This section is intended for the educator and provides background information about Indigenous knowledge and the traditional land practices documented in each of the five films. Please note that the words Native, Indigenous, and Native American are used throughout this lesson and are interchangeable terms.

Over millenia Indigenous communities around the planet have developed traditional ways of knowing through generations of intimate contact with their homelands. These bodies of knowledge express the relationships between living beings and their environment, including the elements of land, fire, water, and air. The following are “a few common threads” that express this relationship^[1] , also known as Native science:

• “Reciprocity and respect define the bond between all members of the land family.”
• “Reverence toward nature plays a critical role in religious ceremonies, hunting rituals, arts and crafts, agricultural techniques, and other day to day activities.”  
• “One’s relationship to the land is shaped by something other than economic profit.” 
• “Each generation has a responsibility to leave a healthy world to future generations.”

Indigenous peoples and communities hold a reciprocal relationship with their ancestral lands. For example, some Indigenous peoples refer to their languages as coming from the land, while others describe having a deeply felt spiritual responsibility to care for their ancestral lands. Indigenous peoples have passed on tools and technologies for tending their lands for generations, to ultimately create a mutually beneficial relationship with the natural world and all of its inhabitants. Indigenous knowledge, describes Stephen Augustine (Mi’kmaq elder), is “based on the belief that all things are connected and must be considered within the context of that interrelationship.”^[2] 

The word ecology, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, “is derived from the Greek oikos, the word for home.” She continues, “In some Native languages, the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us.’”

The lands and territories that Indigenous people inhabit today are home to 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.^[3] Native territories are rich with natural resources and are at risk of being appropriated, sold, or pillaged by governments and private companies. Many governments only recognize a small fraction of this land as legally belonging to Indigenous communities, which can contribute to cultural, social, economic, and environmental losses. 

Tewa writer Gregory Cajete describes the importance of creating a strong, nature-centered society for the future. He writes, “Western society must once again become nature-centered, if it is to make the kind of life-serving, ecologically sustainable transformations required in the next decades.”^[4] Or, as Kimmerer writes, “How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again?”^[5]  

1. Cajete, Gregory. “Native Science and Sustaining Indigenous Communities.” Chapter. In Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, edited by Melissa K. Nelson and Daniel Shilling, 15–26. New Directions in Sustainability and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.  [^]

2. Bruchac, M. “Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Knowledge.” In Smith, C. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 3814-3824. New York: Springer, 2014. [^]

3. Kanyinke Sena, “Recognizing Indigenous peoples’ land interests is critical for people and nature.” World Wildlife Fund, October 22, 2020. [^]

4. Cajete, Gregory, Native science: Natural laws of interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000). [^]

5. Kimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass For Young Adults (Minneapolis, MN: Zest Books, 2022). [^]

The following five films are adapted from a feature film called Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective by Costa Boutsikaris and Anna Palmer. Each film documents North America’s original inhabitants and the restoration of traditional land management practices. These practices offer essential ways to foster a harmonious relationship with the natural world, presenting invaluable solutions for the care and future of our planet.

Location: Kykotsmovi, Arizona
Hopi Tribe 
Film length: 11 minutes 

In The Seeds Are Our Children, we meet Hopi farmer, Michael Kotutwa Johnson, Ph.D. who has embarked on a life-long journey to gain recognition for traditional farming techniques. He brings together modern science and Indigenous ways of knowing on the Hopi reservation in the semi-arid environment in Kykotsmovi, Arizona which receives less than ten inches of rain per year on average. 

For thousands of years, the Hopi Tribe has had permanent settlements in their traditional homeland and continues to cultivate resilient agricultural practices adaptable to the changing conditions of the landscape. They developed dry farming methods that are not dependent on irrigation and have “cultivated over forty unique corn varieties that are well-suited to harsh semi-arid environments. These drought resistant varieties are able to produce abundant harvests without external inputs even when rainfall is minimal.”^[6]   

As droughts continue in the southwest, Johnson is dedicated to educating the public about dryland farming and the resilience of Hopi agriculture. His work involves lecturing about dryland farming and breaking down barriers for Indigenous farmers working with the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) of the Native American Agriculture Fund (NAAF).

Dryland farming practices predate Western science and modern farming techniques by thousands of years, offering a sustainable model to address climate change. Johnson explains that his tradition includes the “concept of stewardship versus ownership — not taking more than what the land gives, and working with the land instead of against it.” This is a “partnership with the environment” he explains, an essential relationship that “we need to return to.” Johnson explains, “It’s not the economics of what we’re doing but the culture of stewardship that sustains us. Not just the Hopis — all of us.”^[7]   

6. Hopi. Inhabitants Website. [^]

7. Christopher Kuzdas,”What 2,000 years of traditional Hopi farming in the arid Southwest can teach about resilience.” Environmental Defense Fund, December 20, 2019. [^]

Location: Northern California
Karuk Tribe 
Film Length: 11 minutes

Fire Is Our Relation documents the return of controlled burns, also called prescribed fire, to the landscape by the Karuk Tribe of Northern California. The Karuk, as well as hundreds of tribes across California and around the world, have traditionally used small-scale intentional burns to reduce the risk of dangerous wildfires and to “renew food sources and cultural resources, create habitat for animals, and reduce the risk of larger, more dangerous wildfires.”^[8]  Fire Is Our Relation features numerous voices of the Karuk Tribe, including those of ceremonial leader Leaf Hillman, forester and educator Kathy McCovey, Frank Lake Ph.D. from the U.S. Forest Service, cultural resources technician Vikki Preston, and traditional fishermen and firefighters. They aim to bring “good fire” back to their ancestral lands and exemplify how traditional management practices make landscapes resilient and safe.

Widespread consensus within the fire science community today supports what Indigenous tribes have always known: “Intentionally applied fire, often called prescribed fire, is an essential tool for managing wildfires and ecosystems. While state and federal fire management approaches are shifting to reflect this, and also now allowing native tribes, including the Karuk Tribe, to reintroduce and scale-up prescribed fire use, there’s still a long way to go in dismantling the legacy of fire suppression.”^[9] 

In 1850, “fire suppression was mandated by the very first session of the California Legislature.”^[10] Ceremonial and “cultural uses” of fire were banned in 1911 under the Weeks Act. Over a century of western policies, fire suppression, and increased temperatures has created the dense forests with dry underbrush, and catastrophic wildfire conditions that the state of California is experiencing today.^[11] In July 2022, the McKinney fire became California’s largest wildfire, burning over 60,000 acres, including on Karuk ancestral lands. The fire prompted evacuations of thousands of people, killing four residents and a multitude of fish in the Klamath River. 

The Western Klamath Restoration Partnership Project, in collaboration with the Karuk tribe and the U.S. Forest Service, aims to integrate traditional ecological knowledge into forest management policies in order to create resilient landscapes and fire adapted communities, and to encourage safe and effective wildfire response.^[12] Prescribed burns in the forest understory clear out old leaves and brush while the smoke filtering up into the canopy helps suppress harmful insects, both of which are essential to maintaining tree and plant health. Prescribed burns help inhibit the spread of invasive species and encourage the growth of plants that provide renewable food sources and medicinal and cultural resources. 

8. Susie Cagle, “‘Fire is Medicine:’ The Tribes burning California Forests to Save Them.” The Guardian, November 21, 2019. [^]

9. Greta Moran, “Why California's Wildfires are Getting Worse.” Teen Vogue, August 25, 2020. [^]

10. Kari Norgaard, "Colonization, Fire Suppression, and Indigenous Resurgence in the Face of Climate Change.” YES! Magazine, October 22, 2019. [^]

11. US Forest Service, “Western Klamath Restoration Partnership Project.” [^]

12. Ibid. [^]

Location: Northern Montana
Blackfeet Nation
Film Length: 10 minutes 

The short film, They Take Care of Us, documents how the Blackfeet Nation of Northern Montana are reintroducing the buffalo back to their landscape after 125 years of absence.^[13] The return of the buffalo is healing and strengthening the land, the people, and the cultural, spiritual, and ecological connections between them. 

In the early 1700s, the Great Plains of North America once included between 20 to 30 million buffalo.^[14] A keystone species, the North American buffalo played a critical role in both the maintenance of the health of the prairies and the support of the spiritual and cultural lives of the Native people who depended upon them for survival. By the mid-1800s they had been slaughtered to near extinction by settlers and the U.S. government for sport and profit to make way for cattle and to deprive the Native peoples of a vital cultural resource.^[15] By the turn of the century, there were as few as 300 free-roaming plains buffalo remaining in the United States.^[16]  

Due to industrial farming and the absence of free-roaming herds of buffalo, the North American tallgrass prairie shrunk from “the size of Texas to little bigger than Delaware, turning it into one of the most endangered landscapes in the world.”^[17] Several initiatives have been created to help fulfill the important work of restoring the buffalo to the landscape. In 1991 the Intertribal Buffalo Council—a collection of 69 federally recognized tribes from 19 different states—was established to “restore buffalo to Indian Country in order to preserve our historical, cultural, traditional, and spiritual relationship for future generations.” To reestablish healthy buffalo populations on Tribal lands is to reestablish hope for Indian people, “…returning the buffalo to Tribal lands will help heal the land, the animal, and the spirit of the Indian people.”^[18] 

Linnii is the Blackfeet word for buffalo. In 2009, the Linnii Initiative was created by leaders of the following four tribes that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy: Blackfeet Nation, Kainai Nation, Piikani Nation, and Siksika Nation. The goal is to “conserve traditional lands, protect Blackfeet culture, and create a home for the buffalo to return to.”^[19]  

13. Blackfeet. Inhabitants Website. [^]

14. Michelle Nijhuis, “The Bison and the Blackfeet.” Sierra Magazine, June 14, 2021. [^]

15. Matthew Moran, “Bison are Back, and That Benefits Many other Species on the Great Plains.” The Conversation, updated January 24, 2019. [^]

16. Michelle Nijhuis, “The Bison and the Blackfeet.” [^]

17. Ibid. [^]

18. Intertribal Buffalo Council. [^]

19. Iinnii Buffalo Spirit Center, “Blackfeet Buffalo Program.” [^]

Location: Northern Wisconsin
Menominee Tribe 
Film Length: 11 minutes

In The Trees Will Last Forever, we meet community members of the Menominee Tribe in Northern Wisconsin who are forest keepers of ancestral lands that once spanned over 14.5 million acres. The Menominee Tribe models sustainable regenerative forest management. 

Between 1817 and 1856, 15 million acres shrunk to 234,000 due to land secession.^[20]   Today, in 2023, almost all of these acres are managed by the Menominee Tribe, “...ninety-five percent of the Menominee Reservation is so densely forested that the borders can easily be recognized from Satellite images of Northeast Wisconsin and NASA uses the sharp west border to refocus their satellites. The cultural strength demonstrated by the Menominees for generations has kept most of their forest intact.”^[21]   In 1908 the Menominee Tribal Enterprises (MTE), a sawmill owned and operated by the Tribe, was established to create employment opportunities for the Menominee people.^[22]   They recognized the importance of supporting a healthy forest and local ecosystem for the future of their Tribe. According to the MTE, “The Menominee saw their future depending on the forest and began a strategy of sustained yield management that steered clear of forest exploitation, while preserving the Tribe’s way of life. In order to survive off of this limited land base, the Tribe realized the need to harvest timber in a manner that perpetuates the forest resources for future generations. The basic concept was to harvest timber at a pace where the amount harvested never surpasses the forest’s natural capacity to replace it.”^[23]  

20. The Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. [^]

21. Menominee. Inhabitants Website. [^]

22. Ibid. [^]

23. Menominee Tribal Enterprises. [^]

Location: Hawaii
Native Hawaiian
Film Length: 11 minutes

The Island Is a Canoe documents the revitalization of traditional Hawaiian agroforests, which are resilient to climate change, providing food security for the island. For a century, mass-scale sugarcane and pineapple mono-culture farming methods were imposed upon Hawaiiians by the western world, leading to the environmental degradation of the island. 

This story highlights the voice of Native Hawaiian practitioner Reverend Kalani Souza,  a cross-cultural facilitator focusing on food sovereignty and working to build community resilience to climate change. The founder of the Olohana Foundation, Souza’s work focuses on the use of traditional Native Hawaiian edible food forests as a post-disaster recovery strategy and helps communities utilize ancient Native Hawaiian principles to build resilience in the face of climate change.^[24]  

Hawaii and other islands in this region of the Pacific are impacted by the increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters due to global warming. The rural communities of Hawaii are highly vulnerable to the effects of these natural disasters because of their reliance on imports for up to 90 percent of their food and energy.^[25] The annexation of Hawaii by the United States in 1898 followed by the overthrow of the last Hawaiian ruler, Queen Lili’uokalani, undermined Native Hawaii’s agricultural capacities. Food forests were clear cut to make way for huge plantations of monocrops such as sugarcane and pineapple. Today, plantation monocropping is decreasing and small-scale diversified farming is on the rise. According to Kamuela Eno, director of the Office of Indigenous Innovation at the University of Hawaii, the community is now “primed to embrace local farming, and further, Native Hawaiian practices that prospered on these lands many years ago.”^[26] 

24. Olohana Foundation. [^]

25. Hawaii. Inhabitants Website. [^]

26. Yoohyun Jung, “Hawaii Has a Lot of Agricultural Land. Very Little of It Is Used for Growing Food.” Honolulu Civil Beat, February 14, 2021. [^]