Melissa K. Nelson: Living in storied and moral landscapes (Ep401)
“To have true knowledge symbiosis—where there is harmony, balance, inter-relationality, and each [knowledge system] contributing respectfully with care, thoughtfulness, humility—is a messy, entangled process.”
In this episode, we welcome Melissa K. Nelson, an Indigenous ecologist, writer, editor, media-maker and scholar-activist. Expanding on her years of community based work as well as mixed background and heritage, Melissa reflects on climate change as a symptom, rather than a cause, of disharmonious imbalance with the earth. She invites us to ask: how might acts of ‘balance’ be more dynamic than we may perceive? And how might we re-examine, re-situate, and even re-claim the word “sustainability” to invoke more than maintaining stasis, or keeping a status quo?
In staying with these questions, Melissa reminds us of the importance of death, decay and composting; concepts so often eschewed under the house that modernity built. In composting that which needs to change, Melissa gestures towards practices of embodied story-ing that is relational, place-based, and ancestral. Ultimately, Melissa asks of herself and us: what does it mean to become, or be in the process of becoming, a good ancestor?
You can learn more about Melissa’s work here.
Subscribe and listen to Green Dreamer in any podcast app, or read on for the episode transcript.
Artistic credits:
Musical feature: Carolina by Mother Juniper.
Episode-inspired artwork by Lauren Rosenfelt
Additional resources:
What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?, a book co-edited by Melissa K. Nelson
Rekindling Native California Ecologies, a podcast episode with Redbird (Edward Willie) and Melissa Nelson
Indigenous Community: Rekindling the Teachings of the Seventh Fire, a book by Gregory A. Cajete
Expand your lenses:
If you feel inspired or moved by this episode, please consider reciprocating a gift of support of any amount today!
transcript
Note: Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Melissa Nelson: I am a mixed-race Indigenous ecologist, and I studied ecology because it is the art and science of interrelationships. So all of my work is very much focused on interrelationships between peoples and places. With my mixed background, I have Native American heritage from my mother, Anishinaabe Cree, and Métis. I also have settler white heritage from my mother, from the French side, the Métis-French, and then my father is Norwegian.
I think being able to navigate multiple heritages, like many of us these days, gives us the ability to embrace multiple ways of knowing and seeing.
Sometimes it's in conflict, sometimes it's in confluence. So that work of looking at mixed history, different forms of history, different forms of identity, complexity, really is all part of ecological systems.
And so my love of diversity and complexity is for humans and the natural world. And of course, from my Ojibway worldview, we do not make a sharp contrast between those relationships between human people and plant people or animal people. So I think wanting to learn more about my rich heritage, my Indigenous heritage led me down a path of studying also Indigenous studies, both academically but also personally by being of service to Indigenous communities, the lands that I lived on and live on in California. So my homes are my ancestral homes of northern North Dakota, southern Manitoba, the Turtle Mountains, or my sacred mountains where my mother and father come from multiple generations. My sacred places are the lands of the Cahto, Sinkyone, and Yuki peoples also known as Mendocino County of Northern California, where I spent my first 18 years and I strive to be a good settler or a good neighbor, a good accomplice on the lands of the native California Indian peoples. And now I have a new home where I am learning to be a good neighbor, ally, and accomplice in the lands of the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community. The Akimel O'odham and Piipaash peoples of the Salt River Valley, also known as Phoenix, Arizona, where I'm a professor of Indigenous sustainability at Arizona State University. So those were my places and some of my people. I've been very involved with community-based activism through the Cultural Conservancy, an Indigenous rights organization I've been a part of for 30 years. So that is also part of my community, the Intertribal community of Northern California.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you so much for sharing this rich background of yours. You've shared that climate change is a symptom and not a problem. And this is something that I resonate with because I also question a lot of the subtle language around dominant climate discourses. Even things like people who are most vulnerable to climate change, which poses climate change as the problem to fend off that people have to fight against, versus something like people who are most in tune with the symptoms and changing dynamics of the land that require and call for deeper listening. And deeper listening as well to those who are most in touch with every diverse landscape and their messages and their needs.
You've mentioned that recognizing that climate change is just a symptom invites people to dig deeper, to look at the root causes. And as you've named, this is my paraphrase and interpretation, that the ways things have become out of balance over decades and centuries are what need to be addressed. And therefore there aren't going to be any straightforward and quick fixes. This all speaks to me as well, though something that I've been pondering and trying to unravel and unpack is the word and idea of balance. What balance refers to, what it means when, even historically, everything has been in constant motion and transformation, including the configuration and entanglements of life everywhere, even the cultures and stories and storytelling and knowledges. So this is something that I've been thinking a lot about, and I would be curious to hear you speak more to the idea of balance, or out of balance, and what we can apply to better understand the symptom of climate change.
Melissa Nelson: Beautiful question. And you summarized well my perspective on that and shared that message about the symptom, not the cause being climate change. And in terms of balance, you point out a great point that when most people think of the word balance, they think of stasis or lack of change or something solid. To be in balance, just like being on two feet being bipedal organisms, we lift one foot, we sometimes are out of balance, and we have two feet to balance us, but balance means that we're often out of balance.
For me, when I use the word balance, it's more like a dance. It's more about working with change.
Change is the only constant, as so many of the perennial wisdom traditions have said as well as scientists. So it's not a matter of staying the same or stasis or stopping, or that we're always equally balanced. It's a constant maneuvering dance between, I would even say, harmony and disharmony. It's another way of looking at it, or discord and consonant from more of a musical metaphor.
So Indigenous peoples, through our original instructions, strive to, we talk a lot about balance and harmony because it's a harmonization. It's more of a verb rather than a noun. It's an active process of awareness, consciousness, presence, vigilance even, to see where we get out of balance and to strive and harmonize for balance. Just like when we walk, when we are in an intimate relationship with another human being, we know it's not constant harmony or balance. There's often disharmony and imbalance, but we have a commitment to that dance and to that harmonization process so that there can be times of profound resonance and harmony. But we know that includes deep moments of disharmony and discord and imbalance. So to me, they are two sides of the same coin.
Kamea Chayne: I appreciate that analogy of balance being more like a dance. I think that's helpful because when people look up balanced, let's say, on Google Images, I think of pictures of a scale with two sides that are balanced and not moving. At least that's what has been indoctrinated into my mind as the first thing that comes when I think of the word balance, two sides that are fixed in place. So I appreciate this visual of the dance.
Sustainability is a word that has been used so much, as you point out, that it's almost become meaningless. Though you say that it's nothing new at the end of the day, because this awareness, an idea, has existed since the beginning of people's existence just as a matter of survival.
And perhaps this might be an extension of the question of balance, but how can we use this deep history perspective to rethink and re-situate what sustainability means and refers to, in terms of what is the goal of what we are trying to sustain? Because of course oftentimes it gets co-opted or misused to refer to sustaining existing systems, sustaining 'resources' to enable continued extraction for as long as possible, or even sustaining through a kind of preservation of things as they are, and for conservation of things as they are. So, yeah, What would you say to this?
Melissa Nelson: Yes, I think it also is quite a problematic word. And even in my school of sustainability, the first school of sustainability in the U.S. at Arizona State University, many of the scholars within our school are debating the term and wanting to shift it to maybe something like regeneration.
Sustainability does not bring in with it that imbalance or that wobble, or even the importance of disintegration and death and decay and composting and regeneration.
I love how the word regeneration includes the whole life cycle. Sustaining is interpreted, at least in modern America, it is so rooted in this idea of progress and evolution and continuing the status quo. And that's to me, really a massive part of the problem. We have to disrupt the status quo. We have to disrupt the way of consumerism that has become so nonchalant and daily for us to just buy things we don't need and throw them away, and sustaining that lifestyle is completely unsustainable.
So I do have issues with the word sustainability, but it's here to stay and we may transform it, but I think that if you look at the root of it, just etymologically, we want things to continue that are good, quite simply. And from Indigenous perspectives, what I've learned from my Ojibwe elders and others, our knowledge systems are rooted in this idea that we want the sun to come up in the morning. We want to be able to drink clean water. We want to be able to go out and gather our traditional medicines, whether that's tobacco or sage or elderberries, we want to be able to hunt our buffalo or our moose or a caribou. We want to sustain those relationships just like in a good human relationship, we want that trust, longevity, and intimacy to grow over time. And we are that way with our landscape so that we have a relationship with the beaver or the buffalo, and that we knew their grandparents and we know their children and we know their grandchildren just like we are intergenerational people. I think of the Haudenosaunee's emphasis on the seventh generation, and many of our indigenous traditions of North America have this value, this instruction of honor. Seven generations in the past, our grandmothers', grandmothers', grandmothers, and also honor seven generations in the future so that life can continue. So we want to sustain the life that sustains us. And I like that the word sustain is also rooted in the same root of sustenance, right? Nutrition, food. What is our sustenance, our daily food? So sustainability from Indigenous perspectives is often about sustaining a good life.
In my Ojibwe language, we would say mino bimaadiziwin, which is to sustain the good life by honoring the spirit of life in a reciprocal way. And Winona LaDuke, the great Ojibwe activist leader, has interpreted our concept of mino bimaadiziwin as continuous rebirth. So you see that inter-generational long-term thinking, not just short-term thinking, that we are just here a very short amount of time, a human being, if we're lucky, 80 years. You know, that's very privileged. Many people don't have the privilege of living that long. But we're tied to our descendants, we're tied to our ancestors in this long chain of continuous rebirth of life. So that is the deeper meaning that I have with the term Indigenous sustainability. Even though it's so green-washed by corporations and companies and it's been so misused and overused, it is somewhat meaningless in many ways unless we define it. So thank you for asking me to say what I mean by this concept.
Kamea Chayne: I appreciate you sharing all of this. It's certainly been co-opted by the corporate world. And I think this is why it's so important to ask the question of what do you mean when you talk about sustainability? Because I think there are ways, as you say, to reclaim it as well. Like if we're talking about sustaining processes of creation and regeneration and sustaining the expansion of kinship and our intimacies and relationships, maybe that's one way to kind of play with the semantics there and reclaim the word.
In a past talk you gave on traditional ecological knowledge, you say that we live in storied landscapes and moral landscapes. I want to first share that I've felt really kind of dissatisfied with the word landscapes, as much as I also love it and use it quite a bit. But I've just been feeling that, at least in terms of how it's officially defined, it's not as holistic as what I often hope to convey or get at, because formally it just refers to all of the 'visible features of an area'. So it feels very much centered on the material and the aesthetics. I'm curious what you think about that and if you can elaborate more on what it means to live in storied and moral landscapes.
Melissa Nelson:
The English language is a language often of separation and individualism.
So yes, the term landscape often seems very sterile, external, again, static, not alive, not animate, almost like a theater. You know, the old European metaphor of we are merely actors on a stage. And that nature is the landscape is just this kind of dead environment for human drama. And that's not at all what I mean by it, it means place, a sense of place. It kind of gets to what we talk about in geography, political geography, and Indigenous forms of geography, the difference between space and place. You know, spaces are this kind of acultural supposedly objective space, but open for exploitation and open for colonization and place is something imbued with meaning and value and history and kinship.
So when I talk about landscapes, I talk about places.
To me, places are storied. They have ancient histories going back to the dawn of the planet when the planet was created billions of years ago.
Each plant, each stone, each rock, and each mountain has a story in the land. So the land is filled with stories. And then when humans came on the scene, we immediately started listening to the stories of the land, adding our imagination and creativity and experiences and the synergies, and then creating new stories so that we have our creation stories, our migration stories, our hunting stories, our trickster stories. And being oral people, oral cultures, we wrote things down. We were not illiterate people, especially our Ojibwe nation. We wrote things down on birch bark scrolls that were like books and maps. Also in the Southwest, the symbols on pottery, in California, the symbols in the basketry, the rock art that is all over the world in Indigenous territories, ours is a written language. And so there are stories in the land if we know how to listen and if we know how to read them. And that's why our oral tradition and our Indigenous languages are so essential to protect and revitalize, because they come from the land, in terms of the voices of the mountains and the stones and the forests and the rivers and the lakes or the oceans. So we live in storied landscapes and of course, only when we have connections to our ancestral lands.
So as an Anishinaabe kwe woman currently in Akimel O'odham, the River Peoples' land, this is not my storied landscape, this is their storied landscape. For the first peoples, this is their ancestral lands where their ancestors are buried, traveled, traded salt, hunted bighorn sheep, and gathered agave. And so these are their stories, and if we're good visitors, if I'm a good visitor here, I'm going to honor, recognize, and respect their sovereign stories of this land. And sometimes folks are generous enough to share those. But whenever we walk on the land and in places, we are in somebody's Indigenous territory, and the first peoples there have ancestral stories and histories of those places. And so the physical landscape, the mountains, the valleys, the prairies, whatever it may be, they are the visual marker that reminds us of these stories and these dramas, if you will, and often comedies that happen there with characters, Raven or Beaver or Eagle or Hummingbird or whoever it may be. And it's also environmental knowledge- I mean, that's what traditional ecological knowledge is. It's knowing who the other plant and animal people are that live there in that particular river or on that mountain or in that lake or prairie, and so those animals tell those stories. And over time, over generations, our elders have been listening to those stories and listening to the plants and animals, and the winds, and when the stars show up and when the moon rises and sets. And so those stories become imbued not just in language and stories, but in dances and ceremonies and long-form narratives. And that's how we pass on traditional knowledge in place-based embodied ways through the land in these storied landscapes or places.
Kamea Chayne: This reminds me of our past conversation with Professor Rune Rasmussen when he talked about understanding myths as really helping people to build relationships to place and to learn how to better and more intimately relate to place. And on this note, you also co-edited the book What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? And through that dialog, you talk about how you want to be a regenerative ancestor, part of which involves composting and hospice-ing things that need to die and be left behind. As you share, "There are times when we should permit death to come as comfortably and beautifully as possible, embracing the mystery of death as a sacred doorway.".
Various past conversations we've had about becoming good ancestors have centered on what we wish to leave behind for future generations. So I would be keen on hearing you elaborate on this idea of the guardianship of what we've inherited entailing helping to disrupt and end certain things to ensure that they don't continue in their current forms. What do you feel called to share on this front? And then just to toss in another element here, as we recognize that knowledge and stories are in constant reiteration as the dynamics of community and the world change as we mentioned earlier. I also want to ask kind of a tangent question about whether you think the origin stories and myths that teach people how to relate to place, especially those passed down by way of oral traditions, whether these origin stories or original instructions have also kind of been evolving or been reiterated as cultures both remain rooted, but also ever-changing and diversifying as well? And then if so, what might this mean, reflect or signify?
Melissa Nelson: Beautiful constellation of questions. Maybe I'll just start with this last one. Absolutely. I mean, it's funny that we call them sometimes original instructions or first instructions because they're constantly changing. Characters change, places change, and people get dislocated or voluntary shifts. Like my ancestors, we have our seventh fire prophecy, which is all about migration and change, adapting to change, and traveling halfway across Turtle Island, from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. And then my band went out into the plains, and then out towards the Rocky Mountains and with the Blackfeet. So our knowledge is always changing and our stories adapt to these new places and these new people that we join with, mix with, and become. But what remains are the values and values of things like kinship and reciprocity and gratitude. These are part of our original values, if you will, encoded in a lot of different stories are seven ancestors teachings of the Ojibway, and whether we are 10,000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 200 years ago, yesterday, or we hope 100 years in the future, what we have learned and what we adhere to is that these values of gratitude, of reciprocity, of kinship, of simplicity in terms of not taking more than we need from Mother Earth because she is limited.
I think those kinds of values are deeply embedded in a lot of Indigenous psyches, even though they change and we know that we are all human and we're all vulnerable to the shadow side or the trickster side, the coyote side of greed or lust or selfishness. And that's part of being human, and many of our stories even talk about that with the dual twins, there's often kind of a noble twin and then kind of an evil one, if you will, or one that has these other characteristics. And all humans share both of these sides or multiple sides, but at least these different kinds. So we have to be vigilant and aware of how these show up.
And currently in modern America and the way capitalism has been interpreted and is being manifested has turned into this predatory capitalism, an extractivism what I often call a conquest consciousness- that needs to be composted, that needs to die, that needs to change.
Also, our relationship with time, this constant emphasis on the future and progress in this linear movement to the future, and that techno-utopian technology will always solve our problems. I think those are many different worldviews and values, many conscious, many unconscious, embedded in this society that need to be transformed, and I think many of them need to be composted. The selfishness and greed, you are looking up to the billionaires, the Hollywood stars, and this cult of personality, of the individual wealthy person. I think that is toxic, actually, and has created a toxic type of worldview that I think needs to be transformed, needs to be composted.
And having gone through a lot of personal death lately with my family and friends in the last three or four years, it's just really made me respect the mystery of death much, much more and the power of it, and to not take life for granted to any day because it's such a rare gift. I think any of us who are touched by when a loved one close to us dies, there is a sense of humility also. And I think that sense of humility is also an original instruction and part of being open to learning and open to change when needed. So we humans are always changing, Indigenous people are no different, we have to evolve, we have to adapt, we have to change. But we do have our values that are part of our original instructions that give us an ethical Northstar that keeps us rooted in a way of caring for each other, in caring for our lands, in our waters, in our places, and caring about the future and the past, but not in this linear progress way, but in terms of relationships.
Kamea Chayne: Well, I'm sorry for the loss of your loved ones over the last years, and these lessons of humility from the passing of loved ones I'm sure are going to be relatable for most people. And hopefully, it's something positive that we can learn and carry forward. And also, just invitations to think about death in new ways as well, and learn from the ways that different cultures look at stories around death. The last thing I'll say here is just that I love the analogy of composting in general because it shows that there's no pure way out, there is no purist deletion and exit on anything, but it's working with all the messiness of everything, but using that as nourishment to pave a more regenerative way forward. So I appreciate that analogy.
As an increasing number of people come to reckon with the wounds and the troubles of today, from the micro-scale to the broader societal and global scales, there is of course, a growing sense of yearning for healing to move forward. In terms of restoration ecology, you point to the difference between what's called reciprocal restoration versus perhaps ecological preservation or conservation. I would appreciate it if you can introduce this idea of reciprocal restoration to us and how it situates the role of people and how it reflects this spiral analogy that you use also in telling kind of a trickster consciousness that both buries when no longer serves this, as we mentioned, and honors the past by carrying some of the seeds forward.
Melissa Nelson: Reciprocal restoration is something I was introduced to by Robin Wall Kimmerer, although I probably have been doing it for 30 or 40 years without having an explicit name for it. Also, Dennis Martinez, an O'Odham-Swedish restoration ecologist, talked about bio-cultural restoration, or eco-cultural restoration, about 30 or 40 years ago. And so the usual field, or the conventional field, of landscape restoration or ecological restoration is all about humans knowing what's best for the land, this Western scientific template of we're going to restore to native species. Now, how far back are we going to go? You need a reference ecosystem. Are we going to go back to 1491 or are we going to go back to 1900? So you need a template, it's really about designing. So even restoration ecologists will note that there is an element of agency and interpretation and creative selection in, well, what kind of plans do we want here? And making their best estimation about, the paleological record or the pollen sample record or the fire regime record tells us these 12 plants were in this habitat. Only six of them are here now, so we're going to plant these additional six plants so we have, again, a full palette of these 12 plant species that are in this particular valley or habitat.
So it becomes somewhat mechanical and it's not always, but sometimes rooted in this machine metaphor of nature. Just like a car, you need to take out the old oil, put in new oil, change the tires, rotate the tires, add spark plugs, and it'll operate better. And so some restoration ecology is a little mechanical in that way. But once you engage in it, removing exotic or invasive plant species, like in California, we have the scotch broom, French broom, and eucalyptus, and so many things that become invasive and choke out the native plant and animal species. We want to remove that and then bring back more native species. So it's something that we can do with our hands, with our minds, with our bodies. It's so healing to go out and work with the plants and the soil, getting dirty, really embracing the elements, being immersed in the elements. So it has a way of moving us out of our rational cognitive mind any time we do things with our bodies. And I think in this era of nature deficit disorder, children eight to 10 hours on a computer and one hour in nature, whereas in my generation, it was the opposite. We were outside as much as we could be and then inside minimally.
So I think reverential restoration, reciprocal restoration is done with a bit more consciousness that we're entering a relationship with these plants and animals, and we may or may not know the right thing to do.
Again, entering it with humility rather than expertise, and wanting to move slowly and listen to what plants and animals want to be there and need to be there. Also, not just consulting, but working with the native people of the land. What plants and animals do they want there? It is their ancestral territory and making sure that they have access to traditional plants like silkroot or manzanita or oak trees for acorns, whatever it may be. How can we restore culture, be part of cultural revitalization and cultural resurgence and cultural renewal, along with ecological restoration, bringing back the health and the diversity, the biodiversity, the ecological diversity of a particular place? And when we're of service to the first people, it really can almost be part of a land rematriation process of returning to the motherland and supporting what that local tribe or Indigenous community wants to happen there. So I think that also elevates indigenous sovereignty. So there are multiple ways it can heal from colonization. On that collective level, it can heal from the ecocide and the ecological destruction that happened with colonization to bring back thriving native species that are also culturally significant to native peoples.
And then just individually, the mere act of doing something positive and with our bodies, the exercise, you're in community. You rarely do this alone, usually do it in groups. And there's camaraderie and joking and laughing. And the stories that come out, like going to traditional gatherings with basket weavers or other plant people. There are all these stories that come out again because of the storied landscapes of the places that, 'Oh, my grandma used to gather here. She told the story of when she encountered a bear and they had a standoff. And then she sang to the bear and then the bear laid down.' I've heard these stories from people and they're true stories. And so once you're out in the land, especially with people who have an ancestral connection to it, you can hear those. But even if you're new to the area due to diaspora or jobs or migration or whatever, you just want to learn about a sense of place and go out and learn about the plants and animals. I took out an invasive species and there's something kind of therapeutic too- I love removing French broom and Scotch broom in Northern California because it's so invasive and it's just instant gratification and then planting, hazelnut and elderberry or huckleberry, that's going to be food for the animals and birds and then humans as well. So it's a way of giving back to the land, it's also a way of receiving the nourishment and medicine of the land. And it's a way of getting out of our heads and getting back into our bodies and getting back into an intimate relationship with the soil and the nonhuman world. So reciprocal restoration has the potential and opportunity to heal us at an individual, collective, ecological, and historical level.
Kamea Chayne: I appreciate you bringing back the idea of storied landscapes, because it's these stories that make life, and these practices as well, so much more meaningful and enriching and memorable. And I also love the invitation to value our other senses of knowing that come from actually engaging our body and feelings in the work. And of course, through deep listening as well, rather than at least overly relying on, or disproportionately relying on our cognitive thinking and planning and so forth.
And you cued in my next question for you, but something that I felt challenged to think through is the topic of invasive species, which I know some people have problematized the label of, as well as just the broad-stroke approach to kind of mass target and kill. And so far, I think I land on a sort of yes-and way of understanding this because not all introduced species have wreaked havoc on existing communities. But when particular ones disrupt and take over and choke out existing diversities that even push some to the brink of extinction, then I think that does call for some sort of attention and management from the land's caretakers. But how have you thought through this topic of invasives and how do we navigate the nuance and delicate dynamics, especially taking into account that many of the species that have become categorized as invasive were brought to these places through no fault of their own? And there's no neat way to categorize the binary of invasive or not invasive, because it's also very context-dependent, and I would also add that probably every individual of a species is unique and different as well. But what does it then mean to respect the land and to care for the land when the land's configurations have so drastically changed in so many places? How do we think through healing and restoration and having compassion for the ever-changing configuration of communities? And what can we learn from applying that spiral analogy here? I know I just tossed a lot at you, but you're welcome to pull whichever threads and take them in whatever direction you'd like.
Melissa Nelson: Thank you Kamea, and such a beautiful sharing. And that was perfect because I felt like I had something more to say about the concept of invasive species. So we're very attuned here and aligned. I think it is an artificial boundary even between native and non-native. And when people came in when plants were a mosaic in motion that was constantly shifting and changing with fuzzy boundaries. Plants move, animals migrate, and humans move, voluntarily and involuntarily. And yet we know there was this explosion of change and apocalyptic change on Turtle Island, North America, with colonization starting in 1492 and then the waves of colonization, the Spanish from the South, the British from the East, and the French from the north. So every place is slightly different. The time of colonization when these 'foreign' plants and animals came in, when 'foreign' people came in either by choice, by the age of discovery, or by force with enslavement. So it is very complex. And that's why it's good to try to not make too many generalizations and focus locally.
And I'll just use one example from Northern California that I know well, even though it's not my ancestral lands, but Coast Miwok and Pomo and Sinkyone and Wailaki, but a Pomo-Wailaki Elder I'm very blessed to work with is Redbird, or Edward Willie, who is the land manager at Heron Shadow, the Cultural Conservancy's farm in Coast Miwok Pomo territory. He's an Indigenous restoration ecologist and forest manager and land steward. And he will never, I think, use the word invasive, he does not like that word. He talks about immigrants. And one of my podcasts, The Native Seed Pod, I have two episodes with Redbird, where he goes into this, he says some plants and animals are immigrants just like people. They come in from other places for various reasons. Some are good neighbors and good settlers, and some want to take over. And some want to live- here's that word getting back to our beginning- in balance, meaning they don't want to take over, but they want to be present in a healthy force, but not an overwhelming or dominant force. And he talks about certain plants like mustard that are not at all native to Northern California, but we don't even have the concept of naturalization immigration with people. You can naturalize, you can immigrate, you can become a citizen. And so Redbird talks about certain plants that have come in like mustard, that was immediately adopted by many of the local tribes because it was tasty, it was culinary, it added color, it added a little spice. It didn't take over, it wasn't dominant, it was part of the mosaic. And it knew its place, so to speak. And so that's a very powerful statement.
Back when I was doing ecological restoration work in San Francisco with really mixed, diverse urban communities, we had some interesting dialogs about the idea of being an immigrant or being a foreigner or being invasive. And for some people, it became emotional to tear out these plants. And sometimes people do it with vengeance or anger or hostility as if these plants are evil or bad. No plant is evil or bad, just some are more abundant and invasive than others. And I use the word invasive, not necessarily like colonialism. They just take over and they create more of a monoculture rather than a polyculture. I'm all about polycultures, right? Meaning multiple diversities of peoples and plants and animals. That's what we see in healthy ecosystems and healthy cultures. Again, that mosaic and motion of diversity in commitment to harmonization of something positive and healthy, it's more an indicator of health.
And so I agree that this idea of invasive species and eradicated at all costs, it's kind of like being a rabid vegan, which I know because I was one in my twenties, a militant vegan. And so sometimes there are these hysterical historians and hysterical restoration ecologists. And I'm not for that, I'm for really finding a healthy balance. And many elders I know like eucalyptus, they love plums. The fruit trees that were early brought in by the Spanish, brought in delicious stone fruits that have been fully incorporated into native culture with orchard care and orchard work. I mean, they were often indentured servants working in the orchard fields, almost like slaves. But they developed a relationship, often with these foods and these plants that have been fully adopted. So native people are always open to change and these shifting habitats and shifting cultural habitats as well. So I hope that addressed a little bit about that issue.
And I think if we're very mindful when we go out to either remove 'foreign species' and introduce native species, I think when we're very mindful about that in our internal landscape, in our inner climate, it can bring up some interesting feelings and emotions.
And then to have a safe space to have a dialog about, that is very important. And I know some eco-psychologists have been doing that kind of work with habitat restoration, but also really linking it to people's histories of migration and diaspora and immigration.
Kamea Chayne: I've loved this dance of our conversation today and just a lot of these core themes, like balance, that keep resurfacing throughout. And we are nearing the end of our main conversation, but I want to close off by shining a light on the idea of moving forward together in a knowledge symbiosis, again, with the intention and approach of yes-and. We've had past guests share their various concerns and critiques with things like regenerative agriculture and permaculture before. But I think there's a yes-and here as well, and you've shared that you're excited about all of the Western re-innovations of producing food and tending the land because they are coming to their own conclusions of the importance of reciprocity. And of course, they would benefit from continuing to be in dialog with other forms of knowledge as well. I would love it if you can talk more about the knowledge symbiosis here that is about forward movement, honoring knowledges and practices from the past and present, but also weaving in new threads as well. And if it feels relevant here as well, how we can use Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer's analogy of the three sisters to think through this need for different cultural qualities, frameworks, and curiosities to all be in context and conversation with one another.
Melissa Nelson: Excellent question. And it's a big goal, it's a noble goal, it's a complicated one, it's a messy one. Just like a three sisters garden, it's not so easily discernable where the beans end and the squash begins, it's an entanglement. And again, I started with not being afraid, or being attracted to the idea of complexity.
Cultural complexity and complexity can sometimes move into real disharmony or conflict or chaos, but they can move into beautiful harmony and complexity and balance.
And so really, Dr. Wall Kimmerer talking about a knowledge symbiosis, which many people talk about to going back to Albert Marshall, a Mi'kmaq elder, talking about two-eyed seeing, knowledge synthesis, trans-systemic synthesis.
There are many different ways of talking about epistemic plurality, but we cannot talk about epistemic plurality without talking about epistemic justice.
And so it's very important to recognize that some knowledge systems have done real harm to other knowledge systems. And just like in the Truth and Reconciliation processes of Canada or South Africa, the truth has to come first before reconciliation, and we don't have time to deconstruct reconciliation, but a reckoning or a moving forward in a good way, or at least lancing the the the wound so that things can start to heal. So if we're going to do healthy, fair, equitable knowledge, and symbiosis, we need to also have truth in history and reveal how there has been cognitive colonialism, or epistemic injustices, so that we can move towards epistemological justice or cognitive justice.
And that sounds a little abstract maybe right now, but it's very important that we translate how different knowledge systems have been privileged and others have been marginalized and repressed and erased. And so to have true knowledge, symbiosis where there is harmony and balance and inter-relationality and each contributing respectfully with care, thoughtfulness, humility, that is a process and it's a messy and tangled process. But thankfully, I'm very grateful that there is even space for this conversation now in universities, in the United Nations, and certainly in grassroots community activism and coalition building. In the United States White House with all of the complexities, and doing one thing right and another thing not so good. We see that there is a conversation about knowledge, polycultures, and knowledge symbiosis now, which was not the case, I would say, even five or ten years ago in some of these international and academic arenas. So I'm very hopeful that we've started the conversation and there are some great people working on it, and I'm working on it within a mainstream university with scientists and others who are open to it. That doesn't mean it's easy, doesn't mean there's not going to be conflicts and some bruises and entanglements along the way. But it does mean that we have a safe space now to assert our knowledge systems in a new way.
// Musical Interlude //
Kamea Chayne: What's been one of the most impactful books that you've read or publications you follow?
Melissa Nelson: I just started the History of Everything, written by a couple of non-Native anthropologists, who are very much uplifting Indigenous knowledge systems and doing a bit of revisionist history about the past. I've only done the first couple of chapters, but I'm intrigued by it and it's quite stimulating and refreshing. So that's an exciting one. I love all the work of Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, I think she's just doing such a brilliant synthesis of traditional knowledge, Western science, storytelling, and personal narrative; love, love her work. Greg Cajete's Indigenous Community: Rekindling the Teachings of the Seventh Fire is such a sourcebook and almost the how-to of what it means to rebuild and build an Indigenous community in relationship with settler communities as well, so that's a super powerful one. I love the work of Kim TallBear, really addressing science and technology from Indigenous paradigms, and also looking at kinship, love, intimacy, and sexuality, problematizing that, decolonizing settler love with Indigenous worldviews and stories and practices. And I've been a part of some of that movement too, with the piece I did called Getting Dirty, looking at Indigenous women, oral narratives, and eco-eroticism. So there's a lot of exciting work happening in the world right now. And I love your podcast, Kamea, I've been listening to Green Dreamer, and just love your stories and your interviews and am very happy to be here with you as a guest.
Kamea Chayne: Thank you. That means a lot to me, and thank you for all of these wonderful recommendations. What is a personal motto, mantra or practice you engage with to stay grounded?
Melissa Nelson: The first one to come to mind was work hard, play hard. I work very hard, and I try to play hard, too.
Kamea Chayne: Yes, really important. Don't forget the play aspect. What is one of your greatest sources of inspiration at the moment?
Melissa Nelson: Well, I'm relatively new to residing in the Sonoran Desert and I am just blown away by the desert wildflowers and the cactus, the saguaro cactus, and all the different life. It's the most biodiverse desert I think in the world, and the O'Odham people, the Akimel O'Odham, The River People, the Tohono O'odham, The Desert People, have such rich and beautiful traditions of relating to this storied landscape and the beauty of this desert. So I've been enjoying these walks in the desert and appreciating the plant life and the animal life here. So I'm very much a plant person, so I find great inspiration in the different plants' cycles of growth and reproduction and flowering and seeding and then decay and death and rebirth. And you see that very starkly and cleanly in the desert because some of these Yucca plants, sentry plants, they have one shot to reproduce and that's it and they're done. So there's just such elegant beauty of fertility and reproduction and intergenerational living that's so visible to me in the desert, coming from a forest person.
Kamea Chayne: Beautiful. Melissa, thank you so much for joining me on the show. It was a huge honor to be in conversation with you, so I'm just really grateful for this opportunity. As we're wrapping up, what final words of wisdom do you have for us as Green Dreamers?
Melissa Nelson: I'm just going to repeat some medicine words from Leroy Little Bear, a Blackfoot elder, and teacher of mine, is that we find our cultural resilience in the medicines of the land, and whether you identify as a spiritual person, a religious person, an atheist, or whatever it is, a pantheist, just know that this gift of life is so precious and Mother Earth has lots of medicines to give, and Father Sky has lots of medicines to give, and the stars have lots of medicines to give if we just open ourselves up to receive it.
