5 Connections: With the Land
“It was the bees that showed me how to move between different flowers-to drink the nectar and gather pollen from both. It is this dance of cross-pollination that can produce a new species of knowledge, a new way of being in the world. After all, there aren’t two worlds, there is just this one good green earth.”
-Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 47 [1]
Brief Overview
Incorporating Indigenous land-based learning and Etuaptmumk into your nature pedagogy and approach to nature/outdoor play requires investment, action, and continued embodied learning. While you can begin to think about and understand these approaches inside the classroom, integrating them into your way of being and understanding the world, your role in it, and by extension, your role with children as practitioners, requires being present with this learning in the context of relationship with the land and Indigenous knowledge holders. This is the focus of this week.
Take some time to listen closely to the words of local Indigenous knowledge holders and move with this knowledge outdoors with nature. Go to a natural setting that you feel connected in and whether you move through the space or sit still with intention in it, pay attention to how you relate to what is happening around you.
What do you notice? Do you notice things differently? What questions come to you?
Start to think about a tangible action you can take to learn from local Indigenous knowledge holders in your community and build these relationships.
Additional Resources
Short Film: Waseteg
Waseteg a short, animated film by Phyllis Grant and Alanis Obomsawin that tells the story of a young Mi’kmaw girl whose name means “the light from the dawn” who goes looking for healing in the stories of her people.
Mi’kmaw Elders Stories
The website for The Mi’kmawey Debert Cultural Centre has gathered a collection of stories from Mi’kmaw Elders.
Elder Albert Marshall – Reconciliation with the Earth
Watch this video to learn more with Elder Albert Marshall and to gain a deeper understanding of what brought him to Etuaptmumk and what guides him as a human on this earth.
- Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions. ↵
