Are agriculture and biodiversity always at odds? In the late 1970s, a radical environmental movement rejected this dichotomy — rebuking conventional farming in favour of holistic & mutualistic principles, with the dual promise of plentiful food and a vibrant ecosystem.
When Permaculture was first articulated, it emerged from a simple question: why don’t our food systems look more like forests? In the tropics, traditional Indigenous agriculture integrated perennial foods crops so densely that their gardens had often been mistaken for jungle.
Inspired by these techniques, permaculturists adapted forest gardening for the temperate world. But, in their enthusiasm, they too may have been missing the forest for the trees.
Wherever you are, whatever you're going through, we hope you find solace by spending some time with us — in the garden.
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For musical credits, episode transcript, citations, and more:
https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-4-1-forest-garden
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You are listening to Season Four of
Introduction Voiceover:Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins:This is first time we've recorded in like, a year?
Mendel Skulski:More than a year.
Mendel Skulski:Your chair is so squeaky.
Adam Huggins:I have such a creaky chair. Okay I'm gonna be
Adam Huggins:really careful.
Mendel Skulski:The whole point of recorded in person is to be
Mendel Skulski:less stiff.
Adam Huggins:We should probably introduce ourselves right at the
Adam Huggins:top.
Mendel Skulski:Okay. Hey, my name is Mendel.
Adam Huggins:And my name is Adam. And this is Future
Adam Huggins:Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski:Although today we're we're doing a little bit
Mendel Skulski:more than future ecologies.
Adam Huggins:Yeah. Past, present, future.
Mendel Skulski:The whole gamut.
Adam Huggins:So, I wanted to start with a little exercise.
Mendel Skulski:Okay.
Adam Huggins:Deep breath. I want you to picture yourself in
Adam Huggins:a forest.
Mendel Skulski:Okay.
Adam Huggins:The first thing that comes to mind, what are you
Adam Huggins:seeing?
Mendel Skulski:I see the boughs of the trees. I see... light
Mendel Skulski:streaming through it.
Adam Huggins:Tell me what you smell.
Mendel Skulski:I smell the spicy aroma of different saps. I
Mendel Skulski:smell... a smelly rotten mushroom.
Adam Huggins:What do you feel?
Mendel Skulski:I feel a little mist raining down on me from the
Mendel Skulski:water on the branches.
Adam Huggins:Taste anything?
Mendel Skulski:What do I taste? I feel like I taste some of the
Mendel Skulski:minerals from the rocks in the air. A little bit of the dirt. A
Mendel Skulski:little bit of the rot.
Adam Huggins:When you look straight up, like, what are you
Adam Huggins:seeing?
Mendel Skulski:I see cedar branches and fir needles.
Adam Huggins:And what can you hear?
Mendel Skulski:Some chipmunks fighting. Maybe a flicker
Mendel Skulski:pecking. Some birds song
Adam Huggins:Yeah.
Mendel Skulski:Some trickling creeks.
Adam Huggins:That's about the same thing that I picture when I
Adam Huggins:picture a forest. Like, when I put myself in that place, I'm in
Adam Huggins:that kind of, like, rich moist Pacific Northwest forest, right?
Mendel Skulski:Mhm
Adam Huggins:Okay. So change of scene. Now picture yourself in a
Adam Huggins:garden.
Mendel Skulski:Okay.
Adam Huggins:First thing that comes to mind.
Mendel Skulski:Raised beds... Like, walkways. Maybe some, you
Mendel Skulski:know, well-defined plots. You know, there's there's one plant
Mendel Skulski:here and there's another there. There's hedgerows and –
Adam Huggins:That what you see.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:What do you smell?
Mendel Skulski:Oh, rose bushes and flowers of different
Mendel Skulski:varieties. I smell a little bit of rotting fruit on the ground.
Mendel Skulski:I smell rich compost.
Adam Huggins:That almost like alcoholic kind of like –
Mendel Skulski:Yeah
Adam Huggins:– anaerobic. It's that like very particular smell
Adam Huggins:of municipal compost.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:What do you hear?
Mendel Skulski:I mean, if I'm in Strathcona gardens, I
Mendel Skulski:probably hear trucks backing up. And air compressors. Nearby
Mendel Skulski:traffic fire engines.
Adam Huggins:Yeah,
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:What do you feel?
Mendel Skulski:I feel relaxed. I like the garden. I like the
Mendel Skulski:sheer density of plants that's possible in, like, a city block,
Mendel Skulski:right? Like something that you could walk across in 30 seconds.
Mendel Skulski:And suddenly, it's going to take you 20 minutes to go to the same
Mendel Skulski:distance. Because you're stopping every five feet to
Mendel Skulski:examine this berry and that flower and it's like, you hardly
Mendel Skulski:run into the same thing twice.
Adam Huggins:Yeah.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:So if you were to ask me with my very squeaky
Adam Huggins:chair. I have a very similar picture to you in my head of
Adam Huggins:both of these places.
Mendel Skulski:Forest and garden.
Adam Huggins:The garden that I picture is actually really
Adam Huggins:specific too.
Mendel Skulski:Where's that?
Adam Huggins:I go back to this place called the Homeless Garden
Adam Huggins:Project. It's in Santa Cruz, California outside of Santa
Adam Huggins:Cruz. It's on this flat coastal dune, that's just above the
Adam Huggins:ocean at Natural BBridges State Park. It's really beautiful.
Adam Huggins:It's almost always foggy. With a little bit of sunlight filtering
Adam Huggins:through. We're talking about what you smell and hear and feel
Adam Huggins:right? You can like see the dunes, you can kind of see the
Adam Huggins:expanse of the sky leading towards the ocean. You can smell
Adam Huggins:the salt on the breeze. And you hear seagulls – like you hear...
Adam Huggins:you don't hear vehicles. You hear like, shorebirds, and just
Adam Huggins:the wind because it's a windy spot. But, you know, what you're
Adam Huggins:seeing is like pretty typical of any market garden you could
imagine:it's got like little hoop houses, pathways, rows of
imagine:vegetables between them
Mendel Skulski:Okay
Adam Huggins:And the reason that I go to this place first is
Adam Huggins:because it's the first place that I ever did anything
Adam Huggins:resembling gardening. Back in my early 20s, my girlfriend at the
Adam Huggins:time convinced me to go volunteer with her at this
Adam Huggins:place, because they accept volunteers at the Homeless
Adam Huggins:Garden Project. And you know, the volunteer coordinator set us
Adam Huggins:up in this little row of strawberries. This row of
Adam Huggins:strawberries had, you know, the classic plastic row cover over
Adam Huggins:the top, to keep weeds from coming up and to create heat for
Adam Huggins:the strawberries to grow. And then little holes dotting down
Adam Huggins:the plastic row cover with strawberry plants just poking
Adam Huggins:out of each individual hole, right? And all of these
Adam Huggins:strawberry plants had little runners coming off of them.
Adam Huggins:Runners are a strawberry plants way of making more strawberry
Adam Huggins:plants. You know, they can do by seed, but they can also do it
Adam Huggins:vegetatively –
Mendel Skulski:Right.
Adam Huggins:– via what are botanically called stolens.
Adam Huggins:They're little creeping stems that run over the surface of the
Adam Huggins:soil, and they look for another place to root. And so the
Adam Huggins:volunteer coordinator got us to clip the runners, because it
Adam Huggins:takes energy away from the production of the strawberry
Adam Huggins:plant, right? So we're just going down this row and clipping
Adam Huggins:all the runners off of these strawberry plants. I know it
Adam Huggins:sounds like really, it sounds really simple and kind of like
Adam Huggins:monotonous task, but I had never experienced this idea that like,
Adam Huggins:you could take a plant, and then take a part of that plant, and
Adam Huggins:then grow another plant. And that plant is a strawberry
Adam Huggins:plant! Do you know I mean?
Mendel Skulski:Yeah, it's so immediately desirable and
Mendel Skulski:delicious. And like, why wouldn't I do that? Why wouldn't
Mendel Skulski:I take a piece of this, and –
Adam Huggins:That is the low hanging fruit of the fruit
Adam Huggins:world, right?
Mendel Skulski:Probably the lowest.
Adam Huggins:Exactly like, we're down on our knees,
Adam Huggins:clipping these strawberry runners. And it just blew my
Adam Huggins:mind that you could do that. We ended up actually asking them,
Adam Huggins:if we could take a bunch of these runners home, we put them
Adam Huggins:in like a little bundle, we took them home and I built my first
Adam Huggins:garden bed. And we planted these little strawberry runners and
Adam Huggins:they grew into strawberry plants.
Mendel Skulski:Beautiful.
Adam Huggins:So that was literally the first gardening I
Adam Huggins:ever did. Anyhow, the point of this story, going back to that
Adam Huggins:strawberry bed, is that I was having a life changing
Adam Huggins:experience there. And we looked down the row and there was this
Adam Huggins:other guy down there. And he was just on his own, doing the exact
Adam Huggins:same thing that we were a bit farther down the row. He was
Adam Huggins:doing a lot faster. It was pretty clear to us that he was
Adam Huggins:like a little bit older than we were and a little bit more
Adam Huggins:experienced.
Mendel Skulski:He knew what he was doing.
Adam Huggins:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we're like, oh we
Adam Huggins:want to go be near that person. So we worked our way down the
Adam Huggins:row, and, you know, introduce ourselves and all that. And I
Adam Huggins:really, like I don't recall much about our conversation with him.
Adam Huggins:Until we got to this one point where like, I'm sharing with him
Adam Huggins:how excited I am to be there. And how amazed I am that you can
Adam Huggins:just like grow food like this.
Mendel Skulski:Who would have known?! Food can grow!
Adam Huggins:You know, obviously not me. And I'll never
Adam Huggins:forget this. He, he looks over at me. And he's like, "Yeah,
Adam Huggins:this is all right. But it's not a forest garden."
Adam Huggins:For the second time that day, my mind was completely blown. I was
Adam Huggins:like, What is a forest garden? And why has nobody ever told me
Adam Huggins:that not only can you like grow food – like this, you know, at a
Adam Huggins:scale, which seems reasonable to human being – but also like you,
Adam Huggins:you could grow food, but in a forest! I've talked about a
Adam Huggins:bunch of formative experiences in my life on this show. But
Adam Huggins:that's a moment that I'll never forget. And I feel like it leads
Adam Huggins:directly to where I'm standing today. And so much of it begins
Adam Huggins:with this simple idea that a forest and a garden can be the
Adam Huggins:same thing.
Mendel Skulski:You don't have to choose
Adam Huggins:You don't have to choose. You can have your food
Adam Huggins:forest and eat it too.
Mendel Skulski:Amazing.
Introduction Voiceover:Broadcasting from the unceded, shared, and
Introduction Voiceover:asserted territories of the Musqueam, Squamish,
Introduction Voiceover:Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies: exploring the shape
Introduction Voiceover:of our world, through ecology, design and sound.
Mendel Skulski:So we've got the simple idea that food systems
Mendel Skulski:aren't limited to fields of annual crops, things like corn
Mendel Skulski:and soy and wheat, but rather that there's a whole world of
Mendel Skulski:possibility in growing perennial foods: diverse species layered
Mendel Skulski:over each other, as in a forest. This dual promise of plentiful
Mendel Skulski:food and vibrant ecosystems makes for a pretty compelling
Mendel Skulski:meme – propagating itself from person to person. Spreading a
Mendel Skulski:bit like the runners on a strawberry plant. But where did
Mendel Skulski:this meme begin? To tell that story? We have to go back to the
Mendel Skulski:1970s. To Hobart, Tasmania.
David Holmgren:At the fringes of the world – Australia's
David Holmgren:smallest state and smallest capital city at a time when
David Holmgren:Tasmania was really one of the crucibles of modern
David Holmgren:environmentalism.
Mendel Skulski:This is David and he was right in the middle
Mendel Skulski:of this crucible, at college studying Environmental Design,
David Holmgren:And I was interested in how landscape
David Holmgren:architectural design and agriculture and ecology could
David Holmgren:come together. I could see overlaps and intersections
David Holmgren:between any two of those, but not between three.
Mendel Skulski:By chance he would meet, and then later move
Mendel Skulski:in with his future collaborator, a teacher of his named Bill
Mendel Skulski:Mollison.
David Holmgren:And one day, he just casually suggested: well,
David Holmgren:if nature creates some sort of forest most places on the planet
David Holmgren:as a sort of optimal ecosystem – of course, not everywhere,
David Holmgren:there's grassland ecosystems and heathlands, but most places,
David Holmgren:some sort of forest – he says why does our agriculture, if not
David Holmgren:look like a forest, at least function like a forest? And, I
David Holmgren:said oh yeah, that's a – that's a good question.
Mendel Skulski:Bill and David weren't aware of any examples of
Mendel Skulski:this kind of forest-based agriculture where they lived. So
Mendel Skulski:they turned their attention towards the equator.
David Holmgren:In the tropics, agriculture, at its essence was
David Holmgren:really based on perennial foods and food forests that look
David Holmgren:like... analogous to tropical and subtropical rainforests, so
David Holmgren:much so that early ethnographers often didn't realize that they
David Holmgren:were in actually garden cultivated systems, when they
David Holmgren:thought they were moving through some wild forest. Because their
David Holmgren:perception of what agriculture was – was so different.
Adam Huggins:So these early European ethnographers, they
Adam Huggins:were kind of like me in my 20s, right? They couldn't see the
Adam Huggins:food forest for the trees.
Mendel Skulski:I mean, you couldn't see gardens for the
Mendel Skulski:plants at the time, but –
Adam Huggins:That's fair.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah. But David and Bill, they become fascinated
Mendel Skulski:by this idea of forest gardens.
David Holmgren:That idea is where each of the layers of the
David Holmgren:forest – canopy, and understory, and vines that grow in that
David Holmgren:forest – are all, if not food plants, then they're directly
David Holmgren:useful to people.
Mendel Skulski:David and Bill published their thoughts in
Mendel Skulski:1978. And they were as novel and impactful to contemporary
Mendel Skulski:environmentalists, as they were when they reached you back in
Mendel Skulski:Santa Cruz.
Adam Huggins:Right.
Mendel Skulski:But it went beyond just growing food in
Mendel Skulski:forests. It was the seed of reconceptualizing how we relate
Mendel Skulski:with nature, germinating into a radical and all-encompassing
Mendel Skulski:movement.
David Holmgren:Maybe if Mollison and Holmgren had stayed
David Holmgren:focused on selecting new varieties of oaks, this vision
David Holmgren:of the potential of trees to actually be a foundation for
David Holmgren:human food supply, then we might have contributed more
David Holmgren:effectively to that one thread. But as hopeless generalists we
David Holmgren:saw, of course, how all this is connected to everything.
Adam Huggins:Okay, so for those of you haven't guessed yet, we
Adam Huggins:are talking about the origins of permaculture with David
Adam Huggins:Holmgren.
David Holmgren:Hello, I'm David Holmgren, co-originator of the
David Holmgren:permaculture concept with Bill Mollison back in the 1970s.
Adam Huggins:For the uninitiated, Permaculture is
Adam Huggins:usually thought of as a form of holistic organic gardening, or
Adam Huggins:something like that.
David Holmgren:Yeah, I suppose permaculture means many
David Holmgren:different things to different people. And it's infused through
David Holmgren:popular culture. It's almost a household word you might say.
David Holmgren:But it's really a design system – a design system for both
David Holmgren:resilient and sustainable use of nature: where we get our needs
David Holmgren:through agriculture and other aspects of working relationship
David Holmgren:with nature. But it's also concerned with the consumption
side of the equation:how we organize our lives, both at an
side of the equation:individual level right through to a societal level.
Mendel Skulski:Permaculture is organized into a set of
Mendel Skulski:principles and practices, with the goal of integrating every
Mendel Skulski:aspect of a local ecology into a productive, regenerative, and
Mendel Skulski:self-sustaining food system. But as David is quick to note, so
Mendel Skulski:many of the ideas that he and Bill popularized, including
Mendel Skulski:forest gardening, they have really deep roots.
David Holmgren:Permaculture drew on, not just modern
David Holmgren:innovations in ecological thinking, but its prime sources
David Holmgren:were Indigenous and traditional cultures of place that existed
David Holmgren:sustainably for centuries before the explosive and problematic
David Holmgren:nature of industrial modernity. Of course, permaculture ended up
David Holmgren:growing from that to... to some extent being a theory of
David Holmgren:everything, which you know, can be seen as one of the critiques
David Holmgren:of it.
Mendel Skulski:But in spite of that proliferation of ideas, I
Mendel Skulski:think that most modern permaculturists still recognize
Mendel Skulski:food forests as a foundation of the whole movement.
Adam Huggins:Absolutely. Yeah. And that's appropriate, because,
Adam Huggins:you know, that's kind of where this all started.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:And I'm really grateful to David and Bill for
Adam Huggins:sparking this conversation for so many people, including me.
Adam Huggins:But... one of the like, unintended consequences is that
Adam Huggins:newly initiated young permaculture practitioners –
Adam Huggins:like myself, back in the day – we've attempted to grow food
Adam Huggins:forests in temperate climates, by basically trying to mimic
Adam Huggins:practices that many of us have only ever read about from
Adam Huggins:ethnographers, who were themselves writing about
Adam Huggins:Indigenous food systems in the tropics.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:And even more typically, like one step further
Adam Huggins:removed by reading popular permaculture books written
Adam Huggins:almost exclusively by white male authors, who then discuss
Adam Huggins:practices that are based on ethnographers writing about
Adam Huggins:Indigenous food systems in the tropics.
Mendel Skulski:And with that, we've kind of reached the
Mendel Skulski:critical irony, because it turns out that there have been forest
Mendel Skulski:gardens here in the temperate world all along. Or at least,
right here in our backyard:in the coastal rainforests of
right here in our backyard:British Columbia. It's just that many settlers, scientists, and
right here in our backyard:permaculturists have been as oblivious to these Indigenous
right here in our backyard:food systems as early ethnographers were to those in
right here in our backyard:the tropics.
Adam HugginsFood forests:
:they've been here all along.
Mendel Skulski:It's about time we got to know them.
Adam Huggins:So we got in touch with the researcher who's been
Adam Huggins:documenting these temperate forest gardens, and she invited
Adam Huggins:us for a field trip to go visit one.
Mendel Skulski:Who turns that down?
Adam Huggins:Definitely not us.
Adam Huggins:It feels amazing to be out here again. Oh, feels amazing to be
Adam Huggins:off Galiano Island.
Mendel Skulski:Feels amazing to be in the shade.
Chelsey Armstrong:Hey!
Mendel Skulski:Hello.
Chelsey Armstrong:How's it going?
Mendel Skulski:So good.
Adam Huggins:So nice to meet you!
Chelsey Armstrong:I'm like a little star struck!
Adam Huggins:Is that right?
Chelsey Armstrong:Yeah, are you kidding?
Adam Huggins:We're feeling the same way!
Chelsey Armstrong:So which...
Mendel Skulski:I'm Mendel.
Chelsey Armstrong:Mendel.
Adam Huggins:Adam.
Chelsey Armstrong:Adam.
Adam Huggins:This is Dr. Chelsey Armstrong:
Adam Huggins:archaeologist, historical ecologist and Assistant
Adam Huggins:Professor in Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University.
Mendel Skulski:We met in Sts'ailes territory: at the
Mendel Skulski:corner of the Chehalis and Harrison rivers, about two hours
Mendel Skulski:inland from Vancouver. The Sts'ailes reserve sits on a
Mendel Skulski:broad floodplain, surrounded by a rich variety of ecosystems:
Mendel Skulski:extensive marshes, coniferous forests, and beautiful views of
Mendel Skulski:the mountains flanking the river valley.
Adam Huggins:We drove to the end of an old dirt road. And as
Adam Huggins:we got out, we were walking through this fairly typical West
Adam Huggins:Coast forest, not unlike the one you described in the intro to
Adam Huggins:this episode.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:There was Douglas fir trees and western red cedar,
Adam Huggins:some big leaf maple, and an assortment of the typical
Adam Huggins:understory shrubs, you'd expect
Mendel Skulski:Mostly ferns.
Adam Huggins:It was September. so the leaves were already
Adam Huggins:turning and starting to fall, and the air was crisp. But
Adam Huggins:despite the beautiful scene, we were engrossed in conversation
Adam Huggins:with Chelsey, as she told us how she first realized how common
Adam Huggins:these temperate forest gardens really are.
Chelsey Armstrong:It blew our minds because we knew it was
Chelsey Armstrong:happening up north. But then to get this kind of, you know, 700
Chelsey Armstrong:kilometers south, it's happening here. Okay, something's going
Chelsey Armstrong:on...
Mendel Skulski:And then it hit us.
Adam Huggins:This place is wild!
Chelsey Armstrong:Isn't it?
Adam Huggins:It feels immediately different from what
Adam Huggins:we were just walking through.
Mendel Skulski:We'd passed from the shade of this coniferous
Mendel Skulski:forest into a completely different landscape. It felt
Mendel Skulski:open and the sunlight was hitting our faces. And we were
Mendel Skulski:surrounded by all of these deciduous trees that we really
Mendel Skulski:weren't seeing at all before,
Chelsey Armstrong:Like an orchard, almost? Nicely spaced
Chelsey Armstrong:and just -
Adam Huggins:Except that my orchard is not going to look
Adam Huggins:this good 150 years after I let it go.
Chelsey Armstrong:Yeah, it's so impressive that these places
Chelsey Armstrong:remain because these are productive forest, right?
Chelsey Armstrong:Conifers are going to come in, you know, after 20-30 years
Chelsey Armstrong:after disturbance, and yet... it hasn't happened.
Mendel Skulski:What Chelsey was saying is that there's no
Mendel Skulski:obvious ecological reason why the forest we were standing in
Mendel Skulski:shouldn't just be conifers like the one we were walking through
Mendel Skulski:a minute before.
Adam Huggins:But instead of conifers, we have all of these
Adam Huggins:other species growing together. Species like salmonberry in the
Adam Huggins:understory, and like Pacific Crabapple and Cascara in the
Adam Huggins:canopy. Just lots of edible and useful plants all of a sudden.
Chelsey Armstrong:Yeah, like like things like hazelnut,
Chelsey Armstrong:right, which I think you're grabbing right now.
Adam Huggins:Right? Hazelnut. The canopy was mostly beaked
Adam Huggins:hazelnut. A plant, which Chelsey informed us, was what clued her
Adam Huggins:into Indigenous forest in the first place.
Chelsey Armstrong:I did a huge survey years ago like throughout
Chelsey Armstrong:the province, and they're an interior plant. Why are they on
Chelsey Armstrong:the coast and only at village sites. It's almost to the point
Chelsey Armstrong:where it's co-evolved with people.
Mendel Skulski:For example, there's a clear disjunct
Mendel Skulski:population near the town of Hazleton, which, as you might
Mendel Skulski:guess, is named after its hazelnuts. And the
Mendel Skulski:paleo-biolinguistic clues go even deeper. There are
Mendel Skulski:remarkable similarities between the word for hazelnut in Gitxsan
Mendel Skulski:and Halq'eméylem.
Chelsey Armstrong:the term in Gitxsan is sk'an ts'ak'. And
Chelsey Armstrong:ts’ak’ is the borrowed part. So, “nut” in Hul'qumi'num is ts’ak’.
Chelsey Armstrong:It's the same, and they're two totally different language
Chelsey Armstrong:families
Mendel Skulski:Meaning that there's no chance the two names
Mendel Skulski:are cognates. It had to have been a borrowed word, hinting it
Mendel Skulski:was a borrowed nut as well.
Chelsey Armstrong:And so became very apparent very quickly that
Chelsey Armstrong:hazelnut was part of a larger modified landscape, which
Chelsey Armstrong:includes, you know, Crabapple and Highbush Cranberry and
Chelsey Armstrong:Saskatoon Berry and Soapberry all the stuff you can eat,
Chelsey Armstrong:right?
Adam Huggins:A modified landscape full of perennial
Adam Huggins:stuff that you can eat. You know, forest garden.
Chelsey Armstrong:A lot of the species in forest gardens might
Chelsey Armstrong:be locally available in the area. They're just not all
Chelsey Armstrong:growing together, except for these forest garden ecosystems.
Chelsey Armstrong:And so really what's happening is... we talk about the kind of
Chelsey Armstrong:caretaking and maintenance of these areas. And really, it's
Chelsey Armstrong:just that kind of optimizing what's already growing there.
Chelsey Armstrong:And so here we're seeing this kind of orchard like area. But
Chelsey Armstrong:then over closer to the sloughs, there's management of different
Chelsey Armstrong:root foods, and things like Rice Root Lily, Wapato..
Adam Huggins:As Chelsey was explaining how this
Adam Huggins:Hazelnut-Crabapple forest garden is embedded in a larger, diverse
Adam Huggins:food producing landscape...
Chelsey Armstrong:And so they're all very different. But
Chelsey Armstrong:yeah, we're looking more at the orchard like iteration. Yeah.
Adam Huggins:We started noticing that there were all of
Adam Huggins:these little depressions between the trees.
Mendel Skulski:Well, I mean, you might have noticed, I hadn't
Mendel Skulski:actually clocked them until we walked right up to one
Mendel Skulski:undergoing an active excavation. That's where we met Morgan.
Morgan Ritchie:My name is Morgan Ritchie. I've been
Morgan Ritchie:Sts'ailes' heritage research archaeologist for about 12 years
Morgan Ritchie:now.
Mendel Skulski:Standing over this extremely square hole he
Mendel Skulski:was digging, we asked Morgan to help us understand what exactly
Mendel Skulski:we were looking at, in all of these layers of Earth.
Morgan Ritchie:What you can see already right off the bat,
Morgan Ritchie:though, is that you see this kind of clean sand there.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah
Morgan Ritchie:This this is just like flood... flood
Morgan Ritchie:sediments. And then you see the really thick layer of charcoal?
Adam Huggins:Indicating, of course, that there was a fire
Adam Huggins:here.
Morgan Ritchie:So these are cooking pits. We tested one of
Morgan Ritchie:these last year, and we found 40 hazelnut shells or something
Morgan Ritchie:like that – all charred, so clearly, they were cooking
Morgan Ritchie:hazelnuts. And it and we radiocarbon dated it, and it's
Morgan Ritchie:about 650 years old. So when we had that we realized, well, this
Morgan Ritchie:probably been a managed landscape for at least, you
Morgan Ritchie:know, 600-650 years. Look around you it's like all
Morgan Ritchie:hazelnut trees, right? Hazelnut and crabapple.
Adam Huggins:Morgan and his team think that these cooking
Adam Huggins:pits were used frequently over long periods of time.
Morgan Ritchie:Well when you have a band this thick, it could
Morgan Ritchie:easily have been used, you know, twice or three times. And it
Morgan Ritchie:just makes sense – you've done all the work to dig a pit.
Morgan Ritchie:You're gonna want to use it.
Adam Huggins:I was gonna say, I've dug holes.
Morgan Ritchie:Yeah.
Mendel Skulski:Cooking in pits is not all that amenable to a
Mendel Skulski:quick snack. You've got to dig, obviously, make a fire, get some
Mendel Skulski:rocks nice and hot, and then stack bundles of food, and
Mendel Skulski:rebury the whole thing to roast and steam. It's a process that
Mendel Skulski:takes at least a few hours, or with foods like Camas, which
Mendel Skulski:needs to slowly caramelize, over a day.
Adam Huggins:And there were dozens of depressions like this
Adam Huggins:throughout the site. As we were standing there, we were
Adam Huggins:realizing that people didn't just come here to harvest. They
Adam Huggins:came here to eat together. They were essentially having garden
Adam Huggins:parties. And I guess it's sunk into me that this place was
Adam Huggins:lived in, right? And cooked in. And cared for.
Mendel Skulski:The archaeological record proves
Mendel Skulski:that the people of Sts'ailes were using this garden for
Mendel Skulski:centuries, if not millennia. And although the situation obviously
Mendel Skulski:changed 150 years ago, this care for the land continues into the
Mendel Skulski:present day. We haven't mentioned it until now, but this
Mendel Skulski:garden has a name.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Lhemqwatel means "the good place to pick...
Stephanie Leon Riedl:things".
Mendel Skulski:Tells you what you need to know.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Yeah. And like now people know it is the
Stephanie Leon Riedl:place where the elk hang out, because we recently reintroduced
Stephanie Leon Riedl:elk into the traditional territory and they've been
Stephanie Leon Riedl:hanging out down here.
Mendel Skulski:This is Stephanie.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Stephanie Leon Riedl.
Mendel Skulski:Funny enough, Stephanie and I actually know
Mendel Skulski:each other from our local mushroom appreciation society.
Mendel Skulski:But they met us here as part of their official capacity.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:I am the Lands Executive Assistant for
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Xa'xa Temexw Shxweli, which is Sts’ailes Lands Department.
Mendel Skulski:Lhemqwatel is located on Ed Leon Slough, which
Mendel Skulski:just so happens to be named after Stephanie's great
Mendel Skulski:granduncle. The cooking pits we were standing over are literally
Mendel Skulski:the places Stephanie's ancestors gathered to collect, process,
Mendel Skulski:and eat their favorite foods.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:These are all over – they're all over!
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Because I like to forage and and wander around in the woods, I
Stephanie Leon Riedl:will just come up on areas that I'm like that's... that's a pit
Stephanie Leon Riedl:right there.
Mendel Skulski:Sts'ailes is in the process of formally
Mendel Skulski:protecting and revitalizing these ancient spaces. The Lands
Mendel Skulski:Office, where Stephanie works, overseas land use projects, such
Mendel Skulski:as housing and resource management.
Adam Huggins:Effectively zoning and civic planning.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Yeah, all the boring stuff.
Mendel Skulski:Except that, unlike most urban planning
Mendel Skulski:departments, everyone in the community has a direct
Mendel Skulski:connection to what happens on their territory. The Lands
Mendel Skulski:Office answers to the Lands Committee, which is made up of a
Mendel Skulski:representative from each family.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:And they helped us come up with some
Stephanie Leon Riedl:designations for different areas and what their traditional uses
Stephanie Leon Riedl:would have been, along with the work that Morgan has done
Stephanie Leon Riedl:through the archaeology sector.
Mendel Skulski:And Stephanie hopes that it won't be long
Mendel Skulski:before Lhemqwatel – this place of plenty – is officially
Mendel Skulski:designated, and tended, as a forest garden.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Yeah, it's a good spot. People hold it in
Stephanie Leon Riedl:high regard.
Adam Huggins:You can't restore these places without like
Adam Huggins:understanding exactly why they exist in the first place.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Exactly
Adam Huggins:Looking around, I'm like this place looks
Adam Huggins:delicious. I'd sit down here and like, you know, cook something.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Oh, yeah, I do all the time. Grab a snack,
Stephanie Leon Riedl:take a seat on the carpet.
Mendel Skulski:The people of Sts'ailes are engaging with
Mendel Skulski:elders, archeologists and ethnoecologists to help write
Mendel Skulski:the laws of their land, codifying what was almost lost
Mendel Skulski:in the midst of colonization, and adapting to the needs of
Mendel Skulski:their community today.
Adam Huggins:And the research that they're doing here – It's a
Adam Huggins:first step towards bringing back these kinds of traditional food
Adam Huggins:systems. And it's clear that already, this work is beginning
Adam Huggins:to bear fruit.
Mendel Skulski:More on that, right after this.
Adam Huggins:I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski:Mendel.
Adam Huggins:This is Future Ecologies. Today, we're visiting
Adam Huggins:an ancient, temperate, Coast Salish forest garden in
Adam Huggins:Sts'ailes, and listening for what it can tell us about
Adam Huggins:agriculture, permaculture, and other ways to think about
Adam Huggins:resilient food systems.
Mendel Skulski:This story first came to our attention through
Mendel Skulski:the research of Dr. Chelsey Armstrong. She's been looking
Mendel Skulski:specifically at four separate Indigenous forest garden sites
on the coast:two in the north in Kitslas and Kitsumkalum, and
on the coast:two in the south, in Tsleil-Waututh and here, in
on the coast:Sts’ailes, At all of these sites, the vegetation is a
on the coast:veritable who’s who of tasty native species.
Chelsey Armstrong:The suite of plants growing in these places
Chelsey Armstrong:are are kind of like the "duh" plants. They're the best tasting
Chelsey Armstrong:ones that that grow in the region. And so of course, you'd
Chelsey Armstrong:kind of make use of them. Things like Pacific Crabapple, Beaked
Chelsey Armstrong:Hazelnut, Wild Cranberry, Black Hawthorn, all sorts of Vaccinium
Chelsey Armstrong:and Rubus. So your Thimbleberries, Salmonberries,
Chelsey Armstrong:Alaska Blueberry, Ova-leaf Blueberry, Soapberry,
Chelsey Armstrong:Saskatoonberry, I mean, they just kind of the usual suspects
Chelsey Armstrong:in Northwest Coast perennial plant foods. These are the
Chelsey Armstrong:edible plants that make up a huge portion of people's diets.
Chelsey Armstrong:People we're not just relying on salmon. There's a whole host of
Chelsey Armstrong:other nutrients and carbs that need to come from plants. So
Chelsey Armstrong:it's this kind of mixed canopy system that looks vastly
Chelsey Armstrong:different from our typical conifer forests that we're used
Chelsey Armstrong:to coming across. And these places were managed by people.
Chelsey Armstrong:They would not exist without people.
Adam Huggins:One thing that is really important to remember is
Adam Huggins:that none of these forest gardens has been actively
Adam Huggins:managed for at least a century. Since colonization dramatically
Adam Huggins:reduced the populations, and capacity, and access to land for
Adam Huggins:First Nations people. The fact that these forest gardens are
Adam Huggins:still quite clearly cultivated spaces, after all of those
Adam Huggins:years, is really a testament to the resilience of their design.
Adam Huggins:Like, think about what happens if you leave your own garden
Adam Huggins:alone for a few weeks without weeding it at all. And then
Adam Huggins:imagine leaving it alone for 150 years – and still being able to
Adam Huggins:distinguish it.
Chelsey Armstrong:We would assume, given how quickly
Chelsey Armstrong:conifers forests tend to succeed in a lot of places, right? So
Chelsey Armstrong:you log a forest 20-30 years later, it's been replaced with
Chelsey Armstrong:conifer saplings. What we're seeing here is not the same kind
Chelsey Armstrong:of recovery to this, quote, human disturbance, which is the
Chelsey Armstrong:forest garden. These conifers aren't moving in. These gardens
Chelsey Armstrong:have been sustained for over 150 years since people left, or were
Chelsey Armstrong:forcibly removed from them. So it is interesting that they
Chelsey Armstrong:haven't been subsumed by conifers, because we assume that
Chelsey Armstrong:that's what would have happened, just like any other kind of
Chelsey Armstrong:human disturbance.
Mendel Skulski:Some of the evidence Chelsey has collected
Mendel Skulski:provides clues as to why these forest gardens are so resilient
Mendel Skulski:to change. She's used a metric that goes beyond simple
Mendel Skulski:biodiversity. Instead, measuring the diversity of functional
Mendel Skulski:traits.
Chelsey Armstrong:We looked at four traits: seed mass, shade
Chelsey Armstrong:tolerance, pollination syndrome, dispersal syndrome, and what we
Chelsey Armstrong:found that the forest gardens overall had significantly higher
Chelsey Armstrong:frequency of large seeded fruits, which, yes, larger seed
Chelsey Armstrong:means larger fruit. That's the economically important part for
Chelsey Armstrong:humans. That makes sense. But also larger seeds are harder to
Chelsey Armstrong:self pollinate. And so they often require an extra hand, and
Chelsey Armstrong:in this case literally a human hand, to propagate – probably
Chelsey Armstrong:vegetatively. We know from the ethnographic record that people
Chelsey Armstrong:were moving cuttings and the like. You know, germinating, a
Chelsey Armstrong:hazelnut is like 1 out of 10, versus a cutting, it's like 10
Chelsey Armstrong:out of 10.
Mendel Skulski:Kind of like strawberries, huh?
Adam Huggins:Totally. I mean, anywhere you look in the world,
Adam Huggins:people are moving desirable plants around, and for all of
Adam Huggins:the same reasons, right? Because they're delicious, or useful, or
Adam Huggins:just beautiful. And usually, they're bringing them closer to
Adam Huggins:home. So it really shouldn't be surprising that Indigenous
Adam Huggins:people were doing the same thing here on the coast.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah, I mean, transplanting helps explain why
Mendel Skulski:so many of these sites have such a similar compliment of species.
Mendel Skulski:But Chelsey's trade study also revealed a high level of
Mendel Skulski:functional diversity, hinting at why these forest gardens have
Mendel Skulski:been able to resist encroachment for so long.
Chelsey Armstrong:They provide a suite of ecosystem functions
Chelsey Armstrong:that the peripheral forests don't. So maybe they're just
Chelsey Armstrong:making better use of their niche space. And that's kind of
Chelsey Armstrong:thwarting these conifer trees wanting to come in.
Adam Huggins:Essentially, the idea is that all of these
Adam Huggins:diverse species growing together in this one place, are working
Adam Huggins:really well to maintain a self regulating ecosystem. One that
Adam Huggins:creates food, not just for humans, but for all sorts of
Adam Huggins:creatures.
Chelsey Armstrong:And so there's kind of this layered
Chelsey Armstrong:multi-species thing going on with the maintenance of these
Chelsey Armstrong:places.
Adam Huggins:That's permaculture, right?
Chelsey Armstrong:That's permaculture. Totally! It
Chelsey Armstrong:just... and every little being plays a part. That's one of the
Chelsey Armstrong:things that, when I talk about us not discovering these, you
Chelsey Armstrong:know, scientifically that people have known about them for a long
Chelsey Armstrong:time, Kitslas and Kitsumkalum elders often talked about how
Chelsey Armstrong:old villages are the best places to hunt, because that's where
Chelsey Armstrong:all the deer browse. That's where all the berries are for
Chelsey Armstrong:bears, like they know about these places, having that kind
Chelsey Armstrong:of significance. We're just catching up.
Mendel Skulski:We left the Hazelnut and Crabapple grove to
Mendel Skulski:take a stroll with Chelsey and Stephanie at another site,
Mendel Skulski:closer to the river and close to an ancient Sts'ailes village. As
Mendel Skulski:we walked, we were reflecting on how these places were simply
Mendel Skulski:permacultural and had been so for centuries before that
Mendel Skulski:portmanteau of permanent agriculture was coined in the
Mendel Skulski:1970s. Here in these different forms of forest gardens, plants
Mendel Skulski:and animals were thriving together – due to, rather than
Mendel Skulski:in spite of, human influence. So of course, we were curious to
Mendel Skulski:know how Stephanie felt about the popularity of permaculture
Mendel Skulski:today.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:Bless their hearts. I like the concept
Stephanie Leon Riedl:of it, but I find that a lot of permaculture practitioners don't
Stephanie Leon Riedl:attribute the knowledge that they've learned, or bring in the
Stephanie Leon Riedl:people who they've learned it from into the work. It's not
Stephanie Leon Riedl:recognized in a meaningful way. It's not applied in a meaningful
Stephanie Leon Riedl:way to Indigenous people. And so it really is just like nails on
Stephanie Leon Riedl:a chalkboard for me, because it's very extractive, in my
Stephanie Leon Riedl:opinion. I would like to see it less extractive, I think it has
Stephanie Leon Riedl:the capacity to be less extractive. But the way that
Stephanie Leon Riedl:I've experienced it has not been the case. There's really great
Stephanie Leon Riedl:stuff! I'm so glad that people are learning about how to be
Stephanie Leon Riedl:better in tune with their environment, and whatever. But
Stephanie Leon Riedl:people are part of that. And I feel like a lot of Indigenous
Stephanie Leon Riedl:people are getting left behind, in yet another area of life.
Adam Huggins:Stephanie gets right to the heart of the issue
Adam Huggins:– of what makes me uncomfortable, even just like
Adam Huggins:applying that term to what I do. And it's why sometimes I avoid
Adam Huggins:using the word permaculture at all. It's a critique that goes
Adam Huggins:beyond just forest gardens.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:First off, we exist. Second off, you're on
Stephanie Leon Riedl:our land. Third, if you want to restore this area back to the
Stephanie Leon Riedl:way it was before, like you need to involve Indigenous peoples
Stephanie Leon Riedl:you need to involve the original stewards of that land.
Mendel Skulski:We spoke to David about this. And he
Mendel Skulski:reiterated that permaculture owes its whole basis to
Mendel Skulski:Indigenous knowledge from all over the world. But he also
Mendel Skulski:wasn't going to take responsibility for other
Mendel Skulski:teachers and other practitioners failure to properly acknowledge
Mendel Skulski:that fact
David Holmgren:The... the rediscovery about Indigenous
David Holmgren:origins has of course led to all sorts of perceptions that
David Holmgren:permaculture was part of sort of colonial theft of Indigenous
David Holmgren:ideas, or quite validly that, in various expressions of
David Holmgren:permaculture, there's been inadequate acknowledgement of
David Holmgren:sources. But similarly people making those claims are often
David Holmgren:ignorant of, you know, what were happening at the origins, and
David Holmgren:Bill Mollison for example...
Mendel Skulski:In David's telling, Bill Mollison was
Mendel Skulski:working closely with Indigenous communities in Australia as he
Mendel Skulski:was formulating what would become permaculture.
Mendel Skulski:But permaculture became so popular so quickly, that he and
Mendel Skulski:David lost control of the narrative, and over whether
Mendel Skulski:individual practitioners acknowledge or even understand
Mendel Skulski:its origins.
Adam Huggins:Which is... it's a totally fair point.
Mendel Skulski:Yeah.
Adam Huggins:But I can't help feeling that, you know, as
Adam Huggins:somebody who first caught the spark for forest gardening, from
Adam Huggins:permaculture, as a settler, I think there's a clear
Adam Huggins:responsibility to rethink how this knowledge is being shared
Adam Huggins:and used.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:I have people who don't understand when
Stephanie Leon Riedl:they're working with land that we've been here forever, and
Stephanie Leon Riedl:that we've gardened here forever, and that, you know,
Stephanie Leon Riedl:pretty much everything that you see that's still intact, has our
Stephanie Leon Riedl:footprint in it. I think that people know that in their minds,
Stephanie Leon Riedl:but they don't apply it in their work.
Adam Huggins:Stephanie's words really stuck with me. So I got
Adam Huggins:in touch with somebody who could talk with me about how people
Adam Huggins:who profess to practice permaculture can do better.
Hannah Roessler:Hi, Adam. My name is Hannah Roessler.
Adam Huggins:Hannah is a professor at the University of
Adam Huggins:Victoria, teaching an ethnoecology and a permaculture
Adam Huggins:design class in the School of Environmental Studies. She's
Adam Huggins:also an independent consultant, working with various First
Adam Huggins:Nations to collaboratively design food systems,
Hannah Roessler:Usually kind of wearing an archaeologist
Hannah Roessler:ethnobotanist hat at that point, yeah.
Adam Huggins:I suppose this is where I should make an
Adam Huggins:acknowledgement as well, which is that Hannah is now a
Adam Huggins:colleague of mine at UVic, because I teach a class at UVic
Adam Huggins:now.
Mendel Skulski:Congratulations.
Adam Huggins:Thanks! Anyway, we had a lovely chat about our
Adam Huggins:early 20s.
Hannah Roessler:I guess we were just talking about how you and I
Hannah Roessler:both drank the Kool Aid of permaculture, and it was really
Hannah Roessler:delicious and exciting. And for me at the time, especially when
Hannah Roessler:I was first starting to learn about it, it was a way for me to
Hannah Roessler:engage actively in the world with you know, the environmental
Hannah Roessler:and social problems that were coming up and that I had been
Hannah Roessler:learning about in my undergraduate degree in
Hannah Roessler:environmental studies and anthropology and I, I was, you
Hannah Roessler:know, suffering from paralysis by analysis. And permaculture
Hannah Roessler:was a way to be actively engaged.
Adam Huggins:Hannah told me how when she first got introduced to
Adam Huggins:permaculture, she had the opportunity to join her friend
Adam Huggins:who had bought some land in Nicaragua, with the hope of
Adam Huggins:turning it into a food forest paradise.
Hannah Roessler:It's kind of funny because it's sort of like
Hannah Roessler:a perfect example of where permaculture really gets
Hannah Roessler:critiqued, where it can be a very privileged pursuit. So,
Hannah Roessler:it's not very accessible. It's dominated by white community
Hannah Roessler:members, and often people will go to southern countries and buy
Hannah Roessler:cheap land to, you know, create permaculture dreams.
Adam Huggins:At the time, she was still pretty starry-eyed.
Adam Huggins:But she was lucky enough to find herself chatting with one of the
Adam Huggins:locals near the farm.
Hannah Roessler:This woman, her name was Doña Ines. And she was
Hannah Roessler:chatting with me outside her house and asked me "What are you
Hannah Roessler:doing in Nicaragua?" And I started to explain to her like,
Hannah Roessler:"Oh, I'm learning about permaculture", and, you know,
Hannah Roessler:"Permaculture is dot dot dot dot dot dot."
Adam Huggins:She tells Doña Ines all about permaculture
Adam Huggins:design thinking, and food forests, and the ethics, and the
Adam Huggins:principles.
Hannah Roessler:And she was so kind – just smiled at me and
Hannah Roessler:nodded her head, and listened very attentively, and looped her
Hannah Roessler:arm into my arm and asked me to come to her backyard and have a
Hannah Roessler:coffee with her. And I said, Sure.
Adam Huggins:And they sat down, and she brought Hannah some
Adam Huggins:coffee. And she just turns around, and she says "So what
Adam Huggins:you're talking about" like, "do you mean this?"
Hannah Roessler:And she just gestured around her. And I was,
Hannah Roessler:you know, immediately humbled and realize, Oh, my goodness, of
Hannah Roessler:course, we're sitting in exactly a forest garden. Thank goodness
Hannah Roessler:she was there to –to help me see that.
Adam Huggins:Not every young permaculturist gets their head
Adam Huggins:set straight this early in the game, and in such a gentle way.
Mendel Skulski:Hmm, yeah. It seems like it's a pretty common
Mendel Skulski:experience for people to hear about permaculture, and just get
Mendel Skulski:enchanted with all of that possibility – that you can grow
Mendel Skulski:food and do it outside of the industrial agricultural status
Mendel Skulski:quo. And do it in this beautiful, healthy, ecologically
Mendel Skulski:interwoven way. It's no wonder so many people want to rush off
Mendel Skulski:and just try it out.
Adam Huggins:Yeah, I mean, I did. But unfortunately, that
Adam Huggins:epiphany just doesn't come packaged with the understanding
Adam Huggins:that all sorts of perennial food systems already exist – with
Adam Huggins:their roots in communities.
Hannah Roessler:We're really dealing with super locally-based
Hannah Roessler:knowledge. And permaculture recognizes that in principle,
Hannah Roessler:but in practice, I'm not so sure how well I've seen that done by
Hannah Roessler:permaculturists. And coupled with the appropriation of
Hannah Roessler:Indigenous knowledge, even though it is acknowledged by the
Hannah Roessler:founders, it's not really acknowledged anywhere else.
Hannah Roessler:That's a real problem.
Mendel Skulski:So let's say you're the kind of person who's
Mendel Skulski:had a taste of the Kool Aid. And you're excited about the very
Mendel Skulski:real benefits that a design system like permaculture can
Mendel Skulski:offer. How do you tap into that in a way that benefits, instead
Mendel Skulski:of just extracting from, or ignoring Indigenous communities?
Mendel Skulski:How can you participate in revitalizing these forest
Mendel Skulski:gardens, rather than accidentally overwriting them?
Adam Huggins:Right, like, how can you enter the space
Adam Huggins:responsibly instead of, I don't know, bursting through the wall
Adam Huggins:screaming "oh yeah!"
Adam Huggins:Like, like the Kool Aid man... Right?
Hannah Roessler:First of all, it depends on what the community
Hannah Roessler:is going to ask for. Second, if a permaculturist is going to be
Hannah Roessler:working in that community, it might be really useful for them
Hannah Roessler:to explore this concept of two-eyed seeing
Adam Huggins:Two-eyed seeing is a concept put forward by Dr.
Adam Huggins:Albert Marshall – a Mi'kmaw elder in Unama'ki, Cape Breton.
Adam Huggins:It means allowing one eye to see with an Indigenous worldview,
Adam Huggins:and the other eye with a Western one.
Hannah Roessler:And not really trying to mesh the two, or
Hannah Roessler:plug-in Indigenous knowledge into a Western framework (you
Hannah Roessler:know, or a permaculture framework), but instead trying
Hannah Roessler:to allow the existence of both together. And so I think that
Hannah Roessler:permaculturists could really use that approach: be really good
Hannah Roessler:listeners, and recognize that there's so much knowledge in
Hannah Roessler:communities. So, I think a lot of humility is involved.
Adam Huggins:The concept of two-eyed seeing is simple
Adam Huggins:enough. But in practice, most of us are so used to looking at
Adam Huggins:things with a Western worldview, that it's really easy to just
Adam Huggins:pay lip service to that Indigenous worldview, without
Adam Huggins:actually learning how to see with it or engage with it. And
Adam Huggins:this is understandable, right? We we shouldn't expect to just
Adam Huggins:be able to try worldviews on like pairs of shoes. But it does
Adam Huggins:mean that it takes time and attention to learn how to see
things differently:to listen to what origin stories, and
things differently:language, and place names, and even governance systems are
things differently:actually telling us about how the world works.
Mendel Skulski:And in that spirit, I'd like to bring us
Mendel Skulski:back to Sts'ailes for one last introduction.
Willie Charlie:Chaquawet te skwíxs, tèlí tsel kw'e
Willie Charlie:Sts'ailes. My traditional name is Chaquawet, and people know me
Willie Charlie:as Willie Charlie.
Mendel Skulski:Willie helped us understand the worldview that
Mendel Skulski:produced these gardens in the first place – to help us see
Mendel Skulski:with the other eye.
Willie Charlie:I think that all of our snuw'uyulh, all of our
Willie Charlie:laws, and all of our si:wes, all of our teachings point back to
Willie Charlie:this story. All of our social laws point back to the story.
Our origin story is this:before the world was here, the sun and
Our origin story is this:the moon, they fell in love, said their emotions and their
Our origin story is this:feelings towards each other. Where those feelings met was
Our origin story is this:where the world was created. And at the beginning, that world was
Our origin story is this:covered with water. And it was only through time and evolution
Our origin story is this:that land formed. And that some took different shape and
Our origin story is this:different form. Some became the winged, some became the
Our origin story is this:four-legged fur bearing, some became the plant people and the
Our origin story is this:root people, some became the ones that swim in the river and
Our origin story is this:the ocean, and some became human.
Our origin story is this:But our story says that early in time, as the human we needed the
Our origin story is this:most support to survive. And it was all our relations that took
Our origin story is this:pity on us. And they give themselves to us. And they give
Our origin story is this:themselves to us for food, shelter, clothing, utensils, and
Our origin story is this:medicine. And that the only thing they asked in return was
Our origin story is this:to be respected, to be remembered, to only take what
Our origin story is this:you need, and to share with those that are less fortunate.
Our origin story is this:So all of our practices point back to that. All of our ways of
Our origin story is this:harvesting, grooming, looking after, taking, or giving back,
Our origin story is this:point back to that story. That's how you're supposed to look
Our origin story is this:after all our relations.
Our origin story is this:We say we don't own the land, we are the land. For 1000s of
Our origin story is this:years, everything that we are comes from the land. And that
Our origin story is this:when we die, we go back to the land. We are this land.
Our origin story is this:The forest gardens, that we're calling it now, is one part of
Our origin story is this:it. I don't know if they were created, but cultivated, or
Our origin story is this:groomed, or shaped to be here. We believe that everybody is
Our origin story is this:born with a gift. And that gift doesn't belong to an individual.
Our origin story is this:It belongs to your family, and it belongs to the community.
Our origin story is this:When you start a ceremony, when you go into anything, revealing
Our origin story is this:your gift, your always pay your respect to all living things.
Our origin story is this:And your gift comes to the surface. So it'd be the same
Our origin story is this:with anything. It's already here.
Our origin story is this:The area that we're in is called Lhemqwatel. I understand
Our origin story is this:Lhemqwatel means a place of everything.
Adam Huggins:What we took from our conversation with Willie was
Adam Huggins:that, in all likelihood, the forest gardens of Sts'ailes were
Adam Huggins:the result of people recognizing those gifts – in each other and
Adam Huggins:on the land – and giving them the space and the resources to
Adam Huggins:flourish. So, for the purposes of this episode, one big
question remains:if we want to transform our food systems, and
question remains:I think that we do, how do we put this knowledge into
question remains:practice? Ethically, equitably, And effectively?
Chelsey Armstrong:When we started working with these
Chelsey Armstrong:places, like "This is so cool. This is amazing. Look how
Chelsey Armstrong:biodiversity is our and look at how much food production you're
Chelsey Armstrong:getting in one square kilometer in one year. Like it's it's
Chelsey Armstrong:insane." And of course you want to share that with the world and
Chelsey Armstrong:innovate it in a way that can be scaled up. But that scaling up
Chelsey Armstrong:of Indigenous knowledge has not worked out for a lot of people
Chelsey Armstrong:in the past.
Mendel Skulski:When people talk about scaling up Indigenous
Mendel Skulski:knowledge, the concern is that it can lead to commodification
Mendel Skulski:and decontextualization of these culturally-embedded practices.
Mendel Skulski:And that ultimately, there's real risks to moving too fast
Mendel Skulski:and screwing up. And David raises another concern about how
Mendel Skulski:narrowly we invest our future food security in perennial
Mendel Skulski:plants.
David Holmgren:Yes, well, it is very difficult in times of
David Holmgren:crisis of environmental – rapid environmental change, not just
David Holmgren:annual broad scale agriculture, but to some extent, tree crops
David Holmgren:depend on a relatively stable climate. And that actually the
David Holmgren:patterns of hunting, wild foraging, forestry, beekeeping,
David Holmgren:and livestock pastoralism are actually the highly flexible
David Holmgren:land uses that can deal with chaotic climatic change. And so
David Holmgren:I think there is some sobering recognition of vulnerabilities.
David Holmgren:You know, you are planting for some sort of future climate. And
David Holmgren:of course, we mentioned this in Permaculture One, about the
David Holmgren:importance of growing species that imagine until the climate
David Holmgren:in class, the climate changes. You know, we said that in 1975.
David Holmgren:But, of course, that is enormously challenging when
David Holmgren:you're talking about systems that take decades to mature and
David Holmgren:reach their full potential.
Adam Huggins:What David is concerned about here is the
Adam Huggins:opposite extreme from where we are right now, where we rely,
Adam Huggins:for the most part on annual plants for most of our food.
Adam Huggins:Even so, I think that there's room and frankly, the necessity
Adam Huggins:for building up all kinds of regenerative agriculture, from
Adam Huggins:community gardens to small food forests, and, you know, scaling
Adam Huggins:up to revitalized indigenous food systems – at the landscape
Adam Huggins:scale.
Hannah Roessler:I think that forest garden systems are
Hannah Roessler:seriously lacking. I mean, we're so focused on the sort of annual
Hannah Roessler:market vegetable crops that I really wish that there was more
Hannah Roessler:opportunity to take large areas and convert them to forest
Hannah Roessler:gardens, and really do the experimentation that we need to
Hannah Roessler:do, and the learning around it, because it just takes time.
Mendel Skulski:Lucky for us, even in the face of an uncertain
Mendel Skulski:climate, we don't have to start from scratch. We just have to
Mendel Skulski:pay attention to the lessons all around us.
Chelsey Armstrong:One of the things that seems to be a
Chelsey Armstrong:reoccurring debate in the literature is this kind of
Chelsey Armstrong:incompatibility of biodiversity and agro-economic systems,
Chelsey Armstrong:right? That we can't have biodiversity and feed the world.
Chelsey Armstrong:We have to pick one. It's this, kind of archaic, but important
Chelsey Armstrong:argument. And I think what forest gardens show is that we
Chelsey Armstrong:can do both. These are just troves of information and
Chelsey Armstrong:practices and ideologies. It's part of what we're referring to
Chelsey Armstrong:now as Indigenous Futurities, where communities are trying to
Chelsey Armstrong:reconcile over a century of colonialism and erasure. And in
Chelsey Armstrong:order to bring certain things back, they need strategies that
Chelsey Armstrong:depend on things like forest gardens where there's
Chelsey Armstrong:intergenerational knowledge transmission, in a really like
fun way:you get to eat the plants, you get to see them, you
fun way:get to walk through them. It's a lot more fun than learning plant
fun way:names in a classroom, right?
Mendel Skulski:I think anyone who's spent time learning about
Mendel Skulski:wild foods would agree that this is easily the best part. It's
Mendel Skulski:not just about learning what a cloudberry looks like. It's
Mendel Skulski:about holding the leaf in your hand, seeing what's growing
Mendel Skulski:nearby, smelling the ripening season. And cementing all of
Mendel Skulski:that knowledge with the memory of a delicious new flavor. And
Mendel Skulski:with every new flavor, a new acquaintance in the garden, a
Mendel Skulski:new connection with an old neighbor.
Adam Huggins:Better yet, if you know someone who can make
Adam Huggins:introductions.
Stephanie Leon Riedl:You just start a conversation, and then
Stephanie Leon Riedl:the elders will be like "Oh, yeah, I remember". And they'll
Stephanie Leon Riedl:tell you a whole bunch of stuff that you never knew before about
Stephanie Leon Riedl:like eating shoots, and you know, picking bark. My my mom
Stephanie Leon Riedl:was like "I used to remember these trees, and I would just go
Stephanie Leon Riedl:to the tree and I'd just pull the sap right off the tree and,
Stephanie Leon Riedl:like, snack on it." and I'm just like "Okay, you need to show me
Stephanie Leon Riedl:these trees."
Adam Huggins:So instead of trying to replace these places
Adam Huggins:with an idealized version of a tropical food forest, like I
Adam Huggins:think many of us have been trying to do, maybe the best
Adam Huggins:thing to do is to first ask whether the ecosystem that
Adam Huggins:you're in is already producing food. And if so, how this
Adam Huggins:process can be enhanced. Hunter told me about a time when she
Adam Huggins:was working with one of our teachers, Cheryl Bryce, of
Adam Huggins:Songhees Nation.
Hannah Roessler:And she said, you know, Hannah, but everywhere
Hannah Roessler:is a food system. And I kind of knew that, but I didn't really.
Hannah Roessler:It just sort of hit me in that moment of clarity. And so I
Hannah Roessler:started to really look at almost everything as a forest garden
Hannah Roessler:too... or trying to see if that model would apply.
Adam Huggins:It's an invitation to think about every ecosystem a
Adam Huggins:little differently.
Mendel Skulski:And that invitation goes out to more than
Mendel Skulski:just permaculturists. It's also an important one for academics.
Chelsey Armstrong:You know, the first thing archaeologists do
Chelsey Armstrong:when they get to a site to excavate it, is they cut down
Chelsey Armstrong:all the vegetation. It's in the way. You know, archaeologists
Chelsey Armstrong:are not good botanists, never have been. And so I think
Chelsey Armstrong:marrying those two things allowed for this, this kind of
Chelsey Armstrong:work to be done.
Hannah Roessler:Archaeologists, ecologists, and other people who
Hannah Roessler:are working in academia, you know, hey, look around you, and
Hannah Roessler:try and find these patterns.
Mendel Skulski:So slow down, take a seat on the carpet. Ask
Mendel Skulski:and listen.
Adam Huggins:There are gardens and gardeners everywhere.
Willie Charlie:It's not us to say like "Oh, we're gonna use
Willie Charlie:this land for that, we're gonna use that land for that." It's
Willie Charlie:already there. How do we look after it? How do we protect it?
Willie Charlie:How do we groom it – for what it really is already?
Mendel Skulski:Future Ecologies is an independent production,
Mendel Skulski:made possible by our supporters on Patreon. For links, photos,
Mendel Skulski:citations and more episodes, visit us at futureecologies.net
Adam Huggins:This episode was produced by myself Adam Huggins.
Mendel Skulski:And me, Mendel Skulski.
Adam Huggins:With the voices of David Holmgren, Chelsey
Adam Huggins:Armstrong, Morgan Ritchie, Stephanie Leon Riedl, Hannah
Adam Huggins:Roessler, and Willie Charlie.
Adam Huggins:And of course there are lots of researchers who we didn’t get a
Adam Huggins:chance to include in this episode. We want to specifically
Adam Huggins:acknowledge the work of Natasha Lyons, Michael Blake, Jesse
Adam Huggins:Miller, Alex McAlvay, Dana Lepofsky, Nancy Turner, and
Adam Huggins:Marion Dixon Wal'ceckwu.
Mendel Skulski:Music in this episode was by Thumbug, Scott
Mendel Skulski:Gailey, Yu Su, Cat Can Do, Satorian, Museum of No Art,
Mendel Skulski:Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh, and Sunfish Moon Light
Adam Huggins:Special thanks to Meg Ulman, Sue Dennett, Emma
Adam Huggins:Sise, Brendan Hocura, Mark Sutherland, Naomi Okabe, Michael
Adam Huggins:Yadrick, and Cassandra Alan.
Mendel Skulski:We always love hearing from you. So if you'd
Mendel Skulski:like to say hi, you can reach us at our website,
Mendel Skulski:futureecologies.net or on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @futureecologies.
Adam Huggins:Alright, that's it for this one.