When Jeanine Moy started restoring a property, she didn't just wanted to restore an ecosystem. She wanted to establish a deeper connection between people and nature.
As founder and director of Vesper Meadow, a Nature Preserve and Education Program based in the Southern Cascades in the US state of Oregon, Moy consulted a number of experts, some basic studies and PAED about historical archives.
Then she found an old anecdote from an oldest of the indigenous Latgawa people: They once came to this meadow in the summers to come to camas (Camassia) Plant.
“There is a human relationship between camas and people,” says Moy. “It is a beautiful purple lily plant that has a light bulb. It is almost like the potatoes of our society today.”
Camas thrown and developed with people in the area over thousands of years. The plant can be seen on the logo of the nature reserve, where it still grows to this day.
Vesper Meadow is a growing movement of non-indigenous environmental organizations around the world that include traditional and indigenous knowledge. Here in the Northwest of Pacific, this movement has also made important political changes.
A short history of the Pacific northwest
The northwest of Pacific is a region in western North America, which lies between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. Although it does not have an official limit, it is usually understood to span the US states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho and the Canadian province of British Columbia.
The region with mountains, plateaus, fjords and islands is a hotspot with a biological diversity full of legendary species, including the humpback whale and the highly towering Douglas fir tree as well as seasonal laughing bushes.
It also houses many indigenous peoples who have managed their local landscapes for thousands of years, long after they have been colonized by the USA and Canada.
Until the middle of the 19th century, the governments of the United States and British (later Canadian) governments regarded the region as a sparingly populated fur movement area. In the 1850s, however, white settlers came in a larger number to seek gold and other natural resources.
These settlers and their governments drive the Indian tribes and Canada's initial nations from their traditional home countries violently and ignored all agreed contracts.
This displacement from its traditional countries separated an important connection to their way of life and robbed these landscapes of their traditional administrative methods.
Can traditional knowledge prevent forest fires?
Indigenous knowledge and practices are often the result of thousands of years of deep local experiences in combating the country, in which researchers around the world use.
One example is the use of controlled fires to alleviate damage caused by forest fires in western North America.
Indigenous groups have long practiced the “cultural burning”, in which the landscape is burned as part of a long -term tradition that was disturbed when it was colonized and robbed of its country.
Instead, these controlled burns were banned in the United States. This led to the establishment of fire -at risk in forests, which means that the present fires are likely to be more devastating.
Today, political decision -makers have largely reversed this approach. At the beginning of this year, California achieved an agreement with the Karuk strain, with which they can freely practice the cultural burning.
Government authorities are now even starting their own controlled fires, which are referred to as prescribed fires in order to reduce this flammable vegetation.
They are also increasingly working with indigenous groups to use their unique local knowledge, which often makes them effective administrators of their landscapes and natural resources.
In February, the Canadian federal government signed an agreement with the Haida nation in which its property of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the coast of British Columbia, was recognized.
The nation is strongly involved in protecting its own country and the sea area. With the Canadian government, several naval government is directed, invasive species are exhausted and its waters for the towing ships are monitored.
Bring back local administration
Tribes and First Nations are now also working with non -profit organizations.
The Conservation Northwest has, for example, joined several initiatives with tribes and first nations, which extend both sides of the border between the USA and Canada.
The organization recently worked with the Colville Confedered Tribes to catch the Canadian lynx in British Columbia and bring it to the state of Washington to restore a local population of this keystone species.
It also offered “Land Back” gifts that help donors to acquire countries that are of crucial importance for types that the indigenous peoples appreciate and then return them to their traditional administrators.
“We acquire the country that enable the movement of species across broken landscapes,” says Jenor Syrowitz, Senior Manager of Conservation Programs at Conservation Northwest.
“We try to save and restore land on both sides so that they can get to the movement corridors.”
Vesper Meadows now not only helps to gain trunks access to water -loving camas, but also to restore two streams that go through the property.
Stasie Maxwell, program manager of the indigenous partnerships of the organization, is Iñupiaq (born in Alaska), but grew up in a local community of indigenous community in South -Oggon. These two initiatives are perfectly aligned for them.
“The restoration of waterways and the reduction of damage caused by cattle and wood are restored to degraded land into a abundant, healthy ecosystem that not only benefits food systems such as Camas Lily, but also some of the endangered species on the property,” she says.
The streams of the Preserve feed in the Klamath River. Last year the last of the four dams of this river was finally demolished after years of the campaigns of tribal groups, which hoped that this would lead to the return of salmon, which is an important source of food for them.
Now salmon has already been seen how they return their historical area and higher in numbers than expected.
Set local stewards on the same foundation
Maxwell believes that forestry and land management sciences are increasingly respecting indigenous knowledge, especially with the return of cultural burns in the Northwest of Pacific.
She emphasizes that the best way to adequately contain indigenous peoples in the restoration is to search for them, consult them and to concentrate their voices in projects at an early stage.
It is just as important that organizations should also try to understand the groups with which they work with: “Get to know the respective tribe, how he correctly pronounces your name, what your current projects are and what its goals are. Every tribe is clear and unique.”
Syrowitz emphasizes strong relationships and trust with indigenous partners. However, money is also important: in an economic system in which money is the same, financial means can guarantee you a seat at the table to hear your voices.
Perhaps it is the concept of a hierarchy of knowledge systems that have to change. Two -eyed vision is a concept in which the world is understood by both western and indigenous worldviews. Both are braided together instead of one that dominates the other.
“It's about getting together at the same level,” says Syrowitz.