00:00:00.740Hello, and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayan Mayan. Today I'm speaking with Tusha Yakoleva.
00:00:10.000A similar question is, what memories do we need to cherish for the sake of a just and reciprocal future?
00:00:18.880And it's really hard for me to imagine that the memories of categorizing the modern human world into binaries of good and bad,
00:00:25.800especially during a time of great biodiversity loss, will hold much wisdom for generations
00:00:32.060yet to come. Tusha Yakoleva is an educator, gatherer, and ethnobotanist whose work revolves
00:00:40.380around generating strong, respectful relationships between plants and people. Tusha's botanical
00:00:47.060knowledge is rooted in rural and urban lands within northern temperate forests across two
00:00:51.920continents. The foundations of her lifelong foraging practices come from her family and first
00:00:57.020home, the Volga River Watershed in Russia, where tending to uncultivated plants and mushrooms for
00:01:03.340food and medicine is its common practice. Tush's efforts in growing reciprocity between land and
00:01:09.980people have included running a wild food program, learning the gifts of weeds, working with food
00:01:15.400sovereignty groups, keeping seeds, growing perennials, organizing community gardening and
00:01:20.200forestry and sharing the stories of plants. Tusha is the author of Edible Weeds on Farms,
00:01:25.880Northeast Farmer's Guide to Self-Growing Vegetables, a resource for wild edible plants
00:01:30.680on cultivated soils. Tusha is currently completing graduate work at SUNY College of Environmental
00:01:36.280Science and Forestry on Onaga Nation homelands. Her research is in support of cross-cultural
00:01:42.360partnerships for biocultural restoration and takes place under the guidance of the Center
00:01:47.120for Native peoples and the environment. Tusha spent 15-plus years in the Hudson River watershed
00:01:53.440and presently lives in Ute ancestral homelands near the headwaters of the Rio Grande,
00:01:59.380where she is meeting many spiky plants and missing sphagnum bogs.
00:02:06.180Well, Tusha, thank you so much for joining us today for one of my favorite topics,
00:02:13.300which we are about to explore uh well many topics so yeah thanks for joining us on this
00:02:20.040beautiful spring morning thank you so much ayanna it's good to be with you oh there is so much um
00:02:28.400in your research that i felt connected with and i want to read one of your quotes from your book
00:02:37.800edible weeds on farms northeast farmer's guide to self-growing vegetables and it's quote weeds
00:02:44.440love disturbance and most humans love to disturb and thus humans and weeds share a long intertwined
00:02:51.400history for anyone who has ever turned the soil weeds are our ancestry and our inheritance end
00:02:59.160And I really am feeling connected to your words, especially as the weeds in my garden are just reaching for the sky, taking over everywhere they can.
00:03:14.880And so many of my neighbors are attempting to really have some neat and tidy gardens where mine looks pretty wild.
00:03:23.860so i just want to dive into this topic of this intertwined history of humans and weeds and
00:03:33.800explore some of these notions together sure i would love to um
00:03:39.900well i think first we we need to define our terms um you know weeds is a is a very
00:03:50.040well-known word but it's its definition is a little bit slippery um there are there are no
00:03:56.820weeds in botany um a weed is really in the eye of the weeder and it's it's a significant group
00:04:04.300of plants but it's really not contained within with any sort of specific botanical definition
00:04:09.480sort of an ephemeral concept defined according to the relationship between
00:04:14.900a person and a plant in a given time and place so it's forever subject to to context and nuance
00:04:23.340that being said of course the term does have a strong reputation um i think it's in my mind
00:04:31.440it's associated with two um two general characteristics one is that it's it's refers to
00:04:39.000plants who are often vilified and who are unwanted in in a lot of circles and of course the the word
00:04:50.600itself has come to be applied beyond plants as well to mean undesirable or useless and
00:05:00.400it also refers to an ecological niche the majority of plants who are considered weeds
00:05:07.340not all, are early succession species and who specifically thrive in disturbance in those
00:05:13.960upturned soils. So there are plants who live near people since we move soils so frequently
00:05:23.440and in that perpetually reset the successional clock back to an ideal habitat for where the
00:05:32.060so-called weeds to germinate in. And I wanted to spend a little time sort of setting a foundation
00:05:40.100for our relationship through time, through the lens of agriculture. And of course, there are
00:05:46.480many other ways to tell this story. But in relation to agriculture, that's really one of
00:05:53.880the birthplaces of so-called weeds. And that's not to say that plants who thrive in bare mineral
00:06:00.480soils didn't exist before fields were cultivated but they certainly didn't have as much perfect
00:06:07.900habitat to live on and they were less likely to get in the way of human activities I think
00:06:13.600there's um there's archaeological evidence that shows that wild plants co-evolved very rapidly
00:06:22.860alongside planted crops in the early days of farming and many millennia later to this day
00:06:31.880agriculture and weeds are still inextricably linked in this kind of co-evolutionary dance
00:06:38.220but of course today there's there's an accompanying robust industry
00:06:45.460and sort of associated scientific literature that offers solutions to the so-called
00:06:53.420problem of weeds. Yet in my research, I see, I rarely hear the question of whether
00:07:01.040these plants belong in disturbed soils. So growing season after growing season through
00:07:10.700activities such as farming and then beyond agriculture other soil disturbance events
00:07:15.640like building and mining cutting forests many people inadvertently sow more and more weeds
00:07:24.700but coming back to agriculture you know somewhere along this joint history the pressures of
00:07:32.800capital accumulation and affinity for planting in straight lines allowed many of us to forget
00:07:39.940the gifts of wild plants and then from there coaxing medicine or nutrition and maintaining
00:07:49.740healthy soils came to be seen as a jurisdiction of precise science with no space for unruly
00:07:57.860spontaneous ways of wild plants and in fact they came to be seen as competing against the
00:08:05.320the very gifts that they have provided for so long to people.
00:08:11.000You know, I think those dominant extractive narratives,
00:08:13.380they continue to place cultivated and wild plants into dichotomy.
00:08:22.340And any positive attributes of weeds in disturbed spaces are often silenced
00:08:28.220in lieu of the difficulties that they present to farmers or builders
00:09:01.260the plants that we have come to know as vegetables today are the product of
00:09:09.680so-called weeds being selected and tended by by generations of gardeners
00:09:14.260they're essentially a product of ethnobotany of people and plants stepping into long-term
00:09:22.700committed relationships long-term committed relationships of spectacular patience and
00:09:29.240spectacular effort by people with long-rooted ties to place who select wild plants for traits
00:09:39.360that provide generously to human communities. And this is not work that's frozen in the past.
00:09:46.280It's ongoing, it's intergenerational, and it's been undertaken largely, primarily, I'd say,
00:09:53.340by indigenous communities across the planet.
00:09:57.180So today's weeds might be the crops of tomorrow
00:10:01.180and today's crops were the weeds of yesterday.
00:10:07.700And I think one important point in this genetic collaboration
00:10:12.580is also just that the present day wild plants continue
00:10:17.900to support agriculture by carrying beneficial genetic traits
00:10:22.580like dense nutrition or pest resistance or particular drought resistance or you know
00:10:30.480particular sort of ability to withstand climactic stressors. And then yeah I also want to say just
00:10:38.580about the the cultural collaborations between weedy plants and people. This too I see as
00:10:46.120an immemorial practice. People have only ever relied on plants for pretty much all of our needs.
00:10:55.680We're really nothing without plants. And those urgent or frequent needs are often met by plants
00:11:02.500that are most readily and abundantly accessible. And so many such essential plants are now best
00:11:10.320known as weeds they're the plants who have traveled around the world and the pockets of0.94
00:11:17.580of emigrants are carried with you know with intention as precious holders of nourishment
00:11:24.120and healing and yeah and last thing i want to say is you know plants have
00:11:33.800have always moved around the planet and as people began moving at greater distances at
00:11:41.520greater speeds the plants followed um so people became very impactful seed dispersers
00:11:50.640um which in the history of turtle island that's that's especially true for settlers as
00:11:57.940you sort of quoted um my work in the beginning i i see i see um newcomers to to turtle island
00:12:09.800as contemporaries with weeds and our lives and histories as being in great synchronicity
00:12:15.740yeah there's so much in that response that i'm
00:12:22.020thinking of which which part to dive deeper into
00:12:28.020it's interesting because i feel that especially industrial agriculture
00:12:36.100works so hard to control and to grow what may not even want to be grown on the land that they are
00:12:47.200attempting to. Yet weeds grow so abundantly. I'm thinking of dandelion, for instance.
00:12:56.100Dandelion is a green that is edible, it's medicinal, and it wants to grow. It really
00:13:04.600wants to spread. It wants to be prolific. Yet, instead of us allowing the dandelions to nurture
00:13:13.420and nourish us, we poison the dandelions and then force some cultivated green
00:13:20.680to grow in places that they're not trying to grow. And I guess I want to speak to this resistance
00:13:27.960and the resistance we have as a dominant culture to plants and what it would look like for our
00:13:39.520food system if we actually allowed for more space for the plants to choose how not how much they
00:13:48.880want to give us exactly. Cause I know that we can't just be completely free in our growing
00:13:58.420methods, but I just think that there's something here, the struggle and the fight and not actually
00:14:05.340seeing what does want to give abundance. And so I'm wondering if there's anything in that,
00:14:12.780that pulls on you? Yeah, there's a lot there. Well, I think maybe picking up the thread from
00:14:22.980dandelions, no, I think they are such a good example of this sort of our dominant culture's
00:14:30.440amnesia about the gifts of these spontaneous plants. They proliferated on Turtle Island after
00:14:36.980European settlers planted them near their homesteads for food and for medicine. And then
00:14:42.560And it wasn't until about a century ago that their reputation soured, and they were no longer welcomed in front of people's homes, replaced by lawns.
00:14:54.980So I think that says a lot about just kind of forgetting our place in the circle of beings.
00:15:00.820None of us lead lives independent of other creatures with whom we share home.
00:15:09.540We're not exempt from interdependence.
00:15:12.560yeah i don't know in my mind there's a sort of circle of beings as a synonym for
00:15:19.620the wild basically which is which is everything that is all around us always including ourselves
00:15:26.180and this everything but of course encompasses all the beings whose lives fulfill our needs
00:15:33.900for survival weedy plants are not excluded so i think the placement of weeds and sort of
00:15:40.520in contrast with um with the wild or even with human desire this is part of this great
00:15:47.720othering that so many guests on on for the wild have have spoken to so so eloquently
00:15:53.300but of course we are i don't know we're the same the wild is us and we're the wild and thus weeds
00:16:00.620are kin and i think there's a prevailing myth of this self-made person um but how can how can
00:16:08.240anyone who can a person whose body runs on plants and water be self-made i think the dominant
00:16:15.500culture praises extractive ways of being that encourage us to to categorize the world into
00:16:21.220useful and useless and perpetually take action to to increase the former and and erase the latter
00:16:28.880and i see this as a fearful way of living that also just lends to forgetting that the plants
00:16:37.400have made our bodies and that our lives depend on other creatures I feel like I've gone off on
00:16:43.660a bit of a tangent tangents are good okay yeah no I I appreciate being able to run free with
00:16:53.540our minds and I think something else that I was getting at is this judo-christian origin story
00:17:00.700which is dominion over the land and we see this informing the dominant invasive species
00:17:07.840management strategies within industrial western societies and so i want to explore what another
00:17:15.340story might be a story that we tell ourselves around our relationship with spontaneous plants
00:17:23.000and what management practices can emerge from that restoring yeah thank you for that
00:17:30.500question i mean first of all i think stories are therefore remembering an essential purpose
00:17:37.120of of storytelling is to carry memories and to share it through time so maybe another way to ask
00:17:44.640a similar question is what memories do we need to to cherish for the sake of a of a just
00:17:50.880reciprocal future and it's it's really hard for me to imagine that the memories of categorizing
00:17:57.680the more than human world into binaries of good and bad, especially during a time of great
00:18:03.380biodiversity loss, will hold much wisdom for generations yet to come. So things to be specific
00:18:10.900to plants of weedy proclivities, we can start by telling stories that aim to see them as beings in
00:18:18.040their own right, rather than beings in opposition to human desire. It's abundantly clear to me that
00:18:25.620whatever new stories we tell ourselves or old ones that we remember have to center reciprocal
00:18:32.600livelihoods rather than a hierarchy of needs with humans placed at the top. At least these are the
00:18:40.520stories we're in dire need of telling ourselves if humanity is to have any hope of a future which
00:18:45.240includes us and and i do see the story of dominion fully expressed in in the sort of
00:18:56.100management policies of weedy or invasive species within within westernized societies and
00:19:03.260it's interesting this narrative around the management makes makes these plants and animals
00:19:09.660sound like such great threats that one could assume that they only occur within the political
00:19:16.460boundaries of the management agency making policies. Yet, of course, these beings do not
00:19:23.140adhere to political borders. And moreover, they have diverse, rich relationships with other beings
00:19:32.080that they're in community with. There are plenty of humans and more than humans who have stepped
00:19:36.460interrelationship of of care of mutual care with these vilified plants they're endless example
00:19:44.540pollinators who turn to japanese knotweed for late season nectar basket makers who turn to kudzu
00:19:53.000for their strong flexible fibers water who is supported by phragmites and phytoremediation
00:20:05.600you know alongside all this i think that yes there's great grief and heartbreak in the loss
00:20:12.880of coval ecosystems and and there's great work happening in preventing further such loss
00:20:18.760but there are also so many habitats that are changed to a point that it's where it's not
00:20:24.500really an option to return to previous species composition at least not without extremely
00:20:30.600violent interventions that might have no end so i think in habitats like that that are kind of
00:20:37.660altered beyond recognition to a new state we need to make time and space to grieve the loss of of
00:20:47.360those who have left and then and then learn to celebrate those for here and in this particular
00:20:53.980moment in time with us so i think one place to look for better stories is to listen to people
00:21:00.500who have found ways to relate to the weedy plants in question in ways that are culturally
00:21:08.120and ecologically supportive. All plants are embedded in cultures of people and invasive
00:21:14.860species of weeds are no exception. They're not without culture or stories. They have them within
00:21:21.380the places that they originate from. And many of them have new stories in places that have
00:21:27.840adopted them. So I think by listening to people who are in deep lived relationship with these
00:21:34.940plants or have ancestral knowledge of them from their first range, we can begin to see
00:21:42.460to build a bridge of understanding, I guess, the roles such plants may take on when they move
00:21:50.580into a new place, into a novel range. And I also think that's the most kind of minimum level of
00:21:57.780respect that we can extend to hear the plant stories before determining that they don't belong
00:22:04.740need to be eradicated um and i think we could also tell ourselves better stories just as
00:22:12.760animals whose mere existence impact plants and there's a story that's i feel like it's so often
00:22:20.620told right now it's really it's it's shouted in desperate urgency in this time of
00:22:26.240um of great loss of biodiversity and loss of known ecosystems and familiar climates which is that
00:22:34.740people all people are negative forces in the natural world with the environment on one side
00:22:42.600and humans on the other this idea i think bumps up against another pervasive ideas that humans are
00:22:51.020the worst invasive species of them all, that we are to stay as still as we can and leave all
00:22:58.920more than human beings alone if we want to have any hope of supporting their livelihoods.
00:23:05.300I think the philosophy of our story of leave no trace, which instructs people to minimize their
00:23:12.500impact on the environment as a form of ecological care, has some intersections with this stance
00:23:20.900but you know i think no matter what people do leave traces everywhere we go because
00:23:28.260we are interdependent members within within every ecosystem we place our bodies into we're
00:23:35.780part of the circle of kinship whether we know it whether we like it or not but there are
00:23:43.000different traces that one can leave and that's something we do have a choice in
00:23:46.580so right relation stories could start with the recognition of of traces people leave
00:23:52.440on the land that support other beings in in mutual thriving you know everywhere that we are
00:23:59.840is someone's garden sometimes it's it's a human's garden sometimes more than um so maybe
00:24:08.280our new stories can begin by asking the question is my presence supporting this garden in regenerating
00:24:18.520biocultural diverse thriving like every land has its people and and anyone currently walking on
00:24:28.320that land has the responsibility to to honor the rich cultural and ecological legacies of place
00:24:35.140and also to give back to that land and to its plants and to their people
00:24:41.280and at minimum tell stories that don't continue to interrupt traditional stewardship pathways.
00:25:53.500And this topic or this feeling that it's very misanthropic feeling that humans, the best thing humans can do is to stay away from the land, stay away from nature, because if we come close to our more than human kin, we will consume, extract, destroy, disturb negatively, impact negatively.
00:26:18.580and i know for a long time i absolutely felt that to be the truth and even though i think in some
00:26:29.920cases it is true it's also impossible for us as humans to be alive and to not
00:26:37.600have impact on this earth and to not consume
00:26:41.880it's an impossible situation we find ourselves in and so i'm wondering what nuances can we find
00:26:52.580with our relationship with the earth knowing that we're kind of between a rock and a hard place
00:26:59.540where we can't be separate we're not separate and yet so many of the practices we've been
00:27:07.580taught and conditioned have been really detrimental. I don't think that there's a
00:27:15.980one-size-fits-all solution. I think that there's so many of us humans and land in different places
00:27:24.820need different things. I think probably there's some practices that can overlap, but I don't
00:27:34.020want to ask you well what can we all do everywhere because that's just too i mean maybe we could have
00:27:40.840some general thoughts on that but um in this impossible time what does right relationship
00:27:52.760look like with the land or what are some practices or examples you have that have really stuck with
00:27:59.420you? Well, I think one teaching that I turn to over and over again is the sort of Indigenous
00:28:09.620Protocol of the Honorable Harvest, which I know you're well familiar with as well. I first learned
00:28:16.900of this protocol through the words of my mentor, Dr. Robin Welkimer. She frames these teachings
00:28:22.900as a covenant of reciprocity between humans and the land. And actually, I'd like to read a
00:28:29.940quick quote by her that I think is very helpful in this discussion. The honorable harvest is a
00:28:35.280covenant of reciprocity between humans and the land. This simple list may seem like a quaint
00:28:40.520prescription of how to pick berries, but it is the root of a sophisticated ethical protocol that
00:28:47.400could guide us in a time when unbridled exploitation threatens the life that surrounds us.
00:28:51.920western economies institutions and meshes in all profoundly in a profoundly dishonorable harvest
00:28:58.780and collectively by assent or by inaction we have chosen the policies we live by
00:29:03.080we can choose again and what i hear in these teachings is a call to remember that
00:29:09.420we live interdependently and the only choice within our control is how we engage with our
00:29:16.520interspecies kin we depend on other than human relatives and as with all families there may be
00:29:23.880some relatives we like more than others but picking and choosing who is relative and who
00:29:28.420is not is only going to lead to more suffering and despair so i guess coming back to to sort of
00:29:36.460weedy relations and engagement with with land um i think a good question to ask in making these
00:29:45.060decisions of why are certain plants and animals suddenly considered unrelated or irrelevant or
00:29:50.320suited for erasure out of kinship including us and you know this these teachings apply to every
00:30:02.180exchange between people and the earth and i think it can be really challenging even with the purest
00:30:10.560intentions of extending reciprocity and respect to all beings to consistently maintain an
00:30:16.860honorable approach maintain an honorable approach with our interactions with earth when
00:30:22.000the loudest teachings of mainstream society praise extraction and supremacy of humans over
00:30:31.140other creatures this is by no means an answer to your question in fact in some ways it's the very
00:30:38.520opposite but but to be honest one thing that helps me continue to face these challenges put
00:30:43.840up by extractive dishonorable economies is to continually remind myself that there is
00:30:49.460power and wisdom in in what we as a species do not know and again coming back to weedy beings
00:30:59.060you know who who are we to fully know the lives of these so-called invasive plants do we know
00:31:07.420day reasons for making home in unfamiliar soils or what gifts and responsibilities they carry
00:31:13.100so i think i don't know starting our our stories and our engagements with the land with
00:31:18.780with this teaching is is is a really strong place to come from it's it's an invitation to see the
00:31:27.220world as a gift and then ask what principles we can apply in a specific place specific time
00:31:37.320to ensure that that the gift continues yeah and i guess to again to just bring things back to
00:31:44.120to weeds um since this is one of our um mutual interests focuses today i think
00:31:52.560accepting this invitation is sort of stepping into a thoughtful or the invitation is to step
00:32:02.160them to a thoughtful respectful relationship and so when we learn the ecological roles of weeds
00:32:09.420and find their nutritional medicinal even economic gifts they immediately become
00:32:18.140not weeds as weeds are unwanted so it becomes the word just becomes a
00:32:24.600anachronism of a time before we learn to live in reciprocity with plants
00:32:29.040which i guess i yeah just offer that as kind of an example of
00:32:38.000how one can can begin considering um making just yeah engaging with the place
00:32:49.040mm-hmm yeah it's a really important and tough practice I think in our time
00:32:59.780I think this word honorable is challenging to truly understand if it is honorable or if it's
00:33:12.900what we want to be honorable, I find. I think so many of us, well, honestly, I think most of us
00:33:21.700really want to be in right relationship with each other and the earth. And we don't want to be the
00:33:29.240bad guys. We don't want to be implicated and complicit in the damage being done to our human
00:33:37.460and more than human communities. And I think a lot about who gets to decide
00:33:45.160what the honorable harvest is or what is an honorable harvest. I've been working in Alaska
00:33:53.460for the past few months on helping this community stop this massive mining project and old growth
00:33:59.880logging. And I got into a really deep discussion with a many deep discussions with some local
00:34:08.240loggers here. And I live in a little cabin and as much as I am so fervently against logging
00:34:17.680and have been for a really long time, they're like, well, where does this wood come from
00:34:23.340that built your house? Where does the wood come from that heats your home and your wood stove?
00:34:29.880and and then i thought back to living in northern california and all the times
00:34:36.540my myself and my really ecologically wonderful friends activists would go to home depot
00:34:44.640because they needed to build something and they'd get some two by fours
00:34:48.100and it's really hard because for those of us who want to protect the forest
00:34:54.420but who still use wood, whether directly or indirectly, I think it becomes more complicated
00:35:02.160what an honorable harvest is. And now we could say small scale forest management is more honorable
00:35:15.100because maybe it's local and it's taking from smaller areas, but maybe those areas are really
00:35:23.500ecologically important and the sacrifice zones in Oregon and Washington that are
00:35:29.860really damaged at this point, but still growing trees. Maybe that's in a sense more honorable
00:35:37.820because it's not taking from places that are ecologically still intact. And so I'm really
00:35:43.140not saying either of these are the way I'm sitting in the complexity. I'm sitting in the trouble of
00:35:48.380this and really questioning how and what is an honorable harvest you know in this case of trees
00:35:56.600in a time where we've lost so much but in a time where we're still using and I'm not sure
00:36:02.840if even those of us who are forest offenders are really not using wood
00:36:09.800and you know I'm raising my hand as one of them. I'm sitting in the trouble right there with you
00:36:18.380yeah i'm just wondering if you could speak more to the honorable harvest and
00:36:25.080who do you think gets to make the judgment on
00:36:33.000the honorable harvest like who is it something inside of us because we've built
00:36:39.940time we've built a relationship with deep time with the land is it
00:36:46.000is it somebody outside of us like have you explored this with your colleagues
00:36:54.020or just anything that's even coming to you in this moment
00:36:57.660yeah i i mean it's such an important complex question i the first answer that comes to my
00:37:07.440mind is it it should be the people whose whose homes these uh honorable harvest decisions are
00:37:15.100are being made in. But of course, the world and the communities within it are too complicated
00:37:25.720to be able to answer that question in such a way. And yeah, I don't know, it makes me
00:37:36.460think of the concept of biocultural restoration that that my colleagues and I invoke a lot and
00:37:45.580we define it as the the practice of restoring not just ecosystems but the human and cultural
00:37:53.400relationships to place so that cultures are strengthened and revitalized alongside the
00:37:58.760lands with which they're inextricably linked and and of course it's a you know it's a it's a helpful
00:38:05.780and beautiful call for restoring relationships to a place,
00:38:10.140usually a place that one considers home.
00:38:16.180And I think so often that place might have been stolen from other people
00:38:28.740and their ways of being and more than human beings who have called it home
00:38:33.160for long enough to co-evolve with one another.
00:38:35.780and a whole collective memory of both climactic shifts and just understanding of how to
00:38:46.740how to live in balance with one another and how to rely on one another for mutual care
00:38:52.740but kind of no matter how much suffering and greed that that land has seen it it remains a home
00:39:04.320for those who live there and some stories remain thankfully um so i think all we can
00:39:12.000do is kind of regrow our right relationship with with a place um
00:39:20.620and biocultural restoration i think it takes many forms but it's but it's always about restoring
00:39:25.540that relationship between land and its people and rebuilding good relationships between people
00:39:31.140so yeah i don't know i think it's just i invoke that term because it feels
00:39:44.420like a cultural way of interacting with with homeland that's incredibly different than
00:39:51.940kind of prescribing a particular sustainable protocol or returning the land to sort of a
00:40:02.000previous version that's frozen in the time which has passed. And yeah, it's a call to
00:40:11.900kind of move with curiosity and openness and be a student of land.
00:41:19.000So many of the answers or solutions, which I don't even like those words because I don't
00:41:40.280think that they're real anymore but where we can get to is just
00:41:47.240more presence and maybe these ideas of you know how to be better stewards and better lovers and
00:42:00.920better relatives of this earth of the lands that we find ourselves on is maybe presence is
00:42:09.680the most honorable thing we can give at this time. Moving from a place of deep curiosity and
00:42:20.880slowness, even though I know it feels so intense to want to change, to want to repair,
00:42:30.280but I find even in my personal relationships with loved ones, to repair takes time.
00:42:39.680And sometimes I want to rush the repair stage and I just want to be like, can't we just get over this already? But, you know, that's usually not what people need.
00:42:53.620and I also notice in my personal relationships to repair takes space it's like it takes a lot
00:43:01.340of presence and time and space and I need to really give that person a chunk of time that
00:43:08.720is unfettered by distraction and I really like thinking about how being in healthy personal
00:43:18.860relationships is really similar to being for me in healthy relationship with the land
00:43:24.100and if I treat the land like a lover then
00:43:31.280how I walk and how I harvest and how I tend and how I think about the longevity of what is to come
00:43:42.480really shifts so I think I find solace in that and yeah there's so much to say but I almost want
00:43:53.220to go back to the weeds because it helps me get out of the like existential esoteric
00:43:59.040wormholes vortexes that just bring me to like a really airy place but
00:44:04.360spring is definitely here and yeah i you know going outside i'm finding
00:44:13.700yarrow and like i mentioned dandelion and horsetail and um gosh what else right now
00:44:23.100lovage and and it's amazing to be able to go to so many places of the world and still see
00:44:31.280these really powerful medicinal allies that will just grow in so many places like they really
00:44:41.380they just amaze me how fecund and expansive they are and yeah i'd like to talk a little bit about
00:44:54.220how these plants find themselves all across the world in so many different ecosystems
00:45:00.680and maybe a second part to that question i think it might be fun if you shared some of
00:45:07.380your practices with these weeds how you cherish them how you invite them into your life and
00:45:15.320maybe inspire some of us to not overlook them so easily
00:45:19.720well i feel like i want to speak to the sort of the the gifts that these plants offer
00:45:28.340but i'm wondering if you could repeat the first part of your question that's the part i'm
00:45:33.200struggling with that about how they how they move through the world well just thinking about how
00:45:41.640you can find dandelions in alaska in los angeles in berlin like they're they are just prolific
00:45:52.400so just considering how powerful these plants are that they
00:45:56.880they find themselves i don't want to say everywhere which is kind of good i guess but
00:46:04.440but a lot of places let me talk a little or start a little bit broadly um kind of thinking about
00:46:13.260if we're to think about we beings as one giant plant community um then
00:46:19.920i think you could say that their society is built on their inexhaustible willingness to set roots
00:46:26.940in areas that other plants have been forced to vacate often by by human occupation or
00:46:35.000other forces like floods and volcanoes and the disturbance you know can turn
00:46:41.900place into a state that's nearly unrecognizable to the previous inhabitants
00:46:46.860and then the weeds see an opportunity to move into this newly vacant zone and quickly make
00:46:55.080themselves comfortable in in rubble which is which is one of their superpowers they are
00:47:01.680they are as you mentioned you know they're um they travel around they're resilient and adaptable to
00:47:09.620to so so many circumstances and they raise large families and are hands-off parents they
00:47:19.440they allow their children to to grow pretty independently and i think the one important
00:47:26.300lesson that they they make sure to pass on to the next generation is is to be adaptable
00:47:33.220to sort of practice seeing relationship
00:47:37.400where others might only see desolation.
00:47:56.200around opportunity to step into a relation
00:48:00.900wherever they are, whether it's with soil, new animals, new moisture regimes,
00:48:06.620even pollinators, again, where other plant societies might only be able to see destruction.
00:48:14.040So I think the beauty in their approach that maybe has a lesson or some wisdom
00:48:20.480that can be applied elsewhere is that the weeds, they ameliorate the soil
00:48:26.960in places where where this world might be very very sick and and then slowly kind of compose
00:48:33.200that destruction and desolation into habitats that are suited for less weedy plant beings
00:48:39.780i would say for me personally um as someone who who has lived far away from my original homeland
00:48:50.720for the majority of my life just seeing these familiar plants in different places and and
00:49:00.140having um it's it's the strongest way that i know to kind of to connect to to land wherever i am
00:49:12.560It's almost like an entry path into relationship because I know both the sort of ethnobotanical gifts and relationships that I could have with these plants, but also I have a sense of what kind of balanced and honorable harvesting and caretaking relationships I can have with them,
00:49:40.880which is which is a lot more than i can say about other beings in in unfamiliar habitats
00:49:46.960and those relationships take so so so much time sometimes to to have any confidence with
00:49:55.200yeah so certainly dandelions are are also a lifelong ally for me sheep sorrel is another
00:50:05.020plant that i that i have um that i'm always so happy to see and have come across in many continents
00:50:13.360throughout my travels and and um that is also a plant that has such strong memory for me because
00:50:22.560it's one of the first um it's one of my first memories of harvesting a plant who was just
00:50:30.000growing themselves in a meadow but also that that sharp um sour taste and and of course now i know
00:50:39.140an indicator of um of vitamin c nutrition um is has remained with me and i imagine
00:50:49.160will remain with me throughout my life
00:50:53.640beautiful well as we come to a close Tusha I'm wondering if there's anything on your mind
00:51:08.780or anything that you want to share that has yet to be shared so far I'd love to just open up the
00:51:16.580floor to you. Thank you. Well, I think to close, I want to spend a little bit of time
00:51:25.980kind of touching on my more current work within, with the Center for Native Peoples
00:51:34.860and the Environment and in cross-cultural partnerships for biocultural restoration.
00:51:40.220um and i will have to keep with our theme um to touch on the weedy and plant relationships
00:51:51.280that intersect with that i at at the center for native peoples and environment we're engaged
00:51:59.320in various partnerships that aspire to carry out justice for the land
00:52:04.540And in this work, we often invoke the phrase of finding balance at the speed of trust, which I first learned about from First Light Learning Journey organization.
00:52:19.900and it's an important framing for cross-cultural relationships between humans of course but but i
00:52:28.560find it also deeply relevant in um in interspecies relationships involved in in any biocultural work
00:52:37.800um i think moving at the speed of trust here means learning from land taking time to observe
00:52:47.960how beings interact with each other independent of socially constructed origin stories which
00:52:54.720we place on them as you so beautifully said giving giving presence i would also add giving
00:53:02.480giving attention and respect when it comes to so-called invasive species maybe it's taking
00:53:10.840the time to kind of find out what their reasons for being are and maybe from there we can learn
00:53:17.480how to step into reciprocal relation with them and yeah as with cross-cultural
00:53:28.920partnerships for faculty illustrations that are between people it's it's important to remember
00:53:37.220also about long-term commitment to the land not just for a season or for the duration of say
00:53:44.280grant funding but but we must draw on knowledge and memory of the past
00:53:52.860in order to commit to caretaking of the future I think
00:53:58.020and these cross-cultural partnerships they
00:54:06.400the in turn they've they've impacted my interactions with with all plants so tremendously
00:54:16.660when you know when we consider interacting with plants or even talking about land and any of its
00:54:28.300inhabitants, I see the first step toward respect and reciprocity is actively honoring Indigenous
00:54:39.880knowledge and sovereignty. And maybe that is the one piece of advice that can be applied across
00:54:45.600the world just thinking back on our sort of uh you know theoretical speculating on on what um
00:54:54.960how to honorably engaged um in various times and places and communities
00:55:02.280you know indigenous ecological knowledge just inherently benefits all by offering
00:55:10.960practices that are that are place-based and ecologically and culturally appropriate and
00:55:18.500sustainable and here on the continent of turtle island just like anywhere else uh on the planet
00:55:32.520there there are people who have cohabitated with the land since time immemorial and and who's
00:55:39.100And whose language and culture and creation stories reflect deep relationship to place and whose knowledge and practices of science demonstrate environmental stewardship that just incredibly benefits people and other beings.
00:56:00.880It results in healthy forests and strength-inspired diversity and air and water.
00:56:09.100And not only that, but it's exactly the land interactions, the changes that these cultures make to their home ecosystems that foster greater climate resiliency and greater biodiversity adaptation.
00:56:29.020um and whose you know cultures whose records of environmental sustainability is is time-tested
00:56:36.740to a degree that's so far beyond the length of the human life that it can be hard to comprehend
00:56:43.180so yeah so in closing i guess i just want to say that for anyone aspiring to to support the
00:56:52.240livelihood of diverse beings and not not knowing this part of the story and not working
00:56:58.940an alliance with indigenous communities who continue to carry out their commitment to
00:57:05.260the environment in spite of all the many cruel forces that sometimes don't need to list
00:57:15.460they're obvious um it's it's it's like reading a book with every third word missing
00:57:22.600i like that metaphor oh well thank you so much for your time today tisha this has been a really
00:57:32.280beautiful conversation and i look forward to more in the future thank you so much anna this was
00:57:38.640wonderful thank you for listening to for the wild podcast the music you heard today was by
00:57:46.480Ally Dineen and Violet Bell. For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young,
00:57:52.300Ally Constantine, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glassbell, and Julia Jackson.