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The Land Has More to Tell Us (Part II)

June 9, 2025 by Jared Green

Tobacco plant (nicotiana rustica) / istockphoto.com, sorsillo

Indigenous knowledge is rooted in land but also expansive, explained Alice Nash, associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a co-organizer of a recent symposium on Indigenous landscapes at Dumbarton Oaks. “The land tells us who we are, how to sustain ourselves, and envision the future.” Grounded in land and its history, we can “center ourselves” and then look to “regeneration and healing.”

The Indigenous worldview calls for an integrated approach — “all is related and connected.” In contrast, western academia is about putting ideas into specific categories. “How do we parse Indigenous knowledge out?,” asked Gabrielle Tayac, a historian and member of the Piscataway Nation, and the other co-organizer.

The symposium aimed to bring together Indigenous knowledge systems with academia, explained Thaisa Way, FASLA, director of the landscape and garden studies program at Dumbarton Oaks. This process enables Indigenous knowledge-keepers and scholars to “redesign connections” between these ways of understanding and “build community.” The symposium itself was also the result of that inclusive approach: it was developed with an Indigenous Advisory Circle comprised of Indigenous leaders and academics.

The people of the Blackfeet nation, who are now mostly found in Montana and Alberta, Canada, believe “there is a liminal space between land and myth, our world and the supernatural,” explained Rosalyn LaPier, who is a member of the Blackfeet Nation and Métis, and a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana. There is a sky realm made of the sun and moon; an in-between realm where people live; and an underwater realm, with beavers, deities, and monsters.

Ecological knowledge provides a way to connect with the divine. Blackfeet believe plants are deities from another realm, and there are spiritual relationships with specific plants. For example, tobacco is connected to the deities of the underwater realm. Cultivating and smoking tobacco is related to “supernatural power over water — bringing rain and helping plants to grow,” LaPier said.

There is a perception that Indigenous people foraged for foods. While that is true of some tribal communities, many Indigenous communities managed ecosystems, engaged in permaculture, and cultivated gardens. Among the Blackfeet, women played an important spiritual role in cultivating tobacco fields. LaPier described a field that was 100 yards long by 5 yards wide. Women kept tobacco seeds, burned plants and trees to collect ash to mix into soils, and designed the field so it had access to water and was shaded by trees.

There is a skyworld, and a storm caused skywoman to fall to the Earth. As she fell through, water fowl and geese rose up to slow her path and then a great turtle rose up from the watery world to hold her. Skywoman invited a muskrat to dive into the water and bring up more mud to expand the land. This is part of the creation story of the Pequot peoples of Connecticut and many other tribal communities. It’s why they call North and Central America Turtle Island, explained Nakai Clearwater Northrup, a member of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and Narragansett Indian Tribe, director of education with the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut, and founder of RezLife Outdoors.

“The turtle is a system for building relationships with the land,” Clearwater Northrup said. The connection between our world and turtles are wondrous: He explained that turtles’ shells have 13 pieces; there are 12-13 full moons per year. The outer edges of turtles’ shells have 28 notches, roughly corresponding to the number of days in a month.

The Mashantucket Pequot are known as the “people of the shallow waters.” Nearly half of the tribal community is 18-25, so Clearwater Northrup is focused on reconnecting Indigenous youth to their lakes, ponds, and rivers, traditional “food ways,” and culture. This involves teaching Indigenous youth to “eat foods from where they are from,” he said. Harvesting local foods from “isn’t the easiest — it requires long days, hot days — but putting in the work also connects us to land management and conservation.”

Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Connecticut / Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center
Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, Connecticut / Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

Melissa K. Nelson, a professor at Arizona State University, described how tribal communities across the U.S. are undoing the effects of settler colonialism in a holistic way through the concept of rematriation. This involves Indigenous women taking the lead in reclaiming Indigenous land, restoring ecosystems, bringing back Indigenous agricultural practices, and reconnecting with spiritual values and ancestral histories embedded in the land. She also discussed the Anishinaabe and Cree tribal worldviews of Turtle Island and Mino-bimaadaziiwin, which can be translated as “the good life.”

Her own heritage is part of this rich story. She is Anishinaabe, Cree, Métis, and Norwegian and a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of Turtle Island, North Dakota. Land that was originally part of the reservation but homesteaded by the Nelson family was returned to her a few years ago. She plans on rematriating the land, which currently includes farmland, a creek, lake, and habitat for “berries, moose, beaver, and deer.”

Mikinaak Wajiw ~ ​Turtle Mountain, North Dakota​ / Melissa K. Nelson

She looks to examples of rematriation in Marin, California for inspiration. Mount Tamalpais, one of the sacred eyes of Turtle Island and a biodiversity hotspot, is being reclaimed as an Indigenous spiritual site. “The communities are restoring the right relations with the land and transferring dispossession into belonging,” she said. And she also looks to the Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden, an inter-tribal farm where native foods like red and white corn, squash, beans, sage, tomatoes, and peppers are grown. “They are in service to First Peoples there.”

Mount Tamalpais, California / Melissa K. Nelson

Indigenous place-based knowledge, which is rich with community and ecological connections, can also take digital form, explained Christopher Pexa, member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Tribe, and an associate professor at Harvard University. He is collaborating with the Oceti Sakowin — which means the Seven Council Fires, a collective term for the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples — on a digital archive of storytelling.

He explained how he and tribal communities are transforming the “exploitative apparatus” of digital media, with its focus on monetizing relationships, into a place for Indigenous sovereignty and digital territory.

The goal is to replicate an Indigenous sense of time and space online. The collaborative team is developing a website that features the “slowness of elders;” focuses on relations, not users; allows only a single playback of video (no re-winding); and allows visitors to spend time “without an agenda.” This cyberspace is about “slowness and attentiveness.”

Filed Under: Education

ASLA Advances Ambitious Set of Sustainable Conference Strategies

September 24, 2024 by Jared Green

Minneapolis, Minnesota / Lane Pelovsky. Courtesy of Meet Minneapolis

The organization is focusing on transportation, energy, food, and waste to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and new equity strategies to improve the positive legacy of the conference

ASLA has released its 2023 Sustainable Event Management Report, a comprehensive gap analysis of its 2023 Conference on Landscape Architecture, which brought more than 5,000 attendees to the LEED-certified Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 27-30, 2023.

The assessment details the energy used and greenhouse gas emissions and waste generated. It also outlines the many positive actions ASLA has taken to make access to the conference more equitable, donate EXPO products, reuse materials, and support the communities that host the conference.

Based on these findings, ASLA has advanced new event sustainability strategies that will improve the outcomes of its 2024 Conference, which will be held in Washington, D.C., October 6-9, and its 2025 Conference, which will be held in New Orleans, October 10-13, 2025. These include a communications campaign on the benefits of train travel for attendees and a new sustainability pledge for EXPO exhibitors.

“This year’s assessment taught us a lot about what it will take to achieve our ambitious Climate Action goals,” said ASLA CEO Torey Carter-Coneen. “We will need to continue to work as a collective – with the entire landscape architecture community – to decarbonize our conference. Our commitment to transparency and accountability continues to guide us.”

2023 Assessment

The assessment, which was developed in partnership with Honeycomb Strategies, a sustainability consulting company, includes key findings.

Over four days and per attendee, the conference released 0.68 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is 17 percent higher than the 2022 conference.

This is due to:

  • The energy mix in Minneapolis, Minnesota included more fossil fuels than San Francisco, California, where the 2022 Conference was hosted
  • ASLA collected additional transportation emissions data
  • Updated methodology and calculations were used to align with the Net Zero Carbon Events Initiative. (See 2023 assessment for updated 2022 baseline data).

Due to procurement decisions made by ASLA and sustainability measures adopted by the organization:

  • 100 percent of electricity from the grid used by the conference was generated from off-site solar and wind through renewable energy credits. The credits were then retired.
  • 29,850 pounds of EXPO materials were donated to Habitat for Humanity, which is nearly
  • 40 percent less than in 2022. This means exhibitors are leaving behind lower amounts of booth materials.
  • A waste diversion rate of 71 percent was achieved, which is 4 percent higher than 2022. Recycling increased by 700 percent and composting increased by 165 percent in comparison to 2022.
  • More than $43,000 in positive climate contributions were collected from ASLA members to purchase 1,225 offset credits, a 614 percent increase over 2022.
  • 475 pounds of food was donated to People Serving People.

Explore key findings

To reduce adverse climate and environmental impacts and leave a positive legacy in Minneapolis, ASLA has implemented these strategies for its 2024 Conference at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center:

  • Selected host city with train and public transit access and LEED-Gold Certified Convention Center
  • Created climate change and biodiversity educational tracks at its Conference
  • Implemented a communications strategy to reduce transportation emissions from attendees and exhibitors traveling to and from the conference and in the host city. Preliminary data shows a 1,226 percent increase in train travel and a 24 percent decline in air travel to the 2024 conference in comparison with the 2023 conference (as of September 18, 2024).
  • Implemented a range of measures related to food, energy, water, and waste to reduce impacts.
  • Made a positive carbon contribution by purchasing up to 3,500 tons of emission offsets
  • Enhanced a sustainability pledge for EXPO exhibitors
  • Provided free registrations for invited Washington, D.C.-based climate equity and justice leaders to attend the conference
  • Provided free registrations for invited Washington, D.C.-based young climate leaders to attend the conference

See all conference and business operations commitments and progress to date at the Sustainable ASLA hub.

Positive Climate Contributions

While it pursues its near-term goal of reducing emissions 20 percent by 2024, ASLA has committed to purchasing up to 3,500 tons of carbon dioxide emission offsets from the National Indian Carbon Coalition (NICC).

Fond Du Lac Band Forest Carbon Project, Minnesota / © Stan Tekiela

This partnership will also advance the cultural empowerment and climate equity goals of the ASLA Climate Action Plan, which was released in 2022.

The carbon offsets NICC will provide have been generated in the Tribal Forests of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota. The Fond du Lac Band’s forest carbon project is a natural climate solution that generates carbon credits through Improved Forest Management.

Attendees and exhibitors: Please make a positive climate contribution at the ASLA 2024 Conference during the registration process or via this contribution form.

Next steps

By the end of 2024, ASLA will release a sustainability impact assessment of its ASLA Center on Landscape Architecture, the association’s LEED Platinum and WELL Gold-certified headquarters in Washington, D.C; student-led LABash Conference; and Landscape Architecture Magazine.

ASLA will use its own headquarters assessment to educate its members and partners on how to reduce their own office operational impacts and meet the goals of the ASLA Climate Action Plan.

By the end of 2024, ASLA plans to have a fuller understanding of its climate, environmental, and social impacts across the conference, EXPO, and headquarters operations.

Filed Under: Education

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