Midwinter Musings

As we approach Midwinter, the winter Solstice and Christmas tide, botanical symbolism is prominent in our holiday decorations and in traditional carols of the season. We place evergreens in our homes, bedecked with shining ornaments, we hang wreaths of evergreens, and perhaps holly on our doors. We hang kissing balls of mistletoe over doors where they are sure to catch the unwary....

Holly red and mistletoe white.... this is the carol sung by the little animals in an English children’s book about Little Grey Rabbit and her friends, and includes the two most iconic plants of an English Christmas.

One of my favourite carols when I was growing up is “The Holly and the Ivy” which first made me aware of the botanical symbolism in our traditional Christmas celebrations. I read in my songbook that the holly is the male, and the ivy female, and they both indicate fertility and continuation of life in the middle of winter through their evergreen foliage. The carol begins:

The holly and the ivy,
when they are both full grown
of all the trees that are in the wood,
the holly is the crown

In a fascinating analysis of the symbolism of the Unicorn Tapestry series entitled “The Holly King, the Oak King and the Unicorn” (1986, Harper & Row), John Williamson says that the holly was associated with Midwinter or Yuletide, and that Yule was symbolic of death and rebirth. He connects the symbolism to the worship of the sun in pre-Christian times, and comments that the Christians took the time of Saturnalia and the date of Sol Invictus [the death and rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice] as a time to symbolize the death and birth of Christ (1986:178). And the green boughs with bright berries also were part of the decoration for Saturnalia. Apparently the oak and the oak king symbolized the waxing of the year, and the holly the waning half. Holly itself was considered a magical and potent plant in Roman times, as recorded by Pliny (Williamson 1986:62). Once Christianity arose, holly also took on the symbolism of Christ, whose death leads to rebirth in a state of divinity, and which offers humankind victory over death through everlasting life. A later verse of the carol says-

The holly bears a berry,
as red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
to do poor sinners good.

The redness of the berries evoking the blood of sacrifice is one obvious connection. The thorniness of their leaves also evokes the crown of thorns, and the pure white of the blossoms the purity and chastity of Mary, mother of Jesus, as we see in the following verse:

The holly bears a blossom
As white as lily flower
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to be our sweet Saviour.

What of the evergreen tree and its green aromatic boughs? The association of evergreens like fir and spruce trees with midwinter, Yuletide or Christmas is a Germanic connection. [There are no fir or spruce trees in England; the only evergreen conifers there are yew trees, Scotch pine, and spindly junipers]. The nineteenth century German carol lauds the evergreen:

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur
zur Sommerzeit,
Nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!

a literal translation reads:
O Christmas [fir] tree, o Christmas [fir] tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!
You're green not only
in the summertime,
No, also in winter when it snows.
O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
How loyal are your leaves/needles!
[words and translation from http://german.about.com/library/blotannenb.htm]

This modern song is derived from an older traditional German song ”Oh Fir Tree”, versions of which can be dated to the 16th century :

O Dannebom, o Dannebom,
du drägst 'ne grönen Twig,
den Winter, den Sommer,
dat doert de leve Tid.

(http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/Notes_On_Carols/o_christmas_tree-notes.htm)
It has several more verses, but as I don’t read German I won’t include them here.

The evergreen tree didn’t join English Midwinter festivities until German Prince Albert brought a tree for his bride Queen Victoria in 1841.

And what of mistletoe? Mistletoe is evergreen, yellowish green, and forms masses in the (deciduous) oak trees which remain leafy when the oak’s own leaves fall. It’s parasitic, sending strands into the wood of its host. The berries are small and whitish. Apparently these masses of yellowish green are the “golden boughs” which gave Frazer’s famous 19th century tome on world religions its name (Williamson 1986: 59). Mistletoe was associated with the sacred oaks of the druids....and a great deal of 18th century fantasy about Druids shows white robed silver bearded holy men with golden sickles cutting mistletoe for mysterious rites. Apparently Pliny is the source of the white robed druids with golden sickles cutting mistletoe, recently amusingly cartooned by Hergé in Asterix and Obelix.

“Mistletoe and Druids From Pliny - Natural History:

XVI/95: The druids -- that is what the Gauls call their magicians -- hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it is growing, provided that it is an oak. Groves of oaks are chosen even for their own sake, and the magicians perform no rites without using the foliage of these trees... Anything growing on oak trees they think to have been sent down from heaven, and to be a signal that that particular tree has been chosen by a god. Mistletoe is, however, rather seldom found on an oak, and when it is discovered it is gathered with great ceremony, particularly on the ninth day of the moon... because it is then rising in strength and not yet half its full size. Hailing the moon in a native word that means "healing all things", they prepare a ritual sacrifice and banquet beneath a tree and bring up two white bulls, whose horns are bound for the first time on this occasion. A priest arrayed in white vestments climbs the tree and with a golden sickle cuts down the mistletoe, which is caught in a white cloak. Then finally they kill the victims, praying to the god to render his gift propitious to those on whom he has bestowed it.
[URL = Natural History]”

(retrieved from http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/norsegodspictures/p/mistletoe.htm)

Mistletoe also figures in the Norse legend about the death of the god Baldur, second son of Odin....After a disturbing foreboding dream of Baldur’s death, Odin’s wife Frigga had sought to protect the bright twin from all harm by gaining the oath of all things not to harm him....and celebrated his immunity by inviting all to try to hurt him. Weapons fell aside powerless...but Loki, the cunning evil one, took mistletoe....which had escaped Frigga’s notice because of its weakness and insignificance.....and turned it into a dart, which he placed in the hand of Baldur’s blind twin Hodur ....who threw the dart at Loki’s urging, and slew Baldur believing nothing could harm him. Thus Baldur died. (from the Prose Edda, Icelandic Saga in the Wikipedia article on Baldr and the retelling in Thomas Bullfinch’s Mythology http://www.usefultrivia.com/mythology/death_of_baldur.html).

And how did it come to be the plant in the Kissing Bundle? This I don’t actually know. A website on mistletoe lore http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/norsegodspictures/p/mistletoe.htm suggests that the mistletoe berries were Frigga’s tears, and that after Baldur’s restoration to life, the plant then became symbolic of love... but the pathway to English folk use is not obvious. The same website contains other snippets about mistletoe:

“Mistletoe in Dickens Pickwick Papers:

"From the centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old Wardle had just suspended with his own hands a huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and most delightful struggling and confusion; in the midst of which, Mr. Pickwick, with a gallantry that would have done honour to a descendant of Lady Tollimglower herself, took the old lady by the hand, led her beneath the mystic branch, and saluted her in all courtesy and decorum."

Mistletoe in Washington Irving Christmas Eve:

"Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids."’

So- I wish you all the merriest of Midwinter Holidays. Merry Christmas, Good Yuletide, Best Wishes for New Years, and happy Chanukkah, festival of lights [tonight is day 6 of the miracle]. A light in the darkness of midwinter as we approach the Solstice, and green evergreen boughs as a token of rebirth and new growth in the springtime.

Reflections on seeing a coyote cross the path

Coyote looks back

Tsoska Dzidze Whisky Jack's Berries

Yesterday afternoon as I walked in the ravine, a sleek grey and white coyote ran across the meadow in front of me and disappeared into the trees. Coyotes are beautiful animals, but are caricatured in Western cartoons (Wile E. Coyote versus the Roadrunner), made ridiculous, stupid and ugly. In Indigenous narratives, coyote is a trickster, who is smart but often outsmarts him [or even her-] self. I think of the wonderful coyote stories of Native American author Thomas King, and the allusions to coyote found in Hunn’s Nichi Wana, the Big River. Coyote’s opportunism is seen as both intelligent and competent, and self serving at the same time. Coyotes are nothing if not adaptable. living easily on the peripheries of human settlement, elusive and quick witted. Coyotes are predators, feeding on rabbits and other smaller animals, and also take advantage of berries. I saw a lot of saskatoon berry filled scat in the ravine this summer.

In Western thought the concepts of “predator” and “vermin” [aka “varmint”] carry negative connotations....the big bad wolf and the sweet innocent defenseless deer. Carnivores (other than us) are bad, and herbivores [unless rodents] are good. The rodent thing is an interesting one; we are generally fine with squirrels and chipmunks in Western culture [which typically live in the woods and not in our homes or outbuildings, and don’t spoil our food stores or crops]. Beavers are fine too (unless they are blocking culverts or damming fishing streams or cutting down fruit trees along the creek). Rats and mice, however are not fine. Rats carry the plague, and are depicted as evil “underworld” creatures in cartoons. Rats are the target of extermination programs in poor urban neighbourhoods in places like New York. [In the mid 1990’s in Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori biologist Mere Roberts roused a remarkable amount of negative attention trying to defend the kiori, a small rat which was a traditional Maori food. The label “rat” carried the day, and programs to eliminate this endangered cultural animal from protected areas continued.] And in less urban settings, gophers are definitely not fine. Reading the draft of a book on environmental history by my Athabasca University colleague Donald Wetherall a few weeks ago, I was startled to find that in Alberta there had been a bounty on gophers as a “predator” in the early 20th century. In my biology classes I learned that a predator preys on other animals, usually herbivores. Apparently in Alberta a predator can prey on roots, if people take exception to its foraging habits.

I was also distressed to find that there was a bounty on magpies, intelligent and beautiful cousins of jays and of crows, birds with lovely black and white markings, and iridescent blues and greens, with long graceful tails. They too were “predators” because they include the eggs and young of other species of birds in their diet, and are scavengers of carrion and well as eating a wide range of other foods. The bounty was paid per pair of magpie legs, and thousands of pairs were collected. Enough to sicken me....but it helped me understand why the people of Alberta today continue to denigrate magpies, often calling them “aerial rats”. (The contrast with the beautiful song celebrating magpies written by Donovan Leach in the mid ’60’s is noteworthy; it goes---
The magpie is a most illustrious bird
black and blue and white-
I would that I had feathers three
black and blue and white

The magpie is a most royal bird
dwells in a diamond tree
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
sorrow and joy for me

I saw the gentle magpie birds
in a dusky yestereve
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
and sooner than soon did leave

I have known this song, and sung it, since I was a teenager. I was thrilled to come to Alberta where these beautiful and intelligent birds are common place). Crows too were bountied and persecuted. Their depredations on grain were balanced by their consumption of rodents that also preyed on grain, as some farmers tried to point out, but the anti-crow and magpie faction prevailed.

The history of discomfort with crows and ravens is an ancient one in Europe. The birds are black, like night, intelligent, unfathomable, quintessentially adaptable, and associated with carrion, thus with death and with the despoilation of corpses. The Norse God Odin had two ravens, wisdom and thought...and they were also associated with death in battle. Edgar Allen Poe’s uncanny poem the raven evokes a creepy aura of death and fate. The fantasy author JRR Tolkien similarly casts crows and wolves with an aura of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Yet in the Northwest Coast, Raven is a powerful being, laughable but also recognized as a creative force, the trickster creator who liberated daylight along with many other adventures. Raven is one of the two moieties of the Haida and the Tlingit, and one of four Clans of the Nisga’a on the Nass River. Txeemsim, the raven, lived along the Nass River which is also Txeemsim, and many of his stories are localized there. Raven is frequently depicted on Crest items and blankets and on totem poles in that region.

The ways that people relate to and conceive of animals, are shaped by culture and means of livelihood. Hunters, herders, and farmers all see things differently. Those who separate humans, and culture, from animals, and nature, are less tolerant of fellow travellers. In European folk-lore and contemporary popular culture such as cartoons, predators and raptors get bad press for the most part. Reynard the Fox is a sly and cunning animal who grabs the grey goose, and the wolf is a leering evil creature who poses a risk to benighted travellers, or to Sonya the duck in “Peter and the Wolf”. “Chicken hawks” were formerly reviled, and shot on sight. (Our attitude toward “chicken hawks” has shifted somewhat now that many of us in North America are no longer farmers; we made substantial efforts as a society to help the peregrine falcon recover from the brink of extinction due to pesticide use).

While staying with my Gwich’in teachers on the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers, I witnessed very different attitudes and senses of the same species. Although the town ravens in Inuvik ravage unprotected garbage bags and wake one with their croaking and scuffling, on the land people leave food for the ravens, and recognize their role in cleaning the land. The intelligence and inherently comical character of the raven are both recognized in traditional narratives throughout the North. Raven is another trickster, like coyote, shaping the world almost by mistake, and often being brought up short by his own scheming.

In the Northwest Coast region as I noted above, raven is widely credited with bringing daylight to human kind. Versions of this story are found in Raven Steals the Sun by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst (Haida) and Wii Gyet Wanders On (Bookbuilders of Ksan; Gitksan). Other stories of raven highlight his foolish greed, as in the Witsuwit’en story of Estes (their name for this trickster figure) and the swans; he tries to trap too many at once by tying their legs together, and they lift him into the air....ultimately he falls, embedding himself in a rock near Francois Lake, and he has to rely on lynx’s rough tongue to wear away the rock to free him. Lynx’s lovely ear tufts are hair pulled out by Estes in payment. (Stories of the Carrier Indians 1977). At times Raven (‘Wii Gyet with his tattered old Gwiis Gaak or raven blanket) is outsmarted by his hubris, as when he taunts a stump while his bear meat is roasting, and wakes to find the anticipated feast under the spreading rootwad of the stump, which has slipped down to cover Wii Gyet’s bounty.

The wolf is seen as a good hunter in northern Dene cultures, human-like in its skill and as provider for its family. Their emnity to dogs is not appreciated, but my teacher Mary’s Auntie Mary was scolded for shooting a wolf for no reason when she was a young woman. That inappropriate behaviour is likely to have consequences.

Gwich’in and Kaska leave food out for ravens and whisky-jacks (also known as Canada or Grey Jays; whisky-jack is derived from the Cree name for the bird). They have a proscription on harming these birds or gulls; I was told if you harmed a raven or a gull, it would make bad weather come. I watched while Mary Teya painstakingly freed a whisky-jack from fish netting she had placed over her drying fish to keep the gulls from spoiling it. I also watched her leave out the skull of a moose on top of a shed, after the meat had been cut off it, so the whisky-jacks and ravens could clean off the last of the meat. Auntie Alice, one of my Kaska teachers speaks fondly of “uskacha”, the whisky jack, and the fruits of Arctous rubra, the red bear berry, are whisky jack’s berries.

Gulls, I was told, help to clean the land....they are emblematic of summer for Gwich’in, and I was told were more significant locally than eagles. I was told to spill the fish offal on the sandbar for the gulls to eat, not put it in the water. The gulls cleanse the land, and also remove the guts and wastes that might tempt a bear to frequent the camp. Various lakes are named for the gull Tidigeh Van. (Once the gulls return southward, raven takes over clean-up duty for fall fisheries.)

When I was growing up, gulls were associated with garbage dumps, and though beautiful, were not especially valued. To the Mormons, however, gulls saved them from a plague of Mormon crickets which locust like threatened their first grain crops, and there is a statue to the seagull in Salt Lake City.

Our own culture has some ambivalence about wolves and raptors in the present, as magnificent emblems of wildness, beauty and freedom. This plays out in the complexities of endangered species restoration of wolves in Wyoming and Montana, and the immediate re-institution of a hunting season on wolves once their population has recovered....and the immediate response of the Natural Resource Defense Committee to rally wilderness and nature lovers to the defense of the wolves through political means. Whether we can respect other beings on their own terms and leave them space to live is yet an unanswered question.

Hallowe’en, Samhain and the Day of the Dead

Besides Thanksgiving, the other holiday in modern North America in which pumpkins figure is Halloween. Pumpkins have become iconic of Halloween. Carved, hollowed out pumpkins with faces and candles inside gleam on many porches and window sills on the night of October 31. These days you can buy tiny orange decorative gourds that look like miniature pumpkins for table decorations, and strings of orange pumpkin lights to trim your hedge or house front. The orange colour of the pumpkins is paired with the black of night time to make the emblematic black-and-orange of Halloween of 20th and early 21st century America. Black cats and bats are other ethnobiological elements of Halloween.
The night is configured as scary, a time of evil forces- witches, ghosts and a host of more recent evils like vampires- but contained by play-acting. We pretend to be scary/scared, and enjoy the pretense. It becomes a time for children, a way perhaps of taming fears of death and darkness by turning them into fantasy and games. Halloween is an excuse to have fun. It is a time of inversion, where people dress in costumes even at places of work, indulging in fantasy and collectively evading the norms of humdrum respectable daily roles. Children go house to house and are given candy...something that happens on no other day of the year.

Why are pumpkins, cats and bats associated with Halloween? For years I had heard vaguely that jack-o-lanterns were originally hollowed out turnip lanterns, but in North America, people switched to using pumpkins, which were readily available and already hollow if you cleaned out the seeds. Finally my partner and I were able to track a reliable source that actually documents turnip lanterns: The Hallowed Eve: Dimensions of Culture in a Calendar Festival in Northern Ireland by Jack Santino, 1998, University Press of Kentucky, which discusses turnip lanterns on pp. 49-50:
“Rough lanterns hollowed out of turnips, having a lighted candle inside, and holes cut in the turnip for eyes, nose and mouth, and carried by a string handle was deemed sufficient to scare people out of their wits.” (Santino 1998: 49, quotation from a fieldwork notebook, of a collector for the Irish Folklore Commission.)
A black and white photograph of such a turnip lantern labelled “turnip lantern, Bangor, 1991,” is found on page 50 of the book, and can be viewed by following the link below to the Amazon.com preview and scrolling to page 50
http://books.google.ca/books?id=6RvKav1WFmgC&lpg=PP11&ots=8qJ4UwvQqw&dq=turnip%20jack-o'lantern&lr=&pg=PA50#v=onepage&q=&f=false

In Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past (Pictorial America) (Lantos 2009) the author asserts “The tradition of carving pumpkins originated from the legend of ‘Stingy Jack’. Jack was doomed to wander endlessly in the dark nights with only a burning coal ember in a turnip [that had been hollowed out] for light.” [No. 7, page 9]
This source also asserts that people carved scary faces into turnips and potatoes in Ireland to keep “jack-o-the-lantern” away. [No. 8. page 10]

This source is : Lantos, James 2009. Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past, Applewood’s Pictorial America, Vintage Images of America’s Living Past. Bedford, Mass: Applewood books

http://books.google.ca/books?id=JfFGdhilmKUC&lpg=PA4&ots=faDZnl4mko&dq=turnip%20jack-o'lantern&lr=&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q=&f=false

My economic botany book (Economic Botany, Plants in Our World by Beryl Brintnall Simpson and Molly Conner-Ogorzaly, McGraw Hill Publishing 1986) informs me that turnips are the roots of Brassica campestris. Swede turnips or rutabagas are the roots of a related species Brassica napus. Simpson and Connor-Ogorzaly (1986:226-227) suggest that this species is a hybrid between cabbages (Brassica oleracea) and B. campestris, the white turnip. Neaps is a medieval word for this vegetable. I was surprised to find that Simpson and Connor-Ogorzaly also include a figure of two turnip lanterns, accompanied by the following caption (figure 8-17, p. 227):
“The first Jack O’Lantern was carved out of a turnip, The Irish, who started our Halloween tradition explain it this way. One night Satan came to a local pub to claim the soul of Jack, a drunken miserly fellow. Jack suggested that they “have one for the road,” but when the Devil turned himself into a sixpence to pay the barkeeper, Jack grabbed the coin and put it in his wallet. After some bickering, Jack agreed to set the Devil free with the promise that he be left alone for another year. Each year thereafter, Jack managed to outwit the Devil. Finally, Jack grew old and died of natural causes. Heaven refused to admit him, and the Devil was not about to offer his adversary a resting place so Jack’s soul was stuck between Heaven and Hell. Satan gave Jack a burning coal to light his way, and jack fashioned a lantern from a turnip he was eating to hold it.”
In Northern Irish Halloween customs, there was also apparently an association with cabbages, which doesn’t seem to have found its way to this side of the Atlantic :
“A piece of testimony from 1943 describes Halloween pranks as a means of social redistribution as well as a way of publicly calling attention to greedy and miserly individuals : “An old custom that still prevails was the stealing and throwing of cabbages at doors. The cabbages were generally taken from those who were most greedy for the goods of this world. It is suggested that these cabbages were thrown at the doors of those who had none and could not afford to get them.” (UCD)” (Santino p. 49)
It is generally held that the origin of the carved pumpkin jack-o-lantern in North America was an adaptation by Irish immigrants to newly available plant materials in the 19th century. The iconography of Halloween in America also includes stooks of dried corn stalks, again showing the association of Halloween, as Thanksgiving, to the harvest of the major crops of the Americas adopted by European settlers to New England. Apples are also a part of the Halloween tradition; I remember bobbing for apples as a girl.
Reading various references on Samhain and Halloween garnered through Google Scholar, I see one describing bobbing for apples as a remnant of a once serious water ordeal.... That quintessential European fruit, borrowed as the symbolic fruit consumed by Eve and Adam from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, which figures in various Greek myths [the Golden Apples of the Sun] and which is symbolic of all good “Mom and apple pie”. The author writes:
"There are two main apple rites that survive; one involves ordeal by water and the other ordeal by fire. The act of going through water to obtain apples could be the remnants of the Druidic rite symbolizing the passing through water to Emain Abhlach or Apple-Isle. Apple-Isle is where Manannan Mac Lir prepared the Otherworld feast for the eternal enjoyment of those who have passed on. The Ordeal by Water survives in Scotland in such Samhain traditions as “Dookin’ for Aipples.” A large wooden tub is filled with water and set in the middle of the floor into which apples are placed. The master of ceremonies has a porridge stick or some other equivalent of the Druidic wand, and with this he keeps the apples in motion. Each participant get three tries, and if unsuccessful, must wait until the others have had their turn. If a participant captures an apple, it is either eaten or kept for use in another of the divination rites.
The modern form of the Ordeal by Fire is known as “The Aipple and the Can’le.” A small rod of wood is taken and suspended horizontally from the ceiling by a cord. After it is fairly balanced, a lit candle is set on one end and an apple at the other. The rod is then set whirling around. Each of the company takes turns leaping up trying to bite the apple without singing his or her hair. Touching either the rod or apple with the hands is not permitted.” (Weinberger, Stacey. A Druid Missal-Any Samhain Y.R. XL, Vol. 18 Number 7 Oct. 29th, 2002 c.e.) S Weinberger - orgs.carleton.edu
When I was a girl, we simply filled a wash tub with water, and tried to bite an apple, generally resulting in lots of splashing and laughter (and few successfully bitten apples). I can’t really remember exactly where this occurred...possibly a Halloween party for girl scouts.
We learned in school that Halloween is a contraction of All Hallows Eve, and is the night before All Saints Day, November 1. November 2 is All Souls Day, or, in Mexico and Hispanic areas of North America, the Day of the Dead [el Día de los Muertos]. In Mexico when I was there as a university student in the late 1960’s, you could buy sugar skulls with names on them at the Sanborn’s restaurant, and there were festive gatherings of families in cemeteries, sharing food with their dead relatives...a communion of the living and dead.
I remembered marigold flowers as associated with the Day of the Dead. Floral offerings are very important in Mesoamerican cultures, deriving from indigenous religions traditions. Looking up confirming evidence for my memory, I found the following in a blog linked to a Mexican tourist site:
"While English North Americans celebrate Halloween with costumes and candy, ancient tradition in Mexico calls for family reunions with the dead. For three days, from October 31st to November 2nd, specific rites are observed faithfully. They occur in the home and in the cemetery amid bouquets of flowers, banquets of bread, and ghostly candies ornamented with skulls.
These candies are called Muertos, and are given out much the same as parents dispense candy bars and chewing gum to costumed children demanding trick or treat. But among Mexicans, the dead are considered supernatural guardians. Not only do the dead visit during this time, but they also enjoy their favorite food and drink, called "ofrendas," lavishly laid out on home altars and shrines.
In the mountains of Oaxaca, there is a much deeper meaning to the festivity, which begins weeks, perhaps months, before the ordained days, with the collecting of the special dishes and treats which the departed spirits loved most when alive: the best chocolate for mole: fresh eggs and flour for the bread, Pan de Muerto; fruits and vegetables; even cigarettes and mescal. Lux Perpetua votive candles flame day and night, illuminating the decorative wild marigold flowers, Flor de Muertos, which adorn the altars and the graves.
And everywhere, La Calaca, the skeleton carved from wood and dressed for a party, watches with amusement." ( from A journey with La Calaca- A Day of the Dead Experience by Bill Begalke)
Published on January 1, 2000 by Bill Begalke © 2000 To access the article and images, see
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/382-a-journey-with-la-calaca-a-day-of-the-dead-experience

In his Zapotec Natural History, ethnobiologist Eugene Hunn also describes the floral offerings of wild marigold “Flor de Muerte” in San Juan Gbëë, a village in Oaxaca near the place Begalke had his 1999 Day of the Dead experience (Hunn 2008:201).
In neo-Pagan circles, Samhain [an ancient Celtic holy day usually pronounced Sowan, to rhyme with rowan], is the eve of the New Year, and a time of especial potency as the veils between the worlds of the living and dead, or of the mundane and faerie, are thin. In the Reclaiming Wiccan tradition, rituals are held to commemorate the dead and this is one focus of the Samhain rites.
It is clear that, whatever relationship contemporary neo-Pagan Samhain rituals may have with ancient cultural practices, the eve of All Saints Day has been conceived as a time of risk and potency in the Celtic world and I think this is how our contemporary Halloween came to be associated with ghosts [spirits of the dead] and malevolent witches...and their familiars, owls and black cats. The traditional Child Ballad “Tam Lin” narrates the story of a youth captured by the Faerie Queen and his rescue by a mortal lover...one verse goes...”For tonight is Halowe’en, and the faerie folk ride, those that would let true love win, at Miles Cross they must bide.” William Blake’s late18th century print of Hecate [ a witch or evil spirit] shows her with a large owl perched beside her (William Blake, Tate Gallery London, 1966, no. 9). [For modern Wiccans, Hecate is instead one of the manifestations of the Goddess or female divinity rather than a figure of evil].
Whether because of their nocturnal habits, their ghostly silent flight, their large staring eyes or their unnerving unseen calls, owls and their hooting are associated with death in many places. In northwest British Columbia, hearing an owl at night is a portent of death. The title of I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven (1973, Dell), is an reference to this belief and tells the story of a missionary to Kingcome Village on the British Columbia Coast and his death. In Halloween, Fun and Spooky Images from the Past (p. 12, image no 10), Lantos states that “nocturnal bats and owls, as well as black cats, are omens of bad luck. With the next image (No. 11) the text continues, “It was believed on Halloween night that owls would swoop down and eat the souls of the dying. (Lantos 2009, p. 12, see web link above) underscoring European Christian anxiety about owls and association with death as well. Bats are famously anomalous, with erratic seeming dusk or night time flight, and black or brown leathery wings and apparently grimacing fanged faces, unlike the colourful beauty of beaked (and toothless) diurnal birds, and more like the grotesque gargoyles of European cathedrals. They are neither bird, nor normal [quadrupedal, non-flying, fur covered potentially cuddly] mammals. (see Mary Douglas’ 1966 classic work Purity and Danger for a discussion of anomaly and un-cleanness, or Aldona Jonaitis 1986 Art of the Northern Tlingit for a discussion of anomaly in the symbolic associations of animals in Tlingit iconography). Bat wings are often associated with depictions of the diabolical in European iconography, as in Satan Smites Job with Sore Boils, another print by British poet and artist William Blake (William Blake, Tate Gallery, London, 1966 no. 23). So the animals symbolically associated with All Hallows’ Eve also reinforce its perception as a kind of inverted time, where the forces of darkness, the anomalous and the unnatural appear to have a transitory victory, followed, in the Christian calendar, immediately by the day of all hallows, All Saints Day, a day of holiness, in which right order is restored and risk has been averted. And now turned into a cultural fun day where adults and children masquerade, pranks are played, and candy is distributed and eaten while leering or smiling pumpkin lanterns grace front yards and porches.

Musings on Climate, Common Pool Resources, and the Rights of Nature

Today is the International Day of Climate Action....I guess my first act in support of halting climate change is to write this blog, in which I have already called attention to the climate change issue and its implications on several occasions. A second effort will be to listen to the live broadcast of the Peruvian and American youth from the Potato Park in Peru. The most serious commitment one can make regarding climate change is lifestyle change...and the most difficult. Perhaps knowing this is the International Day of Climate Action I will manage to convince myself to do my errands on my bicycle, though the day is gray and cold and windy. Our Earth’s climate is a “common pool resource” for human societies and for all other creatures. To avoid the tragedy of the commons, as biologist Garret Hardin memorably termed it, we need human institutions that instill in us an ethical concern for others, and which act to provide guidelines or rules to govern our behaviour. Such behaviours are not the individual short term maximization of benefits attributed to “Homo economicus”, the “Economic Man” [note gender] of classical economical modeling. Perhaps it is a hopeful sign that Elinor Ostrom recently was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for her decades of research on common property institutions and governance. She is the first woman to have won this award.
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Well, I did the cycle to the store.....it was OK with sweater, vest, Andean tuque and a windbreaker. Good to get some exercise too. One small pedal for the planet, and a bit of aerobic exercise for me.
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Back to Elinor Ostrom’s contributions- the concept that communally managed property was not managed efficiently dates back to the Enclosure movement of the 17th century in England and Scotland, where the gentry argued that the common folk were not managing communal traditional tenures well, and that they should enclose the land [limit access and exclude the peasants] and should scientifically manage and improve their herd of sheep, goats etc. This was the original privatization. After Garrett Hardin’s eloquent expose of the tragedy of open access abuse, which he mis-called the tragedy of the commons, in the late 1960’s, economists and ecologists alike have assumed that privatization, or government regulation, were the only pathways to “good” [scientific, rational] management of common land and other goods and services, The notion being that enlightened self interest and market competition will, in the case of privatization, result in cost efficient and improved service, seen as a win-win situation. It is clear, however, that one difficulty with such market driven analyses are what is “in” the calculation and what is not- the so called “externalities”--- which include things like the cost of cleaning polluted water downstream to enable re-use, the cost of reclaiming mercury out of used computer monitors, the subtle and not-so-subtle environmental consequences of pipeline construction, and the effect of the CO2 released by the airplane you flew to Hawai’i on, or the 18 wheeler used to bring consumer goods to Walmart. This is where sets of social norms, ethical standards that are internalized as “right”, must come in. We must all internalize an environmental ethic. We don’t dump sewage into the creek because it is wrong rather than because we are concerned about whether we will be fined, the risk of which we might then balance against the cost of installing adequate sewage facilities. Ostrom’s original book Governing the Commons, the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action , published by Cambridge University Press in 1990. contained fascinating case material on self regulation of Spanish traditional irrigation systems, and how water was allocated fairly and the labour of system maintenance was shared . She laid out a synopsis of the conditions under which sustainable institutions of commons management could evolve, and also called attention to conditions that would destabilize these institutions, causing degradation of communally held or public lands. One key necessity for the evolution of stable commons institutions is access limitation. You need to have a community of users in place, who have the ability to enforce norms or regulations for the common good, and who can exclude outsiders who do not have the incentive to play by the rules. Hardin’s original mistake in his formulation of the tragedy of the commons, was that, as a biologist, the study of social institutions was not his forte, and he conflated commons which is communally owned and managed property, such as the village grazing commons and field lands of England, subject to traditional institutions which regulate use and access and tenure, and open access lands and resources, which exist in a social vacuum with individual users, who are not part of a shared community, and who can take as much as they can get. Unfortunately, with social and political and economic shifts and instability, commons can be converted to open access wild west shows, and local and regional environments and social institutions can be destroyed.

A related issue which I’ve been thinking about for a while is rights of nature. Many traditional cultures conceive of humans as part of a community of beings, a society, that includes both humans and non human entities. In such societies, there may be strongly felt reciprocal rights and duties, such that animals give their lives for human sustenance, and humans in turn are obliged to treat the animals’ remains respectfully and to use the flesh, organs and hides appropriately, to enable animals to return. Similarly, plants must be harvested with respect, prayer, and perhaps an offering. Or rituals are held to ensure the rains come and the success of the garden, as described by Eugene Anderson in his 2009 chapter on Maya landscape ecology in Landscape Ethnoecology, Concepts of Physical and Biotic Space (Berghahn Books 2009, L. M. Johnson and E.S. Hunn eds.) and his 1996 book Ecologies of the Heart, and by numerous other authors writing about Maya cultures. As some have pointed out, Western culture seems to be one of the few that divides Nature from Culture, and assumes that humans have been given dominion over nature. Western environmentalists are in this arena more in line with members of other cultures and societies in assuming that wild species, plants, trees and environments are worthwhile in themselves, and should be protected or have “rights”. Anthropologist Kay Milton wrote a very interesting book called Loving Nature, which examines English environmentalists’ perspectives on Nature. Some years ago, there was an attempt to establish the standing of natural objects like trees in court in the United States so that their rights to exist could be argued to counter developers. These legal cases were discussed in a 1997 book by Christopher Stone: Should Trees Have Standing?: And Other Essays on Law, Morals and the Environment. A new version of the book will be released in April 2010 according to Amazon.ca . A recent development which extends this debate is the new 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, which extends rights under law to “ecosystem structures” http://www.celdf.org/Default.aspx?tabid=548 In their September 28 News Release, the Community Environmental Defense Fund wrote:

“By an overwhelming margin, the people of Ecuador today voted for a new constitution that is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is pioneering this work in the U.S., where it has assisted more than a dozen local municipalities with drafting and adopting local laws recognizing Rights of Nature.

Over the past year, the Legal Defense Fund was invited to assist the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly to develop and draft provisions for the new constitution to put ecosystem rights directly into the Ecuadorian constitution “Ecuador is now the first country in the world to codify a new system of environmental protection based on rights,” stated Thomas Linzey, Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
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“Article 1 of the new “Rights for Nature” chapter of the Ecuador constitution reads: “Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies.”’

The Wikipedia article on the Constitution quotes more of the Rights of Nature Section in English Translation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Ecuador:
“Chapter: Rights for Nature

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.
Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before public institutions. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation of natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.
In case of severe or permanent environmental impact, including that caused by the exploitation of non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for restoration, and will adopt adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.”
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter the national genetic heritage in a definitive way is prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and from natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.
The environmental services cannot be appropriated; their production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.”

I have not read whether any material shift in the Ecuadorian State’s relationship to the environment has occurred since adoption of the new constitution, but the strength of reverence for Pachamama within the Andean region was very apparent to me when I was attending the 2008 International Congress of Ethnobiology just a few hundred kilometers south of Ecuador. As we as a species impel ever more and more rapid change in our earth system, it will become more and more necessary for all human societies to begin to recognize rights for nature alongside rights for humans.

The Ethnobiology of Thanksgiving

Local varieties of potatoe at the village of Huito, District of Pitumarca, Peru (upper photo) and Woman with turkey at the market in Toluca, central Mexico 1968 (lower photo)
The quintessential symbol of Thanksgiving as we celebrate it in North America is the turkey, a new world domesticate, and a wild bird hunted by Indigenous peoples in New England where the legendary first Thanksgiving occurred.
Scientifically the turkey is Meleagris gallopavo- the “rooster-peacock Guineafowl” . Meleagris is a name for guinea fowl, according to the Wikipedia article I checked to confirm the scientific name, while gallus is the rooster and pavo is the peacock. Turkeys were new to the colonists when they arrived in the Americas, and their true relationships were not immediately apparent...so the Europeans likened them to edible domestic fowl of three distinct families (guinea fowl are Numidae, roosters are Gallidae, the family to which turkeys in fact belong, and the peacock, in the genus Pavo, is in the Faisanidae or pheasant family). Turkeys are apparently named “turkey” because Turkey symbolized the exotic, and it was also a name for Guinea fowl. In Mexican Spanish, turkeys are called “guajolote” an onomatopoetic name derived from the Nahuatl guajolotl [in Spanish the ‘j’ is pronounced like an ‘h’). Turkeys were domesticated in what is now Mexico, and are still the basis of a number of delicious Mexican specialties like mole poblano, a delicious concoction of cooked turkey or chicken, chili and spices and chocolate, and other ingredients like sesame butter and raisins.
The next most iconic food at Thanksgiving is the cranberry Vaccinium macrocarpon, a tart round red fruit of a leathery leafed plant in the heather family that grows in the peat bogs of New England. These tart fruits remain edible after freezing, and with the addition of some sweetening, make a tart sauce to counteract the richness of rich meats. As I discussed earlier, the lingonberry (V. vitis idaea) of the circumboreal North has a similar flavour, but much smaller fruits, and grows in the mossy understory of coniferous forests. The large and now domesticated cranberry of our Thanksgiving table also has smaller wild relatives. I have harvested bog cranberries from sphagnum bogs in northwestern British Columbia, and also recorded stories from some of my Witsuwit’en Elder friends about harvesting this cranberry. This species is called Vaccinium oxycoccus. When I first moved to Northwest British Columbia more than 30 years ago I used to harvest instead the highbush cranberries Viburnum edulis to make my holiday sauce.
In my school days stories of the first Thanksgiving, corn was also a feature of the meal, though I now associate it more with summer plenty. Corn, Zea mays is a grain, the seeds of a large erect grass. Much has been written about the unusual anatomy or corn, and about its inability to propagate itself at all without the assistance of people. There is a lot of fascinating archeobotany of corn and its gradual transformation into the large robust cobs we see today, and it is also a crop that has thousands of cultivated varieties of different textures, colours, and cooking qualities, a staple food from Peru through Mexico and much of the present United States, extending even to what is now Canada. In our ethnobotanical saga of Thanksgiving, I don’t want to get too distracted by the very rich literature on corn, so I’ll simply say here that it was grown by the indigenous peoples of coastal Massachusetts when the settlers arrived, in conjunction with beans and squash in mixed gardens, the so called Three Sisters. (I won’t discuss the beans today, and we’ll get to the squash shortly when we consider dessert....)
More typical of the Thanksgiving dinners of my childhood was candied yams, likely not a part of the celebration at Plymouth Plantation. Yams Dioscorea sp. and sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) - are both tropical starchy tubers. Apparently the orange fleshed tubers we buy as yams in North America are actually varieties of sweet potato and are thus also Ipomea batatas. Sweet potatoes apparently occurred in the south Pacific (where they are called kumara), and in South America, where they name was apparently also kumara, as well as in southeast Asia, suggesting there must have been some trade and contact across the Pacific before European exploration. In contrast yams of the genus Dioscorea were an important food of Australian Aborigines and of various tribal peoples of southern India. Incidentally Mexican yams were also the source of the plant steroids originally used to synthesize birth control pills.
Another typical part of today’s holiday meal, and likely not eaten by the Pilgrim colonists, is mashed potatoes. Potatoes are the tubers of Solanum tuberosum, a plant in the nightshade family (along with tomatoes and eggplants). Potatoes were domesticated in the Andes and altiplano of Bolivia and Peru, which is still the centre of agrobiodiversity of the potato, and taken to Europe after the conquest of Peru. The starchy tubers of potatoes come in many flavours and varieties from bitter (with higher levels of solanum glycoakaloids) to “sweet” (lacking noticeable amounts of the bitter compounds). As these plants can produce large amounts of food in relatively cold, damp and acidic soils, they were immediately popular in northern Europe, where they quickly became a food staple of the poor, and a well loved and traditional element of European cuisines, especially served with butter or cream from domesticated milk producing breeds of Bos taurus, traditional foods from Europe’s dairy culture.
One of my favourite parts of Thanksgiving dinner is pumpkin pie- pumpkins, orange fruits of Curcurbita pepo, are a type of squash and were domesticated in the New World. Squash seeds are found in some of the earliest agricultural remains in Mexico (Nee, M. 1990. “The domestication of Curcurbita (Cucurbitaceae),” Economic Botany 44(3: 56-68). Squash flowers as well as the large fleshy fruits are edible. Wild relatives of the squash protect their fruits from herbivores with bitter compounds, which were bred out over generations of selection for sweeter fruits. Squash require rich soils, so make good partners in cultivation with nitrogen fixing beans. Modern Thanksgiving pies combine cooked pumpkin with eggs, milk, cream, sugar, molasses and a range of spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger to make a rich and spiced custard filling for a wheat flower crust. Pumpkin pie is a thoroughly hybrid dish, as eggs, milk, cream and the spices and the wheat for the crust are all Old-World products while the pumpkin is a New-World native.
Wheat is so iconic of food in Europe and the Middle East that the Bible admonishes “Man shall not live by bread alone” to remind Christians that there is more than a full belly. Wheat is the seeds of a grass Triticum aestivum, a hexaploid hybrid, and its history too is a fascinating study in archeobotany and plant genetics (see Simpson and Ogorzaly’s 1986 Economic Botany pp156-158 for a brief and readable summary of its genetic history). It was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago, and has been a foundation of European agriculture since it began, along with its fellow grains barley and rye.
Now we have considered the components of Thanksgiving dinner, but what of the significance of this special meal? Harvest festivals have been important in the calendrical cycles of agricultural peoples throughout history. They bring people together to celebrate and share the successful harvest. While most of us are far removed from harvesting the food we eat, and the Supermarket offers abundance year round without our efforts, Thanksgiving is still in its essence a harvest feast. Although its particular symbolism has been assimilated, in the United States, to the founding of the Nation, it still commemorates and gives thanks for the fruits of the earth...and can thus be seen as marking a relationship.
Canadian Thanksgiving is somewhat of an echo of the American version, but is less significant as a celebration of the founding charter of the state; and because of our more northerly location, is also held about 6 weeks earlier, at a time just after our own harvest season, and before winter really sets in. The menu is much the same as the American version, and for us the same general format seems to have generalized to other Canadian celebration holiday meals such as Christmas and Easter dinners, also typically marked by turkey.
Other traditions also have harvest feasts. The Jewish holiday of Sukkot or the Festival of Booths which ended today, is a week long celebration held out of doors in late September or early October (the 15th of the lunar month of Tishri). It follows Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which mark times of remembrance and atonement at the Jewish new year. There are some fascinating ethnobotanical aspects of Sukkot in the symbolism of plants carried in procession and/or used to construct the booths, which I don’t have space to elaborate here.
For people who obtain their harvest through hunting, fishing and gathering, harvest feasts, if you will, may mark the first harvest of fish or berries or roots in the year. Hunn and Selam describe this for the Sahaptin in Nichi W’ana, the Big River (University of Washington Press 1990) and the Gitksan and Witsuwit’en celebrate annual landmarks like the beginning of salmon harvest with “First Salmon” feasts. All of these celebrations really mark the relationship of people to the living earth with provides their sustanence....a relationship we need to cultivate to ensure the earth and its plants and animals continue to sustain us, and we them.

Changing contexts for Ethnobiology

Permafrost slumps such at this one in the Richardson Mountains will be come more frequent with climate change.
Contexts for traditional and local knowledges are changing rapidly at the present time. Ethnobiology looks at “traditional” “cultural,” “knowledge”’ of the living world and of the human environment. What any of those terms might mean seems to be a moving target. Global changes in environment, society, economy and the political map are all moving at a dizzying rate. Global appetites for commodities create dramatic shifts in the relationships of Indigenous peoples to their homelands, as their territories suddenly are converted into “empty land” which their enclosing states give away for a variety of resource concessions to multinationals (see the opening chapters of Anna Tsing’s 2005 book Friction, an Ethnography of Global Connection for a graphic description of the impact of timber concessions and oil palm plantations in Kalimantan).
Climate change is an obvious change in the world external to ourselves that calls into question the usefulness of the rich detailed knowledge of rhythms of life in locale. In rapidly and drastically changing conditions, the insights gathered from observations of past patterns of timing and relationship may no longer provide guidance for the future. As a case in point, Joe Linklater, Chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin Nation of Old Crow in the northern Yukon commented on the impacts of climate change for his people and their environment at the Northern Truths Symposium held in Edmonton in January of 2008. ‘The Vuntut Gwitchin are ‘people of the lakes’, he said. ‘There are 2000 lakes in Old Crow Flats and lakes are now draining. Land is being degraded increasingly rapidly. There is uncertainty around the traditional way of life,’ he went on. ‘So what good is traditional knowledge if people are uncertain about future? Technology is changing, and adaptation creates stress in the community. How do we adapt and use our traditional knowledge?’ he queried. Theorists such as Fikret Berkes, Lance Gunderson and CS Holling explore “resilience”, the capacity to productively and effectively respond to change, in their consideration of sustainable life ways and increasingly highlight “adaptation.” (see Navigating Social-Ecological Systems, Building Resilience for Complexity and Change F. Berkes, J Colding and C Folke, eds, 2003, and Panarchy, Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, L. H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling, eds., 2002). The wave of the future....
A new and quite different change in the context for ethnobiological knowledge entered my awareness this past week: synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is a marriage of genetics and engineering to create life forms from basic DNA building blocks that will be little factories to churn out compounds that interest us. Generally this is accomplished by taking a generic bacterium, say an “E. coli”, and then putting the genes one wants into the bacterial genome, and culturing the resultant tailored strain. Some experiments, according to the New Yorker article in the September 28 issue that introduced me to the term (New Yorker, Annals of Science “A Life of its Own- Where will synthetic biology lead us?" http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/28/090928fa_fact_specter), hope to create wholly synthetic organisms—the stuff of brave new worlds, and of nightmarish sci-fi scenarios. As we read on, my attention was suddenly caught by the word “artemisinin”. Artemisinin is the latest best hope in the arsenal of antimalarial drugs, acting by a wholly different mechanism than quinine and its synthetic derivatives, so still effective against those virulent strains that have become resistant to quinine type compounds. Artemisinin is a component of the common weedy wormwood Artemesia annua and was the basis of activity of Chinese traditional herbal medicines made from A. annua. It has recently been gaining prominence in efforts to combat malaria worldwide, and cultivation of Artemesia annua on a large scale has been initiated in Asia to provide a supply of raw material for drug production. By chance, it seems, one of the early proponents of synthetic biology, Jay Keasling of the University of California at Berkeley, decided to focus on a potentially useful class of organic compounds called isoprenoids for his initial efforts in demonstrating biosynthesis in enngineered organisms. These compounds apparently are present in many economic plants and produce both flavour essences in ginger and cinnamon, and the pigments in sunflowers and tomatos. One day a graduate student called Keasling’s attention to a compound in this class called amorphadiene –which happens to be the precursor to artemisinin. Keasling initially was completely unfamiliar with artemisinin, but quickly saw the potential to create industrial level synthesis of the precursor for drug production through his bacterial process. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a world leader in the fight against malaria, provided backing. A consortium is now anticipating having their synthetically produced artemisinin drug on the marked by 2012. Other medicinal compounds are likely to follow.
The ethical and philosophical implications of this development are enormous. The New Yorker article byline says “If the science truly succeeds, it will make it possible to supplant the world created by Darwinian evolution with one created by us.” This is a far cry from the holistic community of beings of many indigenous cosmologies, where social relations and reciprocity characterize relations between hunter and prey, where other beings have agency and rights inherent in their being. Hubris, too, to imagine that humans can get the balancing act right. Unsurprisingly, bioethicists are also concerned by the implications of such perspectives. The August 2009 issue of The American Scholar (page 14), contains a short piece entitled “Synthetic Biology’s New Bugs” by Professor Arthur Kaplan of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics. Among the questions he poses are several that bear on relations of humans with the living world. He queries: “What is the risk that new life forms created by synthetic biologists will escape into the general environment and cause havoc with natural microbes or other living beings?” and “Is it ethical to patent a new life form? The law seems to permit it, but is this in the best interest of science in the long term? Should all forms of life be outside the realm of patents?” . He also questions “Is life reducible to genetic messages? If a scientists creates a new life form, even a microbe, does that challenge religious views that say only God can create life?” Indigenous peoples, as well as devout members of many of the world’s religions may have perspectives on the inherently sacred nature of life and the rightness of the natural order, and that it is inappropriate, even an act of hubris, to attempt to create living beings. Another question that Kaplan raises deals with global equity: “If synthetic biology brings significant benefits to humankind, how can it be assured that the rich and poor benefit equally?”
We might query, what are the implications of such a fundamental shift in relations of humans to other living beings and the living world brought about by creating novel organisms, however good [or ill] the intent? Do we truly know enough to be sure that no harm can come from these organisms entering the environment, or perhaps causing human illness? Will we respect the miracle of life and the inherent rights of other organisms if we can make life the way we make a chair or an mp3 player? Can we be sure that, if we have the means, we will not choose to make terrible novel biological weapons, or modify multicellular animals nearer to ourselves, or even humans? How shall we value the possibility of an affordable and plentiful antimalarial therapy, or perhaps a fuel source not dependent on fossil fuels against these other possibilities?

Seasons- Equinox time

As I write we are at the time of Equinox, one of the two times in the year when day and night are of equal length, and the same all over the world. The Equinoxes are also times of very rapid change at higher latitudes, such as most of Canada, where the day lengths change dramatically between our summer and our winter seasons. As my partner recently pointed out, the change in day length over time can be represented as a cycloid, one of those familiar graphs of oscillating peaks and valleys. The peaks and troughs would represent the summer and winter solstices, where the sun indeed seems to stand still for a while. The Equinoxes are placed just at the times of most rapid change, and at our latitudes, we can see the day length change over a period of a few days. Here on Mountain Daylight time, it was just dawning at a bit after 7 in the morning, and the sun will set tonight at 7:38 according to the weather site. If I were in the middle of my time zone, there would be a perfect symmetry. I can anticipate a rapid shortening of day length now and dramatic shifts of the aspect of the land [deciduous trees will all drop their leaves, snow will mantle the ground once winter arrives]. Thinking about equinoxes made me think about seasonal knowledge: moon cycles, Solstice celebrations, predictors of planting dates, evidence of the timing of salmon migrations, and the like. Trevor Lantz and Nancy Turner wrote an insightful article on what they termed “traditional phenological knowledge”, or the use of one kind of seasonal biological event to predict the timing of another (Lantz, Trevor C. and Nancy J. Turner. 2003. Traditional phenological knowledge of aboriginal peoples in British Columbia. Journal of Ethnobiology 23(2):263-286). Among the Gitksan in northwestern British Columbia, the arrival of robins in the spring “announces” the arrival of steelhead migrating up the rivers from the Coast. The Gitksan interpret the robins' song as saying “Gii gyooks milit, milit”. Milit is the steelhead, and the phrase means the steelhead are coming, the steelhead are coming. In other places other indicators of salmon arrival are noted: the fruiting of the red elderberry, for example. In many traditional calendrical systems the names of the months indicate conditions or resources to be expected in those months. Iain Davidson-Hunt and Fikret Berkes give a nice exposition of this for the Shoal Lake Anishinaabe in their 2003 paper in Conservation Ecology (now renamed Ecology and Society, an online journal about adaptation, conservation, and traditional knowledge) www.consecol.org/vol8
and in their chapter in my upcoming book Landscape Ethnoecology, Concepts of Physical and Biotic Space (Berghahn Books, November 2009), a collection of topical papers on landscape knowledge co-edited with Eugene Hunn. Some of the named moons are “budding moon”, “blooming moon”, “ricing moon” [for the harvest of manomin, or wild rice a “cultural keystone species” for Anishinaabe], “berrying moon”, “leaves turning colour moon”, “falling leaves moon” and “whitefish spawning moon” –all obviously encoding information about the cycle of seasonal change and when key events are anticipated to occur. Other systems make reference to significant events in their local ecologies:

Nearer the equator, seasonal shifts are much more subtle, but nonetheless, in the Andes not far south of the Equator, the Quechua people have elaborate ceremonials at their winter solstice in June. The winter may see frost in places with cold air drainage, whereas in the summer season, the higher precipitation means that mists will prevent radiation of heat away at night, and the frost line is much higher. The present Intí Raymí Ceremony is a mid 20th century re-creation of an ancient annual Inca ritual, which was suppressed during the Colonial period by the Catholic church. The present re-created ceremony makes offerings to Pachamama, the mother earth for a successful renewal of the seasonal cycle and the return of the sun. Apparently the visibility of the Pleiades constellation at winter solstice, gives information about the coming season and when to plant (Orlove et al. "Forecasting Andean rainfall and crop yield from the influence of El Niño on Pleiades visibility." Nature 403, 68-71 (6 January 2000) | doi:10.1038/47456). Depending on the amount of moisture in the air at high altitudes, more or fewer stars will be visible. The fine tuning of traditional knowledges such as this are likely to shift dramatically with present and on-going global climatic change, as all global systems become less predictable, and show more events that are extreme or outside of historic conditions.
Joseph Bastien wrote a compelling and sensitive ethnography of the people of Mt. Kaata in the Bolivian Andes not too far from Cusco where I was, which details the spiritual and agricultural cycle of the local people as it was when he lived there in the early 1970’s Mountain of the Condors, Metaphor and ritual in an Andean Ayllu (1978 St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co.)

On Highbush Cranberries

Walking in the ravine today, an urban greenspace in the middle of Edmonton, where I live. The ravine is an eclectic mix of species, exotic and native, and encompasses a multitude of meanings and uses overlapping in a single geographic space– some commensurable, and some in one degree or another of conflict. The ravine is also a site of natural and human history- once a green riparian forest along a source of permanent water scoring relatively dry and treeless prairie. Until the late 1800’s, the high rolling plain south of the North Saskatchewan was grassland, home to herds of bison and to the Cree who hunted them, periodically fired to maintain it in an open and productive state. Then the settlers arrived, transforming the cultural landscape of the city of Strathcona, now part of Edmonton, bringing with them their notions of gardens and landscape aesthetics derived from European values and land uses, creating neat Victorian clapboard and brick homes with picket fences, planting shade trees, shrubs, lawns and flower gardens. These gardens are the sources of the “alien” species in the ravine mix such as Caragana, a Eurasian leguminous small tree with myriad yellow flowers in spring followed by pea-pods full of [to us] inedible seeds, and many forms of crabapples, seeded by birds, and each tree showing its own unique mix of fruit size and shape, and rowan or mountain ash, full of bitter red-orange fruits beloved of birds. Some garden weeds also multiply in the ravine: exotic “Russian orchids” (a tall species of patience flower or touch-me-not with magenta or white flowers), which find the moist and fertile soil beside the creek congenial, thistles, which thrive on disturbance everywhere, dandelions in grassy places along the trails. But there are plenty of indigenous species too: balsam poplar and aspen [Populus balsamifera and P. tremuloides], pin cherry and chokecherry [Prunus pensylvanica and P. virginiana], saskatoon [Amelanchier alnifolia and red willow [Cornus stolonifera which is not a “true” willow as botanists reckon it, but rather a form of dogwood]. Soapberry or russet buffaloberry [Shepherdia canadensis] and highbush cranberry [Viburnum opulus], hanging with glowing scarlet oval fruits in heavy clusters also grow along the trails. Many of the indigenous shrubs have various tones of berries [in the popular sense of small round fruits], some food for wildlife, and some edible by people. As I walk in the summer and fall, I snack on the various fruits as they ripen, and contemplate the role they played in the diet of the Plains Cree before they were displaced from this part of their homeland. Saskatoons were sweet and abundant this year, despite considerable dry weather, but are now dried up. Pincherries were an occasional tart snack. Chokecherries I leave alone for the unpleasantness of their puckery skins, though I have tasted local chokecherry wine that was superb, and they were an important component of pemmican according to a Lakota acquaintance I knew years ago. Today the highbush cranberries are ripe, and I sucked the juice from various translucent ovals, refreshing in the heat, and discarded the large flat seeds, perhaps propagating more cranberry bushes for the future. These fruits are not related to cranberries that grow in mossy spruce forests or bogs in the northern forests of Canada and Eurasia, nor to the large now domesticated cranberries of New England’s bogs. Those are low growing plants of the heath family which favour acidic soils, and require you to bend to the ground to pick their fruit. “Lowbush” cranberries [also known as lingonberries in Scandinavia] and bog cranberries [the commercial cranberry and a couple of small related wild species of sphagnum bogs] lack large seeds. Our seedy, juicy “cranberries” that grow on tall shrubs with maple-shaped leaves do not much resemble these, but they do share a tart, acidic “cranberry” taste and red colour; hence the English common name. The Cree in this part of the world appreciated the fruits of the two species of Viburnum that grow in northern Alberta (Viburnum opulus and V. edule; nepinana and moosomina in Cree). Viburnum edule is often called “mooseberry” by Cree when they refer to it in English, a translation of the Cree name for the plant. (The bark and buds also have a number of medicinal uses which are summarized in Plants of the western Boreal Forest and Aspen Parkland by Johnson, Kershaw, MacKinnon and Pojar; more on Cree and Dene uses of highbush cranberries can be found in the book Aboriginal Plant Use in Canada's Northwest Boreal Forest by Robin Marles and his co-authors).

As I was appreciating the abundance and fruitfulness of the highbush cranberry here in Edmonton, I thought back to a conference I attended in northwest British Columbia this past June, called Challenging the Paradigm, a focussed look at alternative ways of teaching and learning to help make education more relevant and accessible to First Nations/Indigenous students [and to broaden the perspectives of non-Indigenous students and educators as well]. One of the presentations described a field school looking at cultural landscape and environment in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands). Ecological change is having strong impacts on Haida Gwaii, and making access to certain prized cultural plants difficult. One such change was the introduction of coastal blacktail deer, which were formerly absent on the Islands. The notion was that deer would provide a food source Haida could hunt [the indigenous Dawson caribou having been extirpated in the 1880’s]. However, there are no natural predators for deer in Haida Gwaii....so predictably, the deer multiplied exponentially.... and they are now wiping out many native and culturally important plants which formerly served as food and medicine, from the implausibly spiny devils club (Oplopanax horridus, a medicinal plant related to ginseng) to various edible berry species. One of the highlights of the presentation was that two highbush cranberry bushes hlaayaa hlk’a.aay (Viburnum edule) were discovered by the field school on northern Moresby Island.....doubling the known number of highbush cranberry bushes remaining on the islands....I thought of my Haida colleagues, and reflected what wealth they would see in our neglected, unremarked highbush cranberry in the ravine in Edmonton.

In writing this blog, I referred to Nancy Turner’s lovely book Plants of Haida Gwaii to see what the uses and importance of highbush cranberry were to the Haida. First I learned that cakes of highbush cranberry mixed with hemlock cambium [sweet inner bark of the western hemlock tree] were highly valued food of important persons. Then I learned that they have a lovely traditional narrative detailing how highbush cranberry got to Haida Gwaii (p. 111). The gist of the story is that raven Yaahl was treated by the beavers to wonderful meals of salmon, highbush cranberry, and mountain goat organ meat. He was so impressed that he stole the lake (despite the strenuous efforts of the beavers to prevent him), with its cranberry rich shores and productive fish traps, and carried it to Haida Gwaii, where he unrolled it “and he kept the fish trap and the house to teach the people of Haida Gwaii and the Mainland how to live.” The little tale continues to state “Since then there have been many highbush cranberries in Haida Gwaii.” Sadly, with environmental change this is no longer the case. I thought of my Haida colleagues, and reflected what wealth they would see in our neglected, unremarked highbush cranberry in the ravine in Edmonton.

implications for ethnobiology of the Global Climate Change report from Copenhagen

Greetings- I've decided I want to start a blog to give me a forum to be able to comment on current events and connections in ethnobiology. On Friday a colleague forwarded the link to the Synthesis Report, Global Climate Change, Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions from an international conference held in Copenhagen in April 2009
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/files/synthesis-report-web.pdf


Reading over the report, I couldn't help but think of the many implications of the scenarios described for the nature and relevance of local knowledge, traditional strategies for food security, gathering and cultivation, ability to remain in homelands, and growing conflicts between groups over increasingly scarce resources. We have to remember that the world is changing rapidly technologically, politically, demographically and environmentally, and that these changing contexts form the background to people's present and future practices and livelihoods, and even perhaps their survival. If any of you read this report, I invite you to share your thoughts on the implications of the report for local communities and for your own lives. What are some of the social justice implications of needing to limit greenhouse gas emissions to 0? What might it mean to transition to a non-carbon economy?