Traditional Knowledge – Collaborative Summer Program On the Cape

By JULIA BURNS

There was a giant trout who could hear the singing of a Native woman with a beautiful voice. She would sing at the edge of Santuit Pond every day, and eventually, the trout fell in love with her. He made his way from the ocean, digging a trench that eventually created the Santuit River in Mashpee. This story of an anadromous fish is one of many of the Mashpee Wampanoag stories that give perspective to the nature that surrounds us.

The rich cultural history of the Mashpee Wampanoag people is now being used alongside western science to seek answers to climate change and to empower our youth to be positive stewards of the environment.

Preserving Our Homelands (POH) is a collaborative summer program involving culture keepers, educators, parents and local scientists. The goal is to educate tribal youth and connect them to their native land. This four-week summer science program encourages native 6th, 7th and 8th graders to learn about the scientific and cultural ties to their land and sacred duty to take care of the environment.

Gertrude “Kitty” Hendricks-Miller is the Indian Education Coordinator for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. She says programs like this benefit the native youth because they receive cultural as well as mainstream education. She feels that this prepares them to preserve their homelands.

“You have your moccasins and your regular shoes; you live in two different worlds,” Ms. Hendricks-Miller says.

Experts are seeing this collaborative partnership as the future of climate change education. Beckie Finn, an Environmental Coordinator for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gayhead Aquinnah, believes that there is much to be learned from indigenous knowledge.

“Why reinvent the wheel, so to speak, when everyone benefits?” says Finn.

Cameron Greendeer, who manages the State Tribal Education Partnership grant for the Education Department of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, feels as though this initiative gives Native youth representation and a connection to their culture – something that is not always the norm in education curriculum.

“There is still generational trauma that I know personally I feel. School wasn’t easy for me. College wasn’t too easy for me, but fortunately I pulled it off,” Greendeer reflects from his office in Wisconsin. Now, he fights for Native youth to have an educational experience he wishes he had as a child.

Dale Oakley Jr., the Assistant Director of the POH program, says that programs like this don’t just connect the native youth to their environment, they also show them that their ancestors were scientists in their own right.

“The kids today need to understand that their ancestors practiced science. They were intelligent people who noticed the environment around them and they studied it,” says Oakley.

Building a connection with the environment builds a level of intuition and desire to protect the environment. This relationship to the environment and understanding of everything being connected is a value that is embedded in Native American tradition. Greendeer talks about his children, who are half Mashpee Wampanoag, having this intuition and understanding at a young age.

“For instance, when the ospreys come around, immediately my kids start thinking ‘the herring are here, the fish are running, it’s time to go and fish.’ It’s pretty cool to see that my kids don’t have to look at a calendar or temperature. They see those birds flying and think ‘Spring is here,’” said Greendeer.

Right now, this is just a summer program. However, the benefit of having both a western science perspective, as well as traditional one, could be beneficial to all youth. Building a connection to one’s environment the way that Native Americans traditionally have would undoubtedly have a positive effect on the future of our climate.

Education can play a crucial role in conserving the environment. A study that included teachers, pupils, and other citizens shows a correlation between environmental education and decreasing emissions by seven to 30 percent.

“I certainly could see this operating in a school setting,” says Oakley.

Greendeer feels there is much to be learned from traditional knowledge. He says that in order for programs like this to be brought into traditional educational systems, there would need to be a level of mutual respect for and a culturally accurate history of the Native Americans. He adds that Native American culture is not frequently taught in school systems, and when it is, the material is often inaccurate. However, he feels western science and traditional knowledge both offer important perspectives.

“I think that these two perspectives can exist with a lot of dialogue,” says Greendeer.

In order for the world to benefit from traditional knowledge, they first must be willing to listen. Greendeer references this in the example of the North Dakota pipeline and the Mní Wicóni or “water is life” activists. He says that in many instances, Native Americans’ connection to the environment is so strong that they can rely on intuition to foresee events.

“They called it the black snake pipeline, they knew it was going to break, they knew it was bad. But nobody ever asked the local tribes if they thought there would be anything wrong with it,” says Greendeer.

Ben Gutierrez is a geologist at the Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center who helped with the development of the POH program. He, too, feels that indigenous knowledge offers an important perspective when it comes to the environment.

“I think the important thing is to listen as much or more than you speak. We’re invited as experts, but you immediately realize that there’s a lot we don’t know about the history of an area,” says Gutierrez.

Connection to the environment is a core value of Native American culture. Hendricks feels as though incorporating cultural knowledge into mainstream education could give generations of knowledge and perspective to the current climate crisis. Hendricks feels that this collaboration of western science and traditional knowledge is necessary in order to help stem climate change.

“Because of our cultural knowledge, [the current climate crisis] is very personal for us. But it’s personal for everyone now, because of what humans have done to this earth. So we can’t do it alone,” says Hendricks.