Let's plant 5 Little Forests! Wabaabagaa Giizis (Leaves Turning Moon) - 2 October 2023

Happy Waabaagbagaa-giizis (Leaves Turning Moon)… yes, this newsletter is a few moons late!

“Leaves Turning Moon is the time of retrospection, we look back to reflect on what we have learned. During this moon, we come to understand change. We bring our family back into the home, and we are thankful for the moons and what they have provided.” Ontario Native Women’s Association 

Have you read the wonderful book “Moon of the Crusted Snow” by Waubgeshig Rice, a dystopian novel about the collapse of society from an Indigenous perspective?  The sequel - Moon of the Turning Leaves - is being released October 5.

Waubgeshig Rice writes that:

"It's a world that I'm familiar with. It's set in an Anishinaabe community that's dealing with the impact of being displaced and the effects of colonialism. It's a dystopia that's already here. I could draw the personal experience of growing up in a community like this. But there's still some knowledge of being able to live on the land and use the resources of the natural world to survive."

Time to plant some Little Forests!

Tulip trees, slippery elms, pin cherries, sycamores and pawpaws await their new homes in Kingston Little Forests!

Fall is here so it's time to plant more Little Forests! The trees have begun arriving and we’re expecting more soon. Altogether we anticipate planting nearly 2500 trees in five Little Forests in the coming weeks!

If you would like to help with the plantings, here are a few ways you could get involved:

• Planters: These are the people who plant the trees!

• Coaches: If you have some planting experience perhaps you would consider being a coach and teaching others how to plant

• Site organizers: There are also more organizational aspects to help with (e.g. helping keep the sites running smoothly)

• Safety foresters: If you have a particular interest in keeping people safe, we are looking for “safety foresters” who are ideally trained in First Aid (but this isn’t a necessary requirement)

• Site prep: there is still some site prep work to be done so if you’re into carting mulch around in wheelbarrows, raking, weeding, those sorts of things, we have the perfect job for you!

The full schedule isn’t yet finalized (we’ll publish updates here on our website), but this is what we’re anticipating:

• October 10-11: Final site prep at Seniors Centre (date/time to be confirmed)

• October 14-15 (Saturday and Sunday): Planting at Seniors Centre. Planters / Coaches / Site Organizers / Safety Foresters

• October 16-17 (Monday and Tuesday): Planting by school classes at Seniors Centre. Coaches / Site Organizers / Safety Foresters

• October 18 (Wednesday): Planting any left-over trees at the Seniors Centre, final clean-up. Planters / Coaches / Site Organizers / Safety Foresters

• October 19-27 (Dates/Times TBD): Planting trees at the Hwy 15 Indigenous Food Sovereignty Garden Little Forest (mostly coaching/mentoring school kids), composting and mulching the Little Forest site at 111 Van Order at the Kingston and Frontenac Housing Corporation inaugural Little Forest site! Coaches / Site Prep / Site Organizers / Safety Foresters

As you can see there is much to be done and we would so appreciate your help. Feel free to pass this on to friends and neighbours who might be interested too!

If you’d like to learn more about volunteering, or let us know a particular activity you’d like to get involved in, please contact Chloe at [email protected]. 

Reconciling with the land

The Report of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission asks: “Now that we know about residential schools and their legacy, what do we do about it?” The report quotes Mi’kmaq Elder Augustine:

“other dimensions of human experience—our relationships with the earth and all living beings—are also relevant in working towards reconciliation.”

And Elder Reg Crowshoe:

“Reconciliation requires talking, but our conversations must be broader than Canada’s conventional approaches. Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.”

Listen to Isaac Murdoch from Serpent River First Nation as he speaks about the importance of our relationship with the land and why we must include this when we talk about reconciliation.

“I want to reconcile with the old growth forests that have been cut down. Because some of those trees were thousands of years old. They were Elders. They had a lot of knowledge. They held the code on how to live with Earth. I want to reconcile with that…”

Planting, caring for and building relationships with Little Forests is one way we can begin to unlearn colonialism and renew kinship relations as we work to reconcile with the land.

Begin a relational walking practice

In We Need a New Story: Walking and the wâhkôhtowin Imagination Dwayne Donald (Aipioomahkaa), Papaschase Cree, frames walking “enlivened by the wâhkôhtowin imagination” as a life practice that can teach kinship relationality and help reconceptualize Indigenous-Canadian relations on more ethical terms:

By walking and listening, people begin to perceive the life around themselves differently. They feel enmeshed in relationships. This change in perception… arises from their willingness to be put in the flow of the traditional wisdom insight of the wâhkôhtowin imagination. They walk themselves into kinship relationality… Walking and the wâhkôhtowin imagination can help us re-story ourselves — individually and collectively — as real human beings bent-over-holding-hands-in-reciprocity-with-all-our-relations.”

Download his guided prompt for a daily relational walking practice. He suggests that when you’re walking in a place, think about:

• Who is communicating with you when you’re there

• How are you perceiving what is being communicated to you while you’re there

• How are your making sense of what is being communicated to you there

Here are some additional questions he suggests asking yourself (from Coming to Know”: A Framework for Indigenous Science Education, Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams and Gloria Snively):

• Where is here?

• Who am I that I am here?

• Who else is here alongside me?

• What gives and sustains life here?

• How can I participate in the life that is here?

• How can we live well together here?

“Consider it a form of prayer, this walking that you’re doing, this connecting with the kinship that surrounds you.”