remembering Mida

for Mida

my mind reels

       to think the world goes on

and you have fallen out of it

        I hope there are many

               companions to speak Kaska to

where you have gone

my heart aches remembering

       all the times we went

               into the bush

looking for medicine

    talking about the land

         remembering times long ago

we laughed like girls

   delighting in being out

      on the land together

walking trails of the past

       of the present

          dreams of girlhood

             Auntie Minnie–

                  cranberries

mistsí standing up

   in the wild rhubarb

            giving us a hard stare

your orange garbage bag rain coat

   rifle slung on your back

       as we walked up through the alpine

           on Jade mountain looking

for tangles of brown caribou horn

I remember burning wolverine’s packsack

   to bring the sky down

fires were burning up the land

too many years have gone by

     my academic career

         the rest of your days

now– empty

      a dull ache I

            cannot shake

I’ll never sit in your bright

   quiet living room watching you sew–

bright beads, patterns of flowers

  and stars, endless

     font of colours and patterns

spangling piles of uppers

empty– and still I cannot

            cry

Mida Donnessey, my Elder, mentor, friend, teacher, passed away at 90 on December 8.  I first met Mida and went out on the land with her in September 1997.  

On Dis-Location and Rootedness

Indigeneity implies rootedness, long connection to land/sea/place, since time immemorial. From this long term connection arises traditional knowledge, wisdom about the land, relations among beings, living in place.  I have spent much of my career learning from teachers whose knowledge has deep roots, is emplaced in the web of relationship between cultures and homelands, between people and lands and waters where their ancestors have dwelt in relationship.  I've been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, and in one chapter she briefly explores the question of whether people can become indigenous. Upon reflection, she concludes that one cannot substitute will or desire for the depth of roots.  One cannot become Indigenous.

What relations then are possible for migrants? In this time most of the world's population has migrated from some imagined or real place of ancient origin, possibly through a long saga of  travels through many places.  Many of us are in some sense hybrid, partaking of multiple points of origin in other places, having no single original homeland.  Some of us continue to be travellers, and our relations with any particular land then is likely to be that of passing through....not a relationship of depth, located in place.  Others have fled homelands or situations of impossible repression, grinding poverty, or outright devastation and war.  The refugee problem...

Some of us had ancestors who participated in Settler Colonialism, arriving to lands which were not tabula rasa or terra nullius.   They arrived at lands which were occupied, homelands of original cultures with a long history of relationship to the lands seen by our ancestors as "empty" or "new".  If empty, that was likely due to the passage of disease before settlers or adventurers arrived at any particular place.  New only to our ancestors, not to the original inhabitants.  With a surety born of God given mandate, and concepts of personhood limited not only to our own species, but even to the specific cultures from which they came, our ancestors elbowed their way onto the land, making homes, transforming the land to support the visions of relationship which came from their European agrarian origins.  They cleared forests, created cities, made canals, polluted rivers, mined minerals.....and believed that the alterations in the land, landscape, web of life represented "progress", instantiated the arrival and propagation of "civilization". Some of us have ancestors who have been in our colonized nations for centuries.  I had ancestors who came on the Mayflower, and the most recent European migrants in my family migrated from Scotland in the 1830s.  We have national narratives, now becoming subtly displaced, of the growth of nationhood, of brave pioneers, of the founding of cities, and of institutions of culture and political entities.  In this most recent period, an unease is growing....a double vision of bravery and devastation, of enlightenment and subjugation.    The excesses of the model of "civilizing" the land led to massive ecological changes in forests, in prairies, for productive estuaries and rivers.  A litany of ecological change, based in the shift of inter-species interactions from relationships to economies and commoditization of components of ecological systems.  In scientific circles, the conception of the land, or other entities that dwell there as subjects, as persons rather than inanimate objects, resources to be used or not as we will---cannot be entertained.  Yet this objectification of the land and the web of life which comprises its living subjects is what enables the massive transformation of the land.

Of course there is reaction by the thoughtful, poetic and philosophical among us, rooted also in the romantic notions of Nature and the polar opposite to the profaned world of urban places and the obvious dirt and filth of 19th century industry....Scottish Miller John Muir founded the Sierra Club in thelate 19th century in reaction to mining and grazing in the Sierra Nevada.  The destructiveness of these practices to the beauty and ecological integrity of the Sierra was evident.  But the role of the Sierra Miwok and other nations in creating the "natural" beauty of the Sierra through their relationship to land was somehow invisible.  At this point in time, many of us seek to "preserve wilderness" and revere "nature".  We may claim ally-ship with Indigenous Stewards (but the  relationship with land is theirs, not ours- I would argue we can at best be "fellow travellers"). Or we may seek to form our own relationships with the land.  And yet while personally meaningful, we cannot claim the depth of relationship, the web of respectful relationship amonggroups over deep time, that comprises Indigenous relationship with the Land.  I would echo Robin Wall Kimmerer: we the migrants cannot become  Indigenous.

 I realize I am Dis-Located.  I have no homeland, though such a relationship is something for which I yearn.  In my own personal history, I don't even have a home town.  My parents moved frequently during my childhood, in various places in North America, and also in Japan and Hawai'i.  When I was in University I added  Mexico and Britain to the places I had lived. In the same way that I sought grandparenting and valued my relations with Elder teachers, I also sought relationship with land.  My then husband and I spent three months on the land on the Oregon -California border in the early 1970s, building a lean-to shelter, cooking over a fire, and– learning all of the plants in that diverse forested landscape of the Siskiyou's .  Learning the way the phases of the moon interact with the height of its passage across the sky.  Observing meteors, pond lilies, and rough skinned newts. It was hard to go back to the City after that. We went to British Columbia to live in a Doukhobor cabin in the West Kootenays, Back-to-the-land-ers, seeking to reclaim the esoteric rural skills of our ancestors.  Cooking with a wood stove.  Getting our water from a spring with buckets. Procuring firewood. Learning (again) all of the plants I could, even the mosses.  Observing animals and learning about tracks. We were hooked.  More than citizens of any nation, I felt like a citizen of the Western North American Bioregion.

There was still a missing piece, however.  We had never lived any place with a substantial population of Original Inhabitants in the US or Canada.  The echoes of the former presence of Indigenous peoples could be seen in oddly spelled names, in stories of removal, in re-tellings of histories or legends.  But not in living relationship with Land. 

More than 40 years ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter, we took a trip to the northwestern corner of British Columbia, and spent a month canoeing on a lake known in English as Morice Lake.  A deep finger lake, extending from the interior Sub Boreal Spruce forest into the heart of the Coast Mountains, at lake level (some 2500 feet) making the transition from interior forests to the Mountain Hemlock Zone, higher elevation coast forest types.  There were no present inhabitants of the lake and its environs.  There was no logging, and no roads.  We saw only one person in the nearly 4 weeks we were there.  Again, we delved deeply into the nature of the place, both from a standpoint of scientific ecology, and a more poetic personal level.  We sought to embrace this powerful place with all of the abilities we possessed. 

The one person we met turned out to be the key to a new job for my ex, and a new home for us.  And now we lived in a land with Original Inhabitants. Still in Place.  My then-husband Allen taught in the Aboriginal Studies Program at Northwest College in Terrace.  He taught biology and environmental studies to First Nations people, including Elders, as well as local undergraduates of various origins.  We began to learn about Indigenous perspectives on Land.

I shared skills in pressing plants with the Aboriginal Studies students.  They shared what they knew of uses of the plants.  I went out on the land with one student, and carried out my maiden research in ethnobotany.  She told me uses.  I collected plants and wrote notes. 

Eventually we moved upriver to Cedarvale.  Once again, I sought to learn all of the plants,observed and made notes on the animals we saw.  We travelled on the land.  But now we knew First Nations people.  I took a Gitxsan class at the local school.  I began to want to know- what do people need to know to live on this land?  I began to see the land as history, as story, as resource patches (owned and cared for within the local social structure, the local laws).  And I began to see that my relationship to Place, however deep and meaningful to me, was qualitatively different than that of my Gitksan and Witsuwit'en teachers, friends, and colleagues.  They had an entitlement that I did not.

With my Gitxsan colleague I began to record Gitxsan ethnobotany.  I learned from Elders and teachers, and recorded what they shared to help to preserve knowledge, and, though I hadn't really analysed this yet, to repatriate knowledge to help those torn from land and culture through Residential schools, and to their descendants.  To help to repair the holes in a social fabric, the transmission of knowledge, and relationship to the land itself  that the institutions of the Settler Colonial government hadcreated.  But my relationship to these teachings and this knowledge, imperfect and partial as it is, refracted through the lens of my natal language and culture, is at best custodial.  These interactions, this knowledge, experiences on the land, have changed me, but still  I cannot claim Indigeneity, become truly rooted.  It is in a deep sense not my place, not my history. 

The Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en, like other Indigenous peoples, have deep and complex stories, histories, that relate to their homelands, their laws, the truth of the world.  This history engenders, and grows out of rootedness.  When we first moved onto Gitxsan territory, we learned that people disparagingly referred to us newcomers at "DP's", displaced persons.  A designation that is stingingly accurate, though I more often refer to our relationship as Dis-Located.

So if we cannot become Rooted, cannot aspire to achieve Indigeneity, what is possible?  There is no doubt that many "White" people have a deep reverence for the land, for its beauty, for its biodiversity, for its iconic animals and birds. Many people speak glowingly (but vaguely) about "Nature" and the restorative powers of being "in Nature". For those of us who have deep and spiritually grounded love of the Land, is finding a Home possible?  Kimmerer makes the analogy that, if we cannot become Indigenous, we may be able to become Naturalized, like a plant from elsewhere that finds a spot in the local web of life to become a regular part of the living community.  Perhaps that is as good as it gets.  I feel that knowing and acknowledging, respecting, the original human inhabitants is a key step.  Acknowledgement and respect yes, but not usurpation.  Respect is key.  And humility.  Perhaps in this way we can earn a spot in the garden.

Those fleeing war and oppression, refugees, face a double challenge, of finding a home in the social fabric of contemporary Canada (or the US), and learning to be comfortable with climate, vegetation, landscape vastly different from that of their country of origin.  Truly refuegees have been transplanted into very different environments from those from they came.  Challenges exist in learning new species and environmental values both.  And further to both of these, to be aware of and respectful of the Original Inhabitants and their relationship to the Land.

On the Sacredness of preparing food

This time of year is harvest time.  In the old Celtic calendar it was Lamas or Lunasagh.  I spent today processing beautiful organic peaches, a ritual I have undertaken for more than 40 years.  Beautiful fragrant peaches, rosy in colour and floral in scent.

The day was warm, but anticipating the heat and moisture of canning, I cut up and fried an organic chicken yesterday-- soul food for my Missouri ancestors. NOT batter fried. Lightly dredged in seasoned flour (gluten free for me).  When I visited my Great Aunt with my then new husband in 1973, fried chicken was what Aunt Estelle fed us when she welcomed us into her house.
Cold fried chicken is a perfect meal on a hot day. Slipping the skins on the peaches, gently stripping away the outside, leaving a heavy slick globe cradled in my hands- reminded me surprisingly of delivering a baby. [Don't drop it as it squirts into your waiting hands!] Red havens- my favourite peach variety. The first time I canned red havens they were from Creston BC, and I was pregnant with my daughter.  We canned peaches before moving from Sproule Creek to northwest BC, and brought our canning with us.  Now I buy them by the case from the growers at the Old Strathcona Farmers Market in Edmonton. I give away a lot of what I can.  A gift of peaches is like a gift of sunshine that you can eat.  It is a gift that makes sense to my Elders and First Nation friends in Northwest BC.  A gift of the work of hands.
Today I also thought of putting up fish in the smoke house, another intensive focus of seasonal food preparation.  On the Skeena and Bulkeley Rivers (aka Xsan and Widzinkwe) it is sockeye or spring salmon in the fish camps and smokehouses- deep orange flesh falling away from sharp blades wielded by skilled hands. ts'el.  If half smoked, not enough to keep without canning or freezing, the resulting fish is called ts'el.  To make fully smoked you have to leave it in the smokehouse, in cool smoke, to finish drying. (The extra thickness is removed through a thinning process to make the highly valued and delicious strips huuks, which are threaded on clean sticks to be smoked into salmon jerky). When you do the same process with a spring salmon (aka chinook), the result is like a small pink blanket thrown over the pole in the smokehouse.  They are BIG. I watched a Tahltan lady in Glenora on the Stikine River doing this once.  It was impressive.

spring salmon hanging to fully dry ASG photo 1984

The process of smoking salmon here involves opening out the fish like a blanket, scoring to- but not through- the skin.  There are special boards shaped like a peaked wooden roof on a sawhorse to accomplish this. In Gitxsan the process is
On the Mackenzie and Peel Rivers, the fish we worked with in fish camps were coneys (inconnu or sheefish (Stenodus leucichthys ), broad whitefish and crooked back, a second smaller whitefish species. The approach to cutting and drying was quite different, but the reverence for the gift of food was the same. And the beautiful skill of hands and knives creating valued food was also the same. Fish are air dried first, with care taken to discourage hungry gulls from snacking, and then smoke dried in a smokehouse. 

fish air drying at Tree River Fish camp, August 2000

The resulting dryfish is golden toned and utterly delicious.
On the Skeena, the unused parts of the fish must be returned to the water, or burned in the fire.  On the Mackenzie and Peel Rivers, the guts and trimmings are spread out on the sandbar for the gulls to eat.  The gulls are thanked for cleaning the land, and are welcomed. Tidigeh. For my peaches, and the local apricots I spent the past week turning into preserves, unusable parts are returned to the earth via my compost.
In all of these cases, the process, the goal, is the same: taking the gifts of the season, of the Earth, and putting them up to sustain family and friends, to feed the people. A ritual of enacting thanks, and perpetuating relationship. Prayer in motion.

On Fireweed

Last week I was working in my garden.  The patch of Canada violets was lush and green, covered with white violets.  Young fireweed stalks were coming up in a clump along the path from the gate.  They are spreading, as are the ostrich ferns, making the land their own.  I picked a tender young stalk, stripped off the leaves and peeled the cortex off to eat the soft green inner stem. Taste of spring.  Taste of locale.  Very local.  From my 10 by 40m urban yard.  Made me think back to Verly Nelson teaching me to eat fireweed on a walk nearly 40 years ago to the Kitamaat reserve on the delta of the Kitimat River in northwestern British Columbia. I found that properly peeled young fireweed stalk reminds me of raw kohlrabi, or broccoli stems.  The very young tender tops can also be cooked and eaten as a potherb; we used to combine them with tender dandelion leaves, nodding onion and, if we were lucky, morel mushroons when I lived on the Skeena near Cedarvale.

  Fireweed (Chamaerion angustifolium) has many uses.  Its magenta blossoms brighten large expanses of cut over land and burnt forest and is a great source of nectar for bees. It is circumpolar; in the British Isles it goes by the moniker "willow herb" and in Ireland, Blooming Sally.  Fireweed honey is delicious, white and a touch acidic. I used to melt honey on the wood stove to put on whole wheat sourdough pancakes a long time ago when I lived in little off-grid cabins in the Kootenays in southeastern BC. Before my daughter Rose was born. Before I moved to Gitxsan Territory in northwest BC.  Fireweed is the territorial flower of the Yukon, and one of the four Clans of the Gitxsan, the Gisga'ast.   Its image is rendered in crests and artwork.  The Gil haast, the single fireweed, is described in the migrations of  chronicled by the late Walter Wright, from Kitselas in the slender volume called Men of Medeek (Wil Robinson, 1966, Sentinel Press, Kitimat BC) The Gitxsan used to take the marrow of somewhat older fireweed stalks and use it as a binder in their table sized fruit leathers, aka berry cakes, most typically made from black huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) known in Gitxsanimx as Sim M'aay, the "real" berry.  Other fruits also could be made into berry cakes, including red elder berry.  The small seedy red berries of bunch berry (Cornus canadensis)  sgan gapgoyp were an alternate source of thickening.  The late Olive Ryan, Gwans, told wonderful stories of berry camp in the subalpine on the mountain known as Steykooden, behind Gitsegukla.  People picked for a couple of weeks, and then the berries were boiled in large bentwood boxes covered with woven cedarbark mats. Rocks were heated in a fire and then dropped in to the box of berries until the liquid began to boil.  When the fruit was cooked, it was ladled onto cedar splint berry racks (skeexsin) covered by skunk cabbage leaves ["like Indian wax paper"] or layered thimble berry leaves to prevent leakage. (see Johnson 1997 Plants, Land and People, Gitksan Ethnobotany, PhD Dissertation, University of Alberta) for more detail of Olive's story and Gathering what the Great Nature Provided, People of Ksan, 1980, for more about cooking berries and making berry cakes).

The fireweed can also provide cordage suitable for fish nets and other uses.  Mrs. Harriet Hudson, Tsimshian from Kitselas, told Indigenous ethnographer William Beynon about the discovery of the use of nettle fibre to make fish nets in 1948 (narrative number 29 in Tsimshian Narratives volume 1, edited by Cove and MacDonald, published by the Canadian Museum of Civilization  in the 1987).  Incidentally, when describing how to process the nettle fibre, she mentioned that fireweed stalks could also provide a suitable string.  Harlan Smith's Gitxsan consultants from Gitwangak in the 1920's also mentioned how to make this string (Ethnobotany of the Gitksan Indians of British Columbia, edited by Compton, Rigsby and Tarpent, Canadian Museum of Civilization 1997).  Both nettle (Urtica dioica) and fireweed fibres are bast fibres, like the flax fibre (from Linum usitatissimum) that is used to make linen. Similarly, the mature stalks must be retted, that is, they must decompose just enough that it is possible to separate the fibres from both the papery cortex and the woody vascular cylinder.  To little, the fibres break with the brittle vascular tissue.  Too much, the fibres break because they are rotted.  I have tried this myself, and finger twined quite reasonable two ply cord of a pleasing reddish brown tone.
I find it comforting to have fireweed appear in my urban yard in central Alberta. A reminder of wilder and more northern places I've lived and travelled.

Another spring (I guess) in the era of chaotic climate

my Edmonton yard, April 23

Another spring.  I guess.  In the era of chaotic climate.  My last blog post was April 16 of last year, with a comment two weeks later on the McMurray fire.  I talked about dandelions, and wild blue violets, then about my concerns for a dry summer. This year....I'm looking at a sodden blanket of very wet spring snow.  For the third time in April, a couple of warm days and the snow finally off....followed by grey, drizzle, rain and sleet and finally a new blanket of wet snow covering everything.  In February the weather was lovely- +12 or so, the snow melting fast, sunny.  Then March brought a return to snow/thaw cycles.  Oscillations of temperature and precipitation.  The manitoba maples are poised to open their flowers...but keep getting snowed on.  The aspens tassled already several weeks ago, and the hazel flowers, tiny crimson fringed stars, were already opening.  Now LONG grey and white days.  It is nearly May Day, but no green is to be seen around the fresh blanket of white. The past few years have seemed to feature rapid temperature oscillations throughout the entire year.  Literally, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute.  Core-less winters and summers both.  What seems evident in lived experience is the utter lack of predictability.  This winter, and last, cross-country skiing was poor, sporadically available.  New snow followed by a melt and thaw, then cold temperatures with no snow.  You can't ski on ice.  In February it literally felt like spring this winter and last.  February, traditionally the heart of winter in this northern prairie climate.  This year we had snow on Thanksgiving (early October in Canada) but then barely had snow for Christmas.
The lack of predictability, of melts and hard freezes, has ramifications.  In the North, caribou (and reindeer) have trouble feeding when a midwinter followed by a hard freeze created a layer of ice they can't paw through to find lichens.  River ice, crucial for winter transport in the Canadian north, freezes late and has to be artificially thickened to enable motorized transportation across rivers, as crossing the Dempster Highway at Tsiigehtchic.  Warmer climate can cause heavier snowfalls in some places as well, as warmer air holds more moisture than cold.  Plants can flower too soon, fooled by anomalously warm weather, and then young fruit can freeze in later cold.  Chronic stress can cause trees and shrubs to be more susceptible to fungi and to insect attack.  Pathogenic fungi, and insect pests may increase their range, no longer being killed off by prolonged winter cold snaps.  This is the mountain pine beetle story, pushing widespread change in forest composition across British Columbia and elsewhere in the mountain west. 
It's never as simple as "climatic warming". We experience shifts in weather, and in frequency of different weather events.  On a recent trip to the US, I noted that weather reports featured maps showing occurance of "extreme weather".  This was new for me....but not really surprising, as the "atmospheric rivers" are bringing massive amounts of rain, and flooding, to definitively end California's multi-year severe drought. Rainfall and flooding have reached records in some areas not surpassed in the period of recordkeeping
But climate warming, the aggregate of all of the intensified fluctuations, does drive larger changes, melting of permafrost, increasing aridity, changes in range distributions of everything from algae to trees, and of animals species as well. Pacific salmon are appearing in the Arctic, running up the Mackenzie system at the same time as sockeye numbers are diminishing in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.  Probably small rises in mid Ocean temperatures, and in the temperature of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean are responsible.
Yesterday was Earth Day. Blessings to our planet and may it continue to sustain (and tolerate ??) us.  Yesterday thousands of scientists and concerned citizens marched for the defense of science, which has been under attack by the climate-denying regime in Washington.  I never imagined I would read of thousands and thousands of scientists and supporters marching [having to march] to underscore the value of science to humanity, to bring the necessity of good science to the public....in part because key segments of the US do not want the inconvenience of having to make significant changes to limit the impacts of our species, and [try to] retain the state of the planet in a pattern that can sustain our own well-being. They would prefer to deny that human action, that business-as-usual, could be causing serious, and likely irreversible, changes to global climate. 
The short-sightedness of the President's pro-coal efforts, at the point when coal use is already declining world-wide, is a small piece of evidence of the self-defeating and unwise courses of action prompted by short-term economic perspectives in reaction to the challenges of actually dealing with ameliorating climate change.  I have deep sympathy for the dislocation of traditional ways of life and can understand the frustration of those from coal mining regions. But a more pro-active response through economic diversification would be a better response than to promote a short lived extension of coal economy, with the inevitable impacts of these last paroxysms of mining on these already much altered landscapes.
We are in uncharted waters.  Our numbers, and our impacts on our home planet are unprecedented.  People argue that our influence on Earth processes is so great that we are actually in a new geologic epoch, the Anthroposcene. (My ex-husband, in a moment of disparagement some twenty two years agocalled it the Obscene some twenty years ago). Climate change and other forms environmental change proceed at global scales. The chemistry of both oceans and atmosphere are changing in response to our activities. We also live in an age of unprecedented communication and interconnection.  People form virtual communities of continental, or even global reach. New modes of communication offer hope as well as threat as we can find those of like mind all over the world, and can promote our diverse messages far beyond the reach of our individual communities.  Chillingly, they can also create echo chambers so we hear only the voices of those with whom we agree, thus polarizing our very senses of reality.  Alt facts are lies.... but depending on where you stand, which is the "alt"? Does truth even exist in a "post-truth century"?  I would argue yes it does. Events like the Oroville Dam flood in California a few weeks ago did happen, even while their causes might be argued.  The March for Science speaks to the necessity of knowing as much as we can, in a dispassionate way, to try to make good decisions for our collective future.

wild roses

I walk with wild roses through the green
while the crystal globes of the dandelions shed their seeds on the wind
the birds dance in the air above the lapping stream
and the rustle of the poplar leaves is threaded with birdsong

The wild roses are blooming in the ravine, sweet heady scent.  After the rain, the ground is soft and dark, and the green burgeoning.  Most things have recovered now from early heat and drought, though it looks like there will be no hazelnuts this year.  The creek flooded from the heavy rains in the past two weeks and the lower trail is sticky with thick mud and logs drifted across the path.

I always think of my mother at this time of year.  The wild roses bloom around her birthday, June 6.  Things are a bit early this year....I saw three yellow warblers, like impossibly bright moving flowers, dart among the green leaves as I walked, a blast of complex interwoven trajectories, like celtic knotwork in motion– then gone from sight.

Seasons. Connections. Memories.

Raining

Raining.  The whole day cool and grey, welcome blessed rain soaking the parched ground.  After the heat and dry, cool and wet.  Made channa curry tonight....made me think back to days long ago, living in a little bush cabin, cooking our dried garbanzos with spices and our home-canned tomatoes, gathering 'wild ginger' root (Asarum caudatum) to use in place of the store-bought ginger we didn't have.  Washed down with home-made green tomato chutney.  Nice to be home, quiet, in the house.  A moment's solitude.  Tonight I used store-bought ginger from my local natural food store, and a garam masala that I bought rather than mixed myself.  And I made a wonderful eggplant curry with little Indian eggplants I bought down in "Little India" in Millwoods, the Indo-Canadian community at the southeast corner of Edmonton.  I was trying to replicate something I've recently had at an Indian restaurant buffet....first time I've seen these little egg-shaped eggplants for sale....so I had to try some.  I had to interpolate between my friend Sigrid Shepard's recipe, one I found on the web, and my memory of the dish I'd eaten; none of the recipes did quite what I wanted.  However I worked it out, the result was delicious, and will serve for tomorrow's lunch as well.
Glad as I am the rains have come, this unnaturally early year still speaks strongly to global climate change.  Apparently this year is on the way to being the warmest on record.  I've read that in fact this is the 11th month in a row that is a record warm year planet wide.  No surprise that the boreal forest around Fort McMurray has burned- more than 450,000hectares to date.  Yesterday, before it began to rain, the wind shifted and the smoke was so thick it was as nearly as bad as I experienced 10 m from a major forest fire near Tsiigehtchic in August of 1999.  And that fire was 12 km from where I was.  This- hundreds.  Air quality went from three to 7 to 10 (top of the scale) in a few hours here in Edmonton.  Then the forcast rain began to fall.  We've had no rain of consequence til now in more than a month.  The soil surface yesterday was dry as powder walking in the ravine.  Dust bowl days come again.
Tipping points.  My ex used to call the current time period the Ob-scene (coming after the Holocene, completely recent, the time after the ice left in the Pleistocene).  It is now fashionable to call this the Anthropocene.  I dragged my feet a bit on the new term....but the more I think about accelerating species extinctions, ocean acidification, being poised to loose the whole suite of Arctic fauna, an entire ecosystem, with the probable complete loss of permanent sea ice.....much more than the iconic Polar bear....3/4 of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia suffering substantial coral bleaching.....and I think, hmm.  Yes this kind of faunal overturn, changes in ocean chemistry, temperature shifts....yes they do seem to rival big dramatic changes in Earth History, in the paleaontological record.
And I've read that this year is already 1.5 °C above the long term mean of the 20th century....Paris sets us to try to limit change to that level over the next 65 years.....a strong El Niño, yes.  But something beyond.  Anthropogenic, yes.  So the Anthropocene is here. And we are all complicit, caught in a way of life that requires gulping energy to subsidize everything about our current globally connected urbanized lives.  Whether we drive a hybrid or put solar panels on our roof, or poo-poo the whole thing and use our wealth to maintain our current comforts,  we are all complicit.  And having caught this iconic tiger by the toe....how then do we, can we, let go?  Where do we fit all of our other values against this one BIG problem?  Future discounting is so characteristic of our species, and so tempting....putting off the problem for the grandchildren to cope with, or at least until tomorrow, or next year, or....
I live in what passes for a heritage house in Edmonton, 95 years old, made of beautiful clear timber from BC's lower mainland.  I honour my house, and the lives of the trees it took to make it.  I honour its history.  But where then do I fit energy efficiency?  Because of the cold weather today, I have the (gas powered) heat on, in late May....the walls are insulated with sawdust; there are some voids at the top of the walls, as the sawdust has settled with time.  Should I be ripping up my walls to insulate more heavily?  I work at home, so the commute doesn't consume energy (I walk across the hall), but I do travel for work, conferences, research....and put 5 to 10,000 km per year on vehicles for that purpose, and several lengthy air flights.  I also do not ride my bike for errands all through the winter, but use my car....so we are all complicit.
As the day slowly darkens into night, I wonder what will happen with the Alberta economy in the wake of both an oil price down-turn and the destruction of infrastructure and homes in the vicinity of Fort McMurray?  Sobering choices.  At least the rain may the fires and check their explosive growth.  For now. And there were several other large fires in Northern Alberta, and elsewhere, this unnaturally early spring which have sparked (so to speak) more evacuations. 

Spring Tonic

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Spring tonic

Working in the garden…it’s early, really early this year.  Pruning last year’s raspberry canes.  Digging the quack grass that snuck into the berry patch when we replaced the fence last fall….and I notice that I’ve uprooted some prime dandelions….so I toss them aside while I remove the quack grass and creeping campanula from the turned earth.  After a while I think….oh, I’d better take care of the dandelions before they dry out.  And I dig some more to round out the batch.  I rinse the dirt off once outside, and scrub the roots twice inside the house, removing all of the tops that have not wilted yet.  I cut the root into small relatively uniform chunks and set them outside to dry for dandelion “coffee”.  (Some of the depsides, flavour compounds in roasted chicory root, and I presume dandelion root as well, are the same as the compounds that flavour roasted coffee.  Naturally caffeine free.)

Then I turn my attention to the tops, selecting relatively undamaged crowns, pulling off older damaged leaves.  And then I think of my spring tonic on the Skeena years ago….so I check the herb bed to see if the chives are up….and they are! So I pull a handful of new chive tops in lieu of the nodding onion I used to add to my stir-fry.  I chop a half jalapeño and some ginger root (definitely not locally sourced) and heat oil in my wok (a mixture of grape seed and sesame), toss in the greens and accompaniment, and stir-fry til they are bright green and wilted.  I add slices of hard-boiled egg (those are local, from the Farmer’s market), stir a bit longer, and eat my spring tonic.  Thank you dandelions and chives.  Spring blessing.

 

As I harvest, process, and eat, I think about multi-species ethnography, research through practice, and "attending." I am reading the dissertation of a young colleague who is writing about the stories of plants and people.  I’ve also been listening to other colleagues at the recent ethnobiology conference in Tucson talking about multi-species ethnography.  So.  Definitely “located knowledge” as the dandelions are from my urban back yard.  Definitely I have been attending to the dandelions, and the ground where they grow, for the 15 plus years I have lived on this 10 by 40 metre plot of urban landscape.  The raspberries are leafing out.  Already.  At least three weeks before “normal”, whatever that is in this time of progressive and stochastic change.  The chives agree that spring is here.  The maples have opened their flowers and the honeysuckles and cotoneaster are also opening their leaves.  The ground in the raspberry patch is graced by clumps of glorious blooming purple violets. 

They are spreading rapidly, apparently undamaged by the fencing activities of the fall.  In fact, they began to bloom two weeks ago, at the beginning of April.  First blossoms of spring.  All of this in Edmonton, at latitude 53 North, in the Canadian prairies….

We read last night that this is the 11^th warmest month on record in a row, itself a record series. And this is global temperatures, not an Alberta anomaly.  Climate change really is here, and all bets are off.

Enjoying spring.  And crossing my fingers for the summer to come.

Conjunctions: Historical Ecology, Climate Change and Hatred

Gitwangak, 1899 PN 12106, RBC Museum

I've just returned from a lovely and visionary gathering of young scholars and others interested in understanding how past human ecological relationships and practices may inform the present and help evaluate future options.  The group is called "Niche" (a play on words obviously for adaptive or ecological niches) an acronym for "New International Community for Historical Ecology" and the meeting at Simon Fraser University was its second.  My talk centred on three themes in my on-going research on Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en ethnoecology: possible anthropogenic distributions of two food plants, Pacific crabapple and riceroot lily;

Pacific crabapple in Miinskinisht; tree about 150 years old

the historic role of fire in black huckleberry patch maintenance, and potential contemporary management through mechanical brushing or small scale controlled burning, and finally, the challenges and dilemmas of maintaining populations of pacific salmon species, given global and localized environmental changes.

pair of sockeye salmon on spawning ground, Hanna Creek, Nass drainage

While we were there learning about the diverse and interesting research on human/environmental pasts, presents and possible futures from established and younger scholars, we got news of the terrible events of November 13 in Paris, where sectarian inspired real terrorism burst on French society, killing more than a hundred and twenty innocent citizens engaged in listening to music, eating Cambodian food with friends or family, or attending a high level soccer match between France and Germany.  As I returned home a third piece of the chance assemblage of times, places and topics hit me: Paris, site of this horrific hate event, is also the site of the next global climate talks in a mere two weeks. The juxtaposition of these events provoked deep thought: how can humans attains some level of accommodation with the planet to avoid the most catastrophic effects of our choices and actions when inter-group conflict (aka war) keeps shifting priorities and causing societies to engage in terrible acts of social and environmental violence, devastating human and ecological communities alike?  Talking at the conference earlier with my colleague Eugene Anderson (Gene, or "krazykioti" to those who know him), he commented that we have to solve hatred, or we cannot meaningfully and effectively address problems of humans and the environment, perhaps better phrased as mending the relationships between people and the rest of the ecological family to which we belong.  This topic is taken up in Gene's 2014 book Caning for Place, Ecology, Ideology and Emotion in Traditional Landscape Management (Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek California).  In a sense, the interrelationships between social and environmental sustainability, and human actions posed by armed conflict and its effects is a special case of "if we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately".  If societies and social actors cannot moderate their actions to avoid catastrophic conflict, with all the short and long term consequences this entails, it bodes poorly for the planet-wide collective action needed to avert serious consequences of anthropogenic climate change on all life.  Anthropogenic climate change is a reality; what is at question is can we moderate its severity through our focussed attention across the globe, in the face of many forces pushing in the opposite direction.  As long as war and armed conflict are the elephant in the room, accords reached in peace time may have little power to direct the actual course of events.  I hope world leaders will have the courage to meet in Paris despite the risks posed by extremists, and I hope they will find the resolve to move forward in strong and meaningful ways to mitigate climate change through concerted international action.
Meanwhile, as private citizens, we must do what we can to mitigate our consumption of energy and material, to live more simply and equitably, and to be tolerant of difference, rather than provoke and nourish conflict and resentment through demonizing people of good will who have made different choices than those our society or own ethnic or religions groups have made. We need to recognize the commonalities of our human lives.  We must seek to understand and to come together in a good way to nurture our planet and humankind both.
The following website was shared on  Facebook today in the wake of the events in Paris.  I think it is extremely important to remember that the vast majority of people do not wish harm to others, and simply wish to live their lives as we strive to heal violence and work toward peace:
http://mashable.com/2014/09/22/notinmyname-muslims-anti-isis-social-media-campaign/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it#mLifH32fGiqX

Dwelling, Snow and Memory

I've been reading some of Tim Ingold's new book....so thinking about dwelling- and living- life as process, as medium.  Walking on my snowshoes along the back trail in the ravine, I pause for some frozen highbush cranberries.

Their refreshing tang is sharp on the tongue.  Experiencing snow, red jewels of colour, aspen and wild cherry trunks.  Being.  Moving.  Traversing the line of the trail, also a line of memory.  (But of course one must not forget that lines have width, extent, as well as length.  This line was widened by my snowshoes, which require a wider trail width than the feet of walkers, or the fat tire of snow bikes).  Looking down at my snowshoes, made of maple, laced with babiche of deer and of cowhide, decked with red and black pompoms.  Percy made these.  Percy had been making snowshoes since he was 14.  He's gone now, on the trail to wherever we go when we leave this place.  Percy made these for me 37 years ago, when my daughter was a tiny infant still riding in a snugglie pack.  I enjoy the pattern their prints make on the new fallen snow, enjoy the freedom to pick my path as depth of snow is not relevant to constraining my motion.  I'm wearing my canvas boots, Tli Cho work, made for my late mother in law Jean when she was community health nurse in what was then called Rae Lakes.  She gave them to me when I went north for winter fieldwork 15 years ago.  Enjoying the comfort of the deep red wool duffel liners made by my Gwich'in friend Agnes, hand stitched with herringbone stitch in variegated tones of blue and purple.  She found it a bit of a challenge to fit Gwich'in cut duffel liners into Tli Cho canvas boots....but they work wonderfully, keeping feet and legs warm.  Like wearing slippers or walking on a cloud.  They are perfect for the snowshoes, fit the bindings effortlessly, allow one to step into the shoes, and as easily step out, sparing the hands from fumbling with frozen buckles or laces. Dwelling.  Sharing life with the trees and birds and animals of the ravine.  Walking among the trees.  A good way to walk into the new year.

International Peace Day, Climate Change, and Bhutan (finally)

This blog has been long in composition because of many duties at work...so I wrote the piece on Spetember 22; today is October 27 and it is no longer warm- though still very mild for this late in the year.  I will post it today....still more to write.
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This past Sunday was the Equinox, and International Peace Day.  Everywhere over the Earth day and night were the same length, and equal.  Interesting that this was also the date chosen for a large international series of marches to mobilize action against climate change.   I chose to mark the day by dancing circle dances with a friend in Mill Creek Ravine.  Our intent was to dance for peace.  The day was also a remarkable 28°C, the warmest I've ever experienced in Canada for September 21, emphasizing the timeliness of a focus on climate change.  Today, the 22, was even warmer, reaching 29°.
Since returning from the International Society of Ethnobiology conference in Bhutan this June, I've intended to write about it, but found it was such an intense and rich and multi-layered experience I couldn't do it.  I needed more time to process the experience before I could write.  I think finally I can approach the topic, with the perspective (and simplification) that comes from distance. Peace and climate change were very much themes of the conference, and indeed, of the country as a whole.  I had never been to mainland Asia before, never (since early childhood in Japan) been in a Buddhist country.  

Prayer flags adorned roadsides, knolls, and passes.  Little shrines at creek crossings housed water-powered prayer wheels, adorned with bright colours and rich symbols.  Every tiny hamlet has a monastery.  Chortens (shrines) are found in many places, commemorating holy people.  Bhutan is a monarchy, now a constitutional one, and the present King and his sister the Princess (who opened our Congress) are both concerned with conservation of biodiversity, sustainable development, and preserving a peaceful and Buddhism based way of life in Bhutan.  The Royal family wanted our society's conference to be held in Bhutan, wanted to make the country's serious focus on protected area creation and biodiversity conservation to be known around the world.  The conference logo featured the Four Friends, and a motto One Earth for All.  Biodiversity conservation, stabilizing the world's climate, and ensuring food self sufficiency and sustainability are matters of concern for all. Challenges for all.
 There is only one international airport in the country, at Paro in the western part of the country near the capital of Thimphu.  Our conference was held in Bumthang, a district in the north-central part of the country.  Though its distance is comparable to that between Edmonton and Calgary, the lateral road is a narrow ribbon of pavement about one city lane wide, snaking along steep hillsides that often slope near vertically above and below the roadway.  Much patient stonework makes even this narrow roadway possible.  The numerous curves and narrow roadbed (along with numerous cows) dictate very slow travel speeds, between about 15 and 25 kilometers per hour once east of the capital at Thimphu.  The slow trek along the Lateral Road from Paro to Bumthang traverses several river systems, a range of vegetation types from dry grass/pine forest with cactus, through mixed deciduous forest, to forests with hemlock, spruce, fir and rhododendron, and going over several passes in excess of 3000m.  Little hamlets and isolated farmsteads dot the country.  Occasional Dzongs (walled fortresses) are seen.  Lower elevation valley slopes are terraced with rice fields.  Bananas are found around Lobeysa, and a wide array of products including several kinds of fern fiddleheads and various wild mushrooms are found in its well stocked market.

fern fiddleheads- several species are eaten in Bhutan

In the high passes, yaks may be spotted.  Some 13 hours after we left Paro, with darkness already fallen, we arrived in Jakar in the district of Bumthang, where our conference was held.  It was amazing, but overwhelming.  Too much for the mind to take in, too much for the body.  At one place early in the day we had to wait for an hour for them to re-excavate the road; the effort to widen it required dumping a mountain slope onto the roadbed before clearing it away. 

the road- temporarily absent

We passed a sign indicating a major hydro development (financed and carried out by Indians) near  Trongsa.  Hydro power is a relatively sustainable export.  The waters falling between the high Tibetan plateau and the plains of East Bengal, tributaries of the Bramaputra, carry a lot of energy.  The precipitous slopes, high monsoon precipitation, and the altitude, limit the extent of potential arable fields in Bhutan, and contribute to high forest cover, and still high forest biodiversity.  Remarkable in Asia.
The conference itself was held at the Ugyen Wangchuk Institute of Conservation in Bumthang.  A lovely venue.  A new hall had to be constructed for plenary sessions; it was completed just before the Congress opened.  Participants from all over the world attended, including a good number of Bhutanese biologists, conservationists and the like.  The conference opened with a banquet after opening speeches by organizers, and Her Royal Highness.  People shared music on the stage.
At the conference, we met in a series of buildings spread out over a sloping campus.  At the bottom, was a monastery school complex.  Above this paths and stone stairways connected the other venues. The Sung room featured non-traditional presentations by community participants.  Other sessions were focussed on more academic topics and formats, though synergies of knowledge and wisdom were sought in all sessions.  Many Indigenous participants from all parts of the world took part.  Benke, from the Brazilian Amazon, with his remarkable feather headdress and hand-spun cotton poncho, stood out among these participants.  Mercedes, from Palawan in the Philippines, a Bri-Bri speaker from Costa Rica, my friend Linda, Kaska, from the Yukon, Octaviana, Yaqui, from Arizona,  and Kealohanuiopuna Kinny, Native Hawai'ian from Hilo, were other  powerful Indigenous speakers and participants.  People spoke from the Heart, from the spirit, about matters that were of deep importance: well being, survival, respect for the Planet, for the rocks, plants, trees, animals, birds, earth and waters, healing, learning, caring for the earth and one another.  People spoke of wrongs endured, wrong paths taken, of resilience, of continuing challenge.  Debra Bird Rose spoke of flying foxes in Australia, a totemic animal closely linked to Aboriginal clans, dying as their fat literally melts in the unprecedented heat climate change has brought to Australia.  Shocking, provoking grief.  Kealoha and his fellow panelists spoke of environmental change and colonial overthrow of legitimate Hawai'ian government, expressing their deep feelings in song.  No one's eye remained dry. Some of us participated in panels on Food Sovereignty, others learned of multi-generational transmission of knowledge in Kirghistan.  We learned about climate change and high altitude environments, changes in grazing and water in the Tibetan Plateau, and the difficulty of hard boundaries (fenced pastoral allotments) with animals that need to be mobile and temporal shifts over spatial distribution of waters and productive pasture; lakes are growing with glacier melt, among other challenges.  We discussed quinoa in South America and traditional knowledge in Europe (yes there is traditional knowledge in Europe). We learned about Bhutanese conservation and protection efforts, and about linkages to sacred space in the Buddhist tradition.
We ate cheese and chili, red rice, buckwheat, and fresh pounded chillie paste with eggs.  We enjoyed fern fiddleheads and spicy mustard greens, and nourishing dahl. We drank milk tea or butter tea. My friend Linda and I tried a traditional Bhutanese spa [remarkable- hot water scented with the common and aromatic Artemesia that was everywhere in the grazed woods around town, laced with special minerals in the quiet and candle lit bath house- calm, meditative, restorative...]We celebrated in the sports field, eating in booths, listening to  music from Bhutan, Brazil and other places.  We shared drink, danced.  We admired the graceful Bhutanese women in their  traditional kiras (a wrapped skirt or jumper) and jackets, and the men, neat and athletic in their traditional gho's.  As part of the King's effort to preserve Bhutanese culture, all those in public service and who meet the public, must wear traditional dress.  At the close of the conference, we returned to the sports field for a biocultural fair and film festival. 

Making buckwheat noodles (photo taken with permission)

Vendors came from different areas of Bhutan, showing and selling traditional products: paper made of daphne (a fibrous barked shrub), hand ground buckwheat noodles, served with chillie and goat's milk, hand loomed raw silk scarves, dyed with natural dyes, wonderful backstrap woven patterned silks for kiras, local incense, of a blend of aromatic resins and barks from the forest following a thousand year old tradition of incense making, good for meditation and prayer.  A troupe did a traditional yak dance.  There were also tents showing films brought by the various Congress participants.  A fullness.

Yak Dancers at biocultural fair

And then- as if there could be more- there were the post Congress trips.  Some of us went home at the close of the Congress, but others shared in new ways as we trekked together, travelling with those from our own inns and guest houses.  So my companions for two of my treks were from Kaila Guest House.  I went on a trek called the Owl Trek, which ascends the ridge between Jakar and the Chhumey Valley.  I think we drove up the valley of Jakar Chu first, then walked up a ridge to a village and monastery, then down to  a suspension bridge and functioning water mill for grinding buckwheat.  After that we followed the pack ponies up a long and steep trail to about 3800m for our first camp in a pasture below the ridge, which had a couple of herder's shelters there in which our guides Sonam and Pema cooked.  We converged with another group which had Karim Ali-Kassan from Cornell and a number of his students, plus Felice Wyndham, an ethnobiologist based in Georgia, and formerly Secretary of the ISE.  Our small group contained Jon Corbett and Mary Stockdale from UBC Okanagan, my friend Linda, and I in addition to our guides and the herder who managed our ponies and mules.

We walked together with the other group all the next day, along the ridge leading to KitiPoo, a peak of about 4000m.  We walked in flower-filled high elevation meadow pastures with clumps of rhododendrons of different species.  I found the going tough at nearly 4000m, and walked slowly, with frequent "air breaks".  The forest edge and the meadow were magnificent.  Sometimes there were wonderful views, but it was the start of the rainy season, and the clouds streamed and settled, shifting, sometimes closing in, sometimes lifting.  Rai, from the forestry department, walked with those of us at the rear, and answered my many questions about plants.  At one point, he called me back: he had spotted a red panda climbing a tree right at the edge of the forest.  I looked with awe and amazement with my binoculars.  Karim's student Muradbak had the presence of mind to take some photos.  Only about five of us had the gift of seeing the panda.  Sometimes being at the rear is a good thing.  Felice and I marveled at black and white and rust birds we didn't know; they seemed bold and aware, corvids from their behaviour, and we later learned they were Eurasian nutcrackers. We camped on the ridge just below the peak of Kitipoo.  I wanted to climb, but didn't think I had enough air to make it.  Others climbed up to the web of poles and prayer flags on the summit, and glimpsed some of the high peaks in the distance. 

In the morning I awoke early, watching the streaming clouds fill the valleys with mist.  It felt like the creation of the world.  Our herders made fires with green juniper boughs and dry branches. After breakfast, we started the return journey, descending first to a large monastery on the slopes of the Chhumey valley, then doubling back to go over a pass and come down through hemlock, then pine forest behind the Congress venue where we connected with our minibuses and finally returned to the Guest Houses.

Monastery Chhumey Valley

The next day we had scheduled another trek, to visit the weavers of the Chhumey Valley.  John and Mary and I went on that trip, but Linda and the others went their separate ways. I'll talk about that trip and weaving in Bhutan in my next blog.
After our Chhumey Valley trip, we returned to Thimphu (me to look at more weaving) and Paro (the others to fly out to Nepal).  I was re-united with my Hungarian friends on the trip out.  Still tiring, but nicer with friends and much excited pointing out of birds discussion of forests, and best of all, encountering a yak herder's camp at the pass leaving Bumthang district. 

A visit to the Eastern Cherokee

Greetings everyone- I recently returned from the Ethnobiology meetings in Cherokee North Carolina.  Fascinating place.  It's the home of the Eastern Cherokee who evaded removal in the 1830s when the 5 civilized tribes were removed from their homelands in the southeastern US and marched across the continent to new homes in Oklahoma.  Many perished in that forced removal, and it is widely known as the Trail of Tears.  The Eastern Cherokee are the descendents of 700 (of about 14,000) who hid out in the Great Smoky Mountains, for a couple of years, and ultimately, through the lobbying efforts of an adopted white man who read law, were allowed to buy back their lands and become citizens of North Carolina.
They presently have a large casino which provides them income to fund language revitalization efforts, cultural activities, conservation of arts and of the materials that artists and artisans need, and a range of other benefits to the tribe. The Cherokee Preservation Foundation is funded by the casino, and one of its ethnobotanical programs is called "RTCAR" restoring the Cherokee artist's resources.  David Cozzo, the ethnobotanist who works there, was instrumental in hosting our conference.  In addition to academic sessions, we visited their museum, which tells the story of Cherokee history and contains many lovely artifacts, their artists' coop gallery, and the Oconaluftee Indian Village, which is a recreated 18th century village with crafts people doing traditional arts, dance performances, and re-enactment to interpret their history and culture for visitors.

Baskets made by the eastern Cherokee included both white oak and river cane baskets, both featuring dyed patterns coloured with blood root and black walnut.  The educational efforts sponsored by the Cherokee Preservation Foundation have revitalized basket weaving, especially the intricate river cane double weave baskets, and also enhanced the availability of materials for basket making.   Crafts we watched at the Oconaluftee village included finger weaving, traditional Cherokee pot making, wood carving, and basket weaving.

A sample of traditional Cherokee pot types. The intriguing vessel in the centre with large knobs was for carrying fire, for example to the council house, without burning your hands, the potter told us.

The finger weaving was intricate and very varied in pattern.  The weavers were using commercial yarn for the most part.

 One feature that stood out to me were weavings that featured beads added to the web in a diamond pattern.  The weavers showed us a small sample of bison wool yarn with a similar diamond bead pattern, which we were told represented the type of weaving the Cherokee did before the introduction of coloured trade wool.

weavers doing finger weaving

bison wool strap sample, decorated with beads

I had not known that Cherokee traditionally used blow guns, from smoothed lengths of river cane, to shoot light weight darts for bird hunting.  The tips were fire hardened, and they were fletched with down of the thistle Carduus!
 We learned that the number seven is sacred to Cherokee, who also have 7 clans, and the Council House in the recreated village has seven sides.  The seven is derived from the four directions, mother earth, father sky, and the centre or place of the heart.  At the opening ceremony and reception we were privileged to hear Elder and master storyteller Freeman Owle recount several key Cherokee myths (in English so we could understand), including how water spider successfully obtained fire for humans.
We also learned about the ethnobotany of Cherokee in the conference itself (along with many other fascinating papers and some videos), and on the fieldtrip, where David Cozzo showed us plants used by Cherokee in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  One thing that stuck in my mind is that "stickers" are an intermediate category (a grouping of folk species or generics), and can be used medicinally to improve memory!  David told of one young person who was treated with a decoction of various kinds of "stickers" to treat a learning disability.  Apparently this was effective and the young man went on to be successful in school and is now in college.  We also learned that one can eat the young tips of cat briar (a species of Smilax, or green briar) and that violet leaves are another good spring edible.  Towering tulip poplars (Liriodendron tulipiferum) have sweet nectar in the "tulips", and apparently very useful wood. (If you want to read more about Cherokee ethnobotany, David has a paper from his dissertation material in Stepp et al. (eds) 2002 Ethnobiology and Biocultural Diversity entitled "Cherokee System of Folk Classification" (pp139-151) which is published by the University of Georgia Press.)