Traditional Ecological Knowledge is the Key to Successful Stewardship of the Long Tom Watershed, and Youth Are Helping to Lead the Way
The Traditional Ecological Inquiry Program (TEIP) internship started in 2017 with its first cohort of Native Youth gathering within the Long Tom Watershed in Western Oregon to pursue projects that connect restoration work, Tribal identity, history, and ecology. Hosted by the Long Tom Watershed Council (LTWC), a nonprofit committed to the health of watershed conditions, the program supports youth to develop skills and explore Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge (ITEK), while sharing that wisdom as a way to contribute to the restoration and health of the ecosystem.
The lands within the watershed are the historic homelands of the Kalapuya people. Today, about 90% of the land within the watershed is privately held by farmers, ranchers, landowners, and government entities. In 1998, the LTWC was formed to bridge these interests in a collaborative effort to take care of the land and water. Crucial to this is the centering of the Indigenous perspective and Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
“TEIP is part of the process of transforming the awareness among landowners of the importance of traditional ecological knowledge and burning. I think every watershed council in Oregon should have some relationship to a program like this, or help create one,” says Steve Dear, Executive Director and Watershed Coordinator. “Indigenous knowledge is elemental to the success of an organization like the watershed council.”
The internship, guided by the instruction of Tribal leadership and educators, area partners, and members of the LTWC, brings Native Youth into the fold with an eye on the future.
“The goal is to empower native youth to pursue careers in indigeneity, Indigenous science, Indigenous culture, Indigenous language, Indigenous practice, using Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge, as a foundation for community, career, college success,” says Joe Scott, TEIP Curriculum Director. Scott, a member of the Siletz Tribe and a longtime educator, leads the program, which welcomes between 8 and 12 young people each year, to the outdoor “classroom” at Andrew Reasoner Wildlife Preserve, or Chaa-lamali, a Kalapuya word which roughly translates to “burned off grass.”
Scott worked with Curriculum Designer Sage Hatch to create a curriculum model that is “learner- and seasonality-guided, and intergenerational, building on prior knowledge throughout life and Tribal community, connecting youth to the land.” It reflects yearly activities, and the ongoing cycle of “tending, gathering, sharing; tending, gathering, sharing.” There are activities for the spring, summer, fall, and winter, and each engages the community as a whole – interns, family members, elders, and neighbors.
With support from private and public grants, including a series of grants from the Gray Family Foundation, TEIP continues to implement projects based on interns’ curiosities, with a focus on food, materials, tending landscapes, and cultural fire. Past activities have included a camas oven built by an intern which led to a community camas bake, now a mainstay of the program every Spring. Interns have planted wild onions, conducted first food comparisons, and learned about the restoration of Oak Savannas, a unique habitat pushed to the brink of extinction by human activities in the area.
Interns have learned how to make cedar planks for the construction of longhouses from elders demonstrating the use of traditional tools. In the Fall, interns visit Vesper Meadow near Medford for Cultural Fire Inquiry Days and learn how to use fire as an agricultural tool.
The story of Bilįį may best show how the internship engages and encourages exploration over time. While in middle school, Bilįį arrived at what was then known as the Andrew Reasoner Preserve with his parents and together they took a walk around the land with Scott. With Navajo ancestry, Bilįį was already familiar with the land, the acorn, oaks, and camas. On their walk, they discussed Bilįį’s interests, one of which was bow-hunting. He began his internship with a bow-making project.
First, he was tasked with identifying wood species on the preserve that would work for the kind of bow he wanted. He selected Yew wood, and then harvested, prepared, and processed it. He built a bow. In the process of working with wood, he decided he wanted to learn how to bend wood with fire, a skill he learned had significant cultural importance in some tribes. He learned to do it. He taught his younger brother. This gave way to further interest in fire and Bilįį began consulting with an elder to learn how to tend oak trees with fire to increase acorn production. In the late winter, he’ll do a small-scale burn. And when he’s done with the internship, and ready for college, he’s decided to pursue a career in biology and stewardship.
“It started off walking around and looking at different kinds of wood,” says Scott.
LTWC, made up of scientists, educators, conservationists, farmers, and businesses, communicates and works with many partners and stakeholders, where interests and land overlap, including landowners, farmers, ranchers, and Fish and Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management.
The internship creates a space for young people to participate in sharing and collaboration with these partners and agencies if they want it. A recent intern, Sam Bull, worked with Polk County Soil and Water Conservation District as part of a project to monitor pre-burning and post-burning at Smithfield Oaks, a preserve owned by the county.
The intern helped guide a night burn, and in attendance were non-Indigenous stewardship representatives, such as the local fire department and private landowners. “In an otherwise intimidating context,” says Scott, the intern helped guide the project, sharing and demonstrating cultural fire knowledge as he did.
“All the work they are doing, if they are extending it out into the larger world, means working outside the Tribal community,” says Scott. “To a certain extent, it’s fundamental to all our programming because we exist as native people in a larger stewardship world that does not prioritize Tribal knowledge.”
This is a useful experience for interns, as Scott and Dear acknowledge that Indigenous youth will face many barriers to presenting and implementing their Indigenous perspective in stewardship or science careers. A goal of the TEIP is to help and support interns as they face these hurdles and equip them to take their cultural knowledge with them into their roles, especially as this knowledge stands to serve everyone who lives here.
“Indigenous leaders are providing the wisdom that we need to address climate change worldwide,” says Dear.
