Listening to Traditional Ecological Knowledge to Reimagine Vassar’s Relationship with Land and Other Beings

By Jake Mier, Jake Kaplan, and Sonia Santos

“…Native people were the first ecologists, as the mythologies, understandings, and technical knowledge were always directly tied to specific ecologies, or specific regions, plants, and animals. The knowledge base itself becomes one of maintaining a thoughtful, proper relationship to those natural forces.” 

–Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence

What is Traditional Ecological Knowledge?

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) refers to Indigenous sciences, which include Indigenous philosophies and cosmologies, constituting the major difference between western science and TEK. While western science posits itself as a neutral, objective, and detached discipline, TEK embraces the subjective and centers a relational framework. Indigenous ecology is about relationships; ecosystems come into being and survive through the interactions between living and “nonliving” beings within a community (Cajete, 64). TEK is about interactions, how people interact with other people, animals, plants, and the land. Land is central because everything lives within a landscape; there is no community without the relationships between life and land. Land sustains life so long as life sustains the land, and it is this reciprocal responsibility that is central to TEK (Cajete, 95). Every Indigenous culture has their own unique TEK because they each live in a unique landscape with a unique community of species. 

“Ecophilosophy [such as TEK] seeks to reintegrate values with a worldview, in a direct and ecologically informed way that mirrors the level of integration once achieved by Inidgenous peoples. Just as new forms of life are evolutionary – create out of old forms – so new forms of knowledge and systems of learning must be created out of the most promising spiritual and cultural heritages of the past.” -Gregory Cajete

To understand Indigenous knowledges we must first understand their ties to land, and by extension, their multiplicities (Cajete, 91). Cosmologies (which encompass belief systems, worldviews, knowledge systems, and morality) are included in the realm of TEK because they too, are constructed relationally. Indigenous cosmologies are modes of sharing information, through storytelling and myth. Cultural knowledge moves between generations using stories about different places and species to convey the importance of relationships and of respecting all members of the broader community (Cajete, 82). Cosmologies are activated through community practices, rituals, and relationship building. People live in a community with the environment and landscape around them. Building relationships and respect through understanding, rather than extraction, allows for mutualistic, sustainable community growth of the landscape and all that live within it.

How has TEK informed the Shinnecock Action plan?

The Shinnecock Reservation is located on the middle south shore of present-day Long Island, NY

The Shinnecock Indian Nation is located in southeastern Long Island, NY. “Shinnecock” means “people of the stony shore” alluding to the deep connection they hold with the land, water, plant, and animal life of their community. Because culture and land are tied together, climate change fundamentally endangers their sovereignty and way of life. Rising sea levels threaten to submerge their ancestral lands and traditional burial sites. Whether the danger is short or long term, members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation are greatly concerned. Because Indigenous cultures are tied directly to the land, there is little way to translocate Indigenous cultures; land damage is culturally felt.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation climate vulnerability assessment and action plan lays out a comprehensive plan for addressing climate change that centers cultural effects. The plan is contextualized around the goal to, “conserve, manage, and utilize our tribal lands, natural and cultural resources in a sustainably appropriate manner while balancing our economic growth and community needs” (Shinnecock Indian Nation plan, 11). TEK is woven into the Shinnecock plan by framing adaptation actions through a relational lens. For instance, wetlands serve as a natural sponge for storm energy, yet rising sea levels threaten their existing range (Shinnecock Indian Nation plan, 9). Without this first line of defense, Shinnecock land is at higher risk of devastating loss. Members of the Shinnecock Indian Nation are facilitating the inland migration of these wetland areas, thereby protecting the wetland environment which then protects the rest of their coastal lands. This reciprocal act speaks to the TEK foundation of the plan.

 The relational nature of TEK allows for a natural sharing of knowledge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The Shinnecock plan outlines this through programs to increase public outreach and education. In order to advance adaptation actions, fostering relationships with other communities, more-than-humans, and plants is critical. Many TEK scholars say that plants are our oldest teachers, as they provide metaphorical models for living harmoniously with the land (Kimmerer, 43); thus, there is a “modern relevance” of traditional Indigenous ethical economics (Martinez, 141). 

How can a TEK framework better Vassar’s relationship with the land?

Map of the Hudson Valley in present-day New York State. Vassar College resides in Poughkeepsie, NY.

The Vassar College campus is located on land that was once home to the Delaware Nation, the Delaware Lenape Tribe, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. Despite having no long-term roots to the land, Vassar has prided itself on rooting down trees, which has been at the center of Vassar College’s landscape planning since its inception. Founder Matthew Vassar personally oversaw the first plantings in 1865, and class tree ceremonies have been a long-standing tradition since 1868. As of today, Vassar College is designated as a Level II Arboretum by Arbnet, an international arboreta organization. The campus has 2200 trees, 194 of them designated as arboretum specimens comprising over 171 tree species. 

Map of the main campus of Vassar Campus. Trees referenced in the article are marked with red and yellow dots indicative of the President’s House and Strong House respectively

Around campus, labels tag the trees that are designated as part of the arboretum and are linked to the Vassar Arboretum Web Map, which filters specimens into “…rare, unique, or otherwise exemplary individuals (including native species endemic to the region), as well as designated class trees and memorial trees”. Not all of the trees on campus are logged on the Web Map, which begs the question: what makes these trees more privileged than any other? These categories reveal the taxonomy-based relationship Vassar holds with its land and more-than-human species. Trees become important largely for their eclectic service to the institution; the more diverse the tree species, the higher level arboretum. As a result, the commodification of the trees has come at a great ecological cost. Non-native species, such as Bungeana–originally from Asia planted across from Strong House (yellow dot) or the European Abies near the President’s House (red dot), that were planted for their beauty and eccentricity, are damaging the native tree canopy. The focus on tree diversity simply for the sake of an arboretum label is detrimental to the land we occupy. Biodiversity is not some concept to protect in the abstract; species are innately tied to the environments that produced them. Regional biodiversity must take precedence because the Earth is not an environmental monolith – native biodiversity within regions must be protected to protect the larger whole. 

Vassar has been working to remove non-native invasive species (of course excluding the non-native plants Vassar chose to plant), holding to the ideal of managing the land to  “reestablish native plant areas”. But what is a “native plant area”? This very notion of selective land management is antithetical to a TEK framework. Kyle Whyte argues that “…the term ‘management’ can connote a non-indigenous view of the appropriate relationship among humans, other living beings, and the environment.” (Whyte, 9). All spaces on Vassar’s campus ought to be thought of as native plant areas. By centering a TEK framework, our community can create a system that uses plants as the ultimate teachers and hold each other accountable for supporting native trees and plants rather than focusing on a diversity of species. A manifestation of this could begin with the Vassar Arboretum Web Map incorporating which species are invasive, non-native plants and what action plans are going about to care for the trees we already have. Doing so could be a catalyst for us to create a culture of gratitude rather than the latter which is an acquisitive culture. An ideological change such as this one will take time to reflect, mentorship, community and self-reliance (Cajete, 23), but it will surely be worth it to honor the land that we occupy. 

“…through the lens of traditional Indigenous philosophy the living world is understood, not as a collection of exploitable resources, but as a set of relationships and responsibilities.”

–Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mishkos Kenomagwen, the Lessons of Grass: Restoring Reciprocity with the Good Green Earth

Indigenous scholars that informed this blog

Gregory Cajete, PhD (Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico) teaches at the University of New Mexico, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence and Native Science and Sustaining Indigenous Communities sourced from Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Environmental Sustainability.

Kyle Whyte, PhD (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) teaches at University of Michigan, On the role of traditional ecological knowledge as a collaborative concept: a philosophical study. 

Robin Wall Kimmerer, PhD (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) teaches at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Mishkos Kenomagwen, the Lessons of Grass: Restoring Reciprocity with the Good Green Earth sourced from Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Environmental Sustainability.

Simon Ortiz, (Acoma Pueblo Nation) Indigenous Sustainability: Language, Community Wholeness, and Solidarity sourced from Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Environmental Sustainability.

Dennis Martinez, (Tohono O’odham) Redefining Sustainability through Kincentric Ecology: Reclaiming Indigenous Lands, Knowledge, and Ethics sourced from Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Environmental Sustainability.