Blending Indigenous and western science: Quantifying cultural burning impacts in Karuk Aboriginal Territory

The combined effects of Indigenous fire stewardship and lightning ignitions shaped historical fire regimes, landscape patterns, and available resources in many ecosystems globally. The resulting fire regimes created complex fire-vegetation dynamics that were further influenced by biophysical setting, disturbance history, and climate. While there is increasing recognition of Indigenous fire stewardship among western scientists and managers, the extent and purpose of cultural burning is generally absent from the landscape-fire modeling literature and our understanding of ecosystem processes and development. In collaboration with the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, we developed a transdisciplinary Monte Carlo simulation model of cultural ignition location, frequency, and timing to simulate spatially explicit cultural ignitions across a 264,399-ha landscape within Karuk Aboriginal Territory in northern California. Estimates of cultural ignition parameters were developed with Tribal members and knowledge holders using existing interviews, historical maps, ethnographies, recent ecological studies, contemporary maps, and generational knowledge. Spatial and temporal attributes of cultural burning were explicitly tied to the ecology of specific cultural resources, fuel receptivity, seasonal movement patterns, and spiritual practices. Prior to colonization, cultural burning practices were extensive across the study landscape with an estimated 6972 annual ignitions, averaging approximately 6.5 ignitions per Indigenous fire steward per year. The ignition characteristics we document align closely with data on historical fire regimes and vegetation but differ substantially from the location and timing of contemporary ignitions. This work demonstrates the importance of cultural burning for developing and maintaining the ecosystems present at the time of colonization and underscores the need to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to restore ecocultural processes in these systems.

Predicted impacts of climate change on wild and commercial berry habitats will have food security, conservation and agricultural implications

Climate change is now a reality and is altering ecosystems, with Canada experiencing 2-4 times the global average rate of warming. This will have a critical impact on berry cultivation and horticulture. Enhancing our understanding of how wild and cultivated berries will perform under changing climates will be essential to mitigating impacts on ecosystems, culture and food security. Our objective was to predict the impact of climate change on habitat suitability of four berry producing Vaccinium species: two species with primarily northern distributions (V. uliginosum, V. vitis-idaea), one species with a primarily southern distribution (V. oxycoccos), and the commercially cultivated V. macrocarpon. We used the maximum entropy (Maxent) model and the CMIP6 shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) 126 and 585 projected to 2041-2060 and 2061-2080. Wild species showed a uniform northward progression and expansion of suitable habitat. Our modeling predicts that suitable growing regions for commercial cranberries are also likely to shift with some farms becoming unsuitable for the current varieties and other regions becoming more suitable for cranberry farms. Both V. macrocarpon and V. oxycoccos showed a high dependence on precipitation-associated variables. Vaccinium vitis-idaea and V. uliginosum had a greater number of variables with smaller contributions which may improve their resilience to individual climactic events. Future competition between commercial cranberry farms and wild berries in protected areas could lead to conflicts between agriculture and conservation priorities. New varieties of commercial berries are required to maintain current commercial berry farms.

"When the Wild Roses Bloom": Indigenous Knowledge and Environmental Change in Northwestern North America

Indigenous Peoples in Northwestern North America have always worked with predictable cycles of day and night, tides, moon phases, seasons, and species growth and reproduction, including such phenological indicators as the blooming of flowers and the songs of birds. Negotiating variability has been constant in people's lives. Long-term monitoring and detailed knowledge of other lifeforms and landscapes of people's home territories have assisted in responding and adapting to change. Aspects of cultural knowledge and practice that have helped Indigenous Peoples navigate nature's cycles at different scales of time and space include kin ties and social relationships, experiential learning, language, storytelling and timing of ceremonies such as "First Foods" celebrations. Working with ecological processes, Indigenous Peoples have been able to maintain optimal conditions for preferred species, reducing variability and uncertainty through taking care of productive habitats, leaving ecosystems intact, and allowing other species to change in their own cycles. Since the onset of colonization, however, Indigenous Peoples' lifeways have been changed drastically, culminating with the current impacts of global climate change and biodiversity loss. This paper, based on contributions of numerous Indigenous Knowledge holders from across Northwestern North America, outlines some of the key ways in which Indigenous Peoples have embraced predictability and change in their environments and lifeways, and addresses the particular threat of climate change: its recognition, ways of adapting to it, and, ultimately, how it might be reversed through developing more careful, respectful relationships with and responsibilities for the other-than-human world.

“The Old Foods Are the New Foods!”: Erosion and Revitalization of Indigenous Food Systems in Northwestern North America

The global “nutrition transition” has had an immense impact on Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America. From an original diet comprised of mostly local plant and animal foods, including salmon, game, diverse plants, seaweed and other marine foods, many Indigenous people are now eating mostly imported, refined marketed foods that are generally less healthy, and many are at risk of diet-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Nevertheless, Indigenous people have always valued their ancestral foods, and over the last few decades there have been many initiatives throughout the region to restore and revitalize these original foods, and to re-learn Indigenous methods of processing and harvesting them. In this paper we describe the original Indigenous food systems in the study region, and the methods used to sustain and promote the ancestral food species and habitats. We then discuss the impacts of colonization, and describe recent and ongoing Resilience and Resurgence in relation to ancestral foods and food practices, including firsthand experiences with renewing food traditions. These initiatives are often connected with language revitalization and cultural resurgence programs. Led by Indigenous communities, they are undertaken with support of academic, government, and other partners. In all, they have resulted in stronger, more vibrant cultures and generally healthier communities.

Medicinal ethnobotany of wild plants: a cross-cultural comparison around Georgia-Turkey border, the Western Lesser Caucasus

BACKGROUND

The Mountains of the Western Lesser Caucasus with its rich plant diversity, multicultural and multilingual nature host diverse ethnobotanical knowledge related to medicinal plants. However, cross-cultural medicinal ethnobotany and patterns of plant knowledge have not yet been investigated in the region. Doing so could highlight the salient medicinal plant species and show the variations between communities. This study aimed to determine and discuss the similarities and differences of medicinal ethnobotany among people living in highland pastures on both sides of the Georgia-Turkey border.

METHODS

During the 2017 and 2018 summer transhumance period, 119 participants (74 in Turkey, 45 in Georgia) were interviewed with semi-structured questions. The data was structured in use-reports (URs) following the ICPC classification. Cultural Importance (CI) Index, informant consensus factor (FIC), shared/separate species-use combinations, as well as literature data were used for comparing medicinal ethnobotany of the communities.

RESULTS

One thousand five hundred six UR for 152 native wild plant species were documented. More than half of the species are in common on both sides of the border. Out of 817 species-use combinations, only 9% of the use incidences are shared between communities across the border. Around 66% of these reports had not been previously mentioned specifically in the compared literature. Only 33 species have similar use reports in both countries, most important of which are Plantago major, Urtica dioica, Picea orientalis, Anthemis spp., Sambucus ebulus, Achillea millefolium, Helichrysum rubicundum, Mentha longifolia, Pinus sylvestris var. hamata, Hypericum perforatum, Tussilago farfara, Helichrysum plicatum, Rumex crispus, Berberis vulgaris, and Origanum vulgare. More than half of species reported in each country were found to have more than one part of the plant valued for medicinal use. The most common way of using plants medicinally in both countries is drinking the water infusion of aerial parts with flowers. Based on CI index value, two-thirds of the salient 15 genera in both countries have use reports in at least seven medicinal use categories. While the most cited category with highest FIC is digestive in Georgia, it is skin category in Turkey. Patterns of medicinal plant knowledge among studied communities appear to be connected with more than one cultural factor, in particular ethnolinguistic diversity, cultural background, and access to multilingual written folk and scientific literature, or probably a combination of various factors.

CONCLUSION

Considering the regions' floral similarity, common historical-cultural contact, and similar livelihood strategies of the communities, shared ethnomedicinal knowledge across the Georgia-Turkey border is quite low. Even though the impacts of accessing multilingual folk and scientific literature are likely to be significant, the factors that shape the medicinal plant knowledge patterns of the communities are shown to be variable among species, needing further research into intracultural diversity and socio-economical conditions, as well as the political history across the border.