Blog post: Unearthing Indigenous Knowledge in the Landscape

Written by Nguyen Chu, ESPC volunteer

“Wisdom sits in places,” Apache elder Dudley Patterson once said (Basso, 1996). For Indigenous Peoples, land is not just a physical space, but a living archive of knowledge, history, and cultural memory. It is a teacher, a storykeeper, and a guide. Through place names, oral traditions, and the very contours of the earth, the landscape encodes and preserves the accumulated wisdom of countless generations.

Geographic features serve as mnemonic devices for many Indigenous cultures, anchoring survival knowledge, lineages, and moral teachings in the land itself (Basso, 1984). The Inuit of Northwest Greenland use the landscape to recall both local histories and ancient myths (Nuttall, 2001), while the Inuinnait rely on place names to connect people to their environment, making the land a keeper of the community’s memory and values (Collignon, 2006). Anthropologist Julie Cruikshank (1990) found that for the Tlingit and Tagish peoples of the Yukon, place names serve as gateways to the past, allowing them to “use points in space to talk about time.” Oral traditions, too, are tightly braided with the land; these multi-generational stories help recount important events that happened at specific sites, carrying not just the history of a place but also the wisdom and life lessons it embodies (Eco-Hawk, 2000). These themes are shared across Indigenous cultures worldwide, from the songlines of Aboriginal Australians that hold vast geographical, ecological, and cultural knowledge, to the complex glyphs by the foothills of the Andes that anchor NASCA people’s histories and worldviews in the very earth itself (Kelly, 2016).

Yet the arrival of European settlers disrupted intimate connections. Colonial practices like forced relocation, the creation of reserves, residential schools, and the suppression of Indigenous languages and cultural practices were made with the intention to sever the physical, cultural, and spiritual ties between Indigenous communities and the land (Stojanovik, 2021; UNESCO Canadian Commission, 2021). Moreover, colonialism has been ignoring the evidence of Indigenous oral histories, place names, and archaeological sites that attest to their long-standing presence, justifying the dispossession of Indigenous Peoples from their homelands, rather than acknowledging the complex, localized ways in which colonial encounters have played out (Cruikshank, 2005).

This deliberate separation of Indigenous Peoples from their lands has led to the rapid and severe erosion of languages and cultures that are deeply intertwined with their specific territories (UNESCO Canadian Commission, 2021).

Despite these persistent and systemic adversities, Indigenous Peoples have shown remarkable resilience in maintaining and revitalizing their relationships with the land. Across Canada, communities are asserting their rights to their territories and reviving cultural practices and land-based education, which is an educational approach that integrates Indigenous knowledge and practices with Western education (UNESCO Canadian Commission, 2021), creating a new generation of leaders who carry forward the languages, teachings, and responsibilities of the land.

At the same time, the path toward reconciliation requires non-Indigenous people to have a fundamental shift in our own relationships to land and history by recognizing and respecting Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights to their traditional territories and supporting their efforts in reclaiming and protecting these lands, honouring the treaties and the relationships of mutual respect and sharing that they represent, and learning from Indigenous knowledge systems that see land not as a resource to be exploited, but instead as a sacred relative and teacher (Cowan, n.d.). As climate change and environmental degradation are threatening the very foundations of our existence, we must learn to listen to the wisdom encoded within the landscape, realizing that our survival is braided with the health of the land and all our relations (UNESCO Canadian Commission, 2021).

Indigenous land-based knowledge offers a path forward. As we have established, using the landscape itself as a mnemonic device not only makes learning more memorable and enjoyable but also fosters a deeper connection to places and a sense of commitment to protect them. Across Canada, a growing number of schools and communities are already centring Indigenous land-based education in their curriculums (UNESCO Canadian Commission, 2021). These programs are creating a new generation of leaders who carry forward the languages, teachings, and responsibilities of the land. As Joseph-McCullough puts it, “We are creating citizens of Canada to be like no others before them” (2021).

The land remembers. It carries the stories, the knowledge, and the resilience of Indigenous Peoples. As we try to navigate this turbulent time, may we walk this path of reconciliation together––to honour the living archive of the land, to revive and strengthen the languages and practices that connect us to nature, and to build a future in which all peoples and all beings can thrive.

 References

Basso, K. H. (1996). Wisdom sits in places: Landscape and language among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.

Canadian Commission for UNESCO. (2021). Land as teacher: Understanding Indigenous land-based education. https://en.ccunesco.ca/idealab/indigenous-land-based-education

Collignon, B. (2006). Knowing places: The Inuinnait, landscapes, and the environment. Canadian Circumpolar Institute.

Cowan, J. (n.d.). Indigenous tradition as philosophy [Unpublished manuscript].

Cruikshank, J. (1990). Life lived like a story: Life stories of three Yukon Native elders. University of Nebraska Press; UBC Press.

Cruikshank, J. (2005). Do glaciers listen? Local knowledge, colonial encounters, and social imagination. UBC Press.

Eco-Hawk, R. (2000). The power of place: Native North Americans and Indigenous knowledge. Evergreen State College.

Kelly, L. (2016). Memory code. Allen & Unwin.

Nuttall, M. (2001). Locality, identity, and memory in South Greenland. Études/Inuit/Studies, 25(1-2), 53-72.

Stojanovik, M. (2021). Aboriginal Songlines. Odyssey Traveller.
https://www.odysseytraveller.com/articles/aboriginal-songlines/