1 Natasha Myhal Dumbarton Oaks Land Back Symposium May 13
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Natasha Myhal Dumbarton Oaks Land Back Symposium May 13, 2021 Nmé as Elder Brother: Sustaining Ecological Memory through Indigenous Restoration Abstract: Gichigami (Great Lakes) is a site where the concerns of fish and the land meet. My paper addresses the role of Anishinaabe-more-than-human relations as a re-engagement with subsistence practices that are burdened with memories of colonialism. More-than-humans as relatives generate their own place-based knowledge as they navigate through land/water fraught with jurisdictions and remain deeply embedded in Anishinaabe social systems. This paper will argue that more-than-human memories of the past and future are made through Odawa acts of remembering and forgetting. My paper also attempts to understand how these relations shape present memories of remembered Anishinaabe pasts; putting forward a theory of Indigenous ecological memory that addresses how more-than-humans hold alternative memories, alive with ancestral knowledge. As Indigenous ethnobotanical literature and Anishinaabe methodologies informs my approach, I center the role more-than-humans play in how land/water is remembered (Geniusz 2009; Simpson 2017). Through Indigenous ethnobotany, I bring in the importance of elder brothers, animals, as being critical to this field, as animals cannot survive without plants. Indigenous ecological memory connects Anishinaabe people to the inherent struggles over land/water through contemporary Indigenous governance practices in Michigan. Thus, my paper allows for an engagement with an Anishinaabe distinctiveness, free from colonial interpretation. My Anishinaabe Positionality Boozhoo / Aaniin Natasha nindiznikaaz, makwa nindoodem, Baawating Anishinaabe izhinikaade ishkonigon wenjibaayan. I humbly greet you in the Anishinaabe language and start with my Anishinaabemowin introduction as it was taught to me. I am a beginner speaker of Ojibwemowin, and was fortunate to learn three years of Anishinaabe during my time as an undergraduate student. I am Anishinaabe first before anything else and am accountable to all Anishinaabeg, including more-than-humans. The leftover land that I come from is Sault Ste. Marie, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. My Anishinaabe family, the Lambert’s, made their home in St. Ignace, Michigan and remained there for many generations. I was raised away from my 1 community in Cleveland, Ohio. My introduction in the Anishinaabe language shares our worldview and informs our relations to land/water and more-than-humans. I share this for those Anishinaabe listening and reading to know the origins of my teachings and my familial ties to community. I am deeply influenced by my Anishinaabe ancestors and family. Anishinaabeg peoples lived along the Great Lakes and river systems, relying heavily on fishing. My kinship relations extend from Baawaating (Sault Ste. Marie), which translates to “place of the rapids” in Anishinaabe. For at least 2,000 years, my ancestors seasonally gathered near St. Mary’s Rapids for attikamek, the Ojibwemowin word for whitefish, which translates to “caribou of the waters.” My ancestors traveled for miles to fish in the rapids and had enough food to feed our families. A translation of Anishinaabeg means “Great Peoples,” and we (the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi) have lived on the shores of Gichigami “Great Lakes” for millennia. This relationship with nibi “water” informs my cultural understandings of place through awareness of more-than-human kin that live, breathe, and depend on nibi for survival. Anishinaabemowin as Animating Place Indigenous languages detail a specific and unique relationship to a physical place, which is expressed differently through one’s own relationship with the land/water. Anishinaabe ties to place are found in Anishinaabemowin, our language, which generates geographies of communication with the land/water, more-than-humans, and stories that reinforce this knowledge. Kimberly Blaser describes this as the “ecolegacy of Anishinaabe peoples” that allows for a “reading of land languages,” which is a dynamic set of understandings of land/water 2 that support Anishinaabe lives in the present. 1 Within Anishinaabemowin is a language of care that is a shifting process regarding Odawa relationships to place. In this context, my paper will explore the land/water languages of the Anishinaabe as a crucial way to describe Anishinaabe- more-than-human relationships. The fields of Indigenous studies and Indigenous ethnobotany bring together the more- than-human world. An engagement with these literatures supports how Anishinaabe view more- than-humans and how more than-humans interact with Anishinaabe. In this paper, I will share Anishinaabe oral traditions and provide insights on what I have learned so far in working with the Little River Odawa and their Indigenous restoration projects in Manistee, Michigan. Through this, I will describe components of Indigenous ecological memory and how this idea re-creates events in Anishinaabe collective pasts that inform the present. My view of Indigenous ecological memory is informed by a process of remembering and forgetting. This is due to colonization and the fragmentation of Anishinaabe knowledge. Memory plays a key role in shaping Little River Odawa attitudes about the land/water with their personal and collective experience. Little River Odawa relationships to the land/water itself generates memories and practices that inform Anishinaabeg modes of thought. My project emphasizes Indigenous ecological memory as central for the Little River Odawa as they navigate their own experiences with the land/water. 1Blaser Kimberly, “A Cosmology of Nibi.” In Russo, Linda, Sarah de Leeuw, Craig Santos Perez, and Eric Magrane. Geopoetics in Practice, (Milton: Taylor and Francis, 2019), 32. 3 This paper attempts to show how the Little River Odawa’s conservation strategies and Anishinaabe stories bring more-than-humans that have been separated back together. Indigenous ethnobotany aids in this process to inform more-than-human relations to land/water. I will provide a historical overview of Little River Odawa land/water relations and how they were impacted and regained. This overview leads to the formation of their tribal natural resources department. The Biskaabiiyang2 methodology emergences from the impacts of colonization, embodying Anishinaabe knowledges that informs my project’s relationship with more-than- humans. This methodology presents a return to Anishinaabe ancestral traditions and relies on Anishinaabe-inaadiziwin (ways of being) as a starting point to understand our personal teachings.3 Ultimately, this paper will speak to Anishinaabe spiritual, emotional, and intellectual spaces that embody the land/water embody, invoking meanings in Little River Odawa daily life. I will draw together Anishinaabe theories and Indigenous frameworks from theoretical perspectives that detail the Anishinaabe relationships with land/water. These theories explain the intersections of nmé (Lake Sturgeon) for the Little River Odawa. I draw on frameworks from Anishinaabeg studies, Indigenous studies, and Indigenous ethnobotany to describe what an Indigenous ecological memory, from an Odawa context, might mean within these themes. My framework takes into consideration how memory is informed by settler narratives and how the 2 Wendy Makoons Genuisz, Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings, (Syracuse University Press, 2007), 10. 3 Genuisz, 11. 4 land/water shapes memories for the Little River Odawa. This can provide insight into how the Anishinaabe come to know the land/water in complex ways, thus rendering new memories informed by places that hold distinct memories of their own. In this context, my paper presents a way to rethink how the Anishinaabe, specifically the Odawa, engage with more-than-humans today. In 1994, the Little River Odawa tribal natural resource department developed and implemented a Nmé Stewardship Plan to restore sturgeon populations to the Big Manistee River watershed in Michigan. My research is informed by this ongoing program, as it is grounded in Little River Odawa knowledge and science and provides a transformation way to understand the shared relations between nmé and other more-than-humans. Anishinaabemowin and Settler Relations in Gichigami The Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi originally lived north of what is now known as Maine along the Atlantic Ocean. Seven spiritual beings from the ocean instructed the Anishinaabeg4 to move to where food grew on water because a light skinned race was going to land on the shore and bring death and destruction to their peoples. Knowing this, they migrated from the east, along the St. Lawrence seaway, in search of this food. Once they found manoomin (wild rice) in the Great Lakes region of the United States, they remained in the area. The 4 The Anishinaabeg include the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi. Each nation speaks the Anishinaabe language and belong to the Algonquian language family. 5 Anishinaabe were introduced to their nmé relative, known as the keeper of manoomin, when they first found manoomin. Nmé is considered the “spiritual keeper of the fisheries” who ensured Anishinaabe sustenance year after year.5 Nmé—the oldest fish species in the Great Lakes—is central to the subsistence, spiritual, and cultural practices of many Anishinaabeg peoples, shaping Odawa understandings of themselves over multiple generations.6 Nmé are known as ‘elder brother’ in Odawa teachings. They embody the role of a steadfast teacher