Makwa Giizis: Bear Moon narrated by Grandmother Kim Wheatley/Youtube

Happy Naabdin Giizis (Snowcrust Moon), a good month to visit Ziibaakdakaan (the sugar bush)!

“I have heard the sap called ninaatigwaaboo ‘maple tree water’, wiishkabaaboo ‘sweet water’, and ziisbaakwadaaboo ‘sugar water.’ I have heard that the birch tree is tapped sometimes as well, for medicinal purposes as well as flavouring. I imagine the sap from the birch tree is called wiigwaasaatigwaaboo, or if it is the yellow birch, wiin’zikwaaboo.

I presume it was easy enough for the Anishinaabe to figure out that the trees would give water, but how did they know to boil it down to make sugar? The answer is in a story called “Bgoji-nishnaabenhsag – Little people” which was related by Wiigwaaskingaa (Whitefish River) Elder Nmenhs (Arthur McGregor)”

Ninaatigwaaboo (Maple Tree Water): An Anishinaabe history of maple sugaring, curated by Alan Corbiere

Here’s a beautiful telling of Nanabush & Zhiiwaagamizigan based on Leanne Simpson’s The Gift is in the Making.

Planet Soil: The Power of the Underground

The 1000 Islands Master Gardeners are hosting only the second screening in Canada of the documentary Planet Soil: The Power of the Underground!

"Springtails, woodlice, fungi, nematodes, mites, earthworms, slugs, spiders, or snail eggs typically don’t show up on the big screen in starring roles, but Planet Soil makes the invisible visible and is a rare tribute to the vast underground community on which plants and humans depend... The film not only captures moving images of the teeming micro-life beneath the soil surface — microorganisms like fungi and bacteria as well as species like springtails, nematodes, mites, and other small creatures — but also shows their interactions... The film’s microcinematography and brilliant time-lapse photography captured astonishing images of the behaviour of soil microorganisms." Review in the The Free Press

When: Saturday, April 20 at 1:00 pmWhere: The Screening RoomTickets: $19 on EventbriteFollowing the screening we'll have a virtual Q&A with Producer and Co-Director Ignas van Schaick. Tickets are limited – only 100 – so get them soon.

You'll have a chance to win a Pocket Forest!

Ecology of the Thousand Islands

Last month Oliver Reichl, Consulting Arborist-Ecologist and a Little Forests board member, gave a talk on how the 1000 Islands became one of the most biodiverse places on the continent.  To learn more, he suggests the following resources:

• A Natural Heritage Review of the Thousand Islands Ecosystem, Oliver Reichl

• Islands Insights books (Geology, Plants, Birds, Climate European Settlement 1650-1850)

• Frontenac Arch Biosphere

• Thousand Islands, Parks Canada

• Discovering the Thousand Islands, Don Ross

• Field Guide to Wildlife Habitats of the Eastern United States, Janine M Benyus

Kingston signs the Montreal Pledge

On Tuesday March 19 Kingston City Council became a signatory to the Montreal Biodiversity Pledge, agreeing to track progress towards the 15 Pledge commitments using the CitiesWithNature Action Platform.

Nathan, Prusha and Joyce all did delegations in support of the recommendation by staff to sign the Pledge. If you’re interested in reading our delegations, we’ve shared them here. Or watch on Youtube.

I am Cloud. I am Firefly. I am Oak. I am Forest.

“I am Cloud. I’ve been big, and I’ve been small. I’ve dissolved and been re-made many times. I think the humans could stand to dissolve a few times, and it is unwise for them to resist this...

It was hard to identify with Cloud because sometimes (a lot of the time?) Cloud isn’t in a form I would recognize as a cloud. Sometimes in rainwater and sometimes mixed in with other beings - what is Cloud when they’re not being a Cloud? Do they remember that time? How do they feel about it? What language would Cloud use to describe this process?”Participant, Imagining City in a Forest

How might our imaginations help us dream into being other possible worlds? A City in a Forest? We’ve begun exploring this question, facilitating workshops  with a Worldbuilding class at Queen’s and with the residents of the KFHC Bagot Street site we’re planting this fall.

Here’s an excerpt of how we framed the imaginining:

“Twenty years ago, back in 2024 (for some of you I know this is ancient times, for others just a tiny blip in your lifespan), the beings of the more-than-human world – including Aki (Soil), Nibi (Water), Mitigwakiing (forest), Mitigomizh (Oak), Aninaatig (Maple) along with all of the photosynthesizers, the food providers, the processors, the consumers, the recyclers, and Gichigami-ziibi herself collectively called for humans–their younger siblings–to learn the art of reciprocity from the original peoples of this land. We challenged the humans–those they call the two-legged ones–to work with us to create a flourishing future where we would not just survive, but thrive.”

At the Bagot Street imagination session, Firefly spoke of lighting up the night, Fungi spoke of their relationship with Ant, and Diptera (Fly) spoke of their many kin who gave up their lives to feed others in Forest.

Read more about the approach we used for this experiment.

But how do FireFly, Cloud, Oak, Forest imagine us? How do we enter into conversation with them?

Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson honours the oldest Maple in her region of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Territory in this love song to The Oldest Tree in the World.

“I’m worrying about what you’re drinking. You’re worrying about what I’m breathing. I like you because you never talk too loud. I breathe it out. You breathe it in. I like you because you hold this all together. The parts I can’t see. I breathe it in. You breathe it out. You, eleven times my age. Me, draped in clouds of youth. I think I know what you’ve seen. I think we’re the same. But it’s not true. I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t know how to say this without embarrassing you. But I do know I believe in the saying things. I do know I believe in the telling. Your wrinkled grey skin is gorgeous. And I hope you don’t know what’s happening.”

Natasha Myers, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at York University and director of the Plant Studies Collaboratory, explores the question of how we might do more-than-human ecology, becoming sensor to Oak Savanna in Protocols for Doing Ecology Otherwise.

“Becoming Sensor invites you to explore how non-Indigenous people can become allies to Indigenous resurgence by experimenting with ways to detune the settler common sense that informs conventional ideas about the living world. To do this you need to forget your best training: forget what you thought “nature” was; forget how you thought life “worked”; and forget, too, the naturalizing tropes that made you believe that living beings “work” like machines, or that forests perform “ecosystems services,” or that “reproduction” and “fitness” were the only valuable and recordable measures of a life.”

Here are some of her techniques for tuning your senses to the beings and doings in worlds we inhabit:

• Gestures

• Textures

• Sonic Ecologies

• Smellscapes

“If the forest is alive—if the animals, the plants, the fungi, the river, the air, and the rocks are all animate beings—then we need to find ways to hear their voices and spirits.”

MOTH (more-than-human) Rights 

Cultivate your inner plant

How might you cultivate your inner plant?

Natasha Myer, who urges us to vegetalise our sensorium, offers us this kriya for cultivating your inner plant, a variation the Tree pose in yoga.

“Find a patch of sunlight. Stand tall, let your feet sink into the ground below you, and close your eyes. Reach your bare arms outward and feel the sun warm your skin. Drink it in. Now, let go of your bodily contours. The skin and flesh of your arms thins and fans outward, becoming membrane thin. Your bones dissolve, and your muscles melt away. Begin to pump water through your veins until they elongate and branch into turgid vessels. Draw water up your growing stem into your leaves. Play with this new buoyancy, feel the lift and lilt as your leaves and stems reach for more sunlight. You are becoming phototropic. Lap up the sunlight through your greening leaves. Feel a cool pocket of air forming on the underside of your leaves as you release atmospheric vapours. You are photosynthesizing: eating sunlight, inhaling gaseous carbon, exhaling oxygen and releasing water… more here.”