The Land is Speaking
October, 2011 - Among the guests in a Squamish longhouse on the West Coast of British Columbia, a Maori grandmother spoke of saving Lake Omapere in Northern New Zealand; the Inuk mayor of Rigolet in northern Labrador warned of the impacts of melting ice, and a Manitoba Dakota policy analyst shared messages on a changing environment from a five-Nation gathering of traditional healers.
"The land is speaking, and we need to listen," said Joseph Thompson, of the Tuhoe tribe of the North Island of New Zealand.
Maori peoples from New Zealand and Aboriginal participants from Canada gathered at the Squamish longhouse on traditional Salish territory in Vancouver, BC, for an NCCAH-hosted "Healthy Land, Healthy People" meeting on October 3 to 5. Together, they highlighted the role of Indigenous knowledge in addressing links between the health of land and the health of people.
"We need to see that the well-being of Indigenous peoples centers on the critical health of water systems and ecosystems - and that Indigenous knowledge is key to how we go about effecting meaningful and urgent change," said Dr. Margo Greenwood, Academic Lead of the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. The NCCAH is supporting a wholistic 'ecohealth' approach to Indigenous well-being as an emerging priority that can link community, research and policy.
"For years we have been struggling in working with institutions in Canada to integrate our knowledge and ways of seeing," Mi'kmaq Elder Albert Marshall told the gathering. He pointed to an integrative science program offered at Cape Breton University as one small example of a new approach to science education that blends Western-oriented sciences and a Mi'kmaq conceptual world view rooted in a reciprocal relationship with nature. The program was recognized by the Canadian Council on Learning in 2008 as a leading and effective learning practice.
Marshall noted that, in the context of global rates of consumption threatening to exceed the carrying capacity of the ecosystem, "we strongly feel our knowledge must be accepted as equal, that our ways of life and knowing have to be part of where we are going in future."
Cultural Guardians Lead Change in New Zealand
Hine Tohu of New Zealand explained to participants that she is a 'cultural guardian' who is helping to address the environmental collapse of Lake Omapere in her tribe's ancestral region in the northland - using Maori approaches to solving problems that western science and political approaches alone could not.
The story of the Maori-inspired collaborative restoration strategy with local landowners, community members and researchers is a leading example of Indigenous knowledge in action, breaking new ground in New Zealand where a high incidence of poor water quality is related to commercial agriculture, deforestation, stock grazing, and, increasingly, climate change.
Known as the "heart of the Ngapuhi people," Lake Omapere has been historically impacted since the early 1900s by deforestation and agricultural practices. In 1984, Tohu said, levels were dropped to make way for houses, railway tracks and land reclamation, changing the flow of waters in the area and limiting the ability of Maori communities to draw upon the water or access traditional supplies of food - such as whitebait and 'tuna' or long-finned eel.
Impacts included growth of toxic weeds so thick, people could walk on them; growth of algal blooms; and foul smells from putrefaction in the lake impacting the Utakura River flowing from the lake to Hokianga Harbour, along with toxicity so severe people could no longer use the water for drinking.
"Everything inside the lake was dying, and we weren't seeing any improvement," Tohu said of the restoration initiatives over the years by governments and agencies. These included mechanical harvesting of weeds and the introduction of exotic species of fish. Local Maori began asserting their own approaches to solving the problems, forming the Te Roopu Taiao O Utakura charitable trust in 2000, and by 2006, "we were managers of the land, the river and the harbour," said Tohu. "But we needed to get people to help us."
With the support of researchers at Whariki Research Group at Massey University in Auckland, Maori community members learned what the natural state of the lake had been and took steps to restore the lake's 'mauri' or 'life force.' Among the many actions, they negotiated changes to farming practices with local landowners, supported fencing of the lake's edge, and launched major efforts to re-establish native aquatic plants.
Central to the restoration strategy was the role of Maori 'guardians' or 'kaitiaki' who are responsible for ensuring the viability of land and resources for the future, based on an ecological and spiritual relationship between humans and nature[1].
"I am responsible for the lake's well-being because it is responsible for mine," Irihapeti Morgan said in a documentary film of the restoration efforts. One of the fundamental shifts in their approach was to address the health of the whole water catchment area and to understand its history as a basis for restoration.
Indications are that the efforts are slowly starting to show some positive effects [2]. A 2010 government report updating water quality data monitoring across 112 New Zealand lakes from 2005-2009 showed 28% had deteriorated, 12% had improved - and that Lake Omapere had improved significantly (2% a year), based on an analysis of "trophic level index" trends over the previous ten years. Nutrient levels in the lake had fallen, as had nitrogen and phosphate levels, suggesting water quality could be linked to improvements in the surrounding land cover and use. Studies indicate that this affirms the new cooperation among landowners, communities, institutions and local government - as well as the rejuvenation of Maori roles on the land after a century of marginalized traditional practices.[3]
"We are taking our rights back for the next generation," said Tohu.
The Role of Research in Affirming Traditional Knowledge
Garth Harmsworth, a Maori researcher with the New Zealand Crown Landcare Research institute, said the Cultural Health Index (CHI) is a tool recently developed that empowers and recognizes the knowledge of Maori who live in a region to observe and manage what they experience on the land.
"Maori - particularly the manawhenua or those with customary authority over the land - are most sensitive to the change. They are interconnected on a daily basis and can see the changes, feel them, taste them. You don't need a scientist to monitor data once a year to know what they know. The Cultural Health Index is a tool to help us understand how Indigenous people look at environmental change and how they assess that change," said Harmsworth, who has led or been involved with Indigenous research projects in New Zealand for 27 years. (See Maori research at Landcare Research).
Helen Moewaka Barnes, director of the Whariki Research Group at Massey University in New Zealand, said research concerning the relationship between the health of the land and the health of the people has not been supported by wider agencies, nor recognized as a fundamental determinant of the health of Maori people.
"This is why we are here at this gathering," she said. "The agency, the knowledge, the dignity, lies within the people in the community, not in an institution or an academy." Whariki Research Group is active in community action programs, working alongside Maori communities developing their own solutions and furthering the development of a Maori research workforce.
Barnes said the colonization experienced by peoples in countries like Canada and New Zealand is part of a "wider story, a shared story, and the health of the land is a global issue, not just a local issue. At the heart of this understanding is that global environmental health goes beyond carbon-footprints or the built environment - it's about a relationship with the land."
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The Climate / Health Connection
Charlotte Wolfrey is mayor of Rigolet, a community in Nunatsiavut, northern Labrador that is accessible only by plane and by boat. She noted that she can still walk on the paths her grandfather walked upon and that her children and others still know how to hunt, how to fish, how to smoke meat.
"We are very involved in our cultural activities. I eat from the land; I berry-pick; my fridge is filled and it's not with store-bought food," she said. While there has been a degree of resource extraction in the region, development has not yet had a major impact.
Yet, climate change is the "biggest thing affecting lives in our community," said Wolfrey. "We are people of the ice, but we don't know any more where to go or where not to go to cross the ice. Is it safe? There is rising water; there are droughts and storms at unusual times, and eroding soils..."
One of the outcomes of a two-year community-based research project in Rigolet called "Changing Climate, Changing Health, Changing Stories" was a series of digital media stories told by members of the community. These explore the relationship between climate and health in Inuit communities, and together attempt to redefine the borders between science and stories, humans and landscapes.
Stories like "Thunder of the Hooves" and "Coming out of the Storm" were part of a process of research supporting individuals and the community to understand and manage health issues related to their changing environment. In "Thunder of the Hooves," Barbara Pottle shared her experience of the George River caribou herd coming within a few miles of Rigolet, and the change in hunting patterns for the community. Funded by Health Canada's First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, with support from Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments, the project will also see upcoming publication of several related academic articles.
Traditional knowledge is also being revitalized in Manitoba, where the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has supported province-wide gatherings of traditional healers, said Melissa Hotain, environment policy analyst with the Assembly.
"In 2008, we brought five nations in our region together with the Elders to talk about our relationship with the land," Hotain said. Healers shared philosophies, practices, protocols and languages to achieve greater understanding of the Ininew, Anishinabe, Dakota, Oji-Cree and Denesuline ways of healing.
"Through ceremony, and through our children, we are starting with this generation to relearn our ways and to break the negative cycles of residential schools, loss of language and cultural disruption," said Hotain. "Traditional harvesters are all raising the alarm that we need to get back on the land to understand what is happening; our healers are saying change is coming," she said. "I believe we have the answers within all of us."
A Reciprocal Relationship
Margot Parkes, Canada Research Chair in Health, Ecosystems and Society at the University of Northern BC, said Indigenous understandings of the reciprocal relationship with the natural environment challenges ideas of nature as 'separate' from humanity. As a result, the implications of historic and ongoing environmental dispossession experienced by Aboriginal and Indigenous peoples worldwide are far-reaching.
She said more researchers are beginning to see land as a fundamental determinant of Indigenous peoples' health, and that many initiatives in Indigenous communities, from self-determination to education, language, and natural resource management, are strategies to reinforce connections between people and land, culture and identity.
For instance, Warner Adam, Executive Director of Carrier Sekani Family Services in northern BC, said in his region, First Nations are reclaiming their traditional "bah'lats" governance system as a transformative approach to control of their land as they face increasing pressures of industrialization through forestry and mining. In northern Alberta, Blue Quills First Nations College is a leading and internationally recognized model of post-secondary education that integrates Indigenous knowledge and traditional ceremony based on relationships with land in all aspects of programming.
Water, Land and Global Health
One of the most crucial issues underlying the health of all ecosystems is the health of water systems and this, participants at the gathering agreed, was an urgent global issue.
"It's scandalous that communities in Canada and globally do not have access to safe drinking water," said Dr. Jeff Reading, of the Centre for Aboriginal Health Research at the University of Victoria in BC. He screened the film Water on Tap: First Nations Water for Life which noted that one in six First Nations communities in Canada is on a drinking water advisory at any given time, that many communities have had advisories lasting more than a decade, and that one third of people living on reserve believe their water is unsafe. Rural and remote communities in particular struggle with limited capacity, resources and inadequate infrastructure.
Among the concrete steps discussed at the event was the need to forge and maintain international linkages, promote research opportunities and support engagement. The First Nations Environmental Health Innovation Network is a virtual network that connects research, information and community environmental concerns and one that could also foster international connections. Hosted by the Assembly of First Nations, and championed by the NCCAH, the network respects traditional knowledge and protocols, and reaches out to 630 First Nations communities and stakeholders across Canada.
Don Fiddler, a Métis educator and co-chair of the NCCAH advisory committee, said he was impressed that people at the gathering did not talk about science and management, but about relationships. “What I hear is that you already know what is happening to the land, that you have the knowledge, and that the land is offering you the solution. All of you are involved in recovery of knowledge," he said.
“We are heading through increasingly stressful and demanding times, environmentally," added Garth Harmsworth. "It is incredibly timely to discuss these issues."
The meeting resulted in relationships established, new agendas formed, and a shared commitment to realizing a time immemorial relationship with the land, said NCCAH Academic Leader Dr. Greenwood.