1 Natasha Myhal Dumbarton Oaks Land Back Symposium May 13

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 that ensures the continuity of the Odawa community and their specific relations to plants. Nmé is one of the

Odawa’s first clan relatives and has helped the Little River Odawa weave together their knowledge systems.

Kinship guides how Odawa peoples relate to the more than-human world through a more- than-human clan system, which includes nmé as one of the oldest nindoodem. Nindoodem (clan) informs the Odawa’s earliest social and political relationships to the land/water and more-than- humans. 7 Anishinaabe are accountable for their nindoodem, which is made up of more-than- humans, entailing roles and responsibilities to each other. These roles helped strengthen alliances with the Ojibwe and Potawatomi through social, economic, and military means.8 Their clan

5 Nancy Langston, “Indigenous Communities and Lake Sturgeon Restoration,” in Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in the Anthropocene (Brandeis University Press/U of Chicago Press, in press), 4. 6 James M McClurken, Our People, Our Journey: The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009) 8; Whyte Kyle, “Our Ancestors’ Dystopia Now: Indigenous Conservation and the Anthropocene,” In Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, (The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, 2017), 210. 7 Robert Alexander Innes, Elder Brother and the Law of the People: Contemporary Kinship and Cowessess First Nation (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2013), 6. 8 Innes, 7

system dictates what animal nations they are accountable too and each clan system has a specific role in Odawa society. Odawa governance is informed by kinship ties, and each band uses values of reciprocity to guide hunting and gathering for respective families. Overall, this maintains the well-being of band members.9 Odawa kinship practices historically provide context to understand how they negotiated settler treaty relations.

Settler governance disrupted nindoodem relations through the settler frameworks of treaty making. Treaty making was/is an act of heterogeneity that forced Native peoples into different land/water relations and political alliances.10 It is not within the scope of my paper to discuss Odawa treaty making at length. However, the Grand River Odawa had an entirely different set of assumptions for treaty making then that U.S. federal government. The Grand

River Valley was subject to intense land speculation leading up to the 1836 Treaty of

Washington. American settlers invaded these lands because they knew they were valuable for farming and logging. Prior to the 1836 treaty, the Anishinaabe were part of an intense treaty making period that resulted in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago.11

The Grand River Odawa learned that treaty negotiators were after the outright title to

Anishinaabe lands, and this influenced their approach to the 1836 treaty. This treaty was not

9 McClurken, 13. 10 Mark Rifkin, When did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9 11 Matthew Fletcher, The Eagle Returns: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012), 17

ratified until 1855 when the Grand River Odawa brokered a new treaty, the Treaty of Detroit.

However, much of the treaty lands that were stolen by the U.S. government were already given to squatters, settlers, and lumbermen. Due to the failure of the federal government to uphold the

1855 treaty, the Odawa pressured the U.S. government to renegotiate a third treaty. Before the negotiation process was completed, on March 3rd, 1871, Congress formally declared an end to the treaty-making. This left the Little River Odawas without formal reservation boundaries.

The Grand River Odawas did not want to sell their lands because they suffered poorly from the 1855 treaty terms. During this time, President Andrew Jackson was afraid of potential

Anishinaabe alliances with the British and wanted to remove all Anishinaabe, including the

Odawa, West. During this time, the American Fur Company pressured the Anishinaabe during treaty negotiations, due to debts owed to them. The Anishinaabe were present at the 1836 land negotiations, even though the land in question was not their territory and they did not have the authority to sell. The Odawa viewed the land as “available to all on the basis of need” and wanted to continue using their lands except those set aside for mining or timber.12 At the same time land was being stolen, the ecosystems that Odawas relied on for subsistence were being depleted and destroyed. This destruction can still be seen today as nmé runs have been disrupted and the greater fishing economy destroyed.

12 Fletcher, 18

The Little River Odawa historically gathered in the spring for nmé runs, which allowed for the continuation of their fisheries as a familial activity, with roles for each member of the family.13 However, with the introduction of commercial fishing in the 1840s, nmé populations were considered a nuisance because their skin would ruin nets, and fisherman severely depleted their population. The colonial limitation of nmé’s movement caused the decline of nmé populations. Numerous other environmental changes have impacted Little River Odawa social and relational worlds. Dams on the Big Manistee River, built in the 1920s, eliminated the spawning grounds for nmé.14 Also, during this time, clear-cutting forests along the Big Manistee

River watershed altered the riparian ecology and decreased species diversity.15 This created incredible hardship for the Little River Odawa, yet they continued to hunt, gather, and fish, despite poor treaty terms and settler industrialization.

The Odawa continued to exercise their 1836 treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather. In

1973, the Odawa filed a lawsuit against Michigan to protect their right to hunt and fish on ceded land and waters without state regulation.16 In 1979, the United States district court (NO. M26-73

13 Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Natural Resources Department, Nmé (Lake Sturgeon) Stewardship Plan for the Big Manistee River and 1836 Reservation, (Special Report 1, Manistee, 2008), https://www.lrboinsn.gov/images/docs/nrd/docs/Final%20Stewardship%20Plan.pdf. 14Nancy Auer, “Form and Function in Lake Sturgeon.” ed. Auer, Nancy, & Dempsey, David. The Great Lake Sturgeon (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 9; Daugherty Dan, “Development and Implementation of Habitat Availability Models to Determine Lake Sturgeon Restoration Strategies in Northern Lake Michigan Tributaries.” (Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 2006), 2-3, https://colorado.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest- com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/dissertations-theses/development-implementation-habitat- availability/docview/305265595/se-2?accountid=14503. 15 Daugherty, 2-3. 16 McClurken, 235

C.A.) ruled in the Odawas favor and restored their right to fish in the Great Lakes. This ruling subsequently reversed the 1855 treaty interpretation that terminated the federal government’s relationship with the Little River Odawas after land allotment.17 Although treaties inform the legal relationship between many Indigenous nations and the United States, to the Anishinaabe, treaties are also legal agreements with more-than-humans, like nmé.18 In the restoration program, nmé are cared for on the land, next to the Manistee River, and then once they reach a mature age, they are released back into their original waterways. This juxtaposition shows nmé themselves bring the Odawa back together and situated them within their homelands.

The Importance of Anishinaabe Stories

Anishinaabe view political and environmental changes through the lens of Wiindigo.

Wiindigo is a cannibal monster who travels with colonization and historical trauma, transforming ecologies and the ways of life that are connected to them.19 Wiindigo is the how of colonialism that operates through infrastructure’s invasion of Indigenous lands and waters through colonial systems sustaining ecological violence.20 I considers the imbalance Wiindigo created and what response that elicits from the Little River Odawa and nmé in the context of restoring relations with more-than-humans. As such, I view the Little River Odawa Nmé Stewardship Plan as an

17 Ibid 18 Whyte, 2017. 19 LaDuke Winona and Deborah Cowen, “Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure,” South Atlantic Quarterly 119 (2): 243- 268. (2020); Fleming, Bezhigobinesikwe Elaine, “Nanaboozhoo and the Wiindigo: An Ojibwe History from Colonization to the Present Tribal” College Journal of American Indian Higher Education” 28, no. 3 Spring: 1-9 (2017). 20 LaDuke and Cowen, 253.

active response to Wiindigo that centers Indigenous ways of knowing and relationships to nmé in addressing the pressing problem of the fragmentation of knowledge due to colonization. This is important because memories and experiences help Anishinaabe to understand and remember our responsibilities to an ever-changing environment.

For the Anishinaabe, plant beings existed before animals, and therefore can exist alone.

In that way, both humans and animals are reliant and depend on plants for survival. The

Anishinaabe story of Nanabush, a half-human half-spirit, details this co-existence.

Nanabush was sent to the Anishinaabe when they were very sick so that they could learn about plant medicines. Nanabush instructed Odaemin, a boy who died at that time while the

Anishinaabe were sick, to watch animals and how they interacted with plants in order to share those observations with the Anishinaabe.21 The story of Nanabush outlines Anishinaabe interactions with all forms of creation and how those relations are transformed over time.

A central narrative in the Anishinaabe storytelling is that of Nanabush. This story shapes the way my research understands relationality. The Little River Odawa nmé restoration program is an excellent example of how nmé continue to teach the Anishinaabe the importance of nationhood as it first existed with more-than-humans. Since nmé are the keepers of wild rice, this means that nmé have knowledge of manoomin, which provides a more holistic understanding of

Odawa ecology as shared in the story of Nanabush. Today, nmé provides a new set of

21 Basil Johnston, 1976. Ojibwe Heritage, (University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 34.

relationships with the Little River Odawa, a set of relationships different than their ancestors had.

This includes living with the ongoing trauma from colonization and climate change. The returning to ourselves methodology grounded in Anishinaabe-gikendaawsowin is integral to revitalize Little River Odawa social relations to land/water practices.22

Anishinaabe Ethnobotany as Returning to Oneself

Biskaabiiyang, a methodology, credited to Wendy Genuisz and Laura Horton, describes returning to ourselves a process where Anishinaabe researchers must evaluate how they are affected by the colonization process and return to Anishinaabe teachings.23 The Biskaabiiyang methodology is grounded in the Ojibwe concepts of gikendaawsowin (knowledge), inaadiziwin

(Anishinaabe psychology, way of being), and izhitwaawin (culture, customs, history). Leanne

Simpson’s discussion of Anishinaabeg thought/intelligence influences my projects understanding of Indigenous ecological memory. Anishinaabe gikendaawsowin comes from a lived theory of knowledge that originates from our spiritual realm.24 This is an integral step in the Biskaabiiyang process, as certain teachings are no longer a part of Anishinaabe everyday lives due to the impact of colonization on these processes.

The Anishinaabe language informs the Little River Odawa kinship relations with the land, the water, and all living beings. Anishinaabe peoples also must break free of settler colonial

22 Geniusz, 9. 23 Ibid 24 Simpson, 23.

ideals. 25 Therefore, Anishinaabe must first accept and remember that Anishinaabe held integral knowledge about the world and how to survive in it, as part of their ecological memory. This knowledge has been maintained despite U.S. assimilationist policies that sought to contain and erase Native peoples. Today Anishinaabe ethnobotany continues to reckon with this settler immobility placed on them.

The Nmé Stewardship Program is one example of an Indigenous conservation paradigm.

This shift presents a story not only about nmé, but the ecosystems that all more-than-humans rely on in this region. My research with nmé seeks to tell stories both of settler immobility and

Anishinaabe restoration practices that draw in every member of the Little River Odawa community. This knowledge-sharing practice incorporates traditional knowledge, science, and community outreach. The Little River Odawa take control of their own research through using

Anishinaabe-based restoration science informed by gikendaawsowin. One part of restoring nmé entails a release ceremony, which happens every Fall and the whole community is invited to take part. Kyle Whyte describes this program as “sustaining entanglements” while sharing responsibilities with settlers to address accountability towards the land/water, nmé, and each other.26 Similarly, Geniusz shares that Anishinaabe ethnobotany should take into account

Western science’s solutions to problems they have caused.27 Anishinaabe knowledge brings back

25 Fanon Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1968). 26 Whyte, 209-210. 27 Geniusz,106.

lost gikendaawsowin due to settler science. My project does not dismiss settler science, instead I account for the role that settler science has played in Odawa restoration efforts. Settler science created a legacy of extractive industries or created that made Indigenous peoples vulnerable today. Because of this, Odawa memories rest within the Manistee River watershed. The memories made by Odawa citizens today will look different from what their ancestors experienced. This is due to the intense colonial incursions that have produced or created the present experience. However, I view Anishinaabe restoration practices as part of a memoryscape.28 Nmé and Odawa relationships, situated over time, represent a particular memory that is grounded in their ancestral land/waters.

Odawa restoration practices create a space for human relationships with animal and plant relatives. The Biskaabiiyang methodology acknowledges that not all gikendaawsowin comes from plants, and that animals bring Anishinaabe knowledge of their plant relatives.29 My dissertation explores what it means for Little River Odawas to address the role of fish in their lives. Through the interactions between humans and more-than-humans, water has become a site of analysis that informs Indigenous governance structures.

Little River Odawa life is complex and contemporary issues must be addressed through an Anishinaabe framework. John Borrows facilitates this through the concept of resurgent

28 Keith Thor Carlson and Naxaxalhts’i Albert ‘Sonny’ McHalsie, “Stó:lō Memoryscapes as Indigenous Ways of Knowing”, In De Nardi, Sarah, Hilary Orange, Steven C. High and Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, (Routledge, 2019), 144. 29 Geniusz, 69.

relations which centers Indigenous peoples legal systems as the foundation to enact one’s teachings.30 These teachings originate through political, economic, spiritual, and social values via Anishinaabe teachings and behavior.31 Aki (earth) guides Odawa’s earliest memories and those memories, are invested in contemporary relationships. To pay attention to the realities that the Little River Odawa and nmé face, memory is considered an important source of medicinal knowledge. This knowledge also functions to guide current tribal natural resources management strategies to maintain this knowledge.

My project recognizes the continued impact of colonialism, and a key component of my project includes outreach and interviews that allowed tribal members to share their stories related to more-than-humans and nmé. From 2018-2019, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork that contributed to my focus on more-than-humans, Little River Odawa livelihoods, and tribal natural resource management. In 2018, I spent time visiting and talking with Odawa community members at elders’ lunches. Odawas informed me that they want to know more about culturally important species such as fish and medicinal plants but do not feel as if the information is readily available to them. The Biskaabiiyang methodology stresses consulting Anishinaabe elders first for botanical information. However, elders may not have worked with gikendaawsowin, and

Geniusz acknowledges that one may have to consult a colonized text when working with elders.

Similarly, Leanne Simpson shares that the elder’s lived experience with the land/water can help

30 John Borrows, “Earth-Bound: Indigenous Resurgence and Environmental Reconciliation.” In Asch, Michael, Borrows, John, & Tully, James. (2018). Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous-Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 49. 31 Borrow, 13.

to not only restore content or knowledge specific to more-than-humans but the “conditions in which knowledge was learned”.32 Thus, to begin contemplating what Indigenous ecological memory means, my project looks at the connection between the land/water, memory, and more- than-humans, and how this influences elder’s and the broader communities collective participation in subsistence activities. The Little River Odawa’s understandings of environmental change can reconnect community concerns with that of the Nmé Stewardship Program, as well as future cultural resource programs.

Little River Odawa knowledge attributes to nmé understandings and this creates a link between Anishinaabe philosophies and lived experiences. Historical moments in Little River

Odawa pasts, such as the 1836 treaty and memories associated with particular places, tie individual memory to a collective past. Through working with tribal members, I aim to understand how memory and personal experience are reflected in their daily lives. My research seeks to understand how the Little River Odawa negotiate between tribal natural resource management and Western science and how these approaches coincide or diverge. Additionally, this correspondence with one another also provides a way to involve the community in tribal natural resource management decision making. The answers to these questions outweigh colonial understandings of Little River Odawa livelihoods.

32 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 152.

Colonialism reproduces a severed relationship with the land/water while weighing down contemporary Little River Odawa practices. Memory accounts for Little River Odawa contemporary and historical experiences and how these encounters are not the same. Another way that colonialism operates is viewing land/water and Odawa peoplehood as separate. This reflects my research on the gendered removal of Little River Odawa bodies and minds from their place-based practices. During one of my stays at Little River, a tribal member commented, “We used to have a strong group of kwewag (women) that we could turn to for advice, and now we don’t have that anymore.” This moment, for me, solidified a silence within the community, and as this comment suggests, the role of kwe for the Odawa has changed. Furthermore, dispossession is rooted in heteropatriarchy, and my project will critically interrogate how patriarchy is deemed as normal and serves as a model of the state.33 Anishinaabe philosophies of the land/water are explicitly tied to Anishinaabe understandings of gender. One must understand the colonial conditions that led to the removal of Odawa bodies from the land/water. This presents the realities the Little River Odawa face today that center their current political relations with more-than-humans.

Features of Indigenous Governance

33Arvin, M., Tuck, E., & Morrill, A, Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy. Feminist Formations 25(1), (2013): 13.

Contemporary Indigenous governance practices are expressed through tribal natural resource management as part of how the Anishinaabe engage with the world. The Little River

Odawa tribal natural resources department protects the Odawa land/water-based practices, which enables Odawas to define sovereignty for themselves. Similarly, Clint Carroll provides a framework that theorizes the resource-based and relationship-based approach of tribal natural resources departments.34 This framework illustrates how Indigenous knowledge complicates environmental governance, thus calling upon Indigenous governments to address concerns of traditional knowledge-keepers as central to their own initiatives. My project builds upon

Carroll’s work by drawing attention to relationships between the Little River Odawas and the more-than-human world. Furthermore, Odawa sovereignty responds to legacies of colonialism through reestablishing and maintaining relationships with the land/water, as sites of struggle.

The legacies of colonialism, as previously mentioned, created systems of power that separated the Little River Odawas from relationships to place. This can be seen today as colonialism operates within the structure of “management of resources”. 35 Simpson refers to this as the gendered removal of Nishnabeg (Anishinaabe) bodies and minds from land-based practices.36 The colonial gender binary that severed Anishinaabe bodies from the land/water is understood through Kwe. Kwe is Anishinaabe for woman and Simpson describes this term as

34 Clint Carroll, Roots of Our Renewal: Ethnobotany and Cherokee Environmental Governance, First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 8-9. 35 Simpson, 29. 36 Ibid, 43.

fluid, recognizing a spectrum of genders.37 This informs my approach to how tribal natural resource management practices may have shifted to a land/water loss framework—one that neglects issues related to the body, mind, and knowledge systems. Similarly, my work does not attempt to privilege issues around land/water as more important than other Indigenous issues around gender violence. Odawa issues of land/water are gendered as a result of dispossession.

Knowing this, my work does not argue for decolonizing the field of tribal natural resource management. Rather, I claim that tribal natural resource management provides opportunity for the Little River Odawa to refuse colonial domination and restore their home and community spaces.

Anishinaabe ethnobotany further supports this opposition, as it offers key insights into

Odawa and more-than-human relations to repair this gendered removal of bodies and minds from land/water-based practices. Tribal natural resource management, as part of the broader

Indigenous land/water landback movement, provides opportunities for Odawa community members to reflect on gender violence in their own lives and how it impacts the current conditions in which they live. Moreover, Anishinaabe restoration programs that provide an intimate connection between the Odawa and more-than-humans generates knowledge’s through place-based practices.

Anishinaabe Ethnobotany as Asking for Guidance

37 Ibid, 29.

Thus, we can see how the Little River Odawa tribal members be seen as informing ongoing efforts regarding Anishinaabe ecological restoration and impacts from the effects of colonization that limited their connection to their more-than-human relatives. Anishinaabe stories elicits an interrelationship between narrative and research.38 Attention to nmé restoration and repopulation will repair other flora and fauna important to the Little River Odawa, such as manoomin. Attention to the historical processes that enact sovereignty informs how the Little

River Odawa relate to more-than-humans today. Thus, my project centers Indigenous histories as living political conditions, coinciding with changing ecological systems, which stresses a moral responsibility to more-than-humans. This project empirically operationalizes Indigenous ways of knowing and treaty relationships as the foundation to discuss land/water-based experiences for the Little River Odawa that are now impacted by climate change. Anishinaabe ethnobotany describes the role of nmé as healing the land/water and the entangled process it presents in the current colonial moment.

To draw from Anishinaabe ethnobotany and traditional stories, my project creates a space for Odawa relationships with animal and plant relatives, with attention to Indigenous governance structures that necessitate a deep respect for these systems. The Anishinaabe word for balance is wiiskiwizwin, and more-than-humans help Anishinaabe restore that balance.39 Anishinaabe

38 Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 94. 39 Geniusz, 160.

ethnobotany stresses that plants, animals, and all more-than-humans were put here for use by the community. Through my community-based research, which informs Little River Odawa-nmé relationships, my project will continue to trace the characteristics of nmé in Little River Odawa daily lives and what the reemergence of nmé knowledge means for addressing environmental and colonial impacts on other more-than-humans. This paper represents one step as part of the larger decolonizing process to ask our more-than-human beings for help to bring Anishinaabe people back to each other, the land/water, and back to our stories.

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