What do you see when you think of the Northwoods? Pines towering over blueberries? Waves rocking wild rice? Trout swimming in the shade of cool waters? The Great Lakes? Chances are your mental image does not include smokestacks belching pollution, mines draining sulfuric acid into wild streams, or large powerlines webbing their way through field and wood.
Sadly enough, these latter images are also a part of the northern Great Lakes area. Worse still, they threaten the more beautiful, healthful images of birch stands, cattails, and the sun rising pink on the mists of a small inland lake. But this is not merely a threat to beauty – it is also a threat to the cultures, health, and subsistence lifestyles of the Northwoods.
A course at Northern Michigan University, offered through the Center for Native American Studies, focuses on learning about the ways in which this northern land provides for its human inhabitants. Called “Kinomaage,” (which translates from Anishinaabemowin into English most literally as “the earth shows us the way”), the course took students out into the field and engaged them in classroom discussions to learn about the traditional ecological knowledge of the Anishinaabeg, knowledge that has been acquired through centuries of intergenerational residency in the Northwoods. The course also asks students to pay attention to the plant community as an indicator of ecological stress, to be aware of what it means to have a respectful relationship with the land, and to develop a consciousness of how cultural values shape people’s attitudes toward the earth. As part of this, students look at the way in which the Northwoods, and the people’s ability to harvest healthy food, has been affected by industrialization.
Far from being an untouched forest prior to European settlement, the Anishinaabeg thoroughly utilized the northland by farming, harvesting, hunting and fishing. In fact, it could be argued that the Anishinaabeg made more thorough use of the land prior to the advent of Western society than anyone does today. This concept is important to recognize for it shows that it is possible to utilize the land while also respecting it and keeping it whole.
Some have a difficult time understanding this perspective. As discussed in “Kinomaage,” this difficulty often comes from the anthropocentric worldview of the majority society that humans are separate from this vague, often menacing, concept called “nature.” Today this worldview has gone to such an extent that many believe eating directly from the earth is unsanitary and dangerous. Things must be sprayed with insecticide and packaged in cellophane before they are “safe” to eat. “Kinomaage” contradicts this worldview by offering an introduction to the idea that such things as wiinsisiibag (wintergreen), apakweshkway (cattail), mazaanaatig (stinging nettle), baakwaanaak (sumac), wiigwaasag (birch), and miinan (blueberry) are harvestable and edible or usable. Indeed, the harvest is more than a functional utilization of the earth; it is also heavily spiritual.
This idea that the earth provides us with what we need often comes as a surprise to those who are immersed in the Western paradigm. For example, at a recent DEQ hearing on the proposed metallic sulfide mine on the Yellow Dog Plains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, one of the few citizens who spoke in favor of the mine told his fellow Yoopers that he was tired of hearing how we needed to protect the “pristine” landscape of the Yellow Dog Plains. “You can’t eat landscape,” he said. Raised in a culture that denigrates the earth and sees no value in “uncultivated” or “undeveloped” land, this man was able to say, without embarrassment, that the landscape was inedible. However, there were others at the hearing who were aware of how inaccurate his comment was. One woman from Keweenaw Bay Indian Community “wanted to tell them about the blueberries ‘up there’ being important for our food and feasts.”
Although many of the students in “Kinomaage” are well experienced in the area of wild edibles, one of the goals of “Kinomaage” is to help those who don’t know realize how deliciously edible the landscape is. Bagaanag (hazelnuts) go well with wild rice dishes, as demonstrated by a dish offered by Don Chosa at the end of the semester “Kinomaage” feast. Parts of apakweshkway (cattail) have a light and tender taste. Syrup made from ininaatig (sugar maple) is delicious over popped manoomin (wild rice). Sap from spruce trees offers chewing gum. The new growth ends of various conifers provide a tender snack. Ode’iminan (wild strawberries), odatagaagominag (blackberries), and miskominag (raspberries) are well known, abundant northern berries. Not only do they taste good, but, according to Karen Danielson of Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), berries such as miinan (blueberries) provide “important nutrients such as vitamin C, iron, calcium, and phosphorus.” And these plants are only an introduction to how edible our landscape is.
As discussed in “Kinomaage,” these plants and numerous others are not only important for sustenance, they are important culturally as well. The sugar bush, while hard work, is much looked forward to in late March as the sun warms up the woods. Gathering bagwaji-zhiig (wild leeks) soaks one in the quiet beauty of the spring woods. July and August are known as miini-giizis (blueberry moon), “illustrating the importance of this harvest,” according to Danielson. The harvesting of manoomin (wild rice) is a much anticipated, sacred part of the year. In fact, harvesting rights were seen as so important that they were reserved for the coming generations in various treaties the Anishinaabeg made with the United States government.
However, beginning in the mid-1800s, industrial exploitation in the form of mining, logging and, later, production electrical power, while lining the pockets of outsiders, undermined the subsistence lifestyle of the Northwoods.
In the mid-1800s, around the time the Anishinaabeg were pressured into ceding vast areas of mineral- and timber-rich land to the U.S., the Big Cut began in the northern Great Lakes area. The area soon led the nation in timber-production with the result that by 1910, the forests of the Great Lakes were mostly depleted. By 1929, both as a direct result of industrial-scale logging and as an indirect effect (such as forest fires caused by logging), 92% of Michigan’s forests were destroyed. Prior to the Big Cut, trees tended to grow over 150 feet tall and were so large in diameter that three men could not reach around them. Today, only 1% of that pre-Cut forest remains. What this has meant to the Anishinaabeg culture, a forest culture, has not yet been fully introduced into public discourse. As Anishinaabe activist, Walt Bresette, once said, “We have not yet taken the time to mourn our pines.”
Industrial-scale mining was brought to the Northwoods a little over 150 years ago. Unfortunately for the northern Great Lakes area, mining has devastating effects. According to an EPA report to Congress during the Reagan era, mining wastes may contain everything from cyanide to asbestos to heavy metals. As one example of this, the White Pine mine in Michigan’s U.P. was recently sued by the Michigan United Conservation Clubs and the National Wildlife Federation for emissions of lead, arsenic and mercury over Lake Superior – these emissions were 500% higher than the established legal limit. In addition, the proposed metallic sulfide mine on the Yellow Dog Plains is at high-risk to leak sulfuric acid into the surrounding area (which includes an important trout stream, a wetland, an aquifer, and, down the trout stream, Lake Superior). This risk is as good as a certainty, for every metallic sulfide mine in North America has contaminated its surroundings within ten years of closing. Such contamination certainly affects the quality of healthy food, be it plant or animal, available for harvest in those areas.
Sociologist and environmental activist, Al Gedicks, tells us that the Anishinaabeg of northern Wisconsin “suffer a disproportionate environmental risk of illness and other health problems from eating fish, deer, and other wildlife contaminated with industrial pollutants like airborne polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury and other toxins deposited on land and water.” All lakes in Michigan have a fish consumption advisory due to the mercury and PCB contamination. Wisconsin and Minnesota waterways face similar dire straits as do the Great Lakes themselves. The presence of heavy metals has been found in manoomin (wild rice) as well. A study done by GLIFWC in 2001 found concentrations of “arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, copper, zinc, selenium, magnesium, and chromium in the seeds and roots of wild rice.” These concentrations were “relatively low but detectable.”
Acid rain, created from the pollution coming from a variety of industries in the Northwoods and elsewhere, is also affecting the forests of the northland, particularly the white birch trees. According to Marquette environmental group, “Witness for the Earth,” “[a]cid rain disrupts photosynthesis and healthy soil processes, thus causing plants to become malnourished. Such malnourished plants grow slowly and are much more susceptible to pests and diseases.” Once abundant in the Upper Peninsula, particularly in the eastern portion, the beautiful and useful birch tree has greatly declined in number. Various Anishinaabeg talk of how difficult it is now to find a birch tree suitable for various projects, particularly canoe-making.
While much of this is depressing news, all is not hopeless. There are ways to heal and protect the land in the long-term while also fighting today to stop the industrial projects that currently threaten our area. One very important way is to help the Euro-American culture finds its way to minobimaatisiiwin or “the good life.” Minobimaatisiiwin is an Anishinaabeg and Cree concept that, on one level, involves living in awareness of the land and of how the different forms of life interact with each other. According to Winona LaDuke, minobimaatisiiwin is based on “spiritual-cultural instructions from ‘time immemorial’ and on generations of careful observation within an ecosystem of continuous residence.”
Courses like “Kinomaage” are intended to introduce people to and encourage them in their acquisition of this traditional ecological knowledge. By listening to those cultures that have lived mindfully, for generations, with the land, we can maintain a healthy, well-balanced habitat. As Metis, Anishinaabeg, Yoopers, Wisconsinites, and Minnesotans, it is our duty and our privilege to nurture the land we love. We must protect this beautiful and bountiful northland that we call home.
Feel free to reprint this with attribution. Please notify Aimee if you do so. Miigwech!
Copyright 2006 - Aimee Cree Dunn