because it grounds the words in the places they are from. I realize that

the stories my grandfather shared were chosen for particular purposes. Translation of my

travel writing has gone through many shifts through sharing these poems with Elders and

colleagues. A casual observer might overlook many of the dynamics of the North

American influence on my Latvian translation skills, especially if they were to focus on

the words themselves. However, the etymological inquiry of developing a deeper

understanding of what the words I choose might mean expands the way I will be able to

interpret other works. What I learn and think about is reflected in my own poems as well

as my theoretical writing. Interpretations become a form of mediation between a

landscape of moods, thoughts and experiences. Pouring over stanzas and paragraphs, I

imagine that every word is necessary in terms of the picture I am attempting to create.

Writing songs about experiences also contributes to language development.

Understanding the Latvian language enables me to focus on the reconstructive work of

interpreting ancestral knowledge that is often overlooked in a culture of consumerism. 78

>*: ..«

Figure 5: Northern Clouds

Environmental Autobiography: Remembering Roots

A story provides a structure for our perceptions; only through stories do facts assume any meaning whatsoever. This is why children everywhere ask, as soon as they have the command of language to do so, "Where did I come from?" and, shortly after, "What will happen when I die?" They require a story to give meaning to their existence. Without air, our cells die. Without a story, our selves die. (Postman, 1989, p. 122)

This work of environmental autobiography as data is a way of recovering some of the ways in which I have developed a relationship of understanding the places I live. Basso

(1996) writes:

Travel in your mind to a point from which to view the place whose name has just been spoken. Imagine standing there, as if in the tracks of your ancestors, and recall stories of events that occurred at that place long ago. Picture these events in your mind and appreciate, as if the ancestors were speaking to you directly, the knowledge the stories contain. Bring this knowledge to bear on your own disturbing situation. Allow the past to 79

inform your understanding of the present. You will feel better if you do. (p. 91)

Retracing one's environmental autobiography through re-telling, recounting and re­ interpreting events is a hermeneutic investigation. This section has helped me reconstruct my understanding of how the past informs and influences the present.

Understanding the relationship between spirit, land and life is an essential aspect of comprehending the multitude of complexities that natural environments possess. As

Cajete (2000) explains, this understanding is essential "to learning the full meaning of life" (p. 43). To better comprehend human dependence on the ecology that surrounds us, it is important to have opportunities to be part of the process of gathering or growing food. Understanding the numinous dimensions of place involves being immersed and connected with the land. Kane (1995) suggests "The principle of polyphony is therefore an echo in human expression of a world in which everything has intelligence, everything has personality, everything has voice" (p. 191). Non-human voices are an essential part of the Mythopoetic representation found in Oral Tradition.

As a child, I had little control of my surroundings or the people around me, however,

I perceived that what I thought was my own creation. Clearly, life experiences have changed me a great deal. When we lived at our cottage, I was curious about people who enjoyed reading more than being outdoors. For me, the idea of being, playing and working outside is usually more enticing than spending time in an imposed world of 80 print. Being in intact ecosystems of Northern Ontario as I create this literary work reminds me how much education has affected who I have become.

I have lived in the same places for most of my life. My earliest years were spent living in an apartment. I remember moving across the park to a house six doors from my grandparent's house when I was about three. We moved again, this time two doors closer when I was sixteen. I think that because I have lived in the same geographical locations as a student for most of my life, I have taken the privilege of living in Canada for granted.

Most of my acute memories are of leaving the city, school responsibilities and of escaping smog-riddled urban boundaries.

Last weekend I had the rare opportunity to return to a place that held many memories

I had almost forgotten. Our rock band was invited to perform at the place where I attended summer camp. I could recall how much I did not want to be there when I was a child. Sidrabene is a short drive from Milton and an even shorter drive from Rattle Snake

Point. This place where Latvians congregate was named in memory of a distant ancestral settlement remembered in Latvian legend. Cruickshank (1981) writes: "'Myth' tells of a time different from historical time as we know it, and describes origins and transformations of the world as it now appears. 'Legend' may be highly embellished but it can usually be traced to a historical event" (p. 68). Eco-poetics may encompass the world of myth as well as legend but it is a very broad term that can also be used to describe eco-poetry, interpretation and theory. Mythopoetics then, is a much more narrow term that is used to describe the poetic world of Myth. 81

Sidrabene is situated beside Six Mile Creek in which we used to train for our Red

Cross swimming badges. My favorite part of camp was learning the art of swimming up and down the river. We swam in the current of the water every day. Water is one thing that remains constant with my environmental experiences. I have been able to learn a great deal from water and it has been a source of healing and rest for me. Reading Kane's

(1995) work I realized that there are water spirits in ancient Irish myth-telling and that nature is "seen as having mentality (animus)" (p. 35). Water has been a reoccurring theme throughout my life.

After a delicious and plentiful meal, I went for a walk around the site used for our campground. I noticed that nothing much had changed. The floorboards for the tents were still located in the same area. I watched the sunset from the place we did our morning exercises. The tangerine and raspberry colours were breathtaking. Watching it led me to the memory of witnessing many summer sunrises and sunsets.

I am reminded of my favorite camp nodarbiba or activity, the udens sirojums, which translates as water wander, trek or adventure. It is difficult to translate this term because it is used to describe doing, movement, working, and activity. Part of Latvian language learning at the camp includes rules that attempted mono-lingual communication in the

Latvian language. I now know that similar tactics were used at residential schools to try to assimilate Indigenous cultures. Latvian Elders helped to create camps in an attempt to maintain cultural and ancestral traditions. Cultural traditions envisioned during these summer communal gatherings were an opportunity for the evocation of various elements 82 of ancestral traditions. Latvian camps involved an attempt to maintain cultural traditions whereas residential schools were established as a way to stamp them out. Rabbit-proof

Fence (Noyce, 2002) is a good example of the way living histories can shift from Oral to

Literary to Cinematic Tradition to convey much more than words can on their own.

Landscapes similar to Latvia's provided opportunities for those in intimate contact with North-American natural environments to find the language that could express their surroundings. For Latvians, a major factor in finding places to congregate and also to live was that certain places reminded them of the land they were forced to leave. Transcribing

Latvian to English is a difficult task because often place names have allusions to historical concepts that require extensive background knowledge. Lightning (1993) writes:

For anyone who has spent any time listening to Elders, to be told to rise early has a specific implication: that time before the sun rises is a time to prepare oneself for prayer, and dawn is a particularly appropriate time for prayer. It is necessary to "read" that into the text, however. There is a certain trust that if a person is "in harmony," and rises early, the prayer is an automatic outcome, (p. 235)

Many of the camp place names implied connections with ancestral ways of thinking and knowing the world. Places in the camp like pludmale or in the place of flooding - in other words, the place where the water would flood over in the spring. This term signified the place campers would go to swim. Knowing the different camp locales by the types of activities that took place there was designed to create a mind-map of the place we were living. We all put on our extra pair of shoes, hats and suntan lotion before setting out on 83 an all day hike through local land and water. It was an intense excursion. We walked for a while around the main roads behind the camp until around lunch time. Then we headed back along the river. I remember thinking how exciting the idea of walking back through the river was. In Wisdom sits in Places, Basso (1996) describes the importance of our environment:

For landscapes are always available to their seasoned inhabitants in more than material terms. Landscapes are available in symbolic terms as well, and so, chiefly through the manifold agencies of speech, they can be "detached" from their fixed spatial moorings and transformed into instruments of thought and vehicles of purposive behavior. Thus transformed, landscapes and the places that fill them become tools for the imagination, expressive means for accomplishing verbal deeds, and also, of course, eminently portable possessions to which individuals can maintain deep and abiding attachments, regardless of where they travel, (p. 75)

We were surrounded by nature and learned through the stories our Elders and counselors

told. I think by the end of the day everybody had been pushed to exhaustion but through this walk, we learned an immeasurable amount. I still take this place and the memories

attached to these ecological experiences wherever I go. This trek was a yearly ritual for

campers but now, unfortunately, the river is usually considered unsafe to venture into

because of excessive bacteria levels from fertilizers and other forms of pollution.

Although the nature walks at camp were quite wonderful, I didn't enjoy them much because there was a great divide between a few of us who stayed a week or two rather

than the whole summer. My best friends were at the other Latvian camp, Saulaine. There

seemed to be a divide between those who "owned" property and those who camped on 84 the commons or communal land. I also had to endure taunting from the cliquish campers who had cottages at Sidrabene.

There was an emphasis on ritual and performances grounded in Latvian Oral

Tradition. Each week indoor and outdoor activities were planned to develop a sense of the Mytho-poetic ancestral world. Reading "Rituals of Restoration" by William R. Jordan

(1993) helped me make the connection between rituals and my relationship with nature.

What it suggests, actually, is the possibility of recovering a "classical" relationship with nature - a real postmodern primitivism. The key to this is the recovery of ritual, or the performative tradition of ritual itself, as the dimension in which human beings have always negotiated problematic relationships such as those with nature or their gods. (p. 25)

Memorizing songs that would be sung at the fire as well as creating skits was a way to learn how to orate thoughts and ideas into stories.

North Country

Pushing our rational limits, perhaps we should think, at least occasionally, that the Earth is dreaming us... We can learn once again to treat the Earth as it was, on one level, sentient. We cannot do that with rational conciousness, but we can do it in a mythic mode. In that state, we can engage in a dialogue with the Earth, and find ways of translating gleanings from that interaction into rational conciousness. If we do so, then our relationship with earth will inevitably - if gradually - heal, as surely and as naturally as day follows night. (Devereux, 1996, pp. 248 - 249)

By far, the most essential rituals I have celebrated throughout my life were visits to the following places in Ontario: my grandparent's farm near Timmins, Ontario, our family cottage on Lake K. and J. Lake which I use to refer to a northern Canadian system 85 of rivers and lakes that shall remain nameless, as well as several Latvian communal gathering locations. Returning to these places is a yearly pilgrimage. To return to these places to gather, share food and sit around a fire to recount the stories and songs that helped to bring us there is to return to ancestral ways of being. This tradition of pilgrimage becomes part of cultural celebration and continuity. The following photograph is of one such place of yearly return.

Figure 6: Mirrored Sunrise 86

Of family rituals, my favorite is canoeing along secluded lakeshores of Northern

Ontario. River and lake-shores that do not appear on most maps and have an absence of houses and cottages are some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever encountered.

My dad and his friends learned about J. Lake searching through maps to find swampland.

They wanted a place they could hunt for moose and ended up finding a lake where fish are naturally abundant. The journey to our spring campsite is a yearly routine. At the beginning of every long weekend in May, we load up the car and set out on our annual camping trip. The camping crew would meet at the donut shop in North Bay. From there it is a three hour drive to an abandoned W.W.II airfield to spend the remainder of the night. The following morning the journey continues via boat trip that lasts the better part

of the day, depending how easily we mediate the eight to eleven beaver dams that lay

ahead. The journey brings us along meandering rivers that lead downstream, upstream,

through smaller lakes and tributaries to the mouth of the river where we fish.

The only buildings on the journey are at the far end of the lake, a farm site that once

belonged to an Indigenous woman. Often, we don't see anyone other than our fishing

crew for the entire weekend. It is the responsibility of the person at the bow of the boat to

help navigate and spot rocks before the propeller or paddles slice over them. Everyone is

usually very excited at the prospect of fishing. The fish continue to be abundant and the

probability of not catching one in less than ten casts is very low. For me, however, the

highlight is a total immersion in an intact ecosystem. I started to write this poem one

weekend as I watched the sunrise from a floating canoe in the middle of the lake. 87

Out There

black point stares through vegetation stick sound slicing air flies by black under wing gray at head and tail tip

dives at me veering second before impact again, deciding who is threat, who is warning...

two birds sit silently where stone turns to water alike statues suddenly sinking surfacing... floating

brown bump, spot on the mirror slowly enlarging wades out of water brushes long fur, every hair placed

woodpecker watching, waiting small hammer knocking for food in the hum of a train

(Kulnieks, 2008)

Something is magical about being there because being there makes me want to stay forever. Through my experiences away from the city, I began to understand that the major and subtle difference between being in the city and being up north was the 88 environment. In the city, everything is constructed or manipulated by people. It was interesting for me to read Cobb's (1959) "Work in Progress: The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood." She quotes Julian Huxley: "Life is and must be a continuum because of its basic process of self-reproduction: in the perspective of time all living matter is continuous because every fresh portion of it has been produced from pre-existing living matter" (p. 541). Formalized systems of public education and conditioning make it difficult to consider the fact that everything around us is alive. "Out there", you are a non-

static part of the environment, and nothing besides the railroad, hydro-wires, farm and what we brought along was made by people. As Basso (1996) explains, sacredness of place is closely related to communal and ancestral engagement with place. The following

is a version of the same poem revisited twenty seasons later:

Tracing Shorelines

Black-fly mosquito symphony vibrates vibrato hums along strokes of the paddle waves softly splash star-mapped ancestral paths nature sings soul stories

cavernous entrances glimpse perennial return sillouette stares beyond transformed vegetation ancient moss peers through droplets exploration of northern space

muscles loosen yesterdays urban sprawl dissipates harmony dwells on woven sounds of campfire voices sleeping bags chucked in weathered tents to await impending thunder years bubble and ignite in campfire blaze 89 ember tipped sticks slice still northern field atmosphere roasted hazelnuts roast along rock circle crimson orange charcoal grows as epic nonsense echoes across winding ice-forged lakes coolers and cardboard boxes scavenged under blue tarp walls lantern hangs in propinquity of gas-fueled stove above cooling shore-fried pike stragglers immersed in mind-walks tangerine dawn pilgrimage beckons sleep and magic fishing drifting, trolling, watching... black wing-tips approach soar intimately above revealing grey head and tail tip diving, avoiding incursion, veering breath of menace amongst dawn's breath woodpecker perches on birch tree hammers for food amidst space permeating train vibrations hum slowly disappears two cranes along cove sit silently where stone turns to water slowly dark-brown damp slick-haired statuesque beaver

submerges surfaces coasts wades shoreline brushes long fur every hair placed clear drops form ripples on liquid mirror 90

The Cottage

My earliest memory of my relationship with nature is of swimming with my parents at our cottage on Lake K. The water was terrifyingly inviting. (Terrifying because who really knows all that lives in the waters and inviting because the ability of being able to float and swim within them provides a space to think in different ways than on the land).

I remember one of the first times I entered the lake, being lifted in from the dock, kicking and screaming. The water was over my head there... much like the YWCA pool I had learned to swim in with my mother, except that it appeared endless. My brothers, cousins and I spent most warm days in or waiting to get into the water. We played in the water until we turned purple and were told to dry our hair in the sun before going in again. The wait was agonizing! I remember the excitement that was generated by the prospect of being able to go swimming in the lake.

One summer day we went to the public beach near the cottage. I was upset and maybe

even angered by the prospect of having to go home again. I did not want to leave the

water. My protest was to stay in the water diving for clams at the bottom of the lake until

I was blue. This event marks a near miss with hypothermia. My parents heated the car as

I shook uncontrollably from staying in the water too long. The desire not to leave the lake

and a desire to be a part of it could have been detrimental to my health. However, this

experience helped me appreciate the grandeur of nature and to respect and understand my

own limitations relative to those of natural places. 91

It was interesting to read Thomas Buckley's story about the power of water in "Doing

Your Thinking":

Do like they used to do it in the old days. You're mad, you think you're pretty tough? Well, go down to the beach in the high surf, you'll find out. You go fight with the waves for a while, kick them and beat them and try to knock them down. Your Father, the ocean, will show you something. Now when you've had enough, when you can't stand up any more, go lie on the beach, that's your Mother. Kick her and pound her and yell at her too. She'll forgive you. When you're done in, just lie still and cry. She'll tell you something you need to know." (Cited in Dooling & Jordan-Smith, 1989, p. 46)

From the first time I swam, I knew there was something awesome about my relationship with the water. Even now, every time I go for a swim, I wish I could stay forever. I think this has something to do with the fact that my mothers grandparents lived close to the

Baltic Sea and that water and fishing were an essential aspect of their living and survival.

Wilson (1993) proposes that ancestral memories are a physical part of our being. His experiment shows how past memories are recorded at a cellular level and can contribute to future behavior:

He made a little wooden box, strung a number of wires through it, filled it with sand, and put some worms into the box. He then connected a bright light over the box and wired it so that whenever he turned the bright light on, it also turned on a small electrical current in the wires, which shocked the worms. He did this briefly and watched to see what the worms would do. He noticed that every time he turned the light on, the worms flinched from the shock. After a while he disconnected the battery to the fine wires. When he turned the light on, the worms would still flinch, anticipating the shock. He tried this out a few more times and the worms kept doing the same thing. Then he took the worms out and put a new batch of worms into the box. He ground up the old worms and put their remains back into the back into the box where they would be food for the new bunch of worms. After a while, when the new worms had sufficient time to have 92

eaten the old worms, he watched as he flipped on the light. The new worms flinched. How did they know? How did they know to connect the light with the shock of the wires? He reasoned that by eating the previous worms, the new worms had also ingested the information the old worms gained from their experience with the electric shocks, (p. 65)

Does this ancestral knowledge make me feel good because it connects me with the work of my great, great grandfather who's main way of life was fishing? Do I go back to my fetal state when I am surrounded by water? I suspect that the correlation between the water we all lived in before we were born helps connect everyone with water, but I think my connection is deeply embedded in who I am. I wonder why I didn't enjoy fishing nearly as much as my father and brother. Although I don't like the fishy taste that fish

acquire once they have been out of the water for a few hours, I enjoy the taste of smoked

or shore-fried fish. At some restaurants, I enjoy eating Halibut because to me, these fish have a more diluted flavour. I question how much these preferences are connected to

ancestral experiences and how much of them are a matter of chance.

The Farm

I remember spending many wonderful weeks immersed in the woodlands

encompassing the farm my mother's parents kept. The farm has not been used in a way

that could provide an income for our family for over 50 years. However, a local farmer

and friend has been able to maintain a sustainable harvest from the fields and the land

looks and feels as it did when I was growing up. Because he uses responsible farming

methods, the nutrients required to grow healthy plants have not been depleted from the 93 soil. The forest has not yet returned and the farmhouse is surrounded by fields that had been cleared for open field cattle farming. There was no cultivated grass in the lawn but rather a wide assortment of local self-seeding plants such as plantain, dandelions and other "weeds" from the area including daisies, red clover, Indian paint brush, trefoil and wild roses reappearing after being mowed year after year. The house looked out towards an old grey barn, and behind the barn was a vast garden.

Every year before our arrival, my grandparents planted potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, corn, cabbages, beets, sunflowers, beans and our favorite vegetable, green peas. We ate the sweet-tasting foods whenever we wanted a snack. It was interesting to think about Paul Shepard's (1977) analysis of "the most remote Indians of

Central and South America" building an immunity to germs: "They frolicked happily in the debris of village and camp, dusty and mud-smeared, thrusting everything in their mouths, tasting their way, so to speak, into the environment. Neel knew that infants everywhere do the same if given the chance" (p. 25). Most of the peas were so sweet that we never tired of eating them. The lighter ones tasted dull when raw, but when boiled and

eaten with a bacon-gravy they made a delicious meal. I feel my brothers, cousins and I had more fun-filled learning experiences at the farm retreat than anywhere else. In the

following poem I try to envision a picture of a summer moment as we were growing up. 94

Learning about myself thinking and others about summer especially in forests i realize

BLUEBERRIES staring through sky surrounding clear-cut WATERLIFE running struggling crawling to become oblivious OLD beyond forced to listen cloud watching as rustling leaves breathe forgiveness not beyond reach trying making noticing thoughts flow not knowing beckoning understanding we did not want to know seeing the world m sand Reminding us we are... (Kulnieks, 2008) 95

My grandparents would return to the north as soon as the snow had melted and stayed until the end of November. Throughout our visits, I remember being entranced by my grandfather's stories. There was something magical about the stories he told. Borgmann

(1992b) tells a similar story:

In those days, as far as we can know, both the nature of reality and the reality of nature were divine. The world was full of divinities, it was a spiritual plenum. Nature, reality and divinity were one. The human attitude that corresponded to this unified world was one of piety, (p. 1)

He describes this world as: "the original human condition, the hunting and gathering culture that prevailed for some hundred of thousands of years" (p. 1). I suggest that this transcendence was our mind-set as children, and through our connection with this place

enabled transcendence into it and to those understandings when we return there.

One story we were told, was of Indigenous people who lived in the forests where we played. In public school, I remember learning that they hadn't lived here for many years.

For me, the past, regardless of how far back, was really not that far from our own time

there. I assumed they must be around, somewhere... hunting... living. I remember

imagining that I would someday meet someone who understood and lived the Indigenous

stories of this place. I think I was feeling resonances from long ago. Wilson (1993)

describes the relationship between "ancient memories contained within the biological

cells of my bones, my marrow, my skin cells passed on for generations upon

generations..." (p. 7). I felt a strong connection with the spiritual nature of the forest from 96 eating the plants and animals that lived within an interconnected place that ancestral stories describe.

Part of re-interpreting my farm experience involves seeing our time at the farm in relation to thousands of years people have lived in what we now call Ontario. My experiences on that land, away from the city, helped me realize who I am. Cobb (1959) writes: "Man must create his own psychological identity in order to survive, and he represents a climax in the historically related achievements in discontinuity. His psychosocial history shares in this process..." (p. 541). I was much like the experimental worms Wilson (1993) describes. It was as though I knew how I once lived.

Picking blueberries up north at the farm helped me understand the immense wealth that forests contain. Inevitably, my peers and I would decide to play instead. It might have been because we occasionally stumbled over hornet nests but I remember the running and screaming that followed an unsuspecting immersion into an underground nest. You had to run until you couldn't anymore. Each summer we would pick until boredom, and then invent games to explore our surroundings, eating until stuffing down more sweet, juicy berries was unthinkable. I sometimes wish I could still be there,

collecting blueberries, comparing the leaf to berry ratio, and the fullness of our baskets.

There was no lake by the farm but some days we went to the udenskritums or

waterfall to fish. After a half hour drive, we would cross some fields and follow a path

through the woods until the sound of the water got louder and louder. The water was

foamy and difficult to swim in. After a few casts, while my brother and father fished, I 97 would catch crayfish. I don't remember which I liked better, visiting the waterfall or going to swim at a nearby lake, a twenty minute drive in the other direction, but for me, being near water is the essential aspect of every vacation.

In this natural environment, we lived in our minds. This was a place to move from an urban view of life towards a view that focused on learning the outdoors; a place to imagine beyond the urban world of concrete. Turner (1985) argues that nature is everywhere and rather than being distant from natural places, people are a natural part of the wilderness. Being part of nature included trying to tune into ancestral stories and songs. During summers and long weekends, my brothers, cousins and I would be taken far away from the city, to our intimate world of the north. I do not remember ever being in the city longer than a week during summer holidays until my high-school years.

We named the area where my grandparents farmed ziemelos or "in the north."

Cruikshank (1990) outlines the importance of place names:

If doing oral history really is a process of translating between alternative stories, place names may provide both a point of entry to the past and insight about how symbolic resources like landscape and language may be used to discuss the past. (p. 64)

A displaced Indigenous people can become naturalized to a place by using Indigenous methodologies to create place names as concentrates of ecological and temporal understandings. Thinking about my grandfather's stories for the past few years, I realized they needed to have many layers, so that everybody in the family found something useful or interesting in them. A short saying, one of his favorites judging by the frequency he 98 would tell it, seemed to be about eating. My translation doesn't give the Latvian version justice, but I will translate the general theme. Before during and after mealtimes he would say "... I sure hate this food, so I eat it, because you certainly can't eat what you love..."

This story provided different imagery for each person in the room. Everybody would smile or pause.

Grandfather Stories

Playing chess with our grandfather created a mind-map of urban environments.

Playing through the woodlands with my brothers, cousins and friends inspired questions about the things we found about the place we were living. Vectevs or Grandfather spoke in story, and had a collection of them, interwoven with his own experiences. They are recollections of events that were intense, too intense to forget. Teaching me to split logs always involved stories that could be applied to different areas of life. To split the log you need to look into it and choose the easiest path. Not worrying about all the other possible routes that the spilt could take and aiming for the widest split in the log was the key to a successful chop. Thinking about working on that tree, I realize my grandfather was teaching me many lessons I have often applied to other aspects of my life. Looking for the easiest route is also a good approach to getting things done. We used all the different parts of the tree. First the tree was felled. This entailed identifying how to solve the problem of where the tree would fall. Next the tree was sawed into small pieces. This divides the task into manageable components. Branches were burned on our campfire and 99 the rest was piled away for colder days. Nothing was wasted. Even the ashes from the fire were used to deter certain bugs from living in the garden soil the following spring.

Chopping wood to be piled for the following winter, I observe the various types of logs that have been split and cured. This methodology for keeping warm is not that removed from the houses throughout Toronto that still have wood-burning fireplaces. Just about every place of residence (permanent and otherwise) outside of urban boundaries has a functional wood-burning stove. It is important to know the different temperatures logs burn at, the different types of heat different types of tree generate, dry-rot, green-cut, and otherwise. What moves the process of burning wood towards the realm of being a focal practice is the engagement with the trees on multiple levels. Planting, moving and pruning trees is part of knowing the world of the tree. Understanding the conditions apple trees need to be fruitful as well as identification of tree varieties is also part of this process.

After we worked together, he would retell an anecdote about a fly on a bull's horn.

When someone asked the fly what it was doing, he said, "we're plowing." This incident can be seen in different ways. It conjured the idea that the fly was giving the bull advice as my grandfather was instructing me. It also alludes to the communalistic relationship between different animals in nature. On another level, the fly really wasn't doing much. I think these moments were a part of a larger story grounding me in the tradition of my

ancestors. Working with my grandfather gave me a taste of what it would have been like to work with my ancestors as he had done. 100

The questions we ask shaped how we saw the world around us. Some of the intense questions my grandfather asked are still vividly etched in my mind. One summer I had the opportunity to spend a few days alone with my grandparents, while waiting for my cousins to arrive. My grandfather asked me what the most powerful thing is. He made me think about this question a long time before he spoke. I answered God?, The government?, People? He suggested that "zemes pievilksanas speks" is the strongest.

Translated, that is "the earth's pulling power" or gravity. He asked if I could hear it. I didn't know what he was talking about. I assumed he must have been getting senile.

"Listen to the rustling of the leaves... Everything is connected to the power of gravity... wind, water... everything around us..."

As I was beginning to write my environmental biography, I recalled this moment to be the whole story and could only focus on the way my grandfather's question made me feel. Through writing about it, I realized that this question was actually an introduction to a part of his story that he referred to before, and would return to. Thinking about this question in terms of creating teaching plans, I understand the magic an introductory question can hold. Before writing about it here, I didn't really understand the possibility of these questions, that in fact, they are as powerful as the lessons themselves because they guide the learning process.

Again, the story he told had the flavour of his own experience and took a long time to tell. In light of my reading I suspect the story lasted the duration of our time together at the farm. The only way I can make sense of this concept is by imagining and realizing 101 that our brief visits were well planned, though they did not seem to be. Slowly, he guided us towards new realizations which continue to guide my thinking. It is also very difficult to make sense of everything that affects our lives. It was interesting to think about

Wilson's (1993) "Honoring Spiritual Knowledge" which suggests the reason we cannot see everything is because it would detract from our focus:

If we were able to see everything, we wouldn't be able to pay attention, to focus on one thing at a time. The same applies to our hearing. We cannot hear everything. We cannot hear the radio waves going through the air. We cannot hear the animals talking to each other. We can hear some of them, but some we can't, because our hearing is limited to a small spectrum of sound, (p. 66)

This also applies to developing an understanding of life itself. The story he told after his introduction about the rustling of the leaves was not told linearly. At the time, it seemed to be about his experiences. I now think of his story as a "good talk" about beliefs as

Basso's (1987) transcription of Nick's metaphor explains in "Stalking With Stories":

So someone stalks you and tells a story about what happened long ago. It doesn't matter if other people are around - you're going to know he's aiming at you. All of the sudden it hits you! It's like an arrow, they say. Sometimes it just bounces off - it's too soft and you don't think about anything. But when it's strong it goes in deep and starts working on your mind right away... (p. Ill)

I think some of his arrows transcend time and still hit me from time to time. I think he was trying to keep us on the right path. Walter Lightning (1993) uses metaphor to illustrate the journey of life. "Life is often described as a path. Where does this path lead?

Perhaps it is a path to enlightenment. The elders kept telling us to keep on the path, or try to stay on the path, and they say that it is a difficult path to follow" (p. 247). Grandfather 102 described his youthful encounters with spirituality and how he grappled with questions about his own education and faith. He explained how he had been an atheist, but that the wars had changed his mind. Making me part of the stories through making connections with my own understandings and experiences, he was able to help me change my way of thinking. It was not by chance then, that he was telling me these stories as I was entering my own adolescence.

There were various themes that were reiterated, for example, some of his sayings, of which I have taken what they call "ownership" in education theorizing. One of his favorites was "Sirds nav motors" which translated reads "the heart is not a motor." He had stories to back up these ideas. He used to drink a great deal of coffee and came to think of it as a negative habit after the doctor warned him that he could no longer drink it if he wanted to stay alive. As we drank tea made from different kinds of plants including herbs and jams, he talked about how his grandfather would warm his hands on his cup as he drank his tea while he fished early in the morning. I still think of this story when I drink warm tea on a cold day.

Another saying he liked was "Rikle nav skurstens", which meant "(your) throat is not

a chimney." He described a close relative who turned yellow and eventually smoked through a hole in his throat. I remember stories about my grandfather smoking and

eventually quitting when he couldn't breathe one night while living at the farm. He said he prayed that he could stay alive a little longer so that he could look after his family

asking for another chance in return for never smoking again. I smoked for years but gave 103 it up when I turned twenty-five. My cousin and I had a bet on quitting before reaching that age. We were told that you can't replenish your lungs unless you quit before twenty- five.

The other quote he often repeated was from an article he read in The Sun: "If you want your brain (to) shrink, drink." Looking through old photographs of family gatherings there were many pictures of alcohol bottles. I suspect that he was trying to warn us about the harmful effects of drinking. My mother explained that he lost several very good friends to alcoholism.

One of the last stories he told me was when we were upstairs at his house in the

Queen and Roncesvilles area. I did a good deal of maintenance work there. One of the routines we would go through before beginning my work, was to define a price for the job. He always wanted to know how much the job was going to cost although I didn't know myself. We discussed the merits of piecework versus an hourly wage. He obviously knew what working by the hour could mean. The story he told me on this particular visit was about school. At that time in my life, I did not like being in school. He brought me back to the north by telling me of his early school experiences as he had told me before.

He talked for a while about the course his daughters' lives had taken. He described how he wished he could have had a (university) education. He was able to reiterate what he thought of my parents, that they were turigi or resilient. The story came to a close with the saying "Izmanto tavas iespejas kamer tev kapa rok" or "make use of use your opportunities/abilities until they dig you into a grave." Thinking about his life, I now 104 realize how different circumstances shaped it and how he would have liked me to avoid similar predicaments through the insights his stories could provide. Obviously, his experiences were heavily influenced by the first and second world war and seemed very different to my own. In hindsight, many of the issues he had to grapple with are very similar to some of the situations that I encounter with regards to fate, choice and destiny.

Shortly after this conversation I went to visit him in the hospital. He had become swollen almost beyond recognition. When he asked what I thought would become of him,

I was reminded about his story about when he had to watch over his father. His father asked him what he thought would happen next. Grandfather once told me the story of his father's last moments and how my grandfather hoped he would get better and they would celebrate Christmas together as they always had. As I realized I was telling a similar story we looked at each other but as tears flowed I turned my head to hide. I was the last to see him alive. I wrote this poem thinking about him:

Reading your life

I can only imagine how you lived running from everything you held dear as explosions approached

after burying sweat-stained silver in fear of being sent back to face firing squads

for having too much hoping towards swift return 105

ancestral lands walking and racing our minds to familiar places

crossing borders working through P.O.W. camps blessed to have the privilege of future moments

enclosed in wires ready to work for anything anywhere but home remembering through ritual and vision

everything misunderstood and unknown you return a rich tourist from the west years of life in memories

as spoken language shifted staring into tired eyes hoping for more

(Kulnieks, 2008)

Grandmother Wisdom

A vivid memory of my grandmother is evoked when I do get the chance to go berry picking. As I get ready, I remember her giving us each a metal cup to make the picking

easier. Picking the berries into a cup instead of the basket made us feel more productive.

She would reason that the cups were easier to fill, but also, if you tripped carelessly on a branch, you might avoid losing all the berries. 106

I will always remember sitting near the fire with my grandparents at their farm.

Staring into the coals or watching the flames from the branches on the fire rise, my grandfather and grandmother would share some of the stories they had collected throughout their lives. Before campfire evenings, we would collect small wild hazel nuts, protected by a green sharp outer shell. Grandmother always knew where the most fruitful trees were. The only way to get rid of the prickly feeling was to suck the tiny thistles from your fingers. Miraculously, this did not hurt your mouth. We would also roast these on the fire. That also got rid of the prickly green outer shell. Then we would crack the inner shells to find our reward. Thinking about these moments evokes comforting memories. Going back to the farm, I return to my childhood. Basso (1996) writes:

It is then we come to see that attachments to places may be nothing less than profound, and that when these attachments are threatened we may feel threatened as well. Places, we realize, are as much a part of us as we are of them, and senses of place—yours, mine, and everyone else's— partake complexity of both. (p. xiii -xiv)

I can feel the spirit that is one with nature.

My grandmother loved gathering mushrooms growing in the surrounding forest.

There was a sense of pride knowing what to eat and what was poisonous. This is something my mother continues to help me learn about. My brother would go with grandmother to gather the mushrooms and learned which ones were edible. Once he said he grew as big as the trees after tasting one he was warned not to touch. He didn't tell us about that until years after his experience. I think it scared him because he didn't understand what had happened. He said it was like a dream, and he wasn't even sure if it 107 was real. Just as grandmother knew where the mushrooms, berries and forest nuts grew - she also offered a "matter of fact" explanation of things we, as grandkids, should not focus on. For example, when watching television, she would say "It ka mes to jav nebutu redzejusi" or "As if we haven't seen or witnessed that already." Even when I was unsure and wanted to see more of the flashy portrayals of sexuality, these suggestions lead to a questioning of appropriateness.

Reading Peter Hamill's (1990) "Crack in the Box" was quite an eye-opener. Through our discussion about the article I realized that for most people in our society, television watching seems like a natural occurrence. "Each move from channel to channel alters mood, usually with music or a laugh track. On any given evening you can laugh, be frightened, feel tension, thump with excitement" (p. 64). Hamill's (1990) description regarding the connection between drug use and television continues to be a relevant reminder of the way television has replaced many outdoor experiences:

I also remembered when I was a boy in the 40's and early 50's, and drugs were a minor sideshow, a kind of dark little rumor. And there was one major difference between that time and this: television." (p. 63)

I think television is not only the reason for the increased level of drug addiction, but is actually a vicarious drug altering our moods and changing us, just as any chemical does.

Television cannot compare to playing in the forest. However, without being in this particular place with grandmother's teachings and determination for ecological learning, it would not be possible to imagine or conjure a deep relationship with landscape. The privilege that natural environments provide should be a birthright to all people living in 108

North America, and for that matter, the world. Instead, many stories about natural environments and the animals that live there have been (and continue to be) invented to foster a fear of natural places.

Garezers

What brought me to visit my grandparents those last few years I can attribute to my moments at Garezeru Vasaras Vidusskola or Long Lake Summer High School in

Michigan. This camp is located beside Long Lake and surrounded by forest. Latvian youth from all over America are immersed in Latvian stories kept alive through songs

and traditions. The summer-school sessions for grades nine to twelve lasts six weeks.

In the first year I got to meet my class and become accustomed to our surroundings. I

didn't like the idea of being there but made friends with other students who had a similar

inclination towards afternoon sporting activities. Having made several new friends from

New York just before camp during the Toronto Dziesmas Svetki or Latvian Song Festival

in 1986 provided an opportunity to practice scouting activities like learning to walk the

terrain of the woodlands. I still get together with these friends during some of the events

we have made traditional meeting times such as St. John's Day each year which is an

ancient celebration of the longest day of the year, commonly referred to as Summer

Solstice. Song Festivals are a way to sing different North American cities every four

years. It is a way to give remembrance to friends and families scattered throughout 109 different locations around the world. It is important to meet people who share these traditions, cultures as well as Mythopoetic songs and stories.

There was some question as to whether I would be allowed to enter the fourth grade but after a short exam the teacher, M. Paudrupe allowed me into the class. I still correspond with her over twenty years later. She designed my entrance exam and was responsible for the class (kind of like a home-room teacher). She had been a teacher all her life and has remained immersed in theories of learning throughout the course of her life. She taught the language class with a great deal of passion and emotion. More importantly, she made me realize the potential of my learning abilities. Her emotion and love for learning was truly inspirational. Reading Lightning's (1993) work brought me back to Garezers:

It would seem that the Elders of North American cultures have something that they want us to know for our survival not only physically, but more importantly spiritually as well. In the pursuit of knowledge, of understanding, of education, of learning, perhaps if we open our minds in a non judgmental way, a compassionate way, we may move toward improving our views, our perceptions of what the mind is and how it affects our consciousness as human beings, (p. 219)

I make a special point of seeing Mirdza during "Volleyball Weekend" in Garezers when

Latvians meet each year to revive friendships, develop new ones, and to play volleyball.

One year after I graduated I saw her at a church service. She was speaking to the

audience and said that there had been some dark moments that summer and sunshine was needed. At that moment the sun burst through the clouds and shone on her. This event reminded me of the many epiphanal moments she inspired. Through her lessons I learned 110 to communicate more effectively. However, personal discussions with her about the paths and courses lives can take made me remember who I was and who I could be. We talked about grandparents and why I should visit them. Through her sincerity, I felt as though I could reveal my thoughts and by telling my own story, I was able to formulate ideas in correspondence with linguistic cues contained in the Latvian language. I realized that I would face the inevitable death of my grandparents but at least they were alive and I had some time to learn from them. I also realized that present actions would determine how my life would unfold.

I knew that it was really only for my benefit to be in the class although at first I didn't really want to be there. Slowly I tuned into my natural surroundings, completed the tasks we were assigned, and began to realize the gift of learning. In the text he is trying to

stress the importance of a learning process that is total, a process of internalization and

actualization within oneself in a total way. That means that a learning process is

something that is felt. It is like saying of your teacher, at that state of realization that you have learned something, "I hear and feel you at the same time" (Lightning, 1993 p. 243).

This realization brought with it a great deal of emotion, but also gave me the wisdom to visit my grandparents more often when I got home. She also gave some good talks

about parties. It was important for me to hear the phrase "visu ar meru" which means

something like "everything in moderation". Reading Linda Akan's story I was struck by

her reading of the following quote by Anne Cameron (Akan, 1993) in Healing Wounds: Ill

"...Every decision a person makes is a political and spiritual decision. If you decide you will never live a slave to drugs and alcohol... you have made a spiritual choice" (p. 211).

Akan adds "Total abstinence is a spiritual choice" and implies this is a better choice. In our society, abstinence is a difficult topic to grapple with. It helped me when I heard I could have fun at parties through taking care to control what I put in my body. Although this measure has swayed from time to time, I still use this knowledge. I don't think it would have helped me to hear I couldn't drink at all because it may have tempted me to

do something I could get away with.

The other essential aspect of living in Garezers was our exposure to a deeper

understanding of the oral histories of the Latvian diaspora community. Stories told by

Elders connected us with cultural traditions. Cruikshank (1981) writes:

Literacy, he says, can account for the shift in perspective, because our people can write things down, they can store information and inspect it. This permits criticism and the growth of cumulative knowledge, the basis of Western science.

In a related discussion, some linguists argue that a fundamental prerequisite or continuing development of languages in the twentieth century is literacy... (p. 71)

Orality preserved much of what the communist system tried to destroy. It was also a great

experience to be taught about my own culture by people who had been educated in Latvia

before it was occupied by the Soviet Union in WWII. It was important for me to develop

a cultural understanding of my ancestry as I reflect about why I live where I do. Eksteins 112

(1999) research describes the utter distaste occupying forces had of the people who lived in Latvian landscapes. Eksteins (1999) quotes a German clergyman's notes from 1777:

These men go for cheaper than niggers in the American Colonies. A man servant can be bought for 30 to 50 roubles, an artisan, cook or weaver for anything up to one hundred roubles. The same price is asked for a whole family; a maidservant rarely costs more than 10 roubles, and children can be bought for 4 roubles each. Agricultural workers and their children are sold or bartered for horses, dogs—and even tobacco pipes, (p. 25)

Knowing this history in the Oral Tradition, I realize that there are numerous reasons my family moved to Canada. My grandparents questioned if they could survive the communist occupation of Latvia. Moving away from cherished ancestral lands is why I am here in North America, writing this work. My desire to move away from the city may be a connection to my ancestral memory of living in non-urban environments. Though I

enjoy the luxuries of living in Toronto, I think someday I would like to discover what it would be like to live outside of city limits.

As summers drew to a close, we would load the cars, pile in and head for Toronto. I used to wonder why we needed to go back. I now seldom question why I live in the city because I understand the role economics plays in how people choose to live. It implies that cities are as livable as the people in them are sane and mature - and as Paul Shepard

explains in "Place and Human Development" the journey into ecological maturity does not require continuous immersion in a garden (p. 12).

Through remembering the places which I once took for granted, I have gained a better understanding of where I come from, and how I would like to live. I am grateful 113 for what I am able to learn from my ancestors. In a way, many of the negative experiences I have encountered prepared me for future experiences that now appear trivial in comparison. The events I have described are moments that were of great intensity when I first experienced them. However, this intensity is the reason I still remember them vividly so many years later.

Most memories I have retained are of being in the wilderness. I find peace and feel in harmony with nature - the fragrant forests, the beautiful shades of green meadows - the wild flowers - all dependent on the gift of water. It is ironic that we do little to stop our water supply from becoming more and more polluted by fertilizers, acid rain and industrial runoff. One of the reasons I fear living in Latvia is because the publicly

accessible water has become terribly polluted. Water from taps often appears to be brown. This summer I noticed that the water we use in Toronto smells like sewage. It is

horrifying to think of the consequences we face as water supplies get polluted or sold to

the United States. Developing a connection with local places should be a major focus of

the curricula presented in public systems of learning because it is through these

engagements that learners formulate deeper understandings and connections with the

places they live. I am also certain that the ability of our species to survive depends on

changing attitudes future generations have towards Mother Earth. The failure of

environmental education is that it reproduces previous models of science that are not in

line with sustainable ways of living. Looking to Indigenous ways of developing a 114 connection with place is a way to shift current trends of environmental degradation and destruction currently taking place across the world.

Scouting Environmental Education

Reading Seaton's works has helped me understand my own development in the

Latvian Scout movement by returning to his original methodologies that can foster healthy relationships with place. Two little savages: Being the adventures of two boys who lived as Indians and what they learned (Seton, 1903) has been of particular interest in re-conceptualizing my understanding of movements of scouting. This is a story of the adventures of two boys mediating their paths towards adolescence and adulthood. The story also serves as a methodological outline for engagements with place from a perspective of desiring to become naturalized to a particular place.

One of the stories contained in Seaton's (1903) work that reminded me about my own

engagements in the woods is a story of preparing a shelter, sleeping gear, and the importance of dryness. During sunny days, it is a common exercise at all camps I have

attended, to put sleeping bags and other damp clothes on a line to dry. Keeping warm when taking a break from hiking or working by bundling up, even when it seems warm,

changing damp clothes after hiking and making sure there is a substantial amount of wood collected to keep a camp fire burning throughout the night, are essential codes of behavior. Although these common processes are not crucial for intercity life, in learning 115 to mediate larger areas of terrain, the types of knowledge Seaton's work highlights are an integral aspect of outdoor learning.

Latvian scouts gather in familiar and unfamiliar territories each season. I have been

involved with the Latviesu Skauti or the Latvian Scout Movement throughout my life and have gained a great deal of understanding about nature through being immersed in a

curriculum of outdoor exploration. Sheridan's (1994) work explains that this immersion is

an invaluable aspect of learning about nature. Lessons in ecological thought have fostered

my enthusiasm for engagements in pristine landscapes and will resonate with my

experiences in future places I will encounter. Learning about place can be transferred in a

variety of ways to other places I move through. The language of stories I bring with me,

whether in the form of songs which I invent, or the ideas that Elders send with me,

represent this learning. Through intergenerational knowledge provided by Elders of the

Latvian scout movement, I recognize the importance of essential survival skills. I add this

segment of my autobiography because I feel that these outdoor experiences have

influenced my perceptions about Mother Earth. Sheridan (1994) writes:

The inexact classification of curriculum, along with equally inexact divisions of story, myth, and scientific knowledge come together through experiential relationship with traditional material life in participation with the natural elements of place, (p. 68)

These experiences continue to influence what I am able to think about.

Learning how to start a fire in any type of weather was one of the earliest lessons I

learned in Latvian scouts. Although we were quizzed on how this could be done, it wasn't 116 until we were outside in the forest that we could master this skill. I believe this knowledge saved my life many years later. I have encountered dangerously cold conditions several times near our family cottage, where the creek flows from the beaver damn that created a lake on the other side of the main road. In the conclusion of her essay, Cruikshank (1990) writes: "Visiting familiar places provides a context for a range of memories about life experience" (p. 63). I have visited these kinds of places throughout my life. Returning to them in my mind reminds me of past experiences and informs who I am becoming.

Growing older, I felt a need to distance myself from my parents when we would go to our cottage. Becoming an adolescent I spent a good part of my time alone or with brothers and friends, learning the art of survival camping. One night in early spring I remember going to bed without noticing that my sleeping bag had lost most of its down feathers that I thought would keep me warm. The cold finally awakened me, shivering, as morning rays of light shone through my sleeping bag. It had snowed throughout the night and everything was covered in a soft blanket of damp snow. I used all my strength to find materials (mostly birch bark and dead evergreen branches) to set up a fire. I recall my fire-building lessons of starting with tiny branches and building to larger ones. By the time I was finished, I was shaking uncontrollably and could barely light the match. In

Sam Gill's essay (Cited in Dooling & Jordan-Smith, 1989) "The Trees Stood Deep

Rooted" he describes the importance of experience on one's perceptions: 117

All learning is experiential. It follows clearly from the Yurok theory of individuality that knowledge is an object of perceptual experience, and only an individual is capable of experiencing for himself. Here, we find what seems extreme subjectivity being interpreted as pure objectivity. What is thought by a person and what is experienced by him as true are two different things and in the Yurok view, the difference is immediately obvious to the skilled observer, the teacher who has himself experienced the truth at hand. If this teacher does not see for himself the evidence of his student's having experienced, seen, the facts of a matter, the student's solution to the problem at hand is not accepted by the teacher. "Belief," obviously, has no part in the system; an individual either knows the facts, or he is ignorant of them. (pp. 48-49)

Educators need to have experiences that help shape their understandings about the environment if they are to teach students about it. I am very thankful that someone took the time to teach me the art of starting a fire in any weather and as a scout leader, it is one of the first survival lessons I like to teach.

Seton's (1912) work The book of woodcraft and Indian lore describes requirements of

various badges which demonstrate skills that are required for outdoor engagements that

are echoed by later conceptualizations of movements of scouting around the world.

Because seasonal shifts are fairly extreme in Canadian environments, they provide many

opportunities for different skill building activities. Seton's work regarding the Woodcraft

Indians serves as an example of how Indigenous Oral Tradition was shifted into written

language and how activities can be taken up by settler culture as part of a reconstruction

of orality. In practice, these traditions can come back to the Oral Tradition. Many of the

activities require rethinking to make them more appropriate for the young people

currently enrolled in systems of public education. However, Seton's work illustrates 118 place-based education that could be integrated throughout various strands of current

North American curricular expectations.

The topic of badges is an important aspect of Seton's (1912) methodology of landscape learning. Badges defined in "degrees of woodcraft" ranging from Camper

(Gabeshiked) to Wise woodman (Nibwaka-winini) provided extensive processes for evaluating bush knowledge. These stages provided an opportunity for learners to choose their course of learning based on personal needs and interests. Some examples that were part of Latvian scouting activities include being able to mediate terrains not humanly reconstructed as part of language and community development opportunities. These types of activities also mirror Solnit's (2000) deep investigation of understanding historical elements of what Bowers (2005) would call the commons. Of particular interest is the

"Traveler." The following activities include a range of ways to facilitate movement through a terrain:

Have walked I mile in II minutes Have tramped 30 miles a day. (14 in LL) Have climbed I of the standard peaks (p. 103) Knows at least 15 star groups, including the Great Bear and the Pole Star (Seton, 1912, p. 137)

Speed of movement was not seen to lessen one's skill of engagement with place. On our weekend Sirojumi one of the activities was designed to develop compass skills by walking to a designated locale. By use of maps walked out previously by Elders and camp organizers we would mediate the woods without paths. It was always a great joy 119 when we could follow unmarked paths, although these often did not often lead us to the precise location on the map we were heading towards.

Of similar importance were the concepts Seton (1912) outlined in the "Wise Woodsman":

Have a list of 100 different kinds of birds personally observed on exploration in the field... 10. Know 25 different kinds of trees. 11. Know 30 different wild flowers. 12. Know 10 different snakes. 13. Know 10 different fungi. (Seton, 1912, pp. 140-141)

Being able to differentiate between various types of trees, flowers, snakes, mushrooms and berries is an important aspect of learning about landscapes. Although I cannot document this type of learning academically in terms of references, I wish to give credit to female Elders who were responsible for these kinds of teachings in my experience.

Learning the linguistic distinctions that need to be made for developing a deeper relationship with places beyond human-constructed environments were bestowed upon me by teachers who were primarily women. Knowing trees is one of the activities we would undertake as well as the recognition of the possible uses of different types of trees and plants. Another one of my favorite activities included finding blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and other perennials.

Reading a translation of Seton's (1903) work, Divi Mazi mezoneni (1975), I realize that this work embodies learning the language of the forest. It is an interpretation of how kids understand their place in nature. As much as it is a reflection of Seton's own 120 experience, his work touches on the ability of settler culture to gain an awareness of the importance of survival skills and how these skills can lead learners towards a sustainable culture of becoming naturalized to a particular place. He attempts to teach the reader the importance of having place-based local knowledge. Often, knowing these outdoor skills was a matter of life and death as exemplified in the chapter "Mushrooms, fungi, or toadstools" (Seton, 1912, pp. 391-410).

Proposed games range from combative ways of surviving in nature to knowing what

can and cannot be eaten in the wild. Thinking about what was common knowledge is an

important factor in determining the world of the intended audience in the text. Most of

this ecological knowledge is not being passed down as it would have been traditionally.

When Oral Tradition is transformed into literary work, the understanding becomes static.

Remembering becomes the function of the text rather than an interactive activity. Books

remain on the shelves and their message becomes lost due to a lack of interaction with

those who know about the places they are from. Wandering along trodden paths I know, I

remember places where the mushrooms we ate. Trying to identify edible plants I realize

they are not nearly as familiar to me as they should be. I have lost a great deal of

intergenerational knowledge due to a lack of effort as well as by learning to function in

contemporary urban North American society. Seaton's stories about how learners make

sense of the people around them serve as a pedagogy of place. He continually asks the

reader to question personal engagements with nature. These questions can inspire adult 121 learners to engage with focal practices. For example, he stresses the importance of knowing plants as the Indigenous people living in the forest can compel others to learn.

Being in the woods beside my grandmother's farmland I realized potential rewards of knowing the plants that were good to eat. Moving along the stream is a much more rewarding activity than television watching. However, talking with people who have

developed their understanding about plants and how they can be useful for healthy ways

of being is one way of engaging this primary pedagogy of place. Reading Seton's (1912)

work on the language of signs is a stepping stone to an evolution of linguistic ability.

Communicating without words can serve to generate an understanding of the complexity

of different forms of communication. Similarly, cognitive leaps can be inspired through a

meaningful engagement with stories that are indigenous to a particular place.

Part of my inquiry involves walking along paths that the inhabitants of the woods

share. Being focused on text as primary learning material is to the detriment of

understanding the importance of place. In attempting to reconcile space and time, I look

at the work of Seaton's textual references to learn about place in his work. In Seton's

(1912) work the boys resist learning from adults at first, but eventually come to respect

what Elders try to teach them because they come to the realization that the forest and

what lives there can heal them. Collecting this naturally situated, freely growing medicine

was a way of being able to live without being part of the machinery of consumerism. To

live within a place and learn about the value of abundant indigenous plant-life is an

incalculably worthwhile experience as it is a reconciliation of space and time. Although 122 plants move throughout a course of time, their movement as intact or partially intact ecosystems is at a pace that extends through ancestral time and experience. Their ability to sustain human life simultaneously moves us into the future and connects us with our past. Activities that perpetuate intergenerational knowledge are a way of preserving the learning that has been essential for the survival of humankind. The Latvians were allowed to appreciate their sense of loss as well as the gifts they received from Mother Earth because they were forced to leave the places their ancestral knowledge lived.

According to Indigenous systems of belief, Creation story goes on every day.

Watching living beings like birds move across the land and from tree to tree, it becomes apparent that there are many gifts given to human beings that help them to live and survive. It is of great importance to establish opportunities to witness the gifts that move in unison with the movement of natural places through seasonal cyclical processes of growth.

The capacity to dream and to have the ability to see beyond the glow of city lights is an essential aspect of discovering what it means to be human. Indigenous stories from

around the world find their expression in and amid the places they live. The idea that property is Sacred rather than something that can be used or discarded is one of the ways

in which Indigenous teachings can inspire learners to understand the importance of the places they live. 123

CHAPTER IV: REINTERPRETING ANCESTRAL STORIES: TRACING LANGUAGE LEARNING TRADITIONS THROUGH THE LATVIAN SCOUTING MOVEMENT

A version of this paper has been published as Reinterpreting ancestral stories: Tracing language learning traditions through the Latvian scout movement. Journal of the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies (JCACS), 3(2).

A language is an organism. A weightless, discontinuous organism that lives in the minds and bodies of those who speak it - or from the languages point of view, in the bodies and minds of those through whom it is able to speak. (Bringhurst, 2002, p. 11)

In that volume, William F. Pinar and Madeleine R. Grumet introduced an autobiographical theory of curriculum, denoted by the Latin root of curriculum, "currere," meaning to run the course, or the running of the course. (W. Pinar, Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., Taubman, P., 1995, p. 515)

Several years ago my academic journey brought me to Australia to investigate some of the methods the Latvian diaspora community has adopted from ancestral teachings and traditions to develop relationships with the landscapes they migrated to after World War

Two. Along my research journey, I engaged in conversations about the Latviesu Skautu

Kustiba or Latvian Scout Movement as a way of connecting with Elders and other members of the Latvian diaspora community. Talking with Aboriginal Elders in North-

West Australia's "Outback", I began to understand that the movement's history is informed by Indigenous cultures and traditions. My journey involved what Smith (2003) describes as the work of the hermeneutic researcher which involves interpretive activities as some of the roots from which this paper emerges. 124

Comparing various locations the Latvian Skauti have returned to in North America and Australia, and by paying particular attention to my journey of learning in these places, I realize that one of the primary goals of the movement is to develop a relationship that encompasses survival skills learned in the natural world and the pedagogy that ancestral songs embody. Investigating militaristic aspects of the movement introduced by Baden-Powell as described by Jeal (1990), Solnit (2000), Wadland (1978), and Young (2006), my inquiry involves looking at Seton's deeper conceptualization of the movement as informed by Indigenous cultures. Learning the ecology of the land is akin to developing a deeper relationship with the language that finds a desire to be expressed through human engagement. In this chapter I describe my story of how members of the Latvian Scout Movement have explored landscape and identity formation to uncover ways in which educators can provide opportunities for students to develop a responsibility for the land which is essential to cultural awareness and continuity. Land is an integral aspect of Latvian culture because ancestral songs embody a methodology of sustainable ways of engaging with a language that speaks the landscape.

Beginning this research, I visit a friend who has also been part of the Latvian scouting movement is Australia. We first met at a jamboree in Michigan, USA, more than twenty years prior to our recent visit. Juxtaposing these rendez-vous helped me formulate the focus of this paper and retrace my particular understanding of the movement through an interpretive lens. In the first part of this chapter, I describe my interpretation of the curriculum of the Skauti as a system that is used by Elders to foster the survival and 125 maintenance of the Latvian language and culture. Exploration of my development of familiarity with landscapes demonstrates a need to understand healthy foods as having medicinal properties. I investigate what Orr (1992) describes as Ecoliteracy as a way of merging ecological understandings with ancestral teachings. I question "What happens to ancestral stories when they are told in places far removed from their conception?" and

"How are learners given opportunities to develop relationships with the places they live?"

It is my understanding that ecological education should provide opportunities for learners to become familiar with stories and teachings that are Indigenous to places they visit or inhabit. By re-interpreting what I have learned through revisiting ancestral stories of landscape displacement, my ability to engage in the theorization of Ecoliteracy in public systems of schooling becomes a conversation regarding the direction of Oral Tradition in the field of environmental education.

Metaphor and Landscape

Language is a tool the mind uses - a word can evoke a whole firing pattern of neurons, lighting up networks of memory and associations. But so, too, can forms, moods, lighting effects, vistas, places and spaces in the landscape. (Devereux, 1996, p. 231)

Due to the complex and multi-locational nature that movements of scouting around the world have adopted, it is important to realize that the notion of scouting is reinvented by Elders as well as cultures. For the Latvian diaspora community, it is also an extension of a re-engaged Oral Tradition. Experiential factors play a significant role in the way in which groups of individuals take up the task of language and landscape learning. Using 126 the O.E.D. (1971) I trace the English etymology of the term scout to a "cave formed by jutting rocks" (p. 2677). The image of a cave produces a useful metaphor for my paper as it represents inner landscape as well as inner identity. The term scout is also employed to describe the act (or persons involved in acts) of watching (1553) and earlier definitions are used in conjunction with watch i.e. "scout-watch" (1400). In contrast, scouts are also described as a form of vessel used for war. Militaristic images help me consider earlier influences of the movement. These definitions point to an older history that moves beyond the belief that the development of the scout movement can be attributed to the work of a single individual. Engaging landscapes helps to remedy the Literary Tradition instilled by Christian doctrine and imposed by colonial occupying forces.

My research journey along the landscapes of Australia begins with visiting my

Australian-Latvian Scout friend who resides in Jarlamadanga Burru, an Aboriginal

Community in Western Australia. As we spend time together in different Western

Australian "outback" locations, I theorize a hermeneutic development of my relationship with North-American and European landscapes in order to help me re-conceptualize our

initial meetings at York University in 1992, as well as mutual experiences as skauti in both Australia and Canada. Beyond tracing the texts that informed movements of

scouting, I trace the learning to unfamiliar places where Australian Latvian scouts have

continued their learning through the Latvian Oral Tradition. Revisiting traditional stories

and songs help me re-conceptualize processes of initiation for young boys and girls as a

universal practice of socialization. I consider the implications of such practices as a way 127 of providing opportunities that act as a communally important rite of passage. Comparing and contrasting Latvian ancestral teachings with Aboriginal teachings in Australian landscapes demonstrates how different rituals can foster deep relationships with place.

Although there has been a good deal of debate implicating the Scouting movement in processes of colonization through Baden-Powell's British movement as outlined by Jeal

(1990), Wadland (1978) and Young (2006) among others, many cultures have introduced scouting practices in different ways. As research participant, it is my understanding that the Latvian Scout Movement has evolved from a cultural location to remember ancestral understandings and the awareness gained by exploring natural spaces are essential for connecting people with the pedagogy of Earth. What begins as a way of learning landscapes fosters walking back towards what was understood long before this movement. To walk outdoors is a way of developing a relationship with land and to hear

landscapes sing. Practices of understanding natural environments are well known in the

Latvian Oral Tradition. Participants living in urban areas gained an opportunity to walk the places they needed to walk in order to understand the sacred gifts they were given by the Earth. Engaging in Latvian scouting after World War Two as a method of re­

constructing cultural traditions through ancestral teachings embodied in stories and songs

is to become naturalized to what were once unfamiliar territories.

The memory of ancestral symbols and stories was written down in Displaced Persons

Camps in Germany in the hope of remembrance to be returned to ancestral lands within a relatively short time. The art that accompanies this written work is not extensive but 128 illustrates a desire to return to the freedom of being outside. Work by the Naves salas 95. skautu vieniba (Celms, 1947) illustrates Latvian scouting activities continued after the war ended because job opportunities required relocation to Western Europe, North

America, Australia and beyond. Scouting was outlawed in Latvia and replaced by the

Pioneer movement. The Pioneer Movement was one that all youth behind the Iron

Curtain were expected to join. Although being outside was part of the curriculum, a major aspect of the mixed intentions of this organization was a method (for the state) of

keeping an eye on younger members of society.

Scouting in exile became a movement of resistance to colonialism for the Latvian

diaspora community around the world. Researching stories of cultural continuity through

my own travel has enabled me to develop important understandings about the relationship

between identify-formation and Australian landscapes. Through a tracing of journal

entries and poems, I explore my personal understanding about ancestral places to develop

a deeper respect for unfamiliar places I encounter. My research requires that I travel

across Australia by foot, auto, bus, train and water-craft to learn about the land the

Latvian diaspora community relocated to as well as to develop an alternative sense of this

Australian-Latvian community.

Unfortunately, scouting meetings no longer take place with the frequency they once

did. Exploration of differences between Australian and Canadian Latvian scouts are

informed by participating in camping activities with ex-scouts and by recording my

interpretations in my travelogue dated June 21, 2002, revised Oct. 31, 2007. 129

Camping on the shores of the west coast near Broome, I begin to understand how different the experience of the Latvian diaspora scouting movement is in Australia. This contrast helps me conceptualize the magnitude of effect between learning about Latvian ancestral landscapes and spaces encountered by the diaspora community as a result of the displacement that occurred after Soviet occupation during WWII. (Kulnieks, 2008)

I compare my experience of landscape learning through other camping experiences in

Canada, Latvia and Australia. I document my journey through photographs, poems and journal entries paying particular attention to the numinous nature of unfamiliar

landscapes.

The experience of allowing myself to focus on these stories teaches me a great deal

about the importance and possibility of place-based learning. My traveling experiences

also foster my desire to engage with Mythopoetic stories that resonate from these places.

Chatwin's (1987) interpretive text, The Songlines, paints a vivid picture of Australian

Aboriginal culture and beliefs about "belonging to the land." His work regarding the

deeper meanings of Aboriginal understandings about the continent help the reader

understand the degree to which Oral Tradition can maintain ancestral traditions.

Indigenous Elders explain that there are many traditions that need to remain oral because

once they are recorded, they become archived rather than actively remembered. A loss of

immediacy contributes to a distancing from discussing and reiterating their critical

importance. In the following travel journal entry, I interpret my dialogue dated June 21,

2002 with Aboriginal Elders regarding some of the hardships they have endured. 130

After speaking with one of the Elders I learn that a good deal of sacred cultural information is not discussed with outsiders due to the oppressing effects of colonist laws that are still being felt today. The interpretive meaning of the story shared with younger listeners and outsiders is far less intricately complex than the story Elders know. It is difficult for me to imagine the devastating effects that colonialism has had on Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. (Kulnieks, 2008)

The stories that are told to adults are much more complex that those told to children.

Stories told to "outsiders" resemble the stories children are told as a way of protecting what is considered to be sacred knowledge.

According to Chatwin (1987), Songlines are a way of remembering a history of culture and landscape. They are a system of mapping a particular landscape through song.

In addition, Songlines are a way of representing a responsibility and title to the land: "In

Aboriginal belief, an unsung land is a dead land: since, if the songs are forgotten, the land itself will die" (Chatwin, p. 58). I explore the way in which songs form a basis for trade- routes among landscapes as well as for remembering the importance of myth and tradition relative to identity formation. According to the Elders I speak with, stories about the devastating mistreatment of Australian Aboriginals by colonial powers is one that is only beginning to come to the surface of mainstream society. Relationships with land are well understood by Aboriginal Australians but are often overlooked by colonial powers.

This behavior has caused a great deal of damage to the land (Marshall, 1989). Traditions and rituals as a way of connecting with ancestral knowledge are not shared in their

fullness with outsiders due to the mistrust that is the legacy of colonialist developmental policies. However, according to Aboriginal Elders, oral histories are beginning to be 131 shared (Penderson, 1995). Developing deeper relationships with land will require

Aboriginal understandings. The current drought across the continent will not be solved through a continuity of thinking that suggests that land is merely a resource intended for the generation of wealth and capital.

Traveling across Australia, I realize that what I have learned by participating in the

Latvian communal activities moves me toward natural landscapes where much of the

Latvian diaspora community congregates on a seasonal basis. Singing and listening to

Tautas Dziesmas (or songs of the people), I become more aware that learning Latvian ancestral stories and teachings as some of the rituals that connect me with Mother Earth help me interrupt an ever-increasing monoculture as outlined by Shiva (1993), that globalization inspires. Globalization demands that there be one way of communication,

English being one of if not the most dominating of languages. Aboriginal, Indigenous and

Latvian Elders help me understand that relationships with landscapes defined and

controlled through curricula that does not think of the well being of many generations

ahead, are a grave mistake.

In discovering Indigenous traditions situated in the landscape of North America I

have revisited Latvian Oral Traditions, as remembered and retold after the displacement

of the Baltic States during and after World War Two. My inquiry of the Latvian Scout

Movement in Australian territories has enabled me to reinterpret my participation in the

North-American Latvian Scout movement. In my travelogue, I record the ways in which I

become familiar with landscape with an aim to rediscover what the Aboriginal cultures 132 have not forgotten. Knowing a landscape is an important part of language and identity.

Bringhurst (2006) hypothesizes:

Why is oral culture a key to our continued coexistence with the world?

Because oral culture means much more and less than simply talking. Rekindling oral culture means rejoining the community of speaking beings - sandhill cranes, whitebark pines, coyotes, wood frogs, bees and thunder. Oral culture also means much more than telling stories. It means learning how to hear them, how to nourish them, and how to let them live. (p. 175)

My travelogue documents historical elements of the scout movement that include archival scouting texts by Celms (1947), Eglajs (1947), as well as translated texts by

Dunsdorfs and Kletnieks (Baden-Powell, 1928) and Mednieks (1947), as they inform my development of scouting activities that include environmental education and language learning curricula.

Mediating a Culture of Consumerism

Cultivating sacred space in tune with the seasons is another way of honoring nature's ongoing cycles, rhythms, and needs. It is also a way of gardening for your soul. As the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois or Six Nations) say in their traditional Thanksgiving address: "We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time." (Kavasch, 2002, p. 18)

I feel that the main reason my grandparents spoke with me only in the Latvian language was to give me the opportunity to envision and maintain the world through an ancestral cultural lens. When I visit Latvian landscapes, I often wonder what it would be like to 133 live there on a more permanent basis. I listen to a chorus of birds around me as I take time to learn within Indigenous ancestral spaces. Speaking with relatives I camp with in

Latvia, childhood memories surface and I feel as if I am in familiar places, even though I have never been here before. My relative explains: I am "home again."

Traveling in Australia, I realize that Latvian scout Elders have played an important

role in shaping my understanding of what it means to be a Canadian, a Latvian and a

displaced-Indigenous person. As I think about the idea that one of the Aboriginal Elder

shared with me, that "all ancestral foods were medicine", I realize that another way of

thinking about this is that there are medicinal plants growing all over the world, which is

what Indigenous Anishnaabee Elders including Jacob Thomas (1994 p. 52) have helped

me understand. This understanding is also recorded and kept alive in Ecopoetic and other

forms of ancestral stories. Having a keen awareness of the medicinal and health-giving

properties of these plants was a gift of survival for Latvian peasants who were prohibited

from moving from the area they lived throughout hundreds of years of colonial

occupation. Understanding the sacredness of the land as passed down through generations

of place-based teikas or ancestral stories was a requirement of survival.

Language and landscape learning methods permeate scouting activities. These

oscillate from a literary to an oral culture as I write about them, but I learned these ideas

in the Latvian Oral Tradition. With the degree to which Indigenous languages are

disappearing, it is important to understand traditions that are embedded in local languages

around the world. Nettle and Romaine (2000) explain that the making of a dominant 134 language compulsory is a major reason for the degree to which colonizers have contributed to the loss of Indigenous languages (p. 90). On a night-train from Melbourne to Sydney, I re-read Valdis' (1950) Staburaga Berni, a book my grandfather inscribed on the inside cover: "Jalasa katram." roughly translated - "A must read." The following journal entry dated Journal Entry: Nov. 18. 2002, Revisited Nov 5, 2007 is an interpretation of my reading of this text:

One of the stories that I, along with other mazskauti or young scouts read, was Valdis' Staburaga Berni. This is a story about two brothers growing up in Latvian landscapes near a spiritually relevant energy location, a cliff and surrounding area, flooded for electrical power generation after the Soviet occupation. My grandfather rereads this work many times as a way of revisiting his own memory of that place. For our Elders, much of the story's descriptive content would have been part of quotidian life. As I re­ read the text, I can still remember the scout group sitting in a circle and communally participating in the process of re-creating the story. (Kulnieks, 2008).

Reflecting on my reading development, returns me to a moment when I was in the

Toronto Heritage Saturday-school Programme. It was expected that students could read

by the end of grade one. The Latvian language is written exactly as it sounds so that once

a student understands the correlation between the symbolic relationship between letters

and sounds, reading and writing becomes a matter of vocabulary growth. This way, even

at a very young age, I became a part of a communal process of textual analysis, which

embodies a relationship with ancestral language and landscape learning. Louise

Rosenblatt (1978) gives a detailed description about the reader being an integral part of

the text. Becoming familiarized into a society of readers is another survival skill that I 135 learned in Latvian scouts. Each person in the circle would read a sentence of Valdis'

(1950) text as part of the language learning activities that helped learners make a meaningful connection with signs and symbols both in the land and in cultural objects.

Thinking about my grandfather's teachings about bees helps deepen my understanding of the interconnected nature of the land. As a young child, most of my

scout learning took place in the context of the Oral Tradition of storytelling. Stories were

not only told around campfires but throughout daily activities. My re-reading and re-

interpretation of my grandfather's text in Australian landscapes, reminds me of the two

motifs associated with scouting: a) learning about the outdoors, and b) becoming part of

four seasonal camping expeditions. Each spring, summer, fall and winter the group would

venture into non-urban North-American territories. Camping provides me with an

understanding of the importance of harmonization with wilderness. It facilitates

imagining an ancestral world in ways that cannot be understood without the added

dimension of traveling outside of human-constructed environments.

Investigating some of the texts scout leaders used as a way of telling stories far

removed from ancestral places, I realize that these texts were not used by younger

members of the organization. I re-familiarize my understanding of the skauti in North

America by reading the Latvian Scouting text Zelta Padomina or Gold Advice, a

collection of activities that leaders can draw from. This text outlines the Latvian curricula

intended to move from learners immersed in the Literary Tradition employed in public

systems of schooling towards the Oral Tradition of the songs contained therein. 136

Mirdza Paudrupe, a scouting Elder provides me with a copy of an old scouting manual, Panakuma Tekas (Baden-Powell, 1928) that belonged to another Elder in the scout movement. Laimons Goba also lends me scouting handbooks I have not seen before, reminding me that most of our activities were in the Latvian Oral Tradition. As I read the Latvian text of songs, stories, themes, discussions and debates I realize the extent to which the work acts as a mnemonic device. Some of the skautu curriculum is informed by Tautas dziesmas, meaning songs of the people, or what are often referred to as folksongs. Reading in Latvian becomes less cumbersome as I move between English and

Latvian phrases to re-interpret my ideas.

Eco-Iiteracy: a Path Towards Ancestral Knowledge

The basis for ecological literacy, then, is the comprehension of the interrelatedness of life grounded in the study of natural history, ecology, and thermodynamics. (Orr, 1992, p. 93)

Every natural human language has a literature. But in its own unprinted way, every non-human language has a literature too. If something speaks well, literature is what it has to say. (If you prefer a more self-centred definition, we can also put it this way: any well-told story turns to literature when you pay close attention). (Bringhurst, 2002, p. 11)

The thermodynamic relationship Earth has with the sun stems beyond human time. Eco-

literacy is a way of raising an awareness of the need for future generations to develop the

understanding that a sustainable relationship with place is an essential aspect of survival

for marginalized languages. From the O.E.D. (1971), I trace the etymology of the term

literacy to letters. Letters and signs are defined as raksti in the Latvian language. Brody 137

(2000) explains that although human ancestral origins are not clear, they may be found in

"fossils dating back 2.5 million years" (p. 116). He suggests evidence that the beginnings of human language, culture and environment stretches back 200,000 - 400,000 years.

Some Indigenous Elders I interview concur with Brody's (1988) suggestion, that stories recorded in Oral Tradition place Indigenous people in North America "since time immemorial" (p. 16). For Latvians, symbols written in clay, metal or leather and writing are of the same root "raksti" meaning "ancestral symbols" and "raksti" meaning you write. If symbols or "raksti" are symbolic of a larger story, then in Latvian culture, nature also has a multitude of literacies. Kletnieks (1963) work on Raksti, tells a story that accompanies a place based learning curriculum. Stories that serve as ways of knowing a place can be called Ecoliteracies.

Following the work of Bringhurst (2006), being able to read a place also includes the ecology of language and signs. According to my informants learning to read tracks is essential as one of the first ways of reading the "Outback". To follow Aboriginal teachings and traditions is to become accustomed with the places I travel because there are life forms that can be dangerous everywhere, if the signs are not read accurately.

Latvian Elders have used the scouting system as a way of providing opportunities for re­ constructing language learning and teaching. Visiting places other scout members live provides an opportunity to trade information and to share cultural stories and experiences.

The communal cultural web stems back to the singing of songs from one tribal community to another. The language of the song, especially ancestral Indigenous songs 138 that resonate with a particular landscape, translate a sense of feeling and understanding that moves beyond the language of landscape.

Movements of Scouting are informed by Indigenous traditions. Engaging unfamiliar landscapes provides an opportunity to trace and reconstruct deeper histories of life in non-urban environments and to make them more familiar. The Many Faces of Archie

Belaney: Grey Owl (Billinghurst, 1999) serves as another example of becoming familiar with and in turn, being adopted by a culture and trying to become a part of the landscape

and traditions of that culture. Seasonally inspired meetings are an integral part of

language learning that is inspired by the local landscape. They involve the creation of

personalized stories that map a relationship with place. Developing an awareness of

ancestral languages is a very important part of being immersed in a culture that resists

monoculturization inherent in processes of globalization.

In Latviesu Roveru Nakotnes Darbs or Latvian Rover Future Work, Eglajs (1947)

outlines the idea, that literature is a beginning point of departure but not an absolute

methodology. The experiential is an essential component of that scouting methodology.

The structure of the Latvian Scouting movement becomes an opportunity for community

leaders to foster relationships with the natural world by taking the time to participate in

personal and shared ecologically-centred experiences. Reconstructing the Oral Tradition

of language and landscape learning is synonymous with (re)discovering ancestral

ontologies and epistemologies. Learning about what it means to maintain a sustainable

relationship with place involves deepening one's understandings about human 139 engagement with the world. The experience of growing, collecting or harvesting plants is a relationship with plant-life that entails both the physical realm as well as cognitional elements that have traditionally been stored in the form of ancestral songs and stories.

This is one way a healthy relationship between world and self can develop. Latvian scouting activities in their deepest conceptualization are akin with Indigenous knowledge because they develop through a merger between ancestral songs and stories and teachings passed down by scouting Elders.

Scouting leaders teach through their personal experiences. These experiences inform activities that are fostered by the pedagogy of landscape. Clearly, Baden-Powell's militarily career influenced his conceptualization of the Boy-Scout movement. More importantly, Ernest Thompson Seton's concept of "character building" informed by a participation in what he termed "Woodcraft Indians" in North America, illustrates the

Algonquin practices which are the basis of the scout movement (Seton, 1912). The following entry dated Nov. 31, 2002 and revised Nov. 15, 2007 is an interpretation of my juxtaposition of Baden-Powel's conceptualization of movement doctrine and ancestral practices.

I recall reading The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden Powell reminds me of the stories I was told as young scout. One story often retold was that the history of Powell's work with youth stems back to the Boer War where young boys in the war effort couriered maps indicating key positions disguised as butterfly sketches. As I further investigate beginnings of this movement, I realize that the stories I was told as a young scout were intended to be part of the protocols borrowed from the movement but informed by Indigenous traditions. Current analysis of the Boer War points to militaristic beginnings of the movement. A slow decline in 140

numbers, especially in the last few decades and the desire to grow a Latvian diaspora community fostered a philosophy, that the direction the movement would take would be directed by the needs of the members themselves. This philosophy is more closely in tune with Seton's writings regarding the development of the movement. (Kulnieks, 2008)

The Latvian Scout movement is dedicated to a curriculum of merging ancestral understandings with outdoor education. Carrying ecologically-sustainable traditions into the future is achieved through a preservation of ancestral methodologies of understandings of local places. However, the concept of socializing boys and girls in a particular way of understanding the places they live as Campbell (1988) among others illuminates, suggest far deeper origins that stretch back thousands of years.

Latvian conceptualizations of the future of the Vec-skauti or Old scouts are defined by the Naves Salas 95. Vieniba or the 95th team of Latvian scouts during Displaced

Persons camp activities in Wohnheim, Germany (Eglajs, 1947). This work hypothesizes the future of the movement in a Latvian diaspora community. Scouting is a way of

organizing outdoor education through a course of seasonal changes. Beginning in the

twentieth century these activities play a role of identity negotiation in transit to different parts of the world. Engaging with natural environments created a dialogue of negotiating

the role that ancestral traditions were to play in the future of the movement. Symbolic art

that appears throughout the document demonstrates the importance of ancestral signs,

symbols, and stories in the conceptualization of the future of the Latvian Scout

Movement. 141

Founders of the Movement

It seems that animals know things we don't know - they have certain things to teach us. Little wonder, then, that our ancestors revered the animals as teachers and guides to a world of mystery, thinking of them as creatures of power. The first myths were about the powers and intelligences of animals. What the animals knew was considered sacred. (Kane, 1995, p. 44)

Baden-Powell and Seton, among others, organized opportunities for youth to engage with natural environments, where seeing animals, was not an uncommon occurrence.

Being outside of public schools to explore Ecopoetic stories serves different purposes.

Outdoor environments are welcomed by members as a place to congregate and have fun whereas organizers recognized a potential for instilling certain cultural beliefs. Becoming aware that there is a world beyond Literary Tradition is evident when ecologically intact ecosystems are explored.

In Great Britain, Baden-Powell was able to write books on the subject of the traditional ecological knowledge of the mostly Anishnaabe Oral Tradition partly because he enjoyed both financial and political support. He was sponsored to write a handbook

and made hundreds of speeches to promote his organization. Jeal's (1990, pp. 372, 376,

388) biographical work regarding Powell's life suggests that in order to gain support for the movement, his story received a good deal of orchestration, rather than being a factual

account of personal experiences. It is interesting to read Jeal's (1990, pp. 152-154)

interpretation of this story in relation to a theory of writing proposed by Davis et al.

(2000): "As powerfully evidenced by textbooks and encyclopedias from a century ago, 142 all efforts at representation are (or eventually come to be seen as) fictionalizing acts" (p.

225). Since the scout movement is based on learning the land by being on the land, fictionalization is the process of failing to obey the protocols that require natural processes to ground beliefs. Fictionalization of the scouting movement continues to take place as a way of fostering and becoming part of non-sedentary activities. The idea that winter camping can no longer take place due to insurance restrictions suggests that it is no longer safe to go outdoors. This way of thinking is detrimental to fostering human ability to understand place. Traditional Environmental Education was not prevented by this type of speculation. However, it appears that the movement is moving towards a fictionalization of its original goals. The following journal entry dated Nov. 27, 2002 and re-visited Nov. 5, 2007 illustrates a reflection about experiential environmental learning:

Through the process of learning that comes with growing up, the meanings one can evoke from a story change. My experience of going into the countryside was synonymous with the survivalist tradition of an Indigenous culture's intricate understanding of the land where they were born. As a Latvian scout I remember learning about how Baden Powell's vision of the Boy Scout movement is providing city boys a chance to develop an awareness of natural environments. Reinterpreting this story helps to expand my awareness of the diversity of understanding individual scout groups choose to promote. My understanding is they are as diverse as the stories learners are asked to engage with. Reinterpreting my experience as a Latvian Scout, I realize that survival was a key interest most of my friends and I shared and that interest was fostered by the leaders as a way of bringing young scouts together to learn about their diaspora culture. (Kulnieks, 2008)

In his collection of works, Ernest Thompson Seton takes up Indigenous ancestral practices in order to study North-American landscapes. Unfortunately, his 143 conceptualization of the organization does not gain the same popularity and recognition as Baden-Powell received. The story about the origins of a scouting movement told by

Seton is telling of the time period in which he lived. Seton (1951) writes about his

experience of entering a classroom to confront the same boys who "destroyed" his fence:

So, on a morning soon afterward, I went to the village school and asked the teacher if I might talk to the boys for five minutes. She said: "Certainly."

Then I said: "Will all the boys twelve years old and upward please stand?" A dozen stood.

"Are all here today?" I asked.

"No." There were three absentees.

"Good! That is the right number. Now, boys," I continued, "I invite you standing and the three not here today, to come to the Indian Village on my place next Friday after school, to camp with me there from Friday after school till Monday before school. I shall have boats, canoes, tents, and tepees in good shape, ticks full of straw, plenty of firewood, and as much grub as you can eat. (p. 295)

Rather than calling the police, he invites the perpetrators as well as their friends and

anyone else who might be interested to camp on his property. His story is dated because

this would not even be a possibility in today's society, but illustrates a desire to provide a

locale for engaging with the nature of sacred space and place. My historical inquiry of

Baden-Powell and Seton's youth movements helps me better understand my own

relationship with scouting. Throughout the course of my research, I reinterpret Latvian

tradition songs in natural landscapes as a way of becoming familiar with Indigenous 144 landscapes. Singing and playing ancestral songs in places I now camp inspires an awareness of the resonance of ancestral voices and natural landscapes.

Moving between different spaces that were the locations Elders chose as communal meeting spaces and the places I have found with other members, I realize the folk practices we engaged were a way of embracing personal outdoor experiences and reevaluating current trends of ecological thinking. The following poem explores my

experience of traveling back to Australia through visiting travel-log journal entries as I research the Latvian scouting tradition. This version emerges through a dialogue between the poem and with the subsequent photograph.

Star Maps

New meanings of home stretch along sanded shore Australian travel-log voices shuffle through notes star-map stories record expressions

sea sounds whirl dreams night songs through salt-water and sky blue flames heat fruit in rice-pudding between tent flaps

wine-stained lips sip cold sun-dried tea kangaroos rest on distant fields venom-tainted creatures inspect presences

olive tanks glide behind logging rigs whisps of smoke float log-burning stove warms northern November air I slip beyond Algonquin shores through curtains that divide shadows beyond evening starless lines beyond cloud silhouettes (Kulnieks, 2008)

Implications for Environmental Education

Figure 7: Northern Island

Thus represented and enacted—daily, monthly, seasonally, annually— places and their meanings are continually woven into the fabric of social life, anchoring it to features of the landscape and blanketing it with layers of significance that few can fail to appreciate. (Basso, 1996, pp. 109-110)

In systems of education, field trips embodied in Oral Tradition are often thought of as something outside or less than textually-based learning. Often treated as a reward for 146 good behavior or a break, ecological learning is more than an excuse to play. Looking at my environmental autobiography, I realize that walking through intact ecosystems is an essential part of my cognitive process. As a student I remember spending a week with our class at a camp. Working with the Toronto District School Board Teacher, I investigate possible field trip sites around Toronto. This process reminded me of field trips that influenced my understanding of ecology. My proposal to take students to different places was rejected due to the problem of funding are questions of time and responsibility. I was reminded of accountability and what can go wrong, even on the best-planned field trips.

Environmental education has been excluded from the Ontario Curriculum (1999).

Similarly, there is little room for learning opportunities that allow students to explore

non-urban environments. The primary concern for teachers is shifting towards

standardized testing which is resulting in a return to the practice of "teaching to the test."

Clearly, the strategic political agenda of taking environmental education out of the

curriculum has been designed to instill a disconnection between land and learning.

In an ever increasingly urbanized population, how can students become aware of the

more-than-human experiences less populated landscapes offer? When these experiences

are considered to be too dangerous students lose their opportunity to venture into non-

urban territories. What if a part of the curriculum became spending several weeks of each

year in an environment that is not re-constructed? It is important for educators to think

about these complex questions if there is hope for helping students develop a sense of

environmental sustainability. Inevitably, human survival may depend on relationships 147 with place that do not destroy intact ecosystems. Learning to understand how Literary

Tradition is implicated in creating a throw-away culture should inspire ecologically- minded educators to develop curricula that can help learners familiarize themselves with the richness of oral cultures.

Although much of what I have written for the purposes of this paper has been about landscape, I re-conceptualize movements of scouting as a way of socializing learners in a way that includes an appreciation for the places that give them the opportunity to live.

The influences of this movement and how it has been taken up by different cultures are of importance because of the dramatic changes global and North American landscapes have undergone during the past hundred years. How will these landscapes affect the way that we think? How will future generations approach the role they play in an ecologically sustainable way of understanding their relationship and responsibility with the places they live? The following is a poem that I began several years ago. Recent changes were inspired by thinking about culture and environment as it relates to the ecology of learning landscapes through the Latvian Scout Movement.

Staigajot zemi Walking the landscape

Budami kopa starp dardienu kursa Being together over a course of a few days Dalamies viens ar otru we share our selves Dodoties gar sunam passing along moss Dzivojot par akmeniem that lives on rocks

Smieklos par anglrunajusiem kokiem chuckle about trees that speak English Nogurstot neizteiksme tire of expressionless Baidoties majvietu nozime afraid of what home will mean Zinot so baudanio mirkli knowing this expenence

Pateicot but piecelts saisaules ausma pleased to be awakened to dawn's sunrise Kukaini izgaro neredzamos staros as bugs depart Pilnlapainos zaros stare Into the full-leaved braches Metot cilpi ap ezera that encircle the lake

Sausa kaln-galotne iespaido jaunu skatu dry summit gives new lens Nakotnes domas to inspire future thoughts Atdzivinot izjutas reawaken senses Melnjanogu piegarsas berzu sula In black-current flavoured

Titars gatavojas klavzara dumos turkey simmers in maple smoke Berztelja lee par akmenlem birch tea bounces and boils on sauna rocks rnazgajot pirtsniekus cleansing all as Vilni partvaiko stresu splash vaporizes stress

.;p

<* ^

*

Hi '^HllMimiiiiTif lan

Figure 8: Foggy Cottage Sunrise 149

CHAPTER V: DISCERNING A PROCESS OF MEANING-MAKING THROUGH FOCAL PRACTICES: BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH THE LANDSCAPES OF SAULAINE THROUGH LATVIAN TRADITIONS

Merging Modern and Ancestral Focal Practices

The noun of agent descended from this verb... [poietes], means a maker or a doer. In the Greek of Aristotle and Plato, it is used to mean poet: someone who makes things out of words. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the same word is often used, but never to mean poet. It is used instead to speak of other kinds of craftsmen - metalworkers and carpenters especially - and these are usually described as artisans whose work is graced or guided by the gods. That's a way of saying that humans can reach out, by making and doing, to the realms beyond the human, and that the things humans make or do can have a presence and a value that might also reach beyond the human realm. (Bringhurst, 2006, p. 305)

Inspired by both Borgmann and Franklin, I have combined the phrases "focal reality" and "holistic practice" into the term "focal practice." For me, a focal practice is a particular activity which functions to render visible usually-invisible interpersonal and intertextual relations. As well, a focal practice announces a location of inquiry into personal and cultural histories that have preceded our involvement in any focal practice. As Rebecca Luce-Kapler (1995) suggests, poets must read poetry in order to learn to write poetry, and readers must write poetry to become better readers of poetry. (Sumara, 1995, p. 23)

Communal and familial work entails methods of intergenerational communication that can transfer knowledge, skills, and traditions from generation to generation. In this chapter I theorize focal practices which range from writing poetry to food preparation. I investigate how focal practices, ancestral ontologies and epistemologies are an integral part of Oral Tradition. The final section is an example of a Latvian summer camp in

North America that uses focal practices as a way of merging language and landscape 150 learning. An ever increasing displacement and disconnection from places where plants and animals have sustained human life since the beginning of human-time, signals an escape from the realities of learning to live in a sustainable relationship with place.

Taking part in ancestral practices that are ecologically in tune with the Earth can facilitate an awareness and understanding about the places ecologically minded learners live.

Land and water are the great sustainers of life. The way we treat Earth should include

thankfulness for the gifts she provides. Modern societal interactions with Earth's intact

ecosystems are represented in Mythopoetic form by Indigenous cultures. My inquiry

demonstrates methods that can create a deeper understanding and engagement with place.

Clearly, how educators interact with the places they live, makes a large difference with

respect to the kinds of curriculum they will ask students to engage. Focal practices can

diminish or resolve differences between literacy and orality because they set the stage for

sharing information. Borgman (1992a) writes: "People engaged in focal practices

gratefully acknowledge the immediate and centering power of the focal thing they are

devoted to" (p. 122). Ecologically-minded focal practices are a gateway towards re-

conceptualizing the interconnectedness of natural places and spaces. Examples of focal

practices that are ecologically relevant range from preparing meals with fruits and

vegetables that one has planted or collected, to the writing of poetry.

Life within temporally-based systems of economy combined with the

compartmentalized legacy of the industrial revolution has led to very quick-paced human

lifestyles which are not in tune with Mother Earth and other living beings. The following 151

photograph of a bear walking through the middle of the field in front of me demonstrates

how quickly my anthropocentric view dissipates, when I live in Northern Ontario

landscapes:

M^-M4 iiM^A^m^tmK

• -SB s'imk" viV. •&&*»o&ufert * rt^AU****»etfH

JL .:>»*•-" ;*.•/»;« ^-V*

Figure 9: Bear Walking Through Farm Field

Focal practices like learning to critically interpret poems, songs and stories, can provide a

window into the world of Oral cultures because they provide a space for the learner to move towards what Rosenblatt (1978) refers to as being an integral part of the poem.

Developing a connection to the physical world of the story as well as well as providing a

space for dialogue, Oral Tradition allows the Mythteller or the storyteller to convey information in a way that addresses the audience according to the complexity of intended meaning. 152

The importance of focal practices lies in the complexity of relationships that develop through engagement with a series of inter-related tasks. Developing an understanding about the complexity of intact ecosystems requires an involvement with creative tasks through a multitude of stages. Focal practices require a great deal of time and patience but they allow the practitioner to uncover more than what is perceived "at first glance."

However, once the tasks of the practice being focused upon are learned and participants move towards a state of mastering them, these practices become a space for thoughts to be nurtured, tended to, and developed. This mastery requires a good deal of creativity.

Ancestral practices and focal practices involve very similar processes that stretch beyond fragmentation and compartmentalization of contemporary ways of engaging with the world. They are an engagement with multiple aspects of creating that involve a process of doing and making. Participating in the process of working with food from a stage of gathering or planting seeds to the preparation and consumption of food in ways that people have done for a millennia, is a way of fostering an awareness of ancestral focal practices.

At the Indigenous Elders Conference at Trent University (Feb. 2007) there is talk that the world would soon recover if human existence were to fail. The world would have the capacity to heal itself seemingly effortlessly if people ceased to be here. Proof is found in how quickly trees sprout through paved lots or fields reclaim humanly re-constructed environments. Decaying trees soon become life-giving nutrients for young saplings. 153

Landscape is always in movement, even on a sub-atomic level as has been investigated by scientific communities around the world. Clearly these are signs that all things are in a process of change and flux. However, there are ways in which humankind can play a useful role in the places we live. In Australia, fire-stick farming, defined as using fire to help certain plants grow at particular times of the year, has been practiced by

Aboriginal cultures since ancient times. This has great significance when considering the fact that Aboriginal cultures were considered primitive by settler culture, due to their lack of farming techniques. Because there has been little rain for the past five years, there is a level five fire ban. The consequence of burning fires in particular lands range from large fines to incarceration. The Aboriginal practice of fire-stick farming involves deliberately setting fires at particular times of the year, in an effort to promote certain types of plant growth and reproduction. Forest-fires that make the front-page news, those that come close to human living spaces, are part of a natural cycle of living.

That land should be left as intact and healthy as it was when first encountered by people is a complex ideology. Human interaction with landscape should not be burdensome or have a detrimental effect on the Earth. The idea that the world is alive is a concept long understood by Indigenous cultures but is not often discussed in mainstream systems of thinking. Developing a relationship with place is to develop an understanding that there is life everywhere. To live in ways that are sustainable requires a familiarity with ecosystems over many generations. Ancestral focal practices are an opportunity to 154 engage with intergenerational activities in a particular place and to follow the thoughts that accompany them.

The acres of forest that are cut down each day in Ontario, not to mention the rest of the world for a single day of bad news headlines, is in sharp contrast to the sustainable cultures that co-exist with their habitats. Another far stretch from ecologically sustainable ways of living are subdivisions and other "development" of places that were once intact ecosystems that helped sustain families and communities. These practices demonstrate a great distance between human culture and Mother Earth.

Ecologically grounded focal practices are a way of becoming immersed in a curriculum of environmental education in the Latvian diaspora community. These practices are derived from ways of knowing and being in particular landscapes as life­ long learning practices. Ancestral focal practices, for example, working with food, involve a process of creation that is often lost in the shuffle of anthropocentric consumer- producer lifestyles. Credit cards, shopping malls, and mass production characteristic of the past few decades, have drastically changed how people think about the places they live because the importance of local environments has diminished due to the common practice of non-local consumption of things that are produced in a particular place. There was a time in the not so distant past that foods consumed and clothes people wore

involved an ecologically sustainable method of production. People's lives depended on

engaging with local places they inhabited. Ideally, the materials used to cook with should 155 come from the place where it is grown because this level of awareness helps to develop a connection between people and the places they live.

Local Interaction with Place

Indigenous oral traditions have always been integrated with drawing, the arts, and practical education. It is the perpetuation of injustice to think that Indigenous people have not attained as sophisticated an understanding of the nature of language, myth, art, culture, aesthetics, ethics, and philosophy as Western scholars. If anything, the mythopoetic traditions of Indigenous people reflect that there is no such thing as primitive, in the way Western education has traditionally conditioned people to perceive it. The tendency of Western education to divide myth and poetry from music, dance, relationship to Nature, community, spirituality, history, and even politics reflects an illusion of Western thinking. (Cajete, 1994, p. 133)

Walking along the old lumber trail behind our family cottage brings me to a riverbed where the forest has grown beyond the once-harvested trees. Remnants of coniferous trees, seared in an ancient fire that scorched through this place long ago, protrude from the middle of the lake, metres from where beavers made use of their surroundings to build a dam. Without assistance from the beavers the lake would probably be a small stream. There are at least three ways of sacrificing the trees - what Brown (1987) refers to as the white man's versus the Native Americans way, and what Abram (1996) calls the way in which the more-than-human world functions. Brown (1987) describes the importance of the right way to harvest the gifts that nature provides us with, as very few people do today.

The trees that the beaver uses are quite close to the place from where they have been dragged. So too are the trees that provided a way to travel along the water, material for 156 shelters and fuel for fires that helped keep Indigenous cultures warm. However, plants, animals and insects are an integral part of the way landscapes function. The black fly aids in the reproductive cycle of the blueberries, birds spread seeds from the berries they use to fuel their flight, rain enables plants to grow and wind helps to shift the moisture and dryness being felt and experienced.

Ideally, engaging with the art of ancestral focal practices makes use of locally grown and produced products. This practice takes into account the real costs of production and reduces the pollution created by moving products extremely large distances from where they were created. These are important considerations for environmentally conscientious educators. They provide an interconnected appreciation for what Capra (1996) describes the health of the Web of life so essential for the survival of sustainable ways of living.

Changes in Place and Mind: An Historical Perspective

Before 1918, the place that is now Latvia had been occupied for over 800 years by different colonial powers who sought to have access to the land, its people and sea ports that did not freeze over during winter months due to their salinity. Eksteins (1999) recounts the catastrophic effects of generations who have lived under occupation of colonialist powers. Soviet and German occupations and re-occupations of the Baltic

States pushed the descendents of the Indigenous peoples who have lived along the coast of the Baltic sea for many thousands of years, to evacuate during windows of opportunity during World War Two. The devastating hardships that ensued, for example, the 40, 000 157 people deported on June 14th, 1941, provided Latvians a window into understanding the priceless nature of culture and ancestral places they left behind. In the mass relocation first to Displaced Persons Camps in Germany and then to countries that would take on war refugees as a source of cheap labour, Latvians (as well as Lithuanians and Estonians) tried to teach their children the stories that seemed too important or precious to forget.

Stories about cultural identity that shared intergenerational knowledge were sung as part of daily activities because they were the most effective way of maintaining beliefs and traditional epistemologies. Through relocation to unfamiliar territories, these diaspora communities evolved in various locations around the world, in particular, North America,

Australia and Brazil (Krasnais, 1938). Although Latvian summer camps were set up around the world in an attempt to maintain Latvian culture, they also served to naturalize participants with unfamiliar places.

Focal practices that camp members engage with include working with naturally occurring materials like clay, metals, and leather. Symbols that became part of these creative works embodied the messages of ancestral stories and songs. These practices merged ancestral ways of knowing the world with the deeper meanings the symbols represent. Learning involved engaging and re-shaping the natural world from a raw form into various devices that could aid human perseverance and survival. There was an understanding that people were not separate from the places they lived and that human health is dependent on Mother Earth. The act of making things from locally acquired 158 rocks, plants and animals can re-create an understanding of sustainable ways of living and prevalently healthy human engagements with the world.

Latvians invested in both non-urban and urban North American environments as communal meeting areas in order to congregate and celebrate their opportunity to share ancestral ways of knowing. After relocating to North America at the end of World War

Two, a large number of community members integrated into North American societies via government programs. The relatively recent disintegration of the Soviet Union and subsequently the resurgence of Latvian independence, marked a shift from Communist systems of governance to Capitalist-driven lifestyles. As a result of this freedom, the

frequency of Latvian communal gatherings in North America is becoming increasingly

sporadic. These communal places remain extremely important in terms of understanding the continuity of identity formation for this relatively new settler culture. Places are the physical connection between children, parents, grand parents and great grandparents because they provide the opportunity to share the gifts of living and learning.

The Language of Poetry

...Style, it seems to me, is the primary attribute of what philosopher Harold Bloom (1973) called a strong poet. A strong poet is someone who refuses to accept as useful the descriptions of her life written by others. Instead, the strong poet is a strong storyteller, continuously revisiting her life story in the light of her own experience and imagination. The strong poet constantly re-describes her past interactions with the world around her, constantly reinvents her self, so that she may act in the future with ever greater integrity and coherence. The strong poet plots her life story toward her own emergent ends and purposes. (Barone, 2000, p. 125) 159

Bringhurst (2006) etymologically traces the process of creation to the idea that poetry means "to do or to make" (p. 140). My experience of Latvian stories of landscape learning and teachings involving Indigenous and Latvian Elders continues to reaffirm my understanding that poetry is a focal practice. For me, writing poetry is a focal practice that brings me to spaces I could not otherwise discover. As Bringhurst (2006) writes:

"Poetry is a breathing hole in the ice of our identity" (p. 312). Talking with my grandfather about poems which embody the places they were created, helps me gain a different perspective of his life and the stories he lived. Discussing my poems and translations with colleagues, I am prompted to find language to describe the depth of the thoughts I explore. The interpretations of peers and friends also influence new understandings I am able to evoke. My grandfather's interpretation involves talking through stories about multi-locational memories and dreams that mediate past, present and future experiences. Our discussions encompass interpretations that stem from our readings of the text. However, with his interpretation there is also a connection with deep ancestral epistemologies defined as "ways of knowing".

Translating understandings and insights gained through discussions with Elders are somewhat more formalized and involve reading theories of poetry, such as the ones offered by Rosenblatt (1978), Capra (1996), Eco (1994), Culler (1997), Abram (1996) and Bringhurst (2006). All these interpretations have become part of my experience of language-theorizing. Focusing on the etymology of particular words in the Latvian language allows me to interpret this work in different ways. I draw on theories of reading, 160 writing and ecology to re-conceptualize environmental studies as they pertain to

Ecopoetic learning. The work of translating experience is multidimensional in that the ecology of language beckons a discussion that searches for ways to define what may not be definable in human language. To translate poetry is to translate personal experiences.

The multitude of voices that are inherent in natural settings, are in a more-than-human dialogue that suggests mediation beyond human terms. Smells, actions and other forms of exploration are part of a negotiation with place - and all beings have a different interaction with that translational experience.

Bringhurst (2006) suggests that we are all "oral poets" (p. 222). An engagement with eco-literacy is evoked through the privilege of spending time within places to engage in language and landscape learning. Meanings that words can represent change as learners develop a relationship with their surroundings. Living in a particular place throughout many generations forms deep connections with that place. For example, during summer weeks when I walk the land where my grandparents lived, I watch clouds ignite with the colours of the sunrise, signaling my ability to see quotidian tasks ahead. Similarly, night would often mean an absence of this type of rigor, bringing with it silence and at times, calm. I recall the map of my childhood. Walking along old paths walked and known by my mom and grandparents provides me with a much different sense of place than moving through unfamiliar territories. The following poem dated January 31, 2007 illustrates my desire to remember familiar places but also helps me prepare for the ambiguous space of future transitions to unfamiliar landscapes. 161

Figure 10: Northern Sunset

Movement

Walk along time-lines to understand childhood adventures melted bees-wax fuels memories towards ancestral places residual heat of uncapped honeycomb stored within basement honey-factory machines hum, project honey from frames towards pail side destined to be swallowed through winter snowdrifts furnace radiates heat where grandfather focused time 162

As spring awoke we gathered thunder-struck maple trunks smoke calmed throughout honeycomb explorations trace clouds paths of vibrating wings journey towards sun grandfather's seldom worn sweat-stained gear hangs on garage wall

playgrounds of study lent for borrowed honey grandmother instructed removal of vines that pulled & choked pine-trees sweat of bees entwined in twisting machines echoed through tastes of honey

On the stove simmers liquid gold in a tin can surrounded by lake-water Candle-scents remind me where I once was Lake-shore sings where grandparents borrowed natures breath controlled flames in the darkness of hundreds of generations

Tonight, ice freezes along shingles where water will pour tomorrow walks through fires of print and mind mocha merged manuscripts

leaves dance lightly across tree layered time songs represent notes of language towards ancient understandings (Kulnieks, 2008)

The power of print and other visual mediums, combined with the ability to communicate information without human presence, inspires a distancing of human interaction with stories. Symbolism is part of an ecologically-minded dialogue with nature. Part of the role of a storyteller in tune with the ecology of place is to make knowledge transferable beyond landscapes so that teachings can be applied to other spaces. Thinking about how 163 old the river is, I imagine that it has flowed in a similar fashion for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. However, talking with some of the Latvian camp Elders, I realize that it has changed a great deal in the past forty years.

Purposefully, I do not give the exact location of my journey. This serves as an example of the relationship of responsible teaching inherent in Oral Tradition. In Literary tradition there is little to safeguard the danger of disclosing or sharing information that

can be used for unintended purposes. Once information is printed the responsibility shifts to the reader. Learning about the spirit of the land moves from the realm of the Elder, mythteller or storyteller, to whoever owns a printed facsimile.

Bringhurst (2006) suggests that "poetry provokes human language to exist, and that poetry is what language - even philosophical language - generally aspires, to rejoin (p.

210). Latvian Mythopoetic stories provide connections with what would be referred to as

ancient history in western culture. This story exists in a fragmented form between Oral

and Literary Tradition of Tautsdziesmas or Songs of the people. Ancestral teachings and

oral histories are embodied by these songs because in the beginning, language was sung

(Viks, 2005). Part of the privilege of engaging in focal practices for Latvians includes

learning Mythopoetic songs. During this journey of a focal practice, songs are re-sung in

order to remember them but also to keep the thoughts within them alive and part of day-

to-day life. Singing these songs at communal gatherings is another way of giving thanks

and honoring this Mythopoetic response to living. 164

Ecopoetry

Literacy is not a skill - it is a mentality. It has been the major means of empowering the individual since Greek times, but the price of that empowerment is the muting and dispersal of other ways of knowing before the elucidation of conscious purpose. Among the first qualities of life to be muted by the specialized human power field of literature is the polyphony of oral myth. Body language, musical accompaniment, the breathing of listeners, the sense of event, the background noises of nature - all these go silent when language becomes a set of visual marks marching across a page. These symbols invoke their own kind of consciousness and authority, subtly pressing the newly created reader to choose which of two worlds is closer to truth - the world of oral polyphony or the world of silent thought. (Kane, 1995, pp. 245-246)

Environmental education should help learners develop understandings of place through speaking and writing about their engagements in a poetic way. Ancestral songs that embody a resonance between landscape and mind become part of intergenerational knowledge. When they strike a chord with the mythteller or are deemed as important enough by Indigenous thinkers, their information ventures towards the realm of vocalizing the more-than-human world. Through focal practices these stories move through paths of intergenerational communication. Eco-poetic speaking and writing is a way of developing a relationship between language and landscape. Events that beckon learners to find language to describe their engagement with places become a way to understand non-urban places. 165

I learn to understand unfamiliar territories by walking, not with a desire to change, re­ develop and re-work the land, but to understand how learners who are part of settler culture may begin to realize the gifts of life Mother Earth allows us to explore. In some ways, everything people digest becomes part of their existence. Places people live contribute to the capacity to think and eventually, who people become as do the focal practices communities engage. Klavins (2005) explains:

My first jewelry teacher was my friend Grencions. He also gave me a good piece of advice, which he had thought of himself. He said, "Now that you have begun working with ornaments, make only those based in Latvian traditions, do not try to create your own. Then, when you will have absorbed all the Latvian traditions - like a sponge when it has absorbed so much water that it can not absorb any more, when you pour on just a little bit and it goes through and drips on the floor - then, when you will be so full of Latvian designs, then you can start to create your own. Then the Latvian aspect will flow out of you naturally, and you will not have to force it out. Otherwise, you'll stray off course." (p. 147)

The focal practice of creating art is a long journey. The same is true with writing songs

that resonate with place. Writing songs intended for short term listening can make an

impact on an audience. However, songs that are sung for hundreds and even thousands of

years are likely to have meaningful resonance and harmony with human spirit, where

volition and intellect combined, create a determined effort to make a culture that is in

tune with place. Hearing an echo of bird-songs in human songs is a reflection about place

but also, a communication with place exemplifying the aforementioned process.

According to Mohawk Elders I have interviewed, the most essential aspect of

learning the ecology of a place does not begin with empirical facts and figures. 166

Understanding place including geography, history and language involves spending time developing an understanding of the harmonious relationship of intact ecologies.

Relationships that are in tune with places should involve learning the stories that are

Indigenous to that place. Mohawk Elders have consistently preferred to call and name traditional territories thereby implying the antiquity of their place in the arrangement and legacy of Creation.

The empirical evidence is that people who notice Creation narrate what they see.

Educators need to provide opportunities for learners to develop a relationship between identity and place. It is very difficult to help learners understand place if educators have not taken the opportunity or time to know the places they live. This is an age when the land is envisaged as commodity to be developed and exploited rather than as something borrowed from future generations. This attitude compounds the difficulty of attaining

sustainable ways of living. A focus on ecological literacy is a way of connecting personal experience and stories that are in tune with environmental learning. Creating a story

about land that humans are part of is a measure of the vastness of thanksgiving for being

Creation's last beings created. This work involves reworking, re-writing and re-telling

stories that help us make sense of place.

Focal Practices in Saulaine-A sunny place

There is a lesson here for craft: to reclaim the past entails resisting the forms as much as the content of historical analysis that dislocates craft from history, while at the same time exploring alternative ways of constructing histories. Memory, autobiography and stories may go hand in 167

hand with artifacts and tools to tell histories not only of craft but also of the people in whose life these 'things' were imbedded. (Rowley, 1997, p. 78)

Saulaine located near Barrie, Ontario is a Latvian summer Camp. It is a good example of a place where children try to learn their ancestral language through focal practices. Memorizing and interpreting ancestral songs lyrics aids in developing environmental learning because becoming familiar with places includes understanding the right way to behave towards plants and animals. These words predate the insanely negative way in which many modern societies interact with ecosystems.

Camp Saulaine is a communal meeting place that has been used by Latvians in exile every year since the St. John's Lutheran church acquired this property in 1956. My research inquiry demonstrates how different ancestral practices contribute to the

formation of Latvian Oral Tradition in an ecologically sustainable setting. My investigations question how places contribute to the continuity of ancestral knowledge as well as the development of language skills.

There are two of these camps located near Toronto, Ontario. Sidrabene is named after

an ancient Latvian community, the other, Saulaine called the Place of sun or sunny place.

Traveling between Canada, North America, and Australia has helped me understand that

these cultural meeting places are a global phenomenon. Elders from different continents

who have participated as informants for the purposes of my doctoral research tell a very

similar story across Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian communities. The stories they tell

originate from the same Mythopoetic realm. Saulaine (among other camps) is a 168 grounding place for these ancestral practices because the opportunity to engage these is in relationship with the numinous nature of relatively undeveloped landscapes. Concrete does not mirror the places ancestral stories were conceived.

In the past, information moved between past and present generations through songs and stories told around the camp and shared during the process of engaging with landscapes. These processes occurred during everyday life. However, different stories were told at particular times of the year. Winter months, when the Earth sleeps, is the time stories are most alive (Dooling & Jordan-Smith, 1989). Work and leisure time were not separated by clocks but by the completion of tasks within a space of natural day and night time. It is not that remarkable that numbers of youth who speak and know this world though engaging it outdoors has diminished over the last half century.

Displaced Indigenous cultures have become distanced from place through an immersion into modern culture. This displacement and lack of opportunities to encounter the world that is defined in ancestral teachings is detrimental to being close with and understanding the natural world. The desire to engage their Indigenous environmental knowledge base through dance and song is demonstrative of engaging intact ecosystems as a reintroduction of appreciation for qualities of daily movement. This reconnection with intergenerational knowledge, remaining faithful to that ethic of learning about ancestral lands, is kept alive in the Latvian Oral Tradition. Ancestral stories were an integral aspect of inspiring a culture that was defined by relationships with the places they lived. 169

Postman (1986) writes: "television has gradually become our culture" (p. 79).

Although campers experience a transition phase in moving from urban to non-urban places, camp culture should involve developing a deeper understanding of place. Focal practices include an immersion into stories about moving away from ancestral landscapes told around the campfire. This experience of hearing stories over a course of time and creating art that is useful in terms of remembering and developing aesthetic skills becomes a way of creating connections with Mother Earth.

Conceptualizing walks though the campgrounds I am struck by the memories these places help me evoke. I remember the tranquility of engaging ancestral practices with some of the campers over a decade ago. Perhaps the reason I still remember these encounters is due to grounding self-reflective focal practices like picking blueberries, red, black and white currants, raspberries, cherries, and learning to cook and preserve them through the cold winter months. In learning how to work well, there is a shift that moves the participant beyond focusing on the task at hand and towards meditating other thoughts that arise. This world of sight, sound, smell and touch is part of the interwoven

lifestyle of camp life. Nabhan and Trimble (1994) write:

The natural world does not judge. It exists. One route to self-esteem, particularly for shy and undervalued children, lies in the out-of-doors. If, as psychologist jean Baker Miller asserts, the model of seeking identity by "developing all of one's self in increasingly complex ways, in increasing complex relationships," is desirable, nature is a wonderful place to seek. The sun, the wind, the frogs, and the trees can reassure and strengthen and energize, (p. 23) 170

Although the experience of camp-life takes place for a very short part of the year, the wealth of activities in connection with ancestral teachings is part of a rejuvenation process. Activities facilitated by camp Elders who understand the pressures to conform to unnatural urban ways of viewing the world, are a form of resistance to forces of globalization leading to what Shiva (1993) describes as monocultures of mind. Language of eco-poetic songs and dances connect participants with the places they inhabit because they ask participants, whether they are singing, resigning or creating the eco-poetic work), to concurrently focus on the ecology of place. Several weeks in a natural environment can change attitudes, develop ecological understandings, and uncover new ways of knowing the world.

As I walk across fields towards what was once the home of my grandparents when

they were the custodians of camp Saulaine during the early 1960's, I feel resonances of

their engagement with these places. During the early years of the camp, hundreds of

Latvians in the diaspora community were involved in adhering to a strict regiment of

focal practices to make cultural continuity possible at a time when it was at risk of being

lost. Latvian cultural identity shifted drastically after the occupation of Soviet, German

and a final Soviet occupation during World War Two. After being in exile and having to

find new spaces and places to live, it awakened and kindled a realization for the hope of

finding a connection and continuance of a culture in the process of being crushed over­

seas. Traditional folk-songs, tales, and dances became the basis for teaching ancestral

stories and traditions. My inquiry has enabled me to demonstrate the ecologically 171 relevant impact of providing opportunities for learners to explore their own stories on deeper levels as a way of helping them uncover the interconnectedness of the world and ecology of language.

Walking the grounds I see similarities between some of the wind barriers the trees have been grown into which are very similar to those at our farm near Matheson, Ontario.

The landscape is quite different in Northern Ontario as Saulaine is about 500 km south of there. Walking the same paths that my mom and her parents did years ago, I feel a very deep connection with this place. Wilson (1993) discusses the way in which places and memories resonate within our bodies. Coming in contact with places our ancestors were familiar with demonstrates Wilson's (1993) idea of how our bodies continue to understand information that has been passed down through generations.

The Pedagogy of Ancestral Foods

Some of the food the campers ate was grown on the land where the camp Saulaine is located. Food preparation involves learning about the names and uses of the plants that grew in the surrounding area. My favorite summer activity is camping. Eating on the move provides a wonderful opportunity for campers to become involved with the process of preparing their own food and to experience what follows. The juxtaposition of camping and moving beyond the camp in overnight excursions becomes an important part of learning traditional songs because they are an integral part of learning the connection between ancestral foods and songs. This ecology is in confirmation of a 172 millennia of Indigenous thinkers as well as ecological thinkers postulate as does

Lovelock's (1995) Gaia theory, that Earth is indeed, alive.

Camp gatherings include the making and partaking of ancestral foods. Making ancestral meals is a continuity of cultural traditions. It is also a connection with the memory of Elders who participate in the process of creating them. Particular ingredients used in the making of traditional foods enable an evocation of the places these were created as well as past creators including friends and family members. An example of this is the focal practice of drying apples.

One of my fondest memories is chewing on dried apples my grandmother stowed away in a cloth bag. I can clearly remember watching her work with apples. My favorite dried apples have always been the crispiest ones. Spending a good deal of time making sure that I have a plentiful supply of dried apple slices is one of my favourite focal practices. The first part of this activity entails meeting with the farmer who sells me the

apples on my way to the cottage. They are a large part of my snacks during winter months and are locally grown. I consider the importance of locally grown food that Berry

(1995) and Bowers (2002) describe. I discuss the apple trade with the farmer who grows

them. During these talks I learn about how the apples are harvested and stored, but also

about the growing process of apple trees.

Unpacking my grandfather's Chevrolet Caprice Classic piled full of books, taped

interviews, clothing, water and food which includes several bushels of apples, I realize my research about focal practices can be applied to many of the practices I engage. 173

Peeling apples in the joint living and dining room that overlooks the lake, I sort seeds for planting, peels and browned apple chunks that I will bring to the deer. I know that the sliced apples I have prepared will sustain me on further journeys.

The Sacredness of Trees

It is not enough to just care for the land when we are taking something from it, but to constantly work to help nature along. No, we don't want to create landscape like a well sculptured modern park or garden. Certainly we want to keep it wild. But what we want to achieve is a perfection in nature, free from disease, healthy and strong. We must fulfill the reason we are put here on earth, and we can never do enough to help. (Brown, 1987, p. 74)

An aspect of environmental education that is often taken for granted is the pedagogy of landscape. As the world is alive and does quite well without us, it is important to question our role here. Living in Canadian landscapes one should know the plants that

grow there and how to survive, at least for a few days, if a vehicle breaks down in any weather and in any place that one may have the opportunity to visit. The idea of being

stuck off Highway 400 for Ontario residents should not be a dangerous and possibly-

deadly situation. Knowing how to walk the landscape and being well adapted to it should

be an integral part of environmental education as well the curriculum of systems of public

schooling. Knowing how to live in non-urban environments provides a gift of time that

can help learners understand healthy ways of living. Nourishing oneself through an 174 interaction with wild growing plants and the ingestion of them is an integral aspect of ancestral epistemologies and ontologies.

The work of growing plants and shaping the way in which they grow is more than just aesthetically pleasing practice. Work with plants merges with stories about the way in which plants are sacred medicine. Developing a deeper understanding of how plants are harvested and the way in which these can be transformed into foods and teas that are beneficial for human health, is a way of developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Spending time within the places these plants grow in non-urban environments

demonstrates an essential aspect of developing an understanding of place that can lead

towards sustainable relationships with landscapes. This process also enables new

understandings in unfamiliar places.

The lives of some of the trees at the camp can span a period of hundreds if not

thousands of years. Bringhurst (2006), among other eco-theorists, questions the validity

of what could be classified as "environmental science":

The oldest individuals, not much taller than I am - are 5000 years of age or more. A few years ago, a person who called himself a scientist found in these mountains a pine that might be the oldest of all. He cut it down to count its rings. He killed what may indeed have been the oldest living being in the world, (p. 42)

It is very difficult to merge ways of learning that are sustainable in systems of education

that foster the detriment of intact ecosystems. Through a critical literary approach, eco-

writers seek to uncover linguistic restraints that are engrained in the English language 175

(among others). To define this approach it is important to look at linguistic interaction through a variety of lenses.

The following creation of poetic work involves a close read of the place this poem was

conceived as well as the language engaged to evoke my interpretation of an event.

Understanding and working with biological symbols that are an expression of the

landscape is a way of learning about the relationship between landscape and place. The

following photo is a symbolic of one of my favorite places on Earth. It helps me focus my

attention on the place I describe in the subsequent song submitted here to exemplify a

critical approach to literary engagement.

My investigation of how different institutions of colonization were taken up by the

Latvian diaspora community demonstrates ways of maintaining cultural traditions. In

effect, organizations like movements of scouting can act as methods of rebellion against

forces of globalization and assimilation. Most essential in the process of learning to live

and becoming part of a particular environment involves the gift of time and the

opportunity to live within a community that values and respects the gift of life that land

provides. The following is a song I wrote in re-conceptualizing my experience of

revisiting my journey through northern landscapes. 176

Figure 11: Mirrored Serenity

Northern Mindwalks flow along the riverside with a team of eco-travelers up the stream and down the rapids reading what matters water, rocks, time of day, move you towards sunset better here in the worst of weather than sunny city daze learn to see each place we stop looks different that all others branches break as fire's smoke twists up towards Sky-world understand webs of plants we find along the way thankful of breaded pickerel frying in butter glowing coals in rock formations mark the places we will sleep beyond belching waves of smog and grimy city streets today we'll taste the numinous birth-right of being here health and cleansing medicine grows within sunset's mist 177

tomorrow we journey between waves of deeper waters above the surface unseen realities reveal their depth berries roots and pristine water not distant memory to await northern light and stars, free to hear Earth's breath (Kulnieks, 2008)

Developing environmental education beyond school curriculum requires an understanding of the ecological shifts from one place to another. For me, exploring the

Latvian camp experience is an opportunity to interview Elders about theories regarding teaching methodologies. Living in a diaspora community by definition includes a

displacement from traditional spaces and places. Interviewing some of the Elders who

have worked at Latvian camps, schools and camp-schools has made me aware of the

critical importance of focal practices. Engaging in these practices becomes a vehicle for

learning. Focusing on these over an extended period of time moves participants beyond

the task at hand towards understanding the importance of places they live. These paths

help learners traverse ancestral ways of thinking and being. 178

CHAPTER VI: REDISCOVERING TRADITIONAL TEACHING AND LANGUAGE LEARNING: INTERPRETING A JOURNEY OF STORY, SONG, AND DANCE AT CAMP GAREZERS A version of the following chapter is published as Rediscovering traditional teaching and language learning: Interpreting a journey of story, song and dance at camp Garezers. The Canadian Journal ofEnvironmental Education (JCEE), 11, 143-156.

Lai dariju, ko dariju Regardless of what I did Dziedadama vien dariju I did only through singing Kura darbu padariju for deeds accomplished Tarn dziesminu nodziedaj I sang a song (Kulnieks, 2008)

Dancing Between Languages

Writing, like human language, is engendered not only within the human community but between the human community and the animate landscape, born of the interplay and contact between the human and the more-than- human world. (Abram, 1996, p. 95)

Through an active participation within the non-urban environment of Garezers, these

landscapes become pedagogical sites that help me, as teacher and student, merge past,

present, and future conceptualizations of identities. By returning to these familiar

landscapes and songs this past summer, I imagine where I might be if my grandparents

had not had the opportunity to escape from the war-torn region of Latvian ancestral

homelands during WWII. I question, "How does my vision of self continue to inspire me

to follow and also oppose dominant trends of what it means to be a Canadian, Latvian or

displaced Indigenous person becoming naturalized to North-American landscapes?" 179

Although most of the ancestral songs I know have been written down or recorded, I learned many of these in the Oral Tradition. Many of the songs follow this tradition by design. Verses, or at least a part of them, are repeated so that those who do not know the song have an opportunity to hear them and sing along. Singing these songs helps me theorize and rekindle my relationship with the Latvian language and diaspora communal experiences with non-urban landscapes. Struggling with the absence of Latvian fonts, I reevaluate my translations. Through a close focus on meaning-making practices and their relationship with landscape learning, an understanding of ancestral knowledge of places that are echoed in traditional Latvian songs, stories, and dances is developed. This understanding is an important aspect of becoming naturalized to a particular landscape.

Writing this chapter helps me evoke particular ancestral songs and teachings that

demonstrate ways in which a sustainable relationship with Earth is at the core of their

conception. Developing an understanding of songs and dances that are Indigenous to a particular place can rekindle a relationship with the places people live and depend on for

their survival.

I am moved by the thoughts that echo my interpretation of Understanding

Curriculum. Of particular interest to me is the discussion about Pinar and Grumet's

(1976) autobiographical method of curriculum, tracing the etymology of the Latin term

currere or the "running of a course" (W. Pinar, Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., Taubman, P.,

1995 p. 515). Investigating different theories helps me make sense of the currere of

Garezers. The course of spending time within a particular place provides an opportunity 180 to witness the numinosity of landscape defined as supernatural or spiritual presence that was a quintessential aspect of ancestral lives. Running this course also makes it possible to discover the sacredness of stories that relate to language and place learning that Basso

(1996) describes:

The pictorial character of Western Apache place-names is frequently remarked upon when Apache people are asked to compare their own place-names with familiar place-names in English. On such occasions, English names - such as Globe, Show, Low, McNary, Phoenix, and others - are regularly found deficient for "not showing what those places look like" or for "not letting you see those places in your mind." Alternatively, Western Apache place-names are consistently praised for "making you see those places like they really are" or for "putting those places in your mind so you can see them after you go away." One Apache from Cibecue put the difference succinctly: "The whiteman's names [are] no good. They don't give pictures to your mind." And a local wit said this: "Apaches don't need Polaroids. We've got good names!" (p. 157)

Strategies to reconstruct traditional ways of being unfold in relation to place. Paying close attention to traditional practices, such as the art of song, story, and dance, fosters a relationship between language and landscape.

As research participant, I can tune in with the sacredness of non-urban places by reconstructing ancestral understandings, celebrations, and relationships with what Abram

(1996) refers to as the more-than-human world. Writing this work, I mediate between past, present, and future frames of reference. Being immersed in nature that encompasses the school and sleeping quarter(s) learners realize that nature is everywhere, and that they

are part of that place. Taking the time to develop an understanding of the plants that live

in this area like sassafras that was is also learned during afternoon activities. It becomes 181 evident that sumac, raspberries and strawberries that grow along the side of the road are only a fraction of the plants that should be known. Although nature is very close to urban areas throughout North America, public systems of education exclude students from understanding their world. Moving between classroom and natural settings I realize that the sounds of the woods and sounds of the Latvian language are very similar. For example, the word vejs the word for wind sounds like the wind. Udens (water) resonates with the experience of standing beside the lake. Aug, spoken softly is in tune with the idea of growing. Auksts is reminiscent of the cold.

The act of moving between the English and Latvian language points to gaps between

eco-poetic language and the formalized semantics of the academy, as well as the different

forms of knowledge they attempt to represent. For example, I grapple with the use of the

term Ecopoetic defined as ecological and poetical in place of "Mythopoetic," defined as

poetic stories and systems of belief that have been remembered and passed along through

generations. The process of learning and remembering these stories* over a course of time

demonstrates their importance. However, negative connotation associated with the terms

myth and stories give these terms different meanings in cultures that do not regard these

words as merely representations of fictional events. When these words are used in the

English language, they are not to be thought of as reality. Rhyme and rhythms of

combinations of words may also affect the reader's associations. As Rosenblatt (1978)

explains throughout The Reader, the Text, the Poem, the reader is an integral part of the 182 text. Translating words and sentences in a concise manner does not automatically bring with it an understanding of culture and location.

Becoming familiar with the resonances of Garezers translated as "the place along the lake" located on the shores of Long Lake, Michigan, is an immense privilege. Developing a relationship with non-urban landscapes is accomplished through revisiting a language learned from birth but maintained through persistence in order to continue following traditions that embody the language as well as a seasonal communal pilgrimage back to those familiar spaces. Weatherford's (1991) Native Roots outlines Chief Sealth's 1854 summation that all land is sacred because of a connection with ancestry, which is both physical and experiential. While writing this paper, I am saddened by the fact that I have not learned traditional stories and names of many of the places I spend time within for part of each year.

The process of translating stanzas of traditional songs after looking at photographs of familiar landscapes brings to mind the complexity involved in beginning to know and understand different locales in Garezers that I revisit. For me, knowing the world through two languages does not mean that translations can be extremely accurate or even complementary. The possibility of a wider meaning between multi-lingual engagements may occur; however, it seems to me that the worlds of meaning are somewhat separate entities. Translational discrepancies become part of an eco-poetic relationship that non- developed environments can foster. Urban environments, compared to non-reconstructed spaces and places, are entry points for theorizing environmental education, and more 183 specifically, an eco-literacy that is part of developing a relationship with both language and landscape.

As I write poems and songs and learn to listen to their deeper meanings, I realize that there is more at work than my own imagination. Eco-poetic work also involves a dialogue between language, landscape and mind. Attempting to represent landscape provides a reason for the writer to express moments that are otherwise overlooked. Solnit

(2000) writes:

Wordsworth and his companions are said to have made walking into something else, something new, and thereby to have founded the whole lineage of those who walk for its own sake and for the pleasure of being in the landscape, from which it has sprung. Most who have written about this first generation of Romantics propose that they themselves introduced walking as a cultural act, as part of aesthetic experience, (p. 82)

Attempting to express experiences grounded in ecologically intact settings changes the way that people engage with these. Ecological experiences change the way that people think.

An inquiry of Orr's (1992) conceptualization of Ecological Literacy is a way of deepening an awareness of the ecology of the world that systems of public education

often neglect to consider. Thinking about eco-literacy in both the academy and in systems

of public education often implies a use of Cartesian methods of measurement and

conventional reading and writing forms. As Bringhurst explains, "every non-human

language has a literature too. If something speaks well, literature is what it has to say" (p. 184

163). This notion of environmental literacy is an integral aspect of Indigenous knowledge and outdoor learning.

Mapping the Course

Ecological literacy also requires the more demanding capacity to observe nature with insight, a merger of landscape and mindscape. (Orr, 1992, p. 86)

Dziedot dzimu dziedot augu As I sang I grew dziedot muzu nodzivoju singing I lived my life Daila mana valodina Beautiful is my language Vel dailaki tikumin more beautiful are ethics (Kulnieks, 2008)

Singing the verse above takes me back to Saturday morning Latvian school classes as

well as summer camps I have attended. This song also serves as a reminder of the

importance of the continuance of singing throughout different phases of life. Garezera

Vasaras Vidusskola, or Long-Lake Summer High-School, is one of several Latvian

summer schools outside of Latvia that continues to provide educational opportunities for

ancestral learning. Stories told by Elders, some of whom have worked there since the

1960s, help me evoke personal experiences of returning to these places. One of the

reasons I visit the camp now is because I feel spirit guides call me. I remember one of my

Elders asking me if I could imagine myself taking up the challenge of becoming a 185 teacher. At the time, I assumed she was joking and recall smiling at her suggestion. I now understand this moment as a beginning of my path towards becoming an educator.

Fifteen summers later, I ask her what would be appropriate for me to write about. She tells me, "Raksti visu," which means, "Write it all."

Morning communal activities at Garezers begin with a walk through the forest tracing paths towards a delicious breakfast. Solnit (2000) writes:

The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it. A new thought seems like a feature of the landscape that was there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making, (pp. 5-6)

My trek to the edam zale or meal hall takes approximately ten minutes. As I pass the place of a land-marking hornet's nest, I still remember meandering slowly towards our

communal place of eating. It reminds me of other hornet encounters and the pedagogy

entwined through the landscape of the apiaries with which my grandfather worked. Being

bitten is a window into the power of natural surroundings. Moving along these forest

paths over time, I become increasingly aware of non-urban sounds. I listen to the woods

speak with me. I recall afternoons spent within the tranquility of these landscapes and

become in tune with a language known from birth—a language that stretches me towards

ancestral landscapes of Latvia.

As I listen to the voices and other sounds of the dinner gathering, I recall that before

meals students sing a prayer. The following translation is a song participants sing. 186

Met Dievini zelta jostu Throw a golden belt par so visu istabinu over all this room Lai paeda kas nav edis may those eat who have not eaten lai padzera kas nav dzers let those who are thirsty, drink (Kulnieks, 2008)

I think about my translation of the prayer and conclude that it merges between

Christian and older ancestral systems of belief. The poetic term Dievini is a reference to

God or Gods. It is difficult for the singer not to interpret it as an evocation of the older beliefs that have been passed down through generations of singers. A more poetic interpretation might define the term Dievini as a less formal evocation of an unseen reality. The term josta (meaning belt) in the first line later became changed to krustu

(meaning cross). This is clearly another example of the Christianization of Latvian culture. Interpreting these metaphysical stories becomes part of reflective activities with which learners are asked to engage. Songs like this one have the capacity to evoke an

engagement with the eco-poetic world including ancestral stories, which are a major

focus of the summer curriculum.

In my experience, ways of thinking do not stagnate while traveling along geographical

and metaphysical paths. New realizations surface through humming and singing ancestral

songs that are entwined throughout the curriculum. A focus on ecological literacies is provoked through the learning of these songs that are an echo of living within

ecologically sustainable cultures and surroundings. A great deal of time is required for

personal investigations outside the confines of classrooms. For the most part, summer 187 morning classes take place indoors, whereas afternoon lessons include teachings that explore ancestral beliefs and customs. Following the theory that language skills can be increased greatly when learners are immersed in the language they are attempting to master, Latvian is the primary language of all camp activities.

By reflecting on my experience of getting to know the landscapes of Garezers, I gain a deeper awareness of the lack of ecological education in systems of public education. To paint a more vivid picture of identity formation, this work requires a re-evaluation of my learning experiences that encompasses feelings and understandings that traditional teachings can summon. Writing about these experiences also helps me understand the

systems of indoctrination students are exposed to within North America. My hope is that through the sharing of this story, I will be able to demonstrate the importance of engaging

ecological education in outdoor environments.

For me, each visit to Garezers is a renewal of ancestral ontologies and

epistemologies, but also an opportunity for me to ask Elders questions that bubble and

surface slowly through colder months of the year. Gatherings at various locales

throughout the camp become an opportunity to conceptualize adventures and life-stories

that take place in the outside world. Memories and experiences become embodied by

place. As well as being a place to learn traditional songs and dances, this familiar ground

makes it possible to re-evaluate current thinking within land still connected with former perceptions gained by participants who return here. In the process of pilgrimage, I retrace

paths scattered through the forest and return to memories of a displaced, once again 188 nomadic ancestral spirit. I now realize that returning to these increasingly familiar sites is part of the process of discovering the sacredness of landscapes. This familiarization is a process of naturalization. Slowly, engagement with places becomes embodied and connects students with the land.

Bedu manu lielu bedu Troubles my great troubles Es par bedu nebedaj I don't worry about them Liku bedu zem akmena I put them under a rock Pari gaju dziedadam and over it singing I go (Kulnieks, 2008)

Pedagogies of Song

Language, for oral peoples, is not a human invention but a gift of the land itself. (Abram, 1996, pp. 262-263)

Singing traditional songs is a way of passing along information about daily life. These

songs also represent ancestral knowledge about natural surroundings. The words within

stanzas of songs are pedagogical, as are the themes they embody. Learning these songs

creates a dialogue between place and self as well as fostering a mastery of

communication skills. In addition, stories evoked by participants living in similar

ecological spaces can elicit a resonance and pedagogy of landscape. Ancestral songs are

sung as a way of reconstructing and thinking through daily realities. This act of

description and representation is part of a larger meaning-making process. 189

Natural sounds echo within human languages. Asking students to play with syntax and to interpret the meanings songs represent can inspire an evocation of the Spirit of the land. The opportunity to spend time with these songs within everyday life allows original meanings and intentions of the songs to percolate beyond the words themselves and into contemporary ways of thinking. A return to previously sung lyrics moves learners to discover cognitive, emotional, and physical responses to songs that have become a traditional form of becoming familiar with the dialogue between landscape, self, and language. Singing and thinking about what the songs represent in relation to personal experiences bring them to life.

Written representation of these songs creates a partial loss of the urgency for memorizing and remembering them. Because they can be accessed at any time, it may not

seem essential to sing the songs throughout the course of a typical summer day beyond camp landscapes. However, the existence of a recorded form makes it possible to return to the songs to rekindle their oral and aural traditions. In learning these songs, as well as through their performance, the knowledge they contain is resurrected and made possible through a connection with non-urban environments. To sing in natural environments is to

communicate with them.

Translating songs that describe what can be referred to as Ecopoetic understandings

of the world (for example, Vitols' & Auseklis' song Gaismas Pils or "Castle of Light"), helps me outline the sacredness and strength of relationships between nature and metaphysical Latvian ancestral stories. Abram (1996) writes: 190

Oral memorization calls for lively, dynamic, often violent, characters and encounters. If the story carries knowledge about a particular plant or natural element, then that entity will often be cast, like all of the other characters, in a fully animate form, capable of personlike adventures and experiences, susceptible to the kinds of setbacks or difficulties that we know from our own lives. In this manner the character or personality of a medicinal plant will be easily remembered, (p. 120)

Discussion about the powerful feelings the nature of symbolic references combined with the communicative properties of music demonstrate the power language holds.

As I listen to stories regarding the landscapes members of Latvian diaspora have chosen to inhabit, I realize that there is a deep connection with memory of other landscapes. One of the reasons people sense a connection with unfamiliar places is due to the mnemonic effect of land. Many Elders have told me they have chosen to live in particular landscapes due to the fact that these otherwise unfamiliar settings remind them of the places they once thought of as "home."

Translating stories involves a consideration of the time and place they were written.

Learning unfamiliar languages later on in life makes it difficult to embody the ancestral traditions that live within the first language. However, in order for me to remain connected with my ancestry, it is pertinent to develop language learning and retention strategies. During the final year of this high-school experience, learners philosophize participation in the Latvian community and how identities are constructed within this particular place. I question if my yearly return to that landscape helps me consider if biological ancestral connections, or the desire to continue to know the world through the

Latvian language, tucked away from daily English-North American interactions, makes 191 me feel naturalized to North-American landscapes. Reconsidering my fourth year domraksts (thesis) reveals that I do not know the exact tribal location I am originally from. Rather, a desire to communicate in Latvian and to learn language through ancestral songs is the most essential aspect of developing my awareness of the gifts an understanding of the pedagogy of ancestral culture within a dialogue with place inspires.

Intellectual endeavors in the outdoors are part of a process of naturalization with a particular place. Many camp activities involve singing the newly learned ancestral songs.

Fridays at the campfire gathering, part of the tradition and ceremony is to perform as well as celebrate the week's communal learning. Listening to stories told by Elders is an opportunity often lost if retirement is dictated by age restrictions. Communal gatherings that include many age groups are a method of engaging the eco-poetic world from a variety of perspectives. Spending a week at this camp beneath branches and cloud

formations to research questions about songs, stories, and dances that arise, I am able to revitalize my relationship with increasingly familiar landscapes. My experience inspires me to write new songs and poems as part of my work. Observing the camp from a

distance, but also participating in the tradition of singing in that particular place, provides me with an opportunity to re-evaluate personal experiences. A question that arises from

this inquiry is: "How does that experience continue to develop my relationship with other

landscapes I encounter?" 192

Es tecinus vien teceju I danced only small steps Visu cauri vasarin through the entire summer Lai varetu vienu dienu, so that for a day I can Pie galdina pasedet sit (relaxed) at the table (Kulnieks, 2008)

Interpreting Movement and Dance

If place-making is a way of constructing the past, a venerable means of doing human history, it is also a way of constructing social traditions and, in the process, personal and social identities. (Basso, 1996, p. 7)

Part of what I remember about my camp experience as I interpret my travelogue notes is the enjoyment of leaving the confines of the classroom to explore forested areas of the camp. I now realize that traditional ceremonies are reconstructed by the work of paying close attention to the messages embodied in traditional songs and dances. They become a mnemonic device of ancestral knowledge. The intergenerational knowledge encoded in dances and songs demonstrates a story that requires translation between land and the

Latvian and English languages. The custom of learning to perform them is a return to ancestral pedagogies that help develop communal relationships between language and landscape.

During my week at Garezers I observe folk-dancers perform and realize I am still engaging an interpretive process of understanding what these dances mean. Symbolic gestures, symmetry, how the dance looks to the audience and even possible interpretations of dancers are part of this process of understanding. Observing outdoor performances and listening to the accompanying songs and music connects me to a 193 different part of my experience with the Ecopoetic. I am reminded of conversation with

Dan Longboat, Director of Indigenous Environmental Studies in the Department of

Indigenous Studies, Trent University (Journal entry dated Feb. 15, 2005) who explains that to not continue to learn ancestral songs and stories is to kill them. (Kulnieks, 2008)

Without creating and continuing opportunities to dance ancestral dances, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember them. I am grateful to those who continue to practice and teach these dances to future generations. I also feel that it is also important to consider how the impact of globalization will affect the continuity of ancestral teachings.

My current interpretation of these dances leads me to understand that participants take with them more than the memory and teachings of songs and stories on their lifelong journey of learning. These teachings echo landscapes and cityscapes, but also provide a memory of body movement and capability.

To learn and practice folkdances in this natural environment connects learners with

ancestors through the act of sharing similar movement, rhyme, and time. Tautsdejas and rotalas are forms of folkdances. Tautsdejas are considered to be the more difficult and

complicated of these dances. Although rotalas are easier to dance, they are often regarded to be the older of the two forms. Because they are danced at a slower pace, the

entire community can participate in the dancing of these, whereas tautsdejas require far

more focus on body movement and practice. When dancing traditional dances, I realize

they are a form of language. Body movements, actions, and the stories these dances tell

move dancers beyond the complicated steps towards personal interpretations. However, 194 these practices are increasingly becoming performance pieces rather than a way of promoting movement and healthy living, and deepening awareness of the sacredness of place.

Dancing on grass, rather than on pavement, brings the songs to life. Outdoor dancing and singing forms an ecology of connection with landscape. Solnit (2000) writes:

"Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world" (p. 29). Experiencing sounds, smells, and flavours that are indigenous to a place is to become aware of ones connection with place. Being attentive to the

danger of muscle strains further intensifies memories of these experiences. The changes

of state that occur through the practice of moving from familiar to unfamiliar territories

of mind and place forms a closer bond with others. These outdoor activities are also a

way to combat sedentary urban lifestyles.

New associations with text and with learned tunes and movements are formed

through the act of performing these songs and dances. Ancestral songs help move

learners back towards the oral tradition from whence they came. These associations help

students become aware of healthy lifestyle alternatives beyond the confines of the camp.

Protocols are carried beyond camp life when these songs are evoked in daily life. In

addition, these songs serve as mnemonic devices and release memories and

understandings experienced in the landscapes they were learned. Saturday evenings are

reserved for a modern dance. Gradually, a transformation and re-evaluation of selves 195 takes place as students engage with these landscapes through outdoor activities. The opportunity to participate in formal class environments outdoors moves learners to think beyond classroom barriers. My experience of this model of outdoor education enhances my ability to understand the importance of developing a relationship with environments that have not been reconstructed. My hope and belief is that understanding the more-than- human world so evident in pristine and natural places can challenge the trends of globalization and monoculturalism by moving within a particular place. The body is full

of chemicals that are also found in nature. To engage with these in their most natural

form is to be reconnected with Creation.

Puti puti ziemeliti kaladu, kaladu Blow north wind kaladu, kaladu Dzen sidrabu sai zeme send silver to this land Sai zemei sieves meitas to this land wives and daughters Sidrabina velkatajas the wearers of silver (Kulnieks, 2008)

Recreating Traditional Arts

Art was an integral expression of life, not something separate; it rarely had a specialized name. (Cajete, 1994, p. 150)

In Crossing the Postmodern Divide, Borgmann (1992) describes focal realities and focal

practices. He takes these practices up in relation to agriculture. Participation in ancestral

practices creates connections with ancestral knowledge. Sumara (1996) takes up this

notion of focal practice in terms of reading and writing where the author/reader focuses

on a task from early stages to its completion. I believe that ancestral learning and 196 teaching from signs and symbols, and the work of crafting bracelets, rings, earrings, songs, and dances are indeed focal practices. Creators of these art forms draw on personal experiences to promote a transformation. These experiences become deeply connected with the place they occur when time is given to re-conceptualize and recognize this work in terms of learning and teaching. In the process of transformation, the object becomes a place to re-evaluate current thinking. Through an oscillation between focus and imagination, a metamorphosis of selves takes place.

Formal classes are not scheduled during the afternoon with the exception of some papildstundas, or supplemental classes for the graduating class as students move towards examinations that take place in the oral tradition. Prior to the examination process, students are given concepts to investigate, but the examination does not require writing other than to demonstrate and expand points of discussion. This way, students and teachers have a dialogue, which is a continuation of the learning process. To create art that is meaningful creates an opportunity to evoke teachings about the course to life, rather than to put them on paper to be archived and eventually destroyed in order to generate wealth through the destruction of nature.

Another example of an ancestral focal practice is the art of making pottery. Clay becomes a location where symbols and the stories they represent are re-created. The production of this art form is an ontological investigation. Stories of food preservation, eating habits, and a relationship of landscape are intertwined with the creation of clay forms. With time, students learn about the delicacy with which the clay spins and with a 197 gentle touch, how to pull the shape of a bowl, cup, or vase from the solid substance. Too much water renders it too soft to work with, whereas too little makes it too brittle to mold. Watching an instructor's hands, I wonder how many years she has been working within this world of clay; how many forms has she created? As students learn to move the clay into different shapes, whistles, and mythological figures, I realize the magic of this process. Along with these recreated forms come stories that are passed on by generations of instructors and their apprentices.

Working with the clay and the thinking that accompanies this activity can connect the

learner to ancient ways of food preparation, preservation, and consumption. Being part of

the process of imagining deeper meanings through this creative process as well as the

creative process of preparing food in ways that are not ecologically destructive connects

learners with earth-giving sustenance and life. It is difficult not to be transformed by this

process of creation. Making bowls, cups, as well as the food and beverages these vessels

held in former times is a way to foster an understanding of a sustainable relationship with

place. These ways of life concurrently echo in ancient songs learners begin to hum

through the course of a day. Touching the clay and other materials that are of the land

beckon a response and that response is the resonance of voice translated in ancestral

songs.

Rotkalsana or jewelry creation from metals is one of the afternoon activities students

may choose. Pupils are instructed about contrasts between older and modern ways of

making the rotas. Along with these methodologies and symbols come stories from 198

Latvia. These aesthetic forms include rings, bracelets, and necklaces. Reshaping these objects and symbols connects present artists with previous artisans and future audiences.

In creating art and finding language to describe the process of creation, learners connect personal experiences with ancestral stories. Those songs are a continuation of intergenerational knowledge. A more accurate translation of rotkalsana would be the stage after forging steel, when hammering it into a particular shape takes place.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), the etymology of the word rota has very little to do with jewels—it is more closely associated with the word ipone, or to pound. Although this activity is optional, the main incentive is that students know they will be able to take their creation with them. Working with a master jeweler or rotkals provides an opportunity to create exquisite work of which one can be proud.

Part of working with metal and clay involves learning the raksti or symbols to be

inscribed in them. In Latvian, there is no differentiation between the symbols and the word write as represented by the word raksti. Mirroring the act of writing the engraved

symbol also represents ancient stories and beliefs. Due to space limitations, I will not

discuss these meanings here except to illustrate the deeper meanings the re-creation of

these cultural artifacts embody.

Ai dziesmina, Ai dziesmina O song, o song Kadtevjaukipadziedaju when you are lively/well sung Ar tevimi druva gaju with you I went into the field Ar valodu setina with language into the garden (Kulnieks, 2008) 199

A Pedagogy of Language Beyond the Valley of Song

The culture, however, was extraordinarily rich: several hundred thousand folksongs, thirty thousand melodies, thirty-five thousand fairy tales. This oral tradition was a substitute for "history." (Eksteins, 1999, p. 26)

This previous song reminds me that work becomes easier through a rhythm of song. Part of the summer program involves preparing for a performance that takes place during the graduation weekend. Each day can be seen as a progression towards being able to re­ present the learning that takes place over the currere of Garezers. The opening song chosen by the master of ceremony, usually the camp director, begins the formal part of the day. By the end of the summer students are introduced to dozens of songs and stories.

Dainas are another term for verses with which learners become familiar. My translation of the term dainas is "teachings to be sung," some of which go back to ancient times.

Stories and songs were passed down orally through generations, and collected shortly after the Latvian language was put into today's alphabet less than 200 years ago (Paiders,

2003). Some songs are introduced in the morning gathering as well as being taken up in greater detail during singing classes and rehearsals.

Most of the songs are textually recorded and students sing them as they listen to an instrumental accompaniment. Participants listen to each other while imagining words and meanings that follow. Through the act of learning to sing them, thoughts shift from knowing what the next words are towards paying attention to other interpretations and memories these songs inspire. Appearance of the other singers and dancers, immediate 200 surroundings, as well as landscapes on the other side of bay windows of the auditorium

(and the partition that will turn the performance hall into several classrooms) become part of the experience. In the evening, singing groups gather to practice traditional and newly learned songs. The location where these songs crescendo is the Dziesmu Leja or "Valley of Song." In this valley encompassed by lush forest, participants dance, sing, and return to ancestral traditions. Singing ancestral songs is the artistic embodiment of translating sounds of natural environments. Ancestral songs are an Oral record of human interaction with place. The performance of these songs is a form of communication with the places

(both physical and spiritual) that humans inhabit.

Translation and reinterpretation of ancestral songs and dances deepens my understanding of the second-language learning process. Although learners move within these two languages (both Latvian and English), an understanding of the difficulty to accurately transpose thoughts and ideas from one language to the other develops. Part of the inability to translate terms accurately comes from the cultural experiences particular words and phrases embody in any language. Longboat's (2003) discussion about

ancestral teaching and learning helps me understand that Iroquoian language is an

ancestral gift from the Creator. Listening to the sounds of Latvian language, I realize how much these sounds resonate with natural environments. For example, the word that represents the wind, vejs, (pronounced veysh), especially when whispered, is reminiscent

of a brief moment of listening to wind "whispering." For the Latvian listener, the word is

also connected with trees from particular landscapes. They can help the speaker elicit the 201 place the language was learned. This access to memory demonstrates the importance of developing a deep relationship with place through seasonal returns. Language may be exported, but associations are very difficult to call forth from histories and their deeper meanings in another language.

Latvian diaspora gatherings require participants to take the time to sing the songs as well as share and acknowledge realities of life beyond the community. As part of my ongoing research regarding language learning in relation to the landscapes of Camp

Garezers, I revisit some of my poetic writing that evolves through an engagement with these landscapes. Latvia is no longer under Soviet occupation and the Latvian language is again spoken openly in ancestral places. The interest to know the world through this language in other places is dwindling because arguably, the language is not as endangered as it once was. Few members of the community choose to focus on theories of language learning and continuity, or to know the world primarily through the Latvian language. Grandparents who do not have an understanding of the English language here in North America have become a very small percentage of the population, as most have already ventured "beyond the sun" or aizsaule. For me, it is essential to speak with my grandfather in the Latvian language. This communication helps me understand where I originated and inspires me to search for deeper understandings about myself.

In this chapter I have tried to outline understandings that have evolved through a community spending time together in a particular place. The process of reconstructing

and re-conceptualizing photographs I have taken through the process of creating 202 overheads has allowed me to understand the places they represent in new and meaningful ways. The opportunity to focus on the events of Camp Garezers allows me to think about my own relationship with the landscapes the North American-Latvian community has been learning about. Other celebratory gatherings include Song Festivals, Song Days, Si

Maksla ir Jauna or This Art is New, yearly congresses in Canada and the United States, as well as ski weekends and seasonal camping expeditions in the Latvian Scout

Movement. Returning and focusing on the cultural ecology of particular places over a sustained period of time, it would seem that rather than merely maintaining traditions, culture is changing as it adapts and becomes familiar with these landscapes. To be in natural environments is to be able to experience the wonder of the more-than-human world. Understanding this numinousity through a genuine interaction with place can also

lead to the development of an ability to see through the illusion of the value of non-

sustainable ways of living on Earth. Through paying close attention to the landscapes of

Garezers, I feel that I am beginning to understand sacredness and how to develop a deep

relationship with the places I live. 203

CHAPTER VII: LANDSCAPE AND ORALITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY

Translating Eco-poetic Stories and Literacies: Environmental Educational

Leadership

A version of this chapter has been published as Kulnieks (2007) Translating eco-poetic stories and literacies: Environmental educational leadership. In W.T. Smale, & K. Young (Eds.). Approaches to educational leadership and practice (pp. 237-253). Calgary, Detselig Enterprises Ltd.

EZERMALA SAPNI

Sapnos dziedaju dziesmas ar draugiem atstadams miegu pirms saulite aust rusinot kvelosas ogles atverot aizkarus starp sarkanu-oranzdzeltenu debess un uguni

pusnomoda atplust stasti ko darbos es rakstisu domas pie senciem pastaigajos kas aizsaule solisus sper

skats vilno par udens spoguli saule auz laiku udeni atminas daudzgadiem nestos makonu veidolus krasnos

pie akmens sienam es tuvojos caur dumiem mezvistina iemana mani iedrazas pilnspara dizaja stumbra nemanot pate kur iet 204

mezs noriba sai mirkli skali pats nezin kas radija to radusas norises apvidu pasaule runa un stasta

caur zariem tumsa spid acs peksni cilpu met ta skatoties mane ta pazud svarstiga neliela ala

caur akmeniem redzu spalvinas bildejot aizeju prom sparni tad sitas pret akmeniem satrauksme parversas nesaprasana

gaiss dregns plust no zemes ne vavere riekstinus vac tik galvina paduse klusa ko megina izteikt sis stasts

ka aizvij amies tik talu dzives garsas senci lidzi nak gadiem cinas zem tumsas varas nak dienas baltas, sengaditas

iedegas atminas tasis un skalinos atnak vectetins kupinataja dumos ieminot takas macamies zemi lidzdalities talakas gaitas Lakeshore dreams

Dreams sing songs storied with friends plants stretch towards dawn rekindle coals, draw curtains between orange-red sky and fire-place glow slowly movement percolates stories places and words dance ancestral lifestyles uncovered in tales from footsteps beyond the sun waves ripple liquid mirror luminiferous sunrise weaves time memory emanates water respires clouds shape shift in sky

I tread lightly near rock walls through smoke clouds pheasant senses and sees flies full force into the trunk of a tree life's path chosen mistakes forest echoes this moment unknowing who created course terrain destines thoughts landscapes communicate black eye glows through branches body sweeps unseen circle disappears watching me 206

engulfed beyond cavernous walls

feathers become rock silhouettes unfocused on film wings pound rock in distance chaos and silence in motion

ground-dampened air accents dreary stillness birds and squirrels silently perch head dropped over breasts as if in slumber what is this fateful tale

how did we wind so far ancestral tastes and smells signify struggled under dark dominated days hope anticipated brightness and light

birch skin and pine twigs ignite memories as I smoke food, grandfather visits walk pedagogical paths of landscape memories shared into tomorrow

(Kulnieks, 2008)

Environmental educational leadership in the context of my scholarly research involves Eco-poetics as focal practice, which is a convergence of landscape, translation of the poetic nature of stories, with time. I consider multiple theoretical layers of environmental education, language learning and Oral Tradition juxtaposed with Literary

Tradition as outlined by Basso (1987, 1996), Cajete (1994), Cruikshank (1990),

Longboat (2007) and Sheridan (2002). My mixed methodological approach includes a) 207 learning about ancestral stories told by Elders that helped me better understand landscapes of Northern Ontario b) the writing and translation of my poem "lakeshore dreams" in Northern Ontario c) my translation of Imants Ziedonis' (1997) untitled poem as a beginning for developing a relationship with his work and d) a hermeneutic inquiry of ancestral stories in both oral and literary form. Interpretation of this work includes discussing the poem with my grandfather in relation to his youth in Latvia as well as an ethnographic study in which I engage in discussions about this investigation with Elders, friends, colleagues and poets as well as my research supervisors Dennis Sumara and subsequently Joe Sheridan in the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Education at York

University. The conversational aspects of Oral Tradition are an integral part of my understanding of these poems; the honour of having dialogues with Elders helps me uncover questions about language and place. This paper is a triangulation of; a) an analysis and translation of several poems, b) an ethnographic study of eco-knowledge and c) an interpretation of eco-poetry that outlines why Indigenous knowledge is an essential aspect of environmental education and leadership.

Ethnographic Literacies and Practice

As I move between my translation of Ziedonis' untitled poem, the original poem as published in his Collected Works (1997), and a translation by Barry Callaghan (Ziedonis

1987), I realize that has been many years since I found a well read copy of his book

Flowers of Ice. Leafing through the silver-covered book, I recall the cold winter evening 208 of my first encounter with this work and the learning journey it inspires. Subsequent readings evoke further memories, framed around this initial encounter. While translating the poetry of Imants Ziedonis I contemplate how Oral and Literary tradition become entwined in language and landscape learning. Moreover, I consider what an understanding of the relationship between oral and literary tradition contribute to a discussion of leadership in environmental education. In order to explore these questions, I turn to Ziedonis as an exemplar of literary eco-poetics. Like much of his work written in the soviet era, this untitled poem embodies a resonance of Latvian landscapes and echoes

ecological epistemologies (ways of knowing) and ontologies (ways of being) of a particular place. His work serves as an example of literacy that represents sustainable

relationships with land that are commonplace for many who live in ancestral Latvian

landscapes.

Engaging and returning to a particular non-urban landscape is a way that systems of

public schooling can foster an awareness of the importance of the ecology of place. Eco-

poetic work, for example, the interpretation of landscape learning, the crafting of a poem

and the a reinterpretation of that poem in light of Indigenous stories is a useful way of

integrating environmental learning in systems of public education. Ecological leadership

should foster an interest in maintaining intergenerational knowledge through ancestral

stories that embody a deep engagement with landscapes. This knowledge is kept alive

through these practices because the retelling of these stories is a form of learning and

entertainment that is available without the use of industrially created technologies like 209 computers and televisions (Bowers 2000; Mander 1991). Furthermore, these practices allow for a connection with Elders who bring with their stories the experience of lifetimes of learning. These intergenerational engagements and connections between families and land stretch back to the beginnings of human-time as they have been retold through generations as a way of passing on knowledge as well as entertaining generations of listeners and orators.

Ziedonis' works are created and embedded in natural ecosystems. In taking a poem

from its place of conceptualization and conception it echoes a resonance of landscape

(Basso, 1987, Cajete, 1994, Cruikshank, 1990, Longboat, 2007, Sheridan, 1994, Sheridan

& Longboat, 2003). Knowing the place a poem is conceived gives learners the

opportunity to tap into the resonance of landscape from which it has been harvested. The

Latvian language contains sounds of local landscapes. These sounds are sung in tautas

dziesmas or "songs of the people", which illuminate the interconnectedness of land and

human life. The humming and singing of these songs as part of a process of investigating

etymological references to Indigenous stories, brings them to life. Ancestral

understandings can be evoked through the use of an ancient language like Latvian

because it is one of the oldest languages alive (Viks, 2001). It stands to reason that the

oldest tautas dziesmas that have been passed down in Oral Tradition, contain very ancient

information. Names and titles as well as ontologies and epistemologies form a living

connection between orators, the sounds they translate, the language they use and the

interpretations of listeners. Though I know of few environmental ethics within 210 contemporary poetry, the performance of ancestral and modern poetic forms that I write brings me towards a better understanding of the Latvian Oral Tradition. Reciting poetry and thus engaging in Oral Tradition, is important because it facilitates a dialogue among different generations. Engaging in the tradition of performing ancestral stories helps to inspire dialogues among community members. Celebrations that correspond with particular times of year are a way to remember important information as well as to develop a sense of community, that reach into and are coordinated by the movements of the heavens. Eco-poetic dialogues are essential for developing an understanding of place because they allow for a convergence of knowledge, place, experience and understandings. The origins of environmental knowledges are consistent with folk culture. Methodologically then, folk stories are the basis of environmental education since assimilation by literacy and schooling now work in the alienated media of literacy and computing. A restorative agenda would return orality and storytelling to its rightful epistemological and ontological integration with nature and reality.

Ecologies of Stories

Cross-cultural storytelling is an extremely difficult task. The term "story" in the

English language brings with it a lengthy history. According to the Oxford English

Dictionary (OED, 1971), during the 1200s story is defined as "a narrative, true or presumed to be true, relating to important events and celebrated persons of a more or less remote past; a historical relation or anecdote" (p.3073). Over the years this meaning 211 shifted and currently use of the word "story" often brings with it an air of non- believability. This term is representative of many derogatory connotations. The Latvian words "stasts", which also evokes the word "pastastit", "teika", alluding to "pateikt" and

"pasaka" all contain the idea of "telling" and "saying" within the word for different forms of stories. In the Latvian language, stories bring with them a re-telling of an event.

However, the original intention may not be exact depending on how long ago it was first told as outlined by Longboat (2007), Sheridan (2001) and Viks (2001) among others.

Similarly, the term "folksong", which Callaghan uses in his translation of Ziedonis

(1987) brings with it connotations of "simple country folk" when etymologically re­ traced. Rather, when these traditional songs and stories are called forth and focused upon, it is evident they contain a metaphorical language illustrating ancestral beliefs and

recollections about events that took place thousands and even hundreds of thousands of

years ago as Brody (1988) and Viks (2004), among others, contend. There are many

forms of Latvian cultural stories, both sung and recited. Through time, however, due to

dominating occupiers who suppressed and attempted to silence ancestral ontologies,

epistemologies and teachings, the original meaning often becomes stored in its

metaphorical integrity. The original intention of these songs can only be understood

through a physical engagement with particular landscapes. These landscapes contain

information that is integral for evoking a deeper understanding of stories that are

autochtonous or original inhabitants growing of these places. This engagement requires a 212 movement between mental and physical connections with this world that traverses metaphorical and physical planes of understanding.

Imants Ziedonis is a good example of a cultural storyteller. In Kane's (1995) Wisdom of the Mythtellers he states: "...the storyteller is simply the one who speaks the myth on behalf of the listeners. The voice of the storyteller is the collective voice of the community" (p. 189). The meanings of his poem evolve as a reader focuses on particular stanzas, lines and word combinations in the poem. Repeated engagements with similar versions of a particular story or event strengthen the relationship between the reader and the language of the literarily contextualized form of the story.

Engagement with language requires a process of interpretation. Plural meanings unfold as a reader spends time within the places poems are conceived. As I reread my translations of Ziedonis poem, I consider what is lost in processes of translation. I attempt to include everything that he describes, but my translation is also a response to the meanings he intends as I attempt to make the translation flow more poetically. Although I cannot even begin to match his rhyme scheme, a new flow of the poem develops.

As a cross-cultural storyteller I realize the importance of the place the story is told. It is also important to provide listeners with a background as part of the story as well as to respond to questions that arise through the process of story-telling. It is difficult to walk away from a story without some form of closure. However, the telling of a story is an opportunity to focus attention on a particular teaching or a lens to observe an occurrence.

Eco-poetry introduces ideas that evolve through repeated dialogue with the story told by 213 the writer. This dialogue with the text facilitates an internalization and understanding of some of the meanings a poem holds.

On one of my return visits to Ziedonis' untitled poem and my translation I am reminded of Eva Hoffman's (1989) Lost in Translation. She writes: "Eventually, the voices enter me; by assuming them, I gradually make them mine. I am being remade, fragment by fragment, like a patchwork quilt; there are more colors in the world than I ever knew." (p. 220). Re-reading the poem merges previous understandings, current dialogues as well as theoretical works of other authors. The meanings the reader evokes through the poem shift again. As Hoffman suggests, intended meanings are often 'lost' through mediation between different languages and ideas.

Information obtained from dictionaries alone is problematic because definitions are limited to short descriptions for the purpose of basic communication. Reading these definitions for the first time gives me limited access to the associations I gain through familiarization with the world of the poem. Although translations help me mediate between the two languages, neither type of dictionary (English-Latvian or Latvian-

English) is specific enough to come to an etymologically satisfying understanding.

Another difficulty I encounter in my translation is that many words have been omitted and lost between shifts from oral to literary memory. In addition, definitions do not provide an etymological synopsis of words and neglect connections with cultural and metaphorical messages, experiences and histories. 214

Writing this work in the solitude of Northern Ontario this fall, I realize how important my work of translation is for the maintenance of my Latvian language skills. Leadership in education requires me to turn to my grandfather for further insight. Developing my own interpretation to translate Ziedonis work leads me to ask others to also read and interpret this poem. Discussions that follow give me far more insight into the meanings

Ziedonis' poems can evoke to his audience in Latvia than the dictionaries I employ for my task of translation. Reflecting on my experiences of living and being in Latvia, I realize how different the relationship with the poem is to those who read it in its place of origin. Discussing poetry with Elders brings me towards new understandings about how dependent we are on the land we live within. Speaking with Elders who have gathered information about their experience of the relationship between place and ancestral stories provides an invaluable opportunity for learners to shorten the amount of time that it would take to discover the intricacies of place by themselves. The Oral Tradition has the capacity to make learning meaningful because local learning provides an opportunity to uncover information that may be excluded in the Literary Tradition or overlooked at first glance. A comparable condition is created when environmental educators do not engage with the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of the Indigenous peoples on and in whose traditional territory they reside.

Translating Literary and Oral Tradition

The most powerful relaying or transmission of those stories comes from people that have access not only to ancestral knowledge and realms of 215

ancestral knowledge that exist in those ancient stories that they know, but put it in a context of their own personal life experience. So as they have experienced their own lives throughout their many years of existence in the world, that when they express those ancient stories within that kind of context and within the context of their own personal life experience it only serves to enrich the story that much more and makes it more meaningful and more alive and more vibrant so that it becomes more easy for us to understand it as opposed to it being a story of ancient long time ago that you know, the world was so different back then than it is now that when those people, Elders in particular, are able to take the essence and the principles and the ideas within that story and to put them into today's context makes it more meaningful and more vibrant and we remember those things easier so they paint pictures for us in the way that they express it to us. They paint pictures for us by using their language and by illustrating those concepts within a picture so that it's easy then for us to remember what the picture actually looks like, so it's not only what they talk about but it's how they talk about it and how they construct it for us and how we remember and if we are given that picture over and over and over again we begin to see details that we haven't seen before and as our thinking and our life experience progresses those pictures become more vivid and more real and when we add those things and make them part of ourselves and incorporate those teachings and those ideas into our own understanding that creates a specific lifestyle and into our own lives then when we share them they become that much more richer and that much more vibrant to others that are listening .. .more than just information and knowledge it is the application and actualization of knowledge and experience that creates wisdom. (Longboat, 2005)

Mastering the art of writing eco-poetic work involves a dialogue between the work of developing connections between places, experiences and the world of the poem. There is a danger of environmental learning that attempts to make sense of place without a concurrent immersion that includes an engagement with place. However, the process of writing eco-poetry makes it possible to use the technology of writing as a way to have a dialogue between self, other, text and landscape. Writing the poem at the beginning of this chapter is at first a translation of the event from what happened. No words were said 216 during the event. The text itself reflects mediation between experience, the English language and the Latvian language. The Latvian language was very important to my translation of the event because it was the first language that I learned the landscape.

However, my translation to the English language was essential for the purposes of this paper. Writing the poems I realized that as I translated the poems, I could not translate them to the level of accuracy that I desired. The stories that the process of writing the

Latvian poem Ezermala evoked could not be conveyed in a stanza to stanza translation.

Mytho-poetic references could not be explained without writing pages upon pages of notes. As I turned to Latvian Elders I realized that as we discussed what I was trying to say, my direct translation did not convey the meaning I intended.

Moving words and phrases from the English language over a period of weeks and months made me realize how difficult it was to summarize rhetorical terms for example, schemes. Word order conveyed a different sense as did the pattern of sounds and rhymes.

As I tried to tell the story to Elders as it happened, when I went back over the poem in the

English language, I had to find ways to express ideas that were very familiar to me in thoughts, but not readily available in the language I had chosen. When I did finally have what I though would be an adequate description of the event, I realized that the way that I conveyed the story in the Latvian language could not be considered an accurate translation. This did not mean that either description was wrong. Rather, I was evoking the Oral Tradition of speaking the poem to realize what the images and meanings the words I had chosen helped me evoke. 217

Understanding landscapes that are not reconstructed by humans requires a lengthy process of investigating local ecosystems. This investigation should not be limited to ecology, biology and chemistry as the ability to describe an evolution of linguistic development as well as relationship with local places. Furthermore, understanding of place should include an understanding of traditional and ancestral stories because when they are told, they represent a living dialogue of the sustainable relationship between human beings and the places that keep them alive. Objects and place are an integral aspect of the memory relationship. In Re-Visioning the Earth, Devereaux (1996) discusses the powerful nature of visiting and remembering special places in nature that exist all over the planet. Eco-poetry is a way of making a metaphysical connection with nature. Different places I engage this poem become part of a process of interpretation.

Re-familiarizing myself with the concept of thinking in the Latvian language in Latvian rural and pristine landscapes I realize that the sounds that form words are embodied in those landscapes. Interviews with Indigenous scholars and environmental educators as part of my research help me understand that the oldest languages are filled with sounds of the bush, a view shared by some of the Indigenous informants who have helped me understand the deep relationship between language and landscape.

Rosenblatt (1978) describes the importance of the interpreter's experience in her transactional theory of reading. The reader brings a poem to life and is a co-creator of the poem. Although a great deal of the poem is lost through attempting to relate and translate thoughts, ideas and feelings exactly as they are, new associations and meanings can be 218 discovered in this act of translation. Ideas are transformed, re-created and re-interpreted through this cognitive act. Solnit (2000) describes the connection between movement and cognition through a process of developing a historical awareness of place. The interpretation of stories demands a (re)formulation of understandings in relation to a particular text as well as the places described in the poem. Sharing interpretations and stories can foster an awareness of how the reader understands themes and concepts that they embody. However, the development of a deeper relationship with landscape and the language evolves through a desire to describe the familiarity of place. This is the way environmental knowledge is determined to possess or not possess legitimacy, validity and authority. For eco-poetic work to have resonance with a particular place requires movement and interaction within that place and provides for the making of a sacred tradition for and of Creation to emerge in the territories settlers now occupy. Doing so builds a sacred tradition and a capacity to develop a comparable tradition to and with

TEK.

Poetry as Environmental Education

Language given, created or discovered within a particular landscape requires time and focus with that place. The landscape people are in tune with affects the way people think and ecopoetics is its record and validation as legitimate and authoritative in giving that affect voice. Poetic forms of writing have the capability to surprise and delight because they allow the imagination to summon learning through the spaces and gaps that poetry 219 creates. Culler (1997) writes: "... poetry organizes the sound plane of language so as to make it something to reckon with" (p. 28). Writing poetry is a way of organizing information but it is also an ecology of place and mind exposing and confirming the invisible dimensions of ecosystems. As the writer crafts and re-writes a poem, many interesting discoveries can be made. Asking what a poem means to someone else fosters a development of communication skills and is an integral part of identity formation. Eco- poetry is a technological tool that aids in the conceptualization and development of ideas regarding the importance of place. When learners engage and reinterpret poetry in relation to Indigenous knowledge it provides a space for growth of personal knowledge that relates with the places they live and as such provides, to use the Hansel and Gretel metaphor, a trail of breadcrumbs into TEK and associated Oral Traditions. Intending to share poetry with others, the writer must consider intended meanings in relationship with hidden meanings of the work. Poetry creates a space for a dialogue between the text and the world beyond classroom activities. According to Milner and Milner (1996), educational leaders should question what approach or school of thought the reader will employ: Moral, Philosophical, Historical, Biographical, Formalist, Rhetorical, Freudian,

Archetypal, Feminist, Marxist, Deconstructionist, Reader Response, New Historical or a combination of these. Ecopoetics should be one of these if not, as Orr (1992) would

suggest, part of all of them. In an attempt to address the environment, we can understand how expository writing practices assiduous avoidance of engagement with nature, by the manufacture and proliferation of symbolic realities alienated from nature, unless 220 volitional choices are made to consciously engage with natural realities. Personal experiences also influence how a poem is written or read. Reasons one has for reading and writing Ecopoetically also make a substantial difference in how a relationship with a poem develops based on how the Ecopoetics in turn grew from epiphanies with nature.

Ecopoetic interpretation is heavily influenced by experiences and attitude. Poetic writings are a method of collecting thoughts that emphasize the importance of ideas about inappropriate form and medium for their expression. This philosophical Ecopoetic work is always in flux because an understanding of poetry develops with time. Returning to a particular poem or other form of writing, associations with the words therein change. The experience of working with a poem is far different in a city like Toronto, than it is on the shores of a less populated lakeshore. Living in a place that has been remade or reconstructed by human hands and machines, demands one to focus on human creation and elemental forces, far removed from thinking that evolves with the pristine state of nature that can be witnessed in Northern Ontario as well as other non-urban locations.

Also, meanings that can be gleaned by the reader change over time due to personal experiences. This is part of the reason it is so important for students to engage with landscapes beyond urban settings in order to consider the development of their identities in relation to the land that makes life possible.

Intergenerational knowledge is an essential aspect of Latvian Oral Tradition. Failure to continue to engage with non-urban landscapes is to lose a sense of identity that includes an understanding of Indigenous plant-life. This in turn leads to not 221 understanding their inherent and medicinal values and eventually, poor health and even death. The Latvian language is in tune with landscape and land because the sounds of language and landscape are the same. These sounds passed on through generations of orators recapitulates medicine wheel teachings on the origin and development of life. The medicine wheel teaches the relationship of minerals, plants, animals and humans. The course of life was set within the perimeter of the area that could be imagined and each place held an important learning opportunity to aid in survival mechanisms.

r^ -f ^ ^

Figure 12: ("Medicine wheel")

Communication was once synonymous with singing the landscape as pointed out by

Abram (1996), Basso (1996), Cajete (1994), Chatwin (1987), Cruikshank (1990),

Longboat (2007), Sheridan (2002), and Viks (2001). Minerals beget soil that begets

plants and beget minerals that beget animals that beget humans and we are the sum total

of all these elements.

Engaging with theories of interpretation challenges learners to delve into the variety

of perspectives eco-writers can develop and the measure they can purport. The wealth of perspectives that multilingual learners can contribute to the reading of a poem is an 222 essential aspect of this meaning-making process. Making use of opportunities and time to explore ecological implications of what Lakoff and Johnson (1980) define as Metaphors

We Live By. Within a culture of consumerism, Ecopoetic writing asks students to engage with a more sustainable way of living. Exploring ways of counteracting systems of short- term economic gains that are imposed on North American systems of education is essential.

The processes of exploring multiple ways of understanding a particular place can be developed through Ecopoetic engagements. Cajete (1994) describes the unavailability of an exact translation of the word art in American Indian Languages. He describes the creation of art as "making or completing" (p. 40). Eco-writing is a way of making a connection with land upon which our lives depend. Paying particular attention to place changes how we look at ourselves. Writing about this attention is a way of enabling a change of attitude towards the sacredness of place.

Writing is much more than an afterthought or an event of consolidation. It is, rather, an act of thought and reformulation, one that contributes profoundly to one's interpretations of one's experiences. That is, every act of writing (and, for that matter, every act of reading) contributes to the formation of one's identity. (Davis et al., 2000, p. 224)

The creation of poetry is a way of translating personal experiences so that they can be shared with others. This process involves interpretation on the part of the poet because the process of writing involves the act of discernment. As I write, questions that guide my thinking include: What is important about this moment; What would others find interesting about this work; What else does this line or stanza mean? Language is more 223 than a medium for socialization. Words can represent our thoughts and ideas. However, they are also an integral part of processes of cognition that poetry inspires. Poetry that begins in Creation or returns to Creation therefore walks the sacred path and long memory of Creation.

Implications for Pedagogy

Developing a relationship with Ecopoetry requires a development of the ability to describe particular bioregions. Returning to the same works over extended periods of time creates deepening understandings about poems and the places they are created.

Finding new vocabulary to express themselves during class discussions occurs when

educators ask students to research words and use them in other writings. Nettle and

Romaine (2000) discuss the correlation between biodiversity and linguistic diversity in

Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. As languages disappear, so too does our ability to understand the vastly differing landscapes of our world.

Approximately 250 Aboriginal Languages in Australia have already disappeared.

However, in Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance; Penderson and Woorunmurra

(1995) suggest that this number is much larger. In light of the many challenges a

standardized curriculum that governments of Canada, the United States and many other

countries throughout the world are advocating, I question how educators can foster a

desire for their students to develop an awareness of ancestral culture and traditions. 224

My research illustrates the wealth of learning that Ecopoetry facilitates. The data for my research develops through my engagement, interpretation and translation of language and place and my understanding that awareness, that I am composed by Creation as the last being to evolve in Creation, makes me eternally grateful and cognizant of Creations role in taking care of my life and thoughts. My interpretation of Ecopoetics and the research it leads me towards serves to illustrate the richness that etymological discoveries

Creation stories and natural histories provide. Clearly, learning about the plurality of meaning that words hold contributes to the formation of one's identity. As Rosenblatt

(1978) writes, the associations the reader evokes are dependent on personal experiences but I would also add, the acknowledgement of eternal truths. Learners need to write responses to the texts we ask them to engage with in order to learn from interpretational practices that juxtapose developing relationships with places and thus finding the pattern

in intact ecosystems that can lead back to the awareness of natural patterns, and ecologies

of relation.

Educators have traditionally had a very solid grounding in theories of reading and writing. In the past, students were asked comprehensive questions that would

demonstrate an understanding of the texts they read. Although this can be a part of an

evaluative process, more important is the relationship that can be developed between the

learner's language and place. Developing an understanding of a poem helps readers and

writers to gain researching experiences as well as a mastery of language because these

two activities have in common a return to particular events over an extended period of 225 time. To deeply focus on the creation of literary art is to learn what it means to become a writer. This creative process enables educators to help learners develop a meaningful relationship with the texts they ask their students to interpret but also the places they live and an ability to understand the restrictions and limitations of human and built, symbolic environments and their similarities and differences with natural systems.

Writing Ecopoetry helps learners discover language to express their relationship between self, other and place. Merging Oral and Literary traditions is a way of dwelling and engaging in a process of deepening understandings. Eco-writing asks writers to reflect on what is of importance to them as well as to find an area of ecological study that will reveal something of themselves. Multiple-subject learning can be incorporated as a way of developing a relationship with a particular poem. For example, footnoting information from other areas of learning within the body of a poem provides a space where it is essential to communicate ideas effectively. As reflective educators, when we ask learners to write poetically, we should also make it clear that writing is work in progress. The interaction of language, place and time evolves throughout the course of a lifetime. However, a dialogue with those who know the land as Indigenous Elders do, can uncover the amazingly rich tapestry of a particular (local) place. Returning to poetry provides an opportunity to formulate and express ideas about places encountered.

Most of my time is spent immersed in the English language, however, to understand these poems, I travel through the Latvian language towards another space of mind. I wonder how a Latvian writer, like Ziedonis, would interpret my reading of his poem. Am 226

I what Zygmunt Bauman (1998) refers to as a "tourist" even if I was to live in Latvia for an extended period of time, or more of a traveler? In his article "Tourists and

Vagabonds", Bauman writes "...we are all on the move also in another, deeper sense, whether or not we take to the roads or leap through the channels, and whether we like doing it or detest it" (p. 78). This deeper sense of traveling signifies the notion of translating or living in a language, other than what we hear in our day-to-day lives.

In speaking and thinking several languages a dialogue occurs between the language of place and mind. Meanings unfold as I communicate with relatives, friends, students, professors and colleagues and my grandfather. Movement between the two languages becomes a part of this process of translation. The complex nature of the world makes it difficult to represent experiences in language because meanings words of either language represent are often non-translatable. Translations cannot be exact because they require mediation between stories, experiences and places.

Most of our students are challenged to learn a second language within the Canadian system of schooling. It is important for teachers to help students develop a meaningful relationship with Oral and Literary tradition through providing opportunities to access stories they can relate to and learn through. Eco-poetic writing that is connected to a particular place that has not been "developed" or "destroyed" by people allows learners to focus on unseen realities. It helps them move beyond the arduous task of trying to communicate what they think the educator wants to hear, and to move towards being able to describe what they need to write about. 227

The work of translation moves across languages and cultures. Eco-poetic writing asks students to think about different associations readers and listeners can evoke. This form of poetic engagement also leads towards making connections with learning beyond classroom borders. Conversations about the poem with the author bring a relationship with the poem beyond Literary Tradition, which is an integral aspect of the Oral

Tradition. Writing in order to expand ones understanding of an event or place is much different than writing a poem for the purpose of receiving a grade. Similarly, if the poet is writing for cathartic purposes, the text may be far different than one designed for the purpose of public performance. It is essential to engage with land that sustains us as part of a meaning-making process so we can find in that range of expression those symbols and styles symmetrical with local places. Looking at Indigenous perspectives about landscapes is another useful way of fostering an awareness of ways of living that are sustainable.

To develop a deeper understanding of nature and to be in tune with it requires a life­ long interaction and engagement with what David Abram (1996) describes as the more- than-human world. The interpretation of these interactions and subsequent developments

of understanding can be greatly expanded if done so through a relationship with

Indigenous culture. The extensive depth of knowledge contained within ancient stories

makes it essential to return to these stories throughout various ages and phases and stages

of life. 228

CHAPTER VIII: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Interpreting a Latvian Eco-Poetic journey in Australian, European and North-

American Landscapes

IF WE LISTEN, FIRST, TO THE SOUNDS OF AN ORAL LANGUAGE - to the rhythms, tones, and inflections that play through the speech of an oral culture - we will likely find that these elements are attuned, in multiple and subtle ways, to the contour and scale of the local landscape, to the depth of its valleys or the open stretch of its distances, to the visual rhythms of the local topography. But the human speaking is necessarily tuned, as well, to the various nonhuman calls and cries that animate the local terrain. (Abram, 1996, p. 140)

Figure 13: Broome Sunset 229

The beauty of the sunset puts me in a state of awe. I feel blessed to witness the vast expanse that extends through what is unseen reality. Photographs do not show all the colours before me and I cannot begin to represent what I see except through metaphor. As

I read Olson (1994) I am intrigued by his discussion of the impossibility of stepping outside language; tangerine orange, grape purple, ruby red - these descriptions all fall

short of what I would like to describe. From my vantage point I could be on any shoreline

- yet the above photograph was taken near Broome, SW Australia. Stories about

crocodiles that lurk beneath and beyond piers (such as the one I stand on now) remind me that I am in unfamiliar territory. Having written about my experiences there, I am able to

further conceptualize my engagement with the places I have been and relate that

engagement with the numinousity of landscapes I have experienced.

This picture helps me evoke my adventures at Jarlamandangah Burru, a reclaimed

cattle station where I stayed. As I re-read journal entries and poetry, I consider the way in

which DeSalvo (1996) describes the process of writing about past discoveries. Her novel

becomes part of my hermeneutic inquiry regarding the way in which returning to the

thoughts that are embodied by text are a way one learns more about oneself. The process

of writing and re-writing poems and songs enables a re-interpretation of where I was

when I wrote them. My poetic work is a record of relationships with the places I live. Re­

writing becomes a pedagogical process, as new understandings are informed through the

act of trying to explain and re-present personal experiences and understandings. 230

I have walked the Songlines as a novice to Australia, but not as a novice to the expression of numinosity that was embodied in the landscapes of my experience in the diaspora of Latvian expatriates. What I know of Chatwin (1987) and Solnit (2000) is that the resonance of blood and soil provokes an inquiry of identity. This inquiry is hermeneutic although it goes beyond a textual analysis. Many discussions I have with

Latvian, Indigenous and Aboriginal Elders become embedded in my dissertational research. Mine was a voyage into primal identities born of cultural continuity of landscape and place. As a displaced Indigenous person laced with an oral expression of landscape I went where I did not truly belong to try to understand how the Mythopoetic realm could bring belonging to a new landscape. The warning that this was also an isolation of danger compelled me to realize that "getting it wrong" was a way of knowing how to "get it right" by understanding the methodology that would establish ecologically

appropriate ways to articulate the cultural landscape I chose to walk. This research

includes memoir as a successful encounter with a methodology of Oral Mythopoetic representation of and with sacred landscapes.

Jarlmandangah Burru is an Aboriginal community, located near Broome, North

Western Australia, where my colleague who is also of Latvian ancestry lives and teaches.

Upon my return from a camping expedition, one of the Aboriginal Elders of the

community asks if I would like to drink some tea. I feel honoured to be able to share this

moment. I vividly remember my excitement growing in anticipation of the stories I knew

would follow. The tea was served in mugs that had evidently been used for a long time. 231

Listening to one of the men who sat with us in the shade, I am struck by the comment:

"Just remember there are things around here that could hurt you." The following poem was written in my travel log dated Journal Entry: Easter, 2002, as a reflection about an encounter I had with a dingo the previous night:

Nightlife at Jarlamadanga Burru

flashlight dims as I glide across star-mesmerized landscape unfamiliar fields track phone-cards and addresses tucked in daddy long-leg nested room

in darkness unfriendly howls signal quickened pace barks & growls transform silent swoosh fangs clamp into leg muscles stars draw near

determined feet project me towards artificial light fangs release before reaching bone yelps blend shapeless creature into darkness

indented punctures glisten in florescent hum of the cool school-room, "should've smacked it" says my friend I try to comprehend understandings reiterated by the owner

tea-tree oil soaks into my skin... I wonder why I am here blurred clarity of distanced spatiality pulses in mind

blue walls illuminate my uncertainty weather and creatures amongst air makes me feel less moist as darkness overcomes uneasy perceptions adrift toward dreamtime

(Kulnieks, 2008) 232

My questions around survival in this landscape inspire stories of surroundings. An

Elder teaches me in staccato statements: "You must always look at the tracks. They tell the story of what is taking place around us." I consider the fact that if I stay here for a while, my survival will depend on knowing how to engage with the beings that live in the place I find myself. It will be far too late to look up information after moving a rock under which a poisonous Redback spider containing matter not fit for humankind hides

from the hot sun. Regardless of whether I find myself in Sydney or the outback, the wealth of information that Aboriginal Oral Tradition contains, serves as life-altering

information that changes the way I perceive the world around me.

Looking at my photographs from Western Australia I consider how my experience of

the Latvian scout movement helps me mediate these travel experiences. I am reminded of

a conversation with one of the woman from the community. Upon our greeting she

explains: "Always have a torch and shake your boots and swag before you get inside".

She asks: "Do you know what a torch and swag are?" The Elder explains that a torch is a

common term for flashlight and that swag is a bedroll or sleeping bag; "Sometimes

poisonous snakes, spiders or other creatures find their way into your boots and stuff. To

be safe, it's a good idea to give everything a shake." The days that follow are an

opportunity to reconsider my landscape and language learning in the Latvian diaspora

community of North America to conceptualize the importance of learning about

unfamiliar places that I encounter. The importance of knowing this place shows me that

being here demands my full attention. I think that Solnit (2000) would agree, 233 understanding environmental learning and education requires a non-sedentary lifestyle of walking the landscape.

Learning the local vernacular is a familiarization with the landscape I am in and that enters my mindscape - a complex web of experience that continually blends new learning and understanding. This learning is represented in travel log entries from my visit to

Broome, Australia. Re-reading and reflecting on how these were conceived reminded me how I learn Latvian language sounds in Toronto. To practice the sounds of the place names I visit that have retained their Aboriginality is to learn the sounds of the landscape.

Communicating with grandparents inspired a desire within me to learn their language, landscapes and stories on deeper levels. I have done so by traveling to the places of their narratives in both English and Latvian dialogues. Translating this journey through the act of writing helps me discover a path towards Indigenous teachings. My Latvian ancestry has provoked an exploration of identity posited between two languages.

In this concluding chapter, I recount my work of memoir as a pedagogical practice.

My theoretical work involves a transformative relationship between landscape and human expression through singing, songwriting and playing bass-guitar. They share an intercultural formula(e) for expressing landscape of both non-ancestral and ancestral territory. Expressing feelings of being within landscape, weather through melody or a rich tapestry that words can convey, is to begin to understand the unseen realities that are ever-present in natural surroundings. Childhood encounters were first with landscape, then with oral representation and finally with a comprehension, however newly 234 developed, with authoritative practice is a beginning of understanding the Latvian

Ecopoetic realm. As a musician charged with cultural continuity, my journey seeks to explicate that continuity by finding a continuity of leaning through the Latvian Oral

Tradition. Ontologies our ancestors shared are represented in the songs that have been passed down within an Oral Tradition. My journey explicates that methodology as the primal, intellectual and cultural expression of land in voice and spirit engaged by moving within terrain of deeply temporal dimensions of Aboriginal Australia. My methodological tools are rhythmic and ultimately temporal. Finding rhythms to express these places becomes a journey of landscape learning expressed as oral comprehension. Learning of story, dance and song were the primary methodologies of these communicated forms of ancestral knowledge.

The root source of walking the landscape was both Aboriginal Australian and responsive to the expatriate Latvian encounter with North America by way of hiking and as formalized in Latvian Scouts. Data for this research comes from my experience of traveling across North America, Europe, and Australia as well as through dialogues with

Latvian Elders who relocated to new places after the German and Soviet occupations of the Baltic States during World War Two. This journey of discovering and understanding relationships of diaspora for Latvians who were "displaced" involves working on Eco­ poetic songwriting as a way of understanding the deeper meanings the act of journeying leads landscape learners towards. 235

Travel Tales

Travel enables me to conceptualize the practice of writing about travel tales as a methodology for developing a relationship between human experiences and landscapes.

My focal practices include recording what I see and hear as I visit different land and seascapes. Moving to different continents, I theorize how learning that occurs through travel guides and shifts what I am able to think about. Travel logs, photographs, poetry, songs and recordings of "natural" sounds from differing landscapes are a way of connecting with ancestral ontologies because their pristine nature still sings as it did through their lifetimes. The following song, named after my grandfather is one I wrote to demonstrate a transition of the stories we were told and their representation in poetry and song. It is the fifth song on the compact-disk Ziemelfarma.

Uz Jaunzemem To new lands

Caur milzu spradzieniem through giant explosions Maza zvejnieku gimene the small fisherpeople family Sencu zemes atstaja left their lands Draugus masas bralus friends, sisters, brothers, mammas un tevus mothers and fathers Priecigi jabutu happy if they could have Dieniska maizite daily bread Un sausuma aizmigt and sheltered in dryness, fall asleep

Vacas nometnetnes Gathered in/German camps Gatavi sakt kaut ko jaunu ready for a new start Cepa pieskirtas norma cooking a rationed allotment Pelnot ko vareja earning what they could Solijumus atjaunojot renewing promises Senatnes gam domas long ago in spirit thoughts Caur dabisko zemi audzina through natural surroundings grown Valodas macibas in language lessons Teikas dziesmas ancestral stones, songs Skanas ritmas atminas sounds, rhythms, memories Amerika, Brazilija, Eiropa un Australia in America, Brazil, Europe and Australia Kustedamies vardos moving in words Agrak sapnu stastos earlier dream tales told Darbos turpinajas continuity in work Rotas un senrakstos crafted symbols and ancient symbolisms

Bagatie valstsviri sarunaja Wealthy ruler men arranged Vegu darbspekus slave workers Kalpot bargas domas to serve severe thoughts Naudu speles est in money games feast Maldojosas takas in deceptive paths Smagmasinas aizruc the commercial machines roar away Izspaujot negaisu spitting out storm-like clouds Melnrusainos makonos black rusty clouds Skaidros udenos in clear waters Atceramies dievdotas zinibas we remember God-given understandings Maksligos meslos dzivojot in excremental-fakeness living Gulbuves razojot building sleeping quarters

Ceribas dziesmas aizved hope in songs take us Dzejas un smaidosas sejas in poetry and smiling faces Sapnos aizceloja in dreams traveled Bernibas kalnos un lejas to childhood hills and valleys Atgriezoties mezos un laukos return to forests and fields Naktis negulejam sleepless nights Svetkus svinedami celebrating holidays Pie oglites liesminam beside small coal flames

Uz talam zemem to far-away lands Sekojot prievitem following hand-woven ribbons Maiguma sajutam dziesmas in tenderness feel songs Ko senciem lidzi nes that ancestors have taken with them

Nezinamie skaidro udenu unknown ones, the clear water Piekrapot pirmas saprasanas desecrated, first understandings Maksligos meslos dzivojot in un-real filth, living Svetos mezus nocertot sacred forests, cut down (Kulnieks, 2008) 237

Ancestral stories are easier to hear when they are not drowned put by modern machinery prevalent in urban lifestyles. Moving between cultures of two languages (Latvian and

English) I re-visit stories familiar from my childhood. This work of memoir leads me to reflect on how arts-informed research can foster strategies for language learning through engagement with poetry and songwriting. Traveling by foot reintroduces rhythmic fundamentals as guides that are profoundly temporal as they are measured by viscerally metered dimensions of Australian time embedded in and equal to temperature, sun and monocycles and the aridity that were both the sources and the constraints of my encounter. The environmental blessing met my cultural capacity to create an authentic, valid and legitimate record of my encounter. My proof is songs and dances learned as intergenerational knowledge and reiterated by Indigenous and Displaced Indigenous

Elders.

Intellectually, that record of music and prose needed the blessing and judgment of two domains; one Aboriginal and one Latvian. I offer that expression as an attempt to demonstrate a common ethos in a primal capacity to get the next steps of the story right.

Doing so was ecology of balance between the real and the representation of the real in a way that would satisfy both cultural authorities and heritages that were both invested in the mimesis of appropriate and enduring meaning of an experiential record of the reality of landscape and mindscape as balanced and correct. Correct representation is a poetic endeavor calling upon metaphor, metonym and synecdoche to capture the nuance of mind, land, spirit and language wherein no single aspect of representation overpowers the 238 other and wherein the power of land and Oral Tradition are mutually resonant. This adventure also resonates in the songs and poetry I share with other members of the

Latvian North-American diaspora community with our band Lusts. Sharing my Latvian and English writing with colleagues, poets and musicians helps me understand the complexities of language that are embodied within this work of memoir.

Moving Between the Languages of Music and Poetry

I am saying that whatever meanings we give to the world - what sense we make of things - derive from our power to name, to create vocabularies. (Postman, 1999, p. 164)

(Re)reading epigrams cited throughout this work, I wonder how long I have been writing in the books that I own. For a while I think this practice began during my

Master's research or as I work on my undergraduate English degree at York University.

However, thinking about this chapter as I re-read books I acquired in childhood, I realize this dialogue with texts began as I listened to and asked questions regarding ancestral

stories. This dialogue makes me think about how I learned to work with poetry and how

this deconstructive work continues to influence the way in which I engage with other

ongoing interpretive practices. Performances that are embedded in Latvian traditions where Elders will attend inspire me to write Latvian songs. Many Lusts band practices

involve returning to the folksongs learned in childhood although we play them in a rock-

n-roll tradition that involves the use of instruments from percussion groups including 239 drums, bongos, and shakers, wind, horn and string instruments like the guitar, bass and the kokle. The following is a Journal entry dated Dec. 10, 2002.

I remember songs and poems that I learn at Latvian Saturday morning classes. From kindergarten to grade 8, my Saturdays begin with singing traditional songs. Singing classes are also devoted to learning and to thinking about what the songs mean. Often these were metaphorical and very moving because of their grounding in ancestral traditions and experiences. At the end of the day a small group of students, including myself, would stay to play songs on the kokle, a rectangular instrument with twelve to fourteen strings, tuned in the C major scale. This instrument can be played "by ear", through reading notes or by reading the numbers penciled in above notes that correspond with "strings". I remember learning melodies quickly and then focusing on the feelings and ideas evoked through playing the songs. (Kulnieks, 2008)

My informants claim language to be the mechanism whereby Creators intentions are

embodied in thought. I think that Louise Rosenblatt (1978) would concur suggesting that

the reader is an integral part of the poem. This theory brings to question teacher-centred

models of learning that suggest that students should aspire to find a correct interpretation

of poetic work. Learning, singing and interpreting ancestral songs requires participants to

imagine themselves in relation to the context of place. As I replay some of the songs now,

I remember moments of learning tucked away in the Latvian and English language. The

gift of bilingualism leaves me feeling out of place in public school communities as other

students seemed proud to be monolingual Canadians. When Latvia regains independence

I have the opportunity to visit relatives in Latvia. Although I realize my identity was not

an easy fit with some ways of knowing the world there, I also realize the privilege of

knowing the world through these two languages. The compositional ethos is a tribute to 240 the somatic and psychological integration in which an ecology of oral natural consciousness expresses what print seeks to dispel which is the idea that requirement of memory and voice of the Oral Tradition is the best way to keep ideas alive.

Understanding the platonic ideal of the uncovered ideal is to realize that the Oral

Tradition's representation of nuance incorporates the power of animals and landscape and seeks to establish and perform a harmony with these numinous voices. Barre Toelken

(Dooling & Jordan-Smith, 1989) explains:

One is not supposed to mention the word for bear, especially while traveling alone in the mountains or forest, for surely it will bring forth a bear on the spot. Coyote tales are not told except in the wintertime. String figures are to be done only in the wintertime, otherwise Spider Woman will become annoyed and will perhaps capture young people in her snare. Whatever one makes of these beliefs, it is clear that they represent among other things a subordination of human activity, even in areas such as storytelling and game playing, to religious assumptions about the properties of actions during certain times of the year. These concepts bear witness to the fact the nature is not seen as something outside the people which must be related to in any kind of practical approach to survival within it, but rather, it represents a ritual circumstance in which man moves as carefully as in any other ritual occurrence. The principal parts are always related to each other, (p. 66)

My evolution within Latvian Oral Tradition teaches me that I belong to that numinous nature. My point is that the ethos should be strong enough to deny the restrictions of the medium of Literary Tradition. Learning about music through stories is far different at

Latvian school, part of Toronto's Heritage Language Programme, than in regimental public school classes. Ecology of connection and sentience rather as a member of that 241 chorus was to its ethos in the written medium that is its exclusion. Humans write whereas the ecology of natural articulation sings.

Systems of education often take up learning about music through memorizing notes and rote learning, and by this activity, create the illusion that music can only be learned in one particular way. To transform poetry into songs is to begin living with(in) them.

Memoir writing in the form of travel logs, poetry, song and eventually this chapter, become portraits of interpretation and representation of a development of identity as the journal entry date April 16, 2002 indicates:

Exploring Australian Aboriginal narratives that were shared with me during my visit to Jarlamandangah Burru heightens my understanding of landscapes I am currently exploring. I am immersed in new vegetations and luscious canopies beside the river that look similar to places outside of city environments I have (re)visited in North America. These are places where things can harm me if I am careless. Reading Bill Bryson's (2001) work, I realize the places I visit are terrifying me because I am out of the comfort zones that I am familiar with. Creating music within a particular landscape is a way of learning about that landscape, especially when this learning is combined with the local language of the area. Hearing sounds of local musical instruments I begin to understand their capacity to represent the landscape. Indigenous Elders have adapted to these dangers for example, the way they make sounds with their hands before going swimming close to crocodiles. As I consider buying a digeridoo, I wonder how and if these instruments were made in the locale of their origin. I surmise that if the instruments were light enough, they could be brought to different parts of the world. I remember my kokle and other Latvian instruments I have at home and wonder how the songs I play in Canada would evoke new different meanings if I were to play the same songs in Latvian landscapes or the landscapes I now find myself within. (Kulnieks, 2008)

Reflecting on my journal entry expands my reading of Nettle & Romaine's (2000)

discussion about the way in which language is a way of naming particular aspects of a 242 landscape. In their chapter "The Ecology of Language" they describe how languages maintain ancestral memories. Despite the intellectual gain of the soniferous corresponding with cognition, I also seek to demonstrate mine was a collaborative voice.

Working only within human discourse, however revealing, did not allow me to comprehend the danger about which I was warned. In a sense, I walked out of the conceit that meaning was socially constructed in its anthropocentric notions, walking into a sense of meaning as an ecological harmony whose service only a non-Cartesian motivation could hope to establish voice in the archetypal register. The protocols for this eco-process

are latent in my heritage and I offer this research to demonstrate how a conceptualization

and aesthetic condensation can benchmark as an emerging example of how landscape can be sung without domination; that is, expressing an essence without interference with that

essence. A landscape sung as an eco-chorus embodies embellishments of the gestalt that a particular landscape inspires. Exquisite qualities of poetics and landscape are alive in

their mysterious yet clairvoyant intersection as undisturbed as they are in the walk of life

and as they were in my walk of Australia and so honoured rather than disturbed my

experience of the Latvian Oral Tradition. Being aware of possible dangers my spirit guide

weaves an awareness of the respect these unfamiliar places demand. This awareness led

to a provocation and re-consideration of past and future relationships with more user-

friendly North American territories.

Processes of translation re-present new understandings that built on former

experiences, interpretations and meanings. This evolution of thought is similar to my 243 walk through Australia because as I walk further, observing and reading cues that appear to me in landscape are reinterpreted with and against my previous understandings. The dialogue that occurs through the process of translating English to Latvian and vice-versa brings with it new epiphanies and understandings about my poetic work as informed by landscapes I am surrounded by and also helps me think about the processes of learning that take place within the revisiting process of translating sounds of the land.

Part of the role of eco-consciousness with all its deep time implications is to leave some stories in the realm of Oral Tradition, requiring a face to face journey to spaces referred to in the world of the metaphysical. I include this work of collage as an example of merging Literary and Oral Tradition which also serves as a visual form of

communicating the places our band has traveled and performed. As I focus on the collage

I realize that it represents a space to think about the musical development of our band.

This work of collage depicts the cover of a band tour poster that I created, outlined by

Sumara (in Davis et al., 2000), as a research tool. I realize that because many of our

practices take place up north, they are also part of our developing relationship with these

landscapes which become part of the songs we write. Figure 14: Collage Photo (by Aldis Sukse)

A Pedagogy of Moving Between Oral and Literary Traditions

Questioning issues of voice and silence of landscape in the context of Literary

Tradition, I realize that locations and perceptions of identity in Oral Tradition imply a 245 presence of a multiplicity of voices. Oral Traditions intertwine speech, silence and ellipses and in so doing, inspire questions with the possibility of immediate response and clarification. This interaction implies the possibility of creating new discourses.

Seamus Heaney, writing about the "almost physiological relation of a poet composing and the music of the poem," says of Wordsworth's pacing back and forth that it "does not forward a journey but habituates the body to a kind of dreamy rhythm." It also makes for composing poetry into physical labor, pacing back and forth like the ploughman turning his furrows up or wandering across the heights like a shepherd in search of a sheep. (Solnit, 2000,p.ll4)

Rebecca Solnit (2000) describes relationships of walking and how the rhythm of

Wordsworth's, Shelly's, Coleridge's, and Keats' footsteps are represented in poetry.

The word music is closely connected to Muse. In the earliest definition in the O.E.D.

(1971) it is defined as the "art of the Muse" and was a general word applied to artistic

culture and culture. Much later it becomes a specific reference to what we now know as

music. The Oxford English Dictionary further defines music as "...one of the Fine arts

which is concerned with the combination of sounds with a view to beauty and form and

the expression of emotion; also, the science of the laws or principles (of melody,

harmony, rhythm, etc.) by which this art is regulated" (pp. 1880-1881). Music is a

medium that can inspire us to move into places of evocation both by the creator and the

listener. Poetry and song have the capacity to focus the attention of an audience on a

particular moment and place. One of the reasons for engaging Oral Tradition is the

capacity of poetic language that looks not only into the past but also has the ability to

reach into the future. Song interpretations evolve in relation to the activities that a 246 particular landscape inspires. Walking the landscapes of Northern Ontario has been very pedagogical in developing a relationship with particular places. Much of my poetry has evolved through spending time immersed in thinking that these places inspire. The photograph below is of my return to a North Ontario place, I visit each summer.

Figure 15: Fishing Falls

Moving between Oral and Literary Archives of Poetry and Song

Ziema Klat Winter is here

Visi mekle kaut ko, kas lai zina ko everybody is looking for something, Who knows what it is Vismaz savas domas, kad rudens veji saltz at least in thoughts, when autumn winds howl 247

Staigaju par celu, cits mocas ratinos I walk along the road another struggles in her wheelchair Viens staiga kosas drebes, cits sez un ubago someone walks in bright clothes, Another sits asking for spare change

Prom, tali tali, sedi tu bez manis, Far, far away, you sit without me

vai ir verts tas sapes ko jutam tu un es are the pains you and I feel worth it

Nolaizas smalks cukurs, lenaam sega aug powder like sugar flutters (down) Slowly a blanket grows Skaties udens spoguli zvaignes debesis look into the water mirror Of stars in the Sky-world

Nezinam kas ir, don't know what is lidz kamer mums tas nav until we have a lack thereof Tomer varam pasmaidit however we can smile kad domas esam klat when in thoughts we are together

koki nolikusi, it ka pilni ziediem trees hunched over as if filled with blossoms zibst ugunis makonos, sarkans, gaiss un melns lightning flashes light red, bright and black tur varetu atgriezties tur kur taka sakas there we could return to the beginnings of the path kur liktens lemis iet, domas atgriezties where fate is destined to take us only in thoughts can we return (Kulnieks, 2008)

The preceding poem demonstrates my theoretical conceptualization of being home within a particular place and imagining where home is. As I develop my understanding of the

Latvian Oral Tradition, a friend and soundman working in the music industry invites me 248 to share some of my poetry with their band. Talking through my Ecopoetic work it becomes lyrics for some of the songs he re-works. Discerningly reviewing about twenty poems and in particular this poem, he develops a chord formation that resonates with the feeling of being in unfamiliar territories through the sounds that are engaged. The transcribed and reworked poetry requires a few more verses to convey my intended meaning. I expand stanzas and storyline in an attempt to illustrate a moment that I imagine listeners can relate to. A few weeks later, he plays the "beginnings" of the song in progress and we experiment with a melody he wants to sing. Eventually, through our collaboration this poem becomes a song on our first compact disc. More importantly, our collaboration moves my eco-poetic work towards the realm of the Latvian Oral Tradition as dialogues become part of conceptualizing live performances as represented in my

Journal Entry dated Dec. 15, 2002.

Practicing the song in preparation for our first concert creates many opportunities to think about the meanings it represented in different ways. Through different lenses of my perspective, the meanings evolve. I travel to places in time and space the song transports me towards. Singing the song closer to a state of completion clarifies ideas represented in each verse. Translating of the song, I add further verses to create more cohesion. I wonder how to clarify my ideas represented in each verse. Through my recent translation of the song I consider adding further verses to create more cohesion. Reconsidering the fragile nature of Ecopoetic writing, I explore how this translational process could expand the meanings it represents.

In translation, more and more memories surface from the origins of the poem; the boat trip, finding a seat, talking to the person next to me become part of the work. Reflections about making a compact disc while I let the music play beyond the song I initially transcribe, lyrics slip into associations about this experience and other memories that blend together 249

through my theorizing about these songs and the moments they represent. During the process of translation, I find that meanings shift as new versions became more coherent. Some of the story I try to tell does not make sense without these shifts. I wonder how an audience might interpret the singer's voice and how the meaning might shift if I sang the song myself or if my brother's voice was recorded instead of Aldis's voice? Now when we perform the song, the three of us sing different verses as a metaphor for shared travel experiences. (Kulnieks, 2008)

The final version of my poem demonstrates the evolving nature of this work. This work also illustrates theoretical aspects of my work in an alternative form. In view of their constraints on my conveyance of that ethos, I realize that in the disconnections of music from the primary rhythms of nature. There is a Cartesian gulf between the ability to perform music and to know and articulate the primal root of its essence which is part of the pedagogy of landscape. My point is that like literacy, the remove from which the representations of the ethos of that landscape occurred in my composition as performed by the band and my own intention. As an ethos of landscape and spirit it is a rupture that will be repeated without primal encounter spiriting the compositional ethos. Without grounding in nature, the mind only discusses mind with other minds. So long as language seeks to represent landscape, mind bestows only identical qualities on minds that are epistemologically distant from the tap-root of earth's ethos. Therefore, I write in the experimental resource of and fundamental of an ancient belonging to source.

The survival of unity of mind, land, spirit and language as a vanquished methodology for the creation of an intercultural earth song are essential for the survival of biocultural diversity. As a songwriter, my itinerant mission has an ecological ethos, without which 250 the potential of the capacity to resonate is only possible in the fusion of the mind and spirit of the musician as listener and that of the audience itself. As I try to change the song back into the realm of poetry, I realize the importance of the visual elements of the literary form. Spatiality accounts for much of the meanings I evoke in subsequent interpretations. A focus on different thoughts, moods, feelings, word spacing, and syntax help me translate the Ecopoetic representation that follows:

Searching

for something unknown unlocked in fall winds

walk along rocks moved and sliced into road watch the wheelchair shift bright clothes of the flamboyant costume with the gnarled clothes of the woman asking for spare change

I imagine you far away feeling through tangerine sunrise illuminating clouds, teary moments of mind

shared

slowly, in consistencies of icing sugar snow flutters

to soil 251

I look within

glassy deep waters seeing stars in sky

Strange how we cannot know life's richness until lost smiling in mindwalks

Drooping trees as if full of flowers blooming silver lightning pulses between red bright and black flashes in sky

feelings of return beginnings on this path fate merged with choice destines to search beyond (Kulnieks, 2008)

Natural peoples, the meaning of Anishinaabe and Onkwehonwe (Real People) respectively in Ojibway and Haudenosunee, are reserved for whose belonging is to a

series of iterations of the intentions of Creator. That intention is to be true to Creation and

so the translation of that ethos springs from Original Instructions from Creator through

every medium that is able to maintain this continuity.

Son^s I create often begin in the form of noetry. Unpolished, thev are my reflection

on a moment or series of them; something I feel a strong desire to explore. Often a

catharsis takes place. Work that begins as free-flowing associations is evoked by 252 transformative reflections shift understandings through a process of attempting to find language to represent them. I am not concerned with form here, but eventually, specific themes emerge. Part of this process involves a process of discernment. I move from a space of "what I needed to transcribe" towards an imagining of story, where an imagined audience may find resonance. Slowly stories wander their way onto the pages of my journals. Exploring the origins of music I theorize different ways in which music provokes and affects both mind and body. When I realize reflections and cognition are in tune with the landscapes they are immersed in, I listen to the musical representation in different locations. My body remembers feelings and reminds me of places I have been.

Listening to music then, can be seen as a metaphysical form of movement. Over the years since Latvia regained its independence, I have visited friends, relatives and ancestral spaces numerous times. Each encounter brings new adventures of learning across language and culture. Within these journeys I also have an opportunity to hear stories of how other Latvians have tried to come to terms with the loss of ancestral spaces in the process of learning through new surroundings.

Eco-poetic music is a complex language of expression. It has the capacity to express and represent feelings that are brought about through tonalities and sounds of being outdoors. Songs come together through a triangulation of listener, performer and their creator, all three being present in the same moment. Having the opportunity to move within and through the story embedded in a song creates a possibility for free-style performances of certain lyrics. Clearly, much of the training I have had in terms of 253 tonality has originated from a Western ontology of music. There are, however, much wider possibilities of tonality when one is immersed in the sounds of natural places.

Playing his guitar, I realize that my grandfather would be over a hundred years old now. The way he tuned his guitar was different to the method I learned at school and currently employ to tune the instrument. My inability to remember his method leads me to question how educators can help inspire learners to understand the value of ancestral ways of knowing. Much of the Anti Oral Ethos and Anti-ecological focus of the Ontario

Curriculum (1999) guidelines fail to take into account ancestral oral teachings that relate to older musical methodologies of learning. Some of the following questions from my journal entry dated Jan. 6, 2003, contribute to how I think and work with musical elements of the Latvian Oral Tradition.

How might a music curriculum that includes Indigenous teachings of oral music change the way in which Ecopoetic practice and experience are interpreted? What is the relationship between memoir and music? Has musical education become a system that needs students or is musical learning a form of language-learning often neglected because of the element of time needed to explore it in deep and meaningful ways? How might educators conceptualize music in a way that promotes a relationship with music? How can public systems of education consider music in a way that fosters and facilitates an understanding of self through engaging with this focal practice? What inspires listeners to learn to fall in love with music? Is knowledge of musical notation a less important consideration than a learners desire to create a song? How might musical performances change the relationship of music making? (Kulnieks, 2008)

These questions lead me to look at the relationship that evolves through engaging with the poetical language of music and how listening to, creating and performing music are exercises of the imagination that can move learning beyond systems of public education. 254

The following is a poem that helps me conceptualize my movement and memory in moving to a new place. Asking myself to focus on this particular place helps me to find the language to describe my engagement.

Exploring

Moving boxes of notes penned through years of schooling campfire offerings - in journey towards Oral Traditions sequestered in north-scapes join star-dreams remembered and imagined within partially intact eco-systems

re-learning childhood moments relived cherished gift of memory written to predawn birdsongs stalk nocturnal mind-walks

last respects paid to rooms no longer my own between walls camp moments join photo albums

until time takes them beyond springtime moves Earth disintegrates seasonal moments in the resilience of life (Kulnieks, 2008)

The opportunity to discover new landscapes enables me to question my identity as an educator and songwriter. Although I have lived in Canada throughout my life, reasons for

Ecopoetic writing are linked to a pedagogy of landscape. 255

Hearing the sound of the Latvian language being spoken all around me in Latvian landscapes, I am deeply moved. I remember family members in Latvia telling me I am home now: "This is where your grandparents are from." I am reminded of other ancestors who come from different places within and beyond Latvia. Each time I return to Northern

Ontario, I feel the joy of being (t)here again. Though I am still a novice, the poetry of song enables me to think about ancestral ontologies and epistemologies. Rhythm, temporality, representation and a reconnection with the ethos of the close attention needed to glimpse the magic within landscapes that are not marred by human construction are the protocols for the songs and poems I perform and create. Moving through different landscapes inspires new understandings which are also a compositional ethos for a culturally competent restoration of representing the numinous nature of pristine environments. Rhythms form through a connection with breathing, walking and moving. Writing and singing poetry makes me reflect on past moments but also fosters an awareness of the present and desire to imagine into the future. However, I realize that my creations are an interpretation of my experiences within time and place. Ancestral songs are indeed a deeper form of communication because their importance has been determined as essential. The proof is that they have been passed along from generation to

generation through Oral Tradition. 256

Latvian Song Festival Concert

Figure 16: Song Festival Photo (by Kristjans Silins)

Solnit (2000) describes the way in which walking is an essential aspect of human identity as well as the way in which movement contributes to cognition (p. 23). Singing and dancing provides an antidote to the battle of sedentary lifestyles. Movement around natural landscapes activates memories that are kinesthetically linked to ancestral 257 movement. For example, moving and using muscles brings me towards healthy ways of thinking and being in the same way that singing and dancing are important interpretational focal practices to combat the sedentary lifestyle plaguing much of North-

American settler culture.

Moving between Latvian natural communal places of meeting in North America, such as Sidrabene, Saulaine, Garezers as well as family meeting places like cottages, farms, and seasonal camping places becomes part of a thought-growing process. In these rural

spaces I learn about the importance of focal practices such as singing and dancing. Focal practices aid in developing an understanding of the places we live. By learning to remember dance steps and movements to correspond with songs, one notices the amazing

array of muscle movement that is possible. Keeping these muscles fit trains and enables

me to move with much greater agility and skill through difficult wilderness terrain as well

as more traveled paths. These practices are embodied by folksongs through the rhythmic

correlation of words and accompanying sounds. Singing these ancestral songs is a way of

tuning into these cognitive processes. Songs can also recount seasonal changes that signal

a movement from place to place.

Bringhurst (2006) suggests that "stories are the reproductive organs of languages" (p

246). A continuity of singing and telling our stories is essential for the well-being of

Indigenous languages. To develop contemporary stories, songs, and dances is a way of

making language relevant in relation to modern ways of living that we all must engage

with. However, it is equally important to retell, re-dance and re-sing ancestral songs and 258 stories as a way of remembering who we are into the future. Identity formation requires a merging of focal practices grounded in both Oral and Literary Tradition. If we forget the importance of what our ancestors tell us through the myths contained within tautas dziesmas, rotalas and tautas dejas, we will be lost in the sameness of a mass-produced culture of consumerism.

In the Latvian diaspora, ancestral songs are performed every four years at Dziesmas

Svetki or Song-festivals, although a more accurate translation would include the teachings celebrating a communal evocation of the sacredness of songs. These songs are a way of focusing information and ancestral knowledge in particular ways that could be interwoven through daily events with minimal effort. Latvians have collected around three million verses of Tautas Dziesmas defined as Ancestral Songs of the people or folksongs thus far. Finding language that expresses the land in deep and meaningful ways is part of developing a relationship between the identity-formation that these songs can inspire, and the landscapes they are from.

Oral Tradition is based on remembering precise information. However, singing during daily activities is also part of making everyday life easier. These songs are medicinal because they focus the mind beyond the rigor of the work. Stories re-told throughout the course of life are meant to convey multiple meanings. During Latvian

Song festivals, the Latvian Oral Tradition is practiced on mass by thousands of Latvians in Latvia every four years as it is in North America and similarly in Australia. These festivals provide an opportunity for competitions in Latvia that provoke the opportunity 259 to sing with the Latvian diaspora community. The importance of this practice has dwindled in the Latvian diaspora community because the possibility of moving back to or visiting Latvian landscapes is now a reality. However, an essential aspect of the Latvian diaspora community is to make the pilgrimage to the Latvian Ecopoetic world that includes a development of Mythopoetic understandings which continue to walk us into the future.

Changing locations for every Song Festival offers the opportunity to meet with other

Latvians living throughout North America to perform Ecopoetic songs that often include

Mythopoetic dimensions. Performances are essential to these gatherings. Audience participation is an integral aspect of the formal program of singing, dancing, and theatre of these performances. Sometimes the audience is asked to sing along whereas other times an invitation by performers is unnecessary. For audience members who are or have

at one time been performers, this is a dual voyage both into the past and towards the present.

Listening to birds singing this morning, I realize that the songs I was hearing were the

same as the ones sung by Elders at Sunrise Ceremonies I have had the honour to attend.

Similarly, the oldest Latvian ancestral songs are the ones with the fewest notes.

Continuity of singing ancestral songs that hold the key to Original Instructions is of

urgent importance in the continuity of my duty as a Latvian Storyteller. In my background, the whole issue around these preferred mediums of delivery was oral.

Primary form of delivery and its heritage could only have been that and the spanning of 260 those traditions has meant that I have experientially recapitulated the difference between the two. It is fundamental to read and to spend time reading to prepare to become a storyteller, as well as to weather the depths for a really long time. I have done so and my dissertation is writing to the many contradictions and so I find myself metaphorically dealing with issues of movement, return, death and rebirth.

In my thesis I make commentary on that circular journey. I can't live outside or beyond the lenses that this journey has inspired, but have developed a description of an ecological epistemology that absolves the argument of distance and contradiction. My experience of a restorative agenda is that I understand environmental education theory is largely vacuous of cultural restoration encompassing Oral and Literary Tradition. With emergent scholarship in Haudenosaune and Anishnaabee Traditions, I understand how environmental tradition and practice can combine and complement one another. The future of environmental education is in the discourse of displaced Indigenous people talking with Indigenous people here.

My life recapitulates the lessons that need to be learned by environmental education and looking to ancestral traditions I strategize an effective formula necessary to solve the problematic question of what environmental education is for and about. Recovery from modernity is not in the experience of modernity but in the experience of ancestral traditional practices. This research acts as homage to ancestors and the places they have come to live in my life. Completion of my work based on completion of landscape is not aligned with rediscovery, validation or co-evolution. The methodology in Latvia was 261 attention to detail and spending time in those landscapes that help you with your thinking.

The ethos of the Two Row Wampum and the ability to live with one another is an integral part of Oral Tradition as is talking about what it means to be here. My addition to environmental education is a participation in the Ecopoetic Traditions of the Latvian Oral

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Appendix A

INFORMATION SHEET FOR Response Activities SUBJECTS PARTICIPATING Participants will be asked to share their responses to IN RESEARCH INTO: "creation stories" and "ancestral teachings" that are deemed appropriate for this discussion by the researcher and the discussant. They will also be Linguistic Autopoesis: Ecopoetics and the asked to share, if they are willing, their own stories. Epistemology of Landscape For example, the application of these stories in their This information sheet describes the methods that will teaching and learning. be used to gather data for this research project, including benefits and risks to participants for the Response Experiences research. Participants will be asked to reflect on their experience of landscape learning and to discuss Title of Project: Linguistic Autopoesis: Ecopoetics their experiences using personal narratives in the and the Epistemology of Landscape. form of autobiography, fiction or poetry as representational forms. Participants will be asked to Purposes of the research: draw on several examples of their experiences during their traditional learning and elaborate My research aims to gather information about the further for the purpose of juxtaposing their own experience of Elders of the Latvian Diaspora experiences as learners. community and compare their methods of Landscape learning with those of Haudenosaunee and Mowahk as a way to compare systems of meaning-making. Benefits of the Research: This inquiry will gather information about It is believed that all participants of the research will conceptions and practices of Aboriginal and diaspora benefit from participating and sharing in the cultures regarding the shaping of identities. The conversations. These conversations will allow an researcher, Andrejs Kulnieks, will be collecting data opportunity for individuals to reflect on and over a six month period, from approximately March, interpret their role and identity in relation to cultural 2005 to August, 2005. He is requesting individuals learning. As well, through engaging in discussions who have experience with landscape learning to and research activities, participants will be able to participate in three categories of activities which will consider new ideas in relation to concepts of facilitate data collection. identity-formation and the possibilities of using various genres (autobiography, poetry, as well as ancestral teachings that are embodied in traditional Undocumented discussions songs and stories) to represent cultural In order to gather specific information regarding accomplishments. participants' experiences and conceptions regarding the participation of ancestral duty in their lives, narricinants will VIP a«V

Appendix B Human Participants Form

Name: Andrejs Kulnieks, Phone: 416-736-2100

Email: [email protected]

Title of Proposed Research: Linguistic Ecopoesis: Ecopoetics and the

Epistemology of Landscape

1. The participants will be:

Participants will be selected from The Latvian Diaspora Community as well as from

North-American Aboriginal communities through a process of familiarization with my research. Volunteers will be asked to participate in this inquiry at a mutually comfortable location that is deemed appropriate by both participant and researcher.

Recording of our discussion will take place if as deemed appropriate by researcher and participant. This research will begin immediately after Ethics approval and will proceed over a three- month period. 276

2. Statement of the Nature of the Project

Purposes of the research:

To gather data for the researcher's Doctoral dissertation and possibly subsequent publications as an embodied collective system of the meaning-making process. The aspect of the inquiry which involves human participants aims to gather further information about the role that ancestral teaching plays in shaping of identities as well as to develop alternative learning practices which might contribute to understating the role ancestral songs, dances and stories play in understanding the relationship of landscapes and communities.

Specifically, this research has the following objectives:

1. To examine the ancestral teachings that may or may not have been supported by systems of public education.

2. To offer a reflection of Ecological learning within systems of schooling as cultural and socializing agents.

3. To inquire into "focal practices" engaged by participants.

4. To examine the ways in which a lack of ancestral teachings ancestral is a hegemonic concept designed to distance learning from landscape. 5. To juxtapose individual narratives with interpretations, historical documents

(ancestral songs and stories) and theoretical texts.

6. To publicize, through the work of my Dissertation and subsequent research, the

procedures, interpretations and findings to others who are interested in developing

alternative practices for ecological learning.

3. What each participant will be asked to do:

1. Undocumented discussions.

In order to gather specific information regarding participants' experiences and

conceptions regarding the participation of dominant stories in their lives,

participants will be asked to reflect on their own experiences of "ancestral

learning" and to share their thoughts about identity formation. All participation is

voluntary and participants will be provided with information about the inquiry

and asked to complete an "Informed Consent Form" ahead of time (see attached),

in order that they may make an informed choice about their participation.

Participants will be encouraged to tell their stories freely and will asked several

questions (see attached).

2, Learning and Teaching Response Activities.

Participants will be asked to share their responses to "ancestral stories" I will

define as "eco-poetic stories". For example, we will discuss "creation teachings" that are outlined m traditional stones, songs and dances. If deemed appropriate by

both the researcher and the participant, participants will also be asked to share

culturally specific traditions and ways of learning for example: "How do creation

teachings influence our understandings about landscapes?"

3. Experiential Response Activities.

Participants will be asked to reflect on their learning experiences in systems of

public education and beyond. An opportunity will be given to discuss the form

these responses will take. Participants may choose to respond orally or through

written form by using personal narratives, autobiography, song, poetry or other

representational forms. Participants will be asked to draw on examples of forms

of learning for the purpose of juxtaposing their own experiences as learners and

Elders or educators.

4. Sample questions attached.

5. Possible discomfort to the participants or others:

The responses will be related to "stories" and will elicit a variety of responses. If the stories or responses make participants uncomfortable, the researcher will end the activities. Participants will be informed of their right to withdraw at any point.

6. Privacy of participants and confidentiality of the data obtained from them: Participants' identities will be protected, and any information which might reveal their positions or location will be altered. Pseudonyms will be used in any products that emerge from the research. All data will be kept in a secure location. 280

Examples of questions likely to be asked during documented conversations/interviews

1. Why is it important for there to be an eco-poetic in relationship to understanding landscape?

2. What is the relationship between landscape and eco-poetic thought?

3. Why is eco-knowledge an essential aspect of eco-poetic thought?

4. Why do we learn ancestral songs, stories and dances?

5. What stories are most memorable to you? Are there particular stories that have influenced you in terms of your identity-formation?

6. How were the stories learned? Through what form? E.g. Poetry, Songs, Dances?

7. Who told the most essential stories and what is the importance of the stories narrated orally?

8. What your experience of learning ancestral stories?

9. How often do you revisit these stories?

10. What do you see as the most important teachings? 11. Do you know them through the oral tradition?

12. What is the difference between the oral and the literary tradition?

13. Can you describe the intentions you had for ways that walking the North American landscapes would be valued in the making of: bush knowledge, identity formation, maturity, knowledge, ways of being, ways of knowing

14. Is this a methodology for making a cultural identity at home in North America able to return to particular ancestral landscapes with appropriate skills?

15. What role did landscape play in that methodology? 282

Glossary

Culture: The OED traces the origin of the word culture to "cultivation, tending, in

Christian authors worship..." The Ecojustice Dictionary describes culture as: "The practices, beliefs, traditions, moral norms that give the people a common sense of identity and way of understanding their relationship to the environment and to each other; cultures are as varied as the world's language(s)..." Clearly there is a connection between the idea of growing and cultivation to the idea of practices, beliefs and traditions. In terms of my research, I use the term culture to trace the learning of the Latvian diaspora communal learning to their songs and stories for which mother Earth is the primary basis of that learning.

Ecoliteracy: Moving beyond Orr's (1992) Stories that serve as ways of knowing a place can be called Ecoliteracies. To be ecologically literate includes an analysis of Indigenous knowledge that is grounded in the ecology of place. Focusing on the ecology of textual interpretations that expand understandings about particular places inevitably bring with them a necessity of Indigenous understandings. Eco-poetic music is a complex language of expression. It has the capacity to express and represent feelings that are brought about through tonalities and sounds of being outdoors. 283

Environmental Learning: This term is used to refer to learning that moves beyond systems of education. Historically, people who could not master environmental learning could not survive. Knowing local plants and animals, how they could be used, understanding which one were poisonous was part of daily life. Although this kind of

learning is being lost, there is hope if people become aware of the intrinsic value of

natural places. Intergenerational knowledge is an essential aspect of environmental

learning. This includes what Basso (1996) argues is the most important aspect of

environmental learning is knowing the stories of a place.

Environmental Education: In North America, Environmental education curriculum

models are primarily based on a scientific knowledge. In an age where environmental

degradation, loss of biodiversity, decimation of intact ecosystems, as well as Indigenous

languages being lost at an unprecedented rate, I consider how Indigenous stories can

inform how people think about the places they live. It is not enough to study frogs soaked

in poisonous chemicals. It is also important to look at the frog within its natural

surroundings. An indigenous model of Environmental education would have learners

observe the frog to see the different types of insects the frog eats, where it moves

throughout the day and how the frog survives. Environmental education should include

opportunities for students to touch a frog, not necessarily in a process of cutting,

chopping or destroying it. 284

Ecological Education: According to the Ecojustice Dictionary, ecological education finds its roots in the Greek word oikas which meant "managing the daily relationships and activities of the household." The OED defines ecology as 1. a. The branch of biology that deals with the relationships between living organisms and their environment. Also: the relationships themselves, esp. those of a specified organism. Ecological education should involve both of these ideas resulting in the development of a relationship with place.

Outdoor Learning: Outdoor learning is an important aspect of environmental learning as well as ecological learning. Solnit's (2000) work regarding the "History of walking''' outlines the importance of movement. The sedentary lifestyle of being inside and learning from books enhances environmental learning by moving towards Indigenous ways of thinking and being. Outdoor learning is also a step towards healthy ways of living because it allows learners to employ kinesthetic intelligence.