{This article is reproduced from Peace Brigades International (PBI)
Project Bulletin, April 1995. It was written by PBI volunteers as
part of a report on a fisheries conference held over March 11-12.
Reproduction and re-use is encouraged, as long as credit is given to
PBI for the text, and your intentions are good. For more
info about PBI's North America Project, contact:
Alan Dixon
27 Third Ave.
Ottawa, ON K1S 2J5
e-mail: adixon@web.apc.org}
On the evening of the first day of the conference, I participated
in the workshop entitled "Getting To Know Traditional
Environmental Knowledge." Through stories of elders and other
First Nations participants, we learned of the values and ways of
traditional knowledge about the relationship between the
Anishnabe and their world. I have written down here some of what
I learned, on a variety of issues that were spoken about.
Being Poor
Many of the speakers described how when they were young they did
not have as many things as they do now. For example, they had no
electric lights, they made their own toys, and they had to fish
and hunt in order to eat.
One elder said that she didn't like to use the word poor to
describe their condition. They thought they were poor because
they didn't have things, but her grandmother told her that they
weren't poor because they had the land and that the creator gave
them everything that they needed. Her understanding was that they
felt poor because of their schooling - they were told by their
teachers that they were poor. She concluded that she is now
actually much poorer than she was then, and observed that the
cash economy is the cause of a lot of the trouble.
On the surface, these comments may not seem to have anything to
do with the environment. I think that what the speakers were
trying to show is how the current economic system interferes with
traditional environmental knowledge.
The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR)
Stories about the MNR were all negative - they described how the
MNR enforcement of provincial hunting and fishing regulations
interfered with the Anishnabe traditional way of living. Notably,
the threat of arrests and fines were considered risks, but not
deterrents.
Fish and Anishnabe
Several elders spoke of their dismay about the current state of
affairs of the fisheries. They described the traditional
understanding of the relationship of the Anishnabe to the fish,
and observered that under that relationship they did not have the
problems they do today.
In their view, the fish and the Anishnabe were both given life by
the same creator, and each was given a way to live, instructions
to live by. The fish give up their lives for humans, and this
flesh is a gift that humans must respect by not wasting it. Like
children and old people, the fish cannot defend themselves from
abuse, it is up to us to protect them. On the other hand, we
don't need to do anything other than let them live their natural
ways. We have been taking the fish for granted, but we haven't
much time left now, and survival is very important.
Not wasting the gifts of our environment was a central ethic of
many of the stories shared over the evening. The speakers were
not only offering insights into another way of understanding the
environment, but were also challenging the way of relating to
nature that Europeans brought with them, the "scientific" way.
Anishnabe Ways Have Not Been Recognized or Respected
An Anishnabe described how his father had taken care of the
animals on his trap line by trapping only on a part of it each
year, allowing the animals in the other part to recuperate. The
MNR game warden had discovered this and had taken away half his
trapping territory. His father continued to trap on only a part
of his land each year, and so the game warden again took away
half his land.
This was given as an example of how traditional environmental
knowledge was not recognized or respected. The speaker gave
several examples to demonstrate that "it is not true that Indians
don't understand science." He observed that they had developed
corn, a great scientific discovery, and that they planted corn,
beans and squash together. Western science has only recently
understood the self-sustaining abilities of this combination. He
also observed that the Anishnabe anticipated the arrival of the
Europeans in their prophecies.
{Photo of discussion with people sitting behind tables}
One speaker spoke about things he had learned from traditional
ways. He said we can learn many things by observing the animals,
who know things that we don't. He gave one example from when he
was trapping and there were suddenly no tracks for two days.
Suddenly, there was a big storm. After the storm had passed,
there were again many tracks. The animals had known the storm was
coming.
Another example of traditional knowledge: last year there was
thunder late in November after it had snowed. The elders said
that this meant that the channel wouldn't freeze up. They were
right.
One Last Story
As a way of illustrating a relevant lesson for the fisheries
issue, one speaker told a traditional story about maple trees.
She said that each tree has different characteristics, and the
maple is maternal because it gives us its sweet syrup. It is said
that in the past, syrup would flow directly from the maple trees
each spring. But the people became greedy and took too much
syrup, and so they had to be taught a lesson. And so now it comes
out as watery sap, and today we have to do a lot of work boiling
it down to get our syrup.