Wabanaki Sweetgrass Harvesting in Acadia National Park

Suzanne Greenlaw, Holton Band of Maliseet

Traditional Ecological Knowledge

The Abbe Museum’s Annual Meeting, held on Friday, June 15th, brought together members of the board, Abbe staff, and friends within the greater Abbe community to celebrate the successes of the Museum’s recent Indian Market and to anticipate the exciting growth of such events in upcoming months and years, including the 25th annual Native American Festival on Saturday, July 7th and the Abbe Midsummer on Wednesday, August 1. The Abbe Annual Meeting also featured a special presentation given by Suzanne Greenlaw, Houlton Band of Maliseets, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Forest Resources at the University of Maine, Orono and a Native Advisory Council member at the Abbe. Suzanne discussed her ongoing research on the role of Native-held traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK, in the sustainable harvest of sweetgrass within Acadia National Park.

Access Restrictions Called into Question

Suzanne opened her talk with a moment of truth telling, which is vital to the Abbe’s decolonization efforts.  She described the National Park Service's historic seizures of Indigenous lands and denial of Indigenous access to those seized lands for decades. Her work, which connects Wabanaki sweetgrass harvesters with Acadia National Park and researchers like herself, is an important example of the process of Native reclamation of colonized lands.  This process is incredibly powerful for Wabanaki people who participate in harvesting.

Native to New England, sweetgrass can be found locally within Acadia National Park in grassy stands that appear to glow in the early morning light. The plant is easily identified by its sweet, hay-like scent, which many describe as similar to vanilla.  Sweetgrass continues to be an important resource for the Wabanaki as a medicinal plant and for its use in basket making.

 As is often the case with colonized land, Wabanaki basket makers have been forced to contend with a number of limits on access to sweetgrass and other resources like black ash trees imposed by private landowners and harvesting restrictions instituted within Acadia National Park.  Recently, however, studies like those conducted by Suzanne and her team of botanists in conjunction with Wabanaki harvesters have called into question the necessity of the Park’s strict harvesting regulations, given the sustainability of Native gathering techniques. Suzanne’s research sets a precedent for new models of harvesting access which could have implications throughout the National Park Service.

Methodology and Findings

Suzanne’s work employs a participatory research methodology, which in the context of sweetgrass harvesting engages with Native harvesters as active participants, recognizes the practical role of findings as agents of change, and allows for methods to evolve throughout the research process. Anticipated outcomes of Suzanne’s research include a greater understanding of the efficacy of TEK as it relates to sweetgrass harvesting as well as the expansion of access to sweetgrass within Park boundaries for Wabanaki harvesters who have cultivated an intimate knowledge of this culturally significant resource for generations.  In 2016, federal regulations against harvesting sweetgrass within Acadia National Park were relaxed for Wabanaki gatherers intending to use sweetgrass in traditional ways. Still, Suzanne hopes, more can and will be done to reconnect Wabanaki harvesters with culturally significant sweetgrass plots in the near future.

Suzanne highlighted the fact that the sustainable harvest of sweetgrass is a priority among Indigenous harvesters.  The common understanding among the harvesters who worked with Suzanne is that “if it doesn’t give itself to you, it’s not sweetgrass.  Don’t take it.” Additional studies have shown that when half of the sweetgrass in an area is harvested, the overall population remains unaffected in subsequent years.  Suzanne’s preliminary findings recapitulated the common understanding among Native gatherers that regular harvesting enhances sweetgrass abundance and allows the species to flourish.  Her study therefore provides an important example of the efficacy of Native stewardship, TEK, and the role of each in the maintenance of local biodiversity.

Cultural Significance

Suzanne’s research also points to the importance of practices related to sweetgrass within Wabanaki culture, especially during difficult times when the use of Wabanaki languages was prohibited or discouraged. “While [harvesters] couldn’t speak their language,” Suzanne told the audience, “they could harvest sweetgrass.” Sweetgrass harvesting also provides a meaningful connection to earlier generations.  “Landscape remembers,” Suzanne impressed upon us. “Harvesters felt as if their ancestors were there with them.” The presence of sweetgrass in Koluskap narratives indicates the importance of this cultural keystone species for the Wabanaki, but, in this case, the sharing of such stories cannot entirely replicate the experience of engaging directly with the plant. “Culture is a practice,” Suzanne emphasized. “You can’t practice your culture from a book.”

TEK as Decolonization

Suzanne also discussed a focus on TEK as a tool for decolonization. She found that harvesters tended to defer to botanists though they themselves possessed a body of practical knowledge related to the species unparalleled by researchers. “Nobody ever said this was knowledge,” Suzanne explained. By reinstating TEK as a viable and valued way of understanding the natural world, Suzanne’s work highlights the practice of sustainable sweetgrass harvesting as a vital aspect of Wabanaki culture as well as its immense significance for those interested in the maintenance of local biodiversity or for those who just can’t get enough of the lovely scent of dried sweetgrass braided along the edge of a hand-woven ash basket.  As an agent of change, her work calls for the continued expansion of Indigenous access to Park resources as well as the advancement of collaborative efforts between Acadia National Park and Wabanaki harvesters who have gathered sweetgrass, among other species, on Mount Desert Island for centuries.

To learn more about efforts to ensure the health and continuity of sweetgrass, please read: 

• Tips On Saving and Maintaining Our Sweetgrass by Mikoo Mendoza

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Milkweed Editions, 2014.

Abbe Museum Indian Market Indigenous Film Festival

The Abbe Museum and Reel Pizza are partnering to present the region’s first ever Indigenous Film Festival during the Abbe Museum Indian Market, May 18-21. Each evening will feature films by and about Indigenous peoples, presenting stories often overlooked in the film industry. The Abbe Museum Indian Market Indigenous Film Festival’s inaugural year will include feature films, documentaries, and Q&A sessions with filmmakers.

We are proud to announce the list of films being shown this year. Alanis Obomsawin’s Our People Will Be Healed; Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls; Valerie Red-Horses’ MANKILLER; Ciara Lacy’s Out of State; and Sydney Freeland’s Drunktown’s Finest will be featured. All Indigenous, all incredibly talented storytellers sharing a diversity of topics.

Hosting a film festival in the heart of Wabanaki homeland is a labor of love, and this year two of our features are made by Wabanaki filmmakers, Alanis Obomsawin, Abenaki from Odanak, and Jeff Barnaby, Mi'gMaq from Listugui, will bring their talent to the Reel Pizza screen for visitors near and far. The Abbe Museum hopes to continue highlighting Wabanaki filmmakers while also showcasing films by talented Indigenous people from around the world as we move forward in years to come producing this event.

This past winter we have highlighted a number of films featuring topics relating to Indigeneity in a lead up series to this film festival. The sheer diversity of films in this lead up series demonstrates the power of film and forced us to confront issues of representation on screen. From the silent film Daughter of Dawn to Powwow Highway, we know that these images are important to unpack.

We would like to thank our partners at Reel Pizza and Elizabeth Weatherford from the National Museum for the American Indian for helping make this vision a reality.

Come celebrate Indigenous filmmakers with us! 

Click on titles to view trailers.

Our People Will Be Healed

Abenaki filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin

Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin’s 50th film, Our People Will Be Healed, reveals how a Cree community in Manitoba has been enriched through the power of education. The Helen Betty Osborne Ininiw Education Resource Centre in Norway House, north of Winnipeg, receives a level of funding that few other Indigenous institutions enjoy. With a focus on self-determination and sustainability, it is home to a remarkable education centre and a range of community-managed industries, but the legacy of colonial policies and the traumas of both the residential school and the crisis around murdered and missing women remain deeply felt. With Our People Will Be Healed, Obomsawin shows us what action-driven decolonization actually looks like, using interviews and gorgeous landscape photography to represent this vibrant place in all its complexity and beauty.

Rhymes for Young Ghouls

Still from Rhymes for young Ghouls

Rhymes for Young Ghouls is grim story of survival written and directed by Mig’maq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby. In 1976, a Mi'gMaq teenager Aila (Devery Jacobs) plots revenge against the sadistic Indian agent, Popper (Mark Antony Krupa), who runs a residential school. At 15, Aila is the weed princess of Red Crow. Hustling with her uncle Burner, she sells enough dope to pay Popper her "truancy tax", keeping her out of residential school. But when Aila's drug money is stolen and her father Joseph returns from prison, the precarious balance of Aila's world is destroyed. Her only options are to run or fight and Mi’gMaq don't run. 

MANKILLER

Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee 

When history fails to preserve stories from our past and present, it’s up to us to correct the record. Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, is omitted from most history books despite ranking among revolutionary leaders like Harriet Tubman or Eleanor Roosevelt. She was an activist and a champion to a nation – and it’s time the world remembers her name. MANKILLER is a documentary celebrating a leader who defied all odds to make a difference for her people. During a time when American Indians found themselves disenfranchised and undervalued by the United States at large, Wilma emerged as a champion of the Cherokee Nation and became its first female Principal Chief in 1985.

Out of State

Out of State, Directed by Ciara Lacy

Shipped thousands of miles away from the tropical islands of Hawaii to a private prison in the Arizona desert, two native Hawaiians discover their indigenous traditions from a fellow inmate serving a life sentence. It's from this unlikely setting that David and Hale finish their terms and return to Hawaii, hoping for a fresh start. Eager to prove to themselves and to their families that this experience has changed them forever, David and Hale struggle with the hurdles of life as formerly incarcerated men, asking the question: can you really go home again?

Drunktown’s Finest

Drunktown's Finest directed by Sydney Freeland

On a beautifully desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous transgender woman – search for love and acceptance. As the three find their lives becoming more complicated and their troubles growing, their paths begin to intersect. With little in common other than a shared heritage, they soon learn that the key to overcoming their respective obstacles may come from the most unlikely of sources, each other. Inspired by a 20/20 story that called her hometown of Gallup, NM “Drunktown USA,” writer/director Sydney Freeland has constructed a moving and ultimately uplifting story about coming of age in the most challenging of circumstances while still finding hope, healing, and the chance for a better life.   

Questions Teachers Must Ask Themselves: A Reflection on Dignity

I came to the Abbe Museum as a former social justice trained educator having worked with middle and high school social studies students. I worked hard to develop my pedagogy in the classroom, constantly forcing myself and my students to look beyond the pages of our resources and ask ourselves questions. Why is this important? Whose voice are we actually listening to? Who is telling this story? Who has been silenced? One question I kept asking myself at the end of every lesson was how do I bring dignity to a society built on colonialism and slavery?

Developing a solid curriculum is essential to all good teaching. My theory behind developing curriculum for dignity is a dual intention of honoring my content and providing an environment that is responsive to the needs of my students. In a history setting, students are free to explore the lives of other people separated by time and space and grapple with questions universal to humanity. "History, in other words, is...open to the whole range of human experience" (Whelman, 55) and I can utilize this to promote my own students' dignity by legitimizing their experiences. 

You may ask how one actually creates this kind of “curriculum for dignity." In my approach to history, I think it is imperative to highlight the agency and resistance of those living under oppressive socio-political systems. I wanted my students to interrogate all of our texts that perpetuate ideas about 'passive victims.' The development of critical thinking is essential for this kind of questioning. My focus on resistance is about bringing dignity to those in our units and students alike. It is an avenue through which students see the importance of being critical citizens who vocalize their questions and concerns. 

My work in museums is not all that different than that in a classroom. I still value the reflective nature of this work and believe that museum professionals must fully form their pedagogical approaches with dignity in mind. How does our work dignify the lived experiences of Wabanaki people? How are we addressing the past transgressions of museum work which assaulted Indigenous dignity and wellbeing? These are the questions I do not fear asking my colleagues and myself because it is the heart of decolonizing work. 

I bring dignity into museum work through truth-telling and decolonizing practices such as honoring the authority the Wabanaki nations have to tell their own stories. Since starting at the Abbe, my education team has developed a dialogue program called Decolonizing Museum Practice. It is an institutionally-reflective experience for visitors to see the challenges museums, like the Abbe, must come to terms with in order to create an environment that breaks down colonial narratives and supports a Native voice and agency. I actively engage visitors in reflecting on their own experiences and biases, because learners never come to us devoid of these, and in order to push past stereotypes and static historical narratives we need to confront ourselves.

Whether my learners are in a classroom or the museum, there is a responsibility I feel I have to bring my pedagogy of dignity to all the work I do behind the scenes and out on the frontline. This ensures that I am able to create a space for deeper educational moments that push us past the comfortable and into a truthful assessment of colonialism today. 

About the Author
Starr Kelly is the Curator of Education at the Abbe Museum. She is a member of the Algonquin First Nation of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg in Quebec, and has worked as a middle and high school social studies teacher and is a social justice oriented educator, developing what she refers to as a "curriculum for dignity." Her lessons and pedagogical approach put theory into practice by honoring those she teaches about while simultaneously creating an environment which is responsive to the needs of her learners and dignifies her students' lived experiences. 

Guest Blogger Series
Our Guest Blogger Series is written by members of the Abbe Museum's Board of Trustees, Native Advisory Council, Staff, and special guest authors. It is a place to talk about the Museum's mission and related topics. Interested in becoming a Guest Blogger? Contact the Abbe's Director of Advancement, Heather Anderson, for more details at heather@abbemuseum.org.