 Good evening. My name is Roberta Fulicki-Pineski and I am President-Elect of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, and I am from Sheboygan. I have been on the board for, oh, eight, nine years, but who's counting? And I had several predecessors from this community who have served on that board. You may recall some of them, Cal Potter, who was our State Representative, Mary Lynn Donahue, Ruth Kohler, and currently I am also partnered with Amy Horst, who is the current Executive Director of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. So a little bit, I will tell you about a little bit about the Academy and then introduce Zach to you, who will then introduce our speaker for this evening. The Wisconsin Academy is 103 years old. We had a huge year of wonderful activities and attractions for our 100s that got shut down by COVID. So we are still celebrating as we move through. But our organization was created by statute, by the Wisconsin Statutes. And again, 103 years old. And it is to create a better world by connecting Wisconsin people and Wisconsin ideas. We are very, in a very collaborative way with the University also. Our vision is to have a brighter future inspired by those ideas. Our guiding values, our curiosity, critical thinking, civil discourse, which has been uppermost in our minds recently, and creativity. We run the James Watris Gallery in Madison. We print Wisconsin people and ideas magazine that talks about science and culture in Wisconsin. And we have our hoping for a sustainable future through one of our programs, Climate and Energy Initiative. We also do fiction and poetry awards. And we do the Fellowship Wisconsin Fellows. And we highlight and name and nominate those people in the state of Wisconsin. We have 100 or fewer that have brought critical thinking and all of our values to the forefront. We sponsor Academy courses. I've had several online. If there was one gift that the pandemic gave us, it's the ability to do things online. And while I'm here, I would just like to say hello to our online audience. This is the first time we've done a hybrid version of an Academy talk. So once again, Meade Library in collaboration with the Wisconsin Academy does a first. So hello to our remote audiences. And we also sponsor Academy courses. And throughout the pandemic, I took several writing courses online, and they were very rewarding. So I encourage you to explore that. You have met a couple of our staff people at the table is Madison Beuning. There she is. She's in the back waving. Madison checked you in and said, Yep, you're registered. And also Zach Robbins. Zach came to our organization about a year ago. I am proud to say I was on the search and screen and we're delighted that he accepted. Zach is our development director. So I will turn this meeting over to Zach, and he will introduce our speaker for this evening. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Bert. On behalf of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, I'd like to thank Bert for her leadership and on the Academy Board and for helping arrange these talks. The Meade Library Foundation for partnering with the Academy to make this and other talks possible. Everyone in person and online for attending tonight. For 153 years, the Wisconsin Academy has been identifying some of Wisconsin's best and brightest minds to help elevate and amplify their important work. Learning together and increasingly understanding each other and our world helps us transcend boundaries and celebrate unique perspectives. This has never been more important than it is right now. If you enjoy tonight's talk and feel this kind of program is important, I hope you'll consider supporting the Wisconsin Academy and joining as a member. We're so happy to welcome Sarah to Sheboygan, especially as we are on ancestral land of several tribal nations, including the monomonies Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, Pottawanami, and as you will hear, Sarah is a citizen of the United Nation of Wisconsin. She is also the Midwest Tribal Resilience Liaison with the College of Monomony Nation Sustainable Development Institute in association with the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. In this role, she facilitates stronger relationships between tribes, climate researchers, organizations, academic institutions, and the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. She also works with tribes to build capacity and provide support by helping identify gaps and assist with climate resilience efforts. Sarah holds a master's degree in science and ecology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an undergraduate degree in biology and First Nations studies from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Please join me in welcoming Sarah Smith. Hello, everyone. My name is Sarah Smith and I'm a citizen of the United Nation and I am part of the Wolf Klam. I'm really excited to be here today with you all to talk about tribal perspectives and tribal resilience in this changing climate. And so part of my presentation is going to take you on a story. I like telling stories and I feel like, you know, a regular presentation you might retain maybe 10% of the presentation itself. And I feel like with stories you seem to retain more. So I'm going to do my best at telling you a story tonight. To start off with, like was mentioned, I went to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and that is where I really felt the need where biology and First Nations studies connected, even though they were in very different departments. My advisors were like, why are you doing both? They did not see the connection. But I did. And I was really grateful to be able to go to SUNY ESF later on over in New York where I was able to study with Robin Kimmer and look at the connection of fungi. So if you want to talk about mushrooms later, I'm your gal. And their relationship to the monomony people and the forest there. So I grew up in Appleton. So just south of my reservation. And I've had a journey. So I started off here, went to New York, came back, worked for the Stockbridge Muncie Nation as an environmental technician, and then took on this role as a tribal liaison. I wasn't really sure what to expect as a tribal liaison. My work is mainly hugging trees, looking for mushrooms in the woods. So I wasn't really sure if this was the right role for me. But with some encouragement, I applied and I've been here for six years now. A little bit about my program just to give you some background. The program itself is funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And there's at least one tribal resilience liaison in each of these different regions on the map. And so the way we are formed is we are funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And so we are then partnered with a tribal organization. So for me, that's the College of Monomony Nation. And then we are partnered with a Climate Adaptation Science Center. The Midwest region just got our center over a year ago, which is really exciting. We were part of the Northeast, which was very large. So we went from Minnesota all the way to the coast. And now we're in a much smaller region where we can have a lot more resources available for those in our region. So the Midwest is made up of a consortium of members. And what that means is that there's the federal side of this Climate Adaptation Science Center, which is the USGS. And then there's a consortium of partners. And the College of Monomony Nation is one of those partners. So you can see kind of where we're all situated. And we have two liaisons for our region. Allie Scott just joined us in February as the deputy liaison for the region. And so we work across the whole Midwest region with the tribes on tribal resilience, adaptation planning, as well as with partners, educators and other stakeholders. So we do a lot of work in this region, just the two of us. And it's been really great. With the forming of our Climate Adaptation Science Center in the Midwest, we also were able to visit with Secretary Deb Holland, who came out to visit. And that was really great to have a tribal roundtable with her as well, to talk about tribal priorities in the Midwest. And so for those of you who might not know where the College of Monomony Nation is, we are about 40 minutes west of Green Bay. You can see on the map the outline of the Monomony Reservation. It's been sustainably forested for a very long time and is known internationally for their sustainable forestry. And I work at the college at the Sustainable Development Institute, which kind of looks like an old barn. And I actually work remotely. So we have a staff of about seven people who work there. Me and the other liaison, we work remotely. So she lives in Madison and I live just south of Shawnau. So I was telling you we were going to take you on a story tonight. And so I wanted to start off with sharing how every place has a story. Every place has an indigenous story as well. If you're interested, I can share these slides with you later too. This is a really great website nativeland.ca to understand the indigenous people in your region currently and in the past. And I just took a small screenshot of what Wisconsin looks like here. But they cover the entire world to show the indigenous peoples and where they are and where they came from. So this is a really great resource to know about where you are, what lands you are on and who's there and who isn't there anymore. So I really encourage you to take a look at that. This is another way to look at a map. Our creation story for Oneida talks about Turtle Island and what that all entails. So in our creation story, Sky Woman fell and she rested on the back of a turtle. I'm just going to give you the brief synopsis. We can take days saying this creation story. But she landed on the back of a turtle and one by one the animals went down into the water because it was all flooded. There was no land. So they went one by one down to the bottom to try to grab the earth. And it was Musgrat, who was the last one to come up with the earth in his hands. And she took that earth, spread it across the back of the turtle and the turtle grew. And so that is what we know as Turtle Island. And if you look to see where the Great Lakes are, that's where the heart is. So no matter where I go, I always feel like home here. Maybe it's the pull of that. But it's really great to see this from like a satellite viewpoint too, to think about how we had stories of Turtle Island and all of that. And then you can see that from a satellite view as well. So how we speak really matters when we're doing work with the environment and with people. When we talk about the environment, a lot of times you'll hear these natural resources, ecosystems, materials, capital, property, individual rights and things like that. But when we're telling the story about the land and our relationship, we want to try to use a different vocabulary. We want to talk about our home. We want to talk about those who sustain us, who heal us, our responsibility to one another. It's a more holistic viewpoint. And we talk about our relationships. And so when you look at a lot of Indigenous languages, those relationships are built into the words. It's not a noun-based system like in English. It's a verb-based system. And so, for example, table in Oneida breaks down into the place where we set our food. It's a very descriptive thing. And a lot of our languages like that. And it talks about the relationship we have with one another and with those in our environment, which is a very different perspective than saying, oh, that's just an oak tree. Or, oh, that's just a rock. It's a very different way of viewing the world. And one of my, my duties that I have personally to myself is that we change our per, per, our paradigm on the environment and how we talk about it to one another. So there's a difference in this kind of language. And in the work that I do, I really try to push for the right side of vocabulary, more than the left. So talking about language, we live in a world of relatives. Our creation story is Oneida. And even in the Bible as well, we were here as the last people. These are relatives were here way before us. We were put on this earth last. And so in our teachings and the teachings I've gained from others as well is that these are our teachers, they are elders, and we need to be learning from them and listening to them and treating with them with respect and reciprocity and all the things we do. And when we think about them as our relatives, we see them differently and we do our actions in a different way. So you wouldn't just go to your grandma's house and be like, Hey, grandma, I need to extract this from you. And you know, I need this from you and this. All right, thank you. Peace out. Right? We wouldn't do that to our grandma. So why are we doing that to the relatives on the landscape and to our mother earth? And so when we think about them as relatives, we think about them in different ways and how we do our actions. And that's really important when it comes to environmental work and adaptation. We also talk about the seven grandfather teachings or indigenous values. These resonate very broadly across indigenous communities. They may vary. I'm today I'm sharing with you one perspective from what I've learned and from who's taught me. And so these really resonate with the things that we do and what the work I do as well. So they can look very differently. Brave for you might mean one thing for another person than it is for myself. For me, that might look like the work that I'm doing with the National Climate Assessment and fighting to use language like relatives instead of natural resources. So that's a very brave act to do to fight against the federal government. Things like respect. So respecting our elders and our teachers on the landscape, and those around us to our family, wisdom, honesty, truth, love and humility. These are what ground us as people. And I like to remind people that we're all indigenous to somewhere. Some of us are very removed from where we came from. So I'm Oneida, but I'm also German and Syrian, and a lot more other things. And we all come from someplace. We're just very removed from or from. But reminding that we're indigenous to someplace can help ground us as well. And the things that we do. When we talk about language, this is one that was brought up quite often in the work that I do. These are invasive cat tails. So people say invasive species. How will we think of them as non local beans? So these beans have come from a place, not on their own volition, but through trade or transportation or seeds that were stuck to box, and were brought over. And they are just going about their day, doing their original instructions that they were given to them. But there's no checks and balances from where they came from. And so it's not their faults for what's happening in that environment. They're just doing what they were originally told. And so when we think about non local beans in that sense, maybe we don't talk about eradicating them with gases or sprays or digging them up, which all might be viable options to. But when we talk about them as non local beans, and think about the relationship they might have had on their previous landscape, maybe we can have a relationship with them as well. Doesn't mean we can't manage for them. We certainly can if that's the goal. But thinking about them in a different way is really important. How we interact matters as well. And this comes on to the language to some of these folks are in the back of the room. How we interact with the environment really matters on how how we conduct ourselves in a respectful way. So we're not just out picking apples and just disregarding everything else around them. We're taking appreciation for that gift that was given to us, because the earth can sustain itself. We need to be sustained from the earth. We can't photosynthesize, although that would be really cool. I wish I could do that. And so we have to rely on our relatives on the landscape to sustain us as people. When we're out picking strawberries, remembering where they came from, strawberry is the leader of the berries. For our people, they're the first ones to come out and say hello. And people don't get a lot of these interactions anymore either. A lot of us tend to buy our foods from a supermarket. If we're fortunate enough, maybe the farmers market or a CSA. And it really shows about how we've lost that connection with the land. And that shows how we interact with it. If we're not part of the landscape from a very young age, it's hard to get reintroduced. So I want everyone to close their eyes for one second. And just think about when you were a kid, playing outside, maybe climbing a tree, maybe running barefoot through the stream. I never wore shoes as a kid. And you build that connection in those tiny moments being outside and connecting with the grass, with the trees, with the birds. And it grounds us and what we do. Okay, you can open your eyes. I want to make sure no one's asleep. But it's really important and we need to teach our children about those as well. So my nephew's in this picture on the right. He's also in the back. And taking them out and teaching them where things come from, how to go about our lives with respect for the plants, not taking everything that we see, making sure we leave some as well for others for other relatives who might need it too. And then talking about our traditions. So the bottom picture is an elder showing kids how to tap a tree. Maple season is going on right now. It's pretty much ended. If folks have been watching the weather. But according to a lot of calendars, indigenous calendars, this is still a sugar maple moon. They're still supposed to be snow on the ground. And that there was yesterday. But that's changed, right? And that changes our stories and changes our traditions. Our sugar maple season is so much shorter now, and so much earlier than it used to be. And we have to think about those things and how how everything else was changing around them. The pollinators have a different time schedule now with the plants. What does that look like? And then reintroducing techniques that were perhaps lost or were not allowed to be used like prescribed fires. So the tribes up on the north shore, so Red Cliff and Bad River, they have reintroduced fire to the Apostle Islands, which hasn't happened in a very long time. And they've worked with the park service to do so. But it shows how that relationship to the land is really important, right? We think about the fires in California. A lot of that happens because there's so much fuel on the ground. Indigenous people over there used to burn it all in low intensity fires. So then that wouldn't happen. And so thinking about these things and how we interact is really important moving forward, whether that's individually on our own or with an organization, or you know, across the region as well. It's really important how we interact. So I'm going to talk real briefly about what's happening with tribes in our region, due to climate change or environmental change. Temperature is really impactful. You can see that now. We just had 80 degree weather last week for some of us. That is not usual. That is not normal. And our temperatures are rising our frost free season is is growing as well. And you can see that because all of our snow is gone, even though we're supposed to have snow right now, right? Our ice on all ice off times are changing as well. So how many people here ice fish? Okay, yeah, some of you. First time ice fishing this year that was really great, but it was very short. We had a very short period of time for ice fishing. And we're losing that due to warming temperatures. And overall on our Great Lakes, ice cover has decreased over 80%. And that's a that's pretty drastic. And that not only impacts what we do as people, whether that's ice fishing or recreation. But that also impacts our other other relatives as well. What's happening to the fish? What's happening to the environment to you so you're getting more flooding maybe, maybe you're not getting as big of a recharge to the system, because you're not getting enough snow. And so things are really changing with the snow and ice in our region, especially floods are happening more often too. How many remember the 2016 flood up north? Okay, I drove on this road before it got washed out. I drove through that storm. It was very, very terrifying. I was actually going to a climate change training, which was a little ironic. So this is up at the Bad River Reservation. And that was over in 2016. This is one of those 100 year, 500 year floods. 2018, it was the same. And so these things are happening more often, not only in tribal communities, but other communities as well. And so what we need to do is we have to figure out how do we adapt this? A lot of our infrastructure is made for 50 years ago, maybe today. But today is going to look very different from 50 years from now, especially if we're having these floods two years apart, our fish and our wildlife are also changing snowshoe hair or yeah, snowshoe hair is having a really hard time. Their color on their coats changes. It's a photo period change. So that means the length of time the sun is up. And so they don't change because it's cold or because it's snowy. They change because of the photo period. And so when it gets to be winter, they change to white. But if you don't have snow, how are they supposed to hide on the landscape from predators and vice versa? Our lakes are also increasing in temperature and our rivers. So what does that mean for brook trout? Trout is so tasty. It's one of my favorite fish to eat. What's going to happen to them? And so we have to think about these things. Do we adapt? Do we let systems change as they may? What do we do about it? And so why is this important? Right? For tribal communities, we are stuck on our reservations or our seeded territories and we can't move with the species, right? So if sugar maple is going to move north, we can't move with it. We have to stay on our reservations or our territories, seeded areas that we can harvest from. What does that mean for fish that's moving or moose really far up north? They're very essential to our cultures as Indigenous people and for others as well. If you grew up ice fishing and you can't ice fish anymore, that changes who you are as a person. You can't ice fish with your grandson or a granddaughter then, right? You'd have to go somewhere else. Canada's, you know, they're very nice people but, you know, we can't all move up to Canada. And what's happening to our relatives on the landscape, you know, their interactions with each other, how is it changing for them? And so this is really important. We sustain ourselves from the land, hunters, fishers, gatherers, and it's really important to think about all these things and how it shapes our lives as people and as Indigenous people too. So I want to be able to, you know, take my nephew out ice fishing, right? Yeah, he's not paying attention in the back. But I want to see that for all my nieces and nephews, right? I want to see their kids be able to do it, take them into the woods. But if those relatives aren't there anymore, then what happens to our traditions and who we are as people? You know, monomony has a clan, the moose clan. There's no moose on monomony land. Maybe one that comes down once in a while but there's no more moose. So what does that mean as a people and who you are in your identity? So with doing this work, this is one model that we like to talk about and how we can see the world from a more holistic point of view in the work of adaptation, right? It's not just environmental. It's also health. It's about land and sovereignty. It's about our institutions, right? If we're getting lots of floods, buildings are getting washed away or there's a lot of flood damage. Does that mean we need to relocate? What does that exactly mean? Technology is changing too. Maybe in good and bad ways. Really depends. But how can technology help us adapt to what's happening? Economics is really important too and so thinking about all these things including human perceptions and activities and behaviors because we are part of this. We're not just like looking at the polar bears and being like well that's not really affecting me, right? Like we're seeing changes here in Wisconsin happening to us and so thinking about this as a whole and how we go forward is really important. If you want to learn a lot about the status of tribes across the United States, this is a really good resource. It's very thick so it's a PDF. I didn't bring copies. It's about this thick so but it goes through every kind of change there is out there. Health, environment, economics, all that kind of stuff. So if you're really interested I suggest you can take a look at that. That one just came out in 2021 so it's pretty pretty new. One of the tools that I was really fortunate to be part of as well as my partner Greg back there is this tribal adaptation menu and I have a copy if people want to check it out in person. What had happened with this and let me tell you another story. Back in 2017, yes 2017, there was this workshop that NIACS puts on so they're the Northern Institute of Climate Science and there was a group that went there working on wild rice, a tribal project and they went through the workshop and at the end they thought the workshop was good but it was missing a few things and it was the inception of this, a menu that includes tribal perspectives on how to adapt to the environment. So what does that exactly look like? That means talking to your elders, talking to community members, to harvesters, gatherers, taking in cultural considerations and this is also for those wanting to work with tribes too. A lot of times as a liaison I get asked well I don't know anything about tribes, how do I approach them and so this has, the beginning is a guiding principle section and so it talks about tips for interacting with tribes, for those who want to work with tribes. This was written by Midwest authors so the tips in here are based for Midwest tribes. When you go to different regions there are different approaches of being respectful and things like that so we're actually working on one for New Mexico tribes and also in Maine, New England area which is really exciting and we didn't think this was going to be as big as it was. I think we did a talk earlier for Wisconsin Academy all about this. I'm sure there's a recording if you're interested in it but I do have a copy after the talk if you'd like to see it as well but it's been recognized nationally. We've won two awards since it's been published and there are many authors so we present our authors in this way. Neither one of us are more of an expert than the other. We're all equal when we were contributing to this so this represents most of our organizations. Some we may be with still some we may not but this has been a really great tool to show how adaptation can be done with tribes and with tribal perspectives especially if you're coming from like a Forest Service or DNR perspective that's been really great and we've had eight workshops since we've published. I mean we did have one before we published because people were just so eager but we've had eight total which has been really cool. We actually had one up in Duluth, Minnesota and it was the it was a funny story so everywhere else was like 80 degree weather sunny beautiful weather right so we go up to Duluth it's 50 degrees it's raining the wind is blowing from like underneath like the wind is coming and all the rain it was very interesting having it outside. Luckily we were in that pavilion which did have a fireplace and the photos are really funny because we take photos throughout the days and you can see the progression of like the first day everybody like brought their blankets and they're in parkas and they're just like like trying to pay attention and then each day got a little bit warmer so the layers started to come off and then finally the last day we were able to just wear sweatshirts but the wind was still going like the food was flying everywhere the papers were flying everywhere it was kind of crazy but we really wanted to try to be outside when we're actually doing this work and then at our workshops too and you'll see in some other photos we also encourage people if they need to to bring their kids we're not against kids coming obviously we would like the adults to watch their kids so they're not running off into the river but we encourage them to be there for a number of reasons so when we were developing this menu we also had kids in the room and it's really important for understanding why we're doing this work we're doing it for them and for their kids they're the reason why we're doing this work and it's also for them to hear so my nephew who's in the back he probably won't remember this talk and that's okay but having them in the room with us when we're talking about these things is really important because it does get down into them at a certain level and so we've had kids pretty much grow up with this menu now which has been really crazy to see we look at photos from like our very early workshops and they've grown so it's been it's been really interesting and we also encourage artistic work it's not just like science science science we want to see our artists and all that come together so this was a really cool post or somebody did about a leaky faucet because I was dealing with leaks which is really cool so we call this the tam for short because tribal adaptation menu that's a lot of words after a while so the tam has been used over 50 projects across the midwest northeast and even the southeast as well we had folks from florida come up from the mix suki tribe and work on flooding and we're like we don't deal with sea level rise but the way we created this menu was to be adaptable so we were able to help them with rising sea levels even though it's not directly in here and then the last thing I wanted to mention too talking about the language is the title so I'll go back for those online I'm gonna try my best it's an Ojibwe I'm not a fluent Ojibwe speaker I'm learning Ojibwe and Oneida a little bit of monomony and so Dabag and Jagadig Anishinaabe is a twad so it doesn't translate to a tribal climate adaptation menu because we don't have words in the language that mean that what it essentially boils down to in a general sense is doing things in the original way so going back to our teachings and our original ways of carrying for the earth is what it essentially boils down to storytelling is really important and I'm trying to work on my storytelling skills I'm very novice and I hope to aspire to be one of those grandmas who like everyone's just like eating their popcorn and listening to the story I'm telling but I'm very novice I am working on it and so I think about growing up and the stories that Manana would tell me reading books that was one of the things that you know was my first spark of life was reading books and going places and all that stuff and Manana was the one to take me there and doing this work storytelling is really important and it's been really interesting to see that the science is catching up to the power of storytelling so there's a paper that even talked about it about traditional life ways and storytelling and how to use that as adaptation for resilience for mitigation due to changing circumstances with our environment and so climate change can impact us in many ways like I mentioned shifting of species to different ranges phenological knowledge loss of relatives altogether it might just be too hot and they can't go anywhere so we might just lose them all together and also increases in non-local beings is a problem people deal with and so storytelling is really a way to connect what we're doing to future generations as well we want to be able to tell a story of why we're doing this work why it's important instead of me being up here saying well by 2070 our climate is going to be changing by this percentage at this temperature that's not how people retain information we retain it through stories and it's a way to bridge humans with the environment once again just because we're so removed from the environment it's a good way to help bridge us together and remind us of responsibilities that we have to this earth and why we're doing the things we're doing I'm going to leave you with two quotes for today the first one is from the the paper I just showed so these teachings reinforce the responsibility to foster quality of life for the next seven generations of humans and for all relations and are grounded in intergenerational experiences and observations of the environment and so Josephine who's in the photo she's in the red shirt she grew up at the Tam since she was a wee tot she's grown up with it and it's been great to see her at all of our workshops and all of our events she she reminds us of why we get up in the morning why we're doing this work a lot of climate work is doom and gloom but they remind us of why we're doing it and that there is hope in what we're doing the last quote I'm going to leave you with is a bit of a long one but I will I will read it to you as well it's one that hits really hard for the work we're doing and remembering our connection to the earth and to our relatives on the landscape so this is by Dr. Robin Wolkimer and she says ethnobiologists tell us that our great grandparents spoke of fluent natural history they knew the name and personalities of dozens of birds and plants today the average American school child can recognize more than 100 corporate logos they can give name to about 10 plants which include categories such as Christmas tree grass we've lost an entire vocabulary of speech of experience and of relationship how can we care for them monitor their well-being and fight for their existence if we don't even know their names young girl thank you I'm going to walk around with the microphone if there are questions people have raise your hand we'll also be taking questions through the chat on zoom don't be shy Sarah can you go back let's find somebody yeah did I cover it all are we going to go out and save the world now any questions hi Sarah thanks for your talk I actually had the opportunity way back when the TAM was when you were introducing the TAM at the last academy presentation and that was very inspiring so much so that I run a service and conservation core primarily in Milwaukee and the southeastern Wisconsin area and so our crews of young people and military veterans they go out and they do conservation work and I'm interested to integrate some of the teachings and the TAM content and I'm wondering how how I go about doing that in the absence of an elder or how do I find an elder who could come out and and share with us that you know prescribed burn maybe or a ceremonial fire or or some kind of a prayer or approach to like you said the non non-local beings non-local beings right thank you yeah that's a good question so you're in the Milwaukee area yeah we should talk afterwards yeah it's it's different too because it's you know is it trying to connect more with the the tribes in that region so that would be a lot of Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi is down there and so yeah it just really depends on what your your goal is too some of these things you know like just taking the the seven teachings of being respectful and and showing that to the landscape is important and I think since the the TAM has been published people have kind of gone off and tried to incorporate it in the work they do in a in a good way so that they're not appropriating anything within the culture but we could we could talk afterwards too for your specific situation I have a question from Tom online and and he's asking how how primarily white environmental organizations create authentic relationships with tribes to advance truly collaborative land and water conservation work it's a good question it's a long process it's not a short consultation I feel like that's been done in the past a lot is organizations will consult with a tribal person and be like okay we talked to tribes we're good but it takes a lot of work you have to do your homework and figure out who's in that area that you'll be working with so that map I showed earlier for native lands is really important understanding the history of what's happened where you are with those tribes and then starting conversations and so when I started this position as a liaison I did a lot of cold calling cold emailing because just because I'm from a tribe doesn't mean I know everybody and all of our tribes are very different in what we do in our culture and so it takes time to build those relationships and making sure that you're just patient with that being very open not hiding your agenda is really important being very transparent and what you're wanting from them and what you can give to them making sure it is reciprocal right we don't want to be taking, taking, taking we want to see how this can turn into a relationship that can grow over time right so I joke because my research was with the monomony tribe and I ended up with a monom in the back and so I'm part of that tribe like my extended family's there and I don't recommend people you know do that but that's one way to build a long relationship right with the tribe that you're working with but it's really making sure you keep those relationships going even when the funding is done just because the funding is done doesn't mean your relationship is done right like if you were with your grandma and you're like man you don't have any more money well I guess I could move on to grandpa like you know you you wouldn't do that to your family so why would you do that to someone you're working with and that goes for other relationships you're building with other organizations too you don't want to just like oh well our funding's done it was nice working with you talk to you never so any other questions my mother taught me this and she's German but she was a big a little lady against the big problem of pollution in a long highways so I when I'm out in economy lock with my little grandson we pick up trash and he just loves it and when I'm not with them I pick it up on this stretch of road in front of my apartment complex and the other day I was out there two hours and I had four huge garbage bags so everybody here could find a little section of you know it's chief Seattle it's you know taking care of mother earth it's simple yeah it doesn't cost you anything except the garbage bags thank you for that oh there's one right behind hi um are there any books websites or organizations that you haven't mentioned that you think deserve more attention that we should be aware of we could be here all night so one of the books I really recommend is Braiding Sweet Cross I see head nods I'm guessing people have read it that's a really good book to read and then I also run the indigenous climate resilience network and we have a website with a lot of resources on there as well yeah man I'm a book nerd so like my list of books is so long but yeah Braiding Sweet Cross is a really great place to start any other questions in the room or I'll go to another one online Heather says so much resilience work requires funding I'm curious how you see federal funds supporting this work or what sorts of collaborations are needed to tap into them yeah funding is really important and that's usually an issue with a lot of project this is that there's not a lot of funding my program with the Bureau of Indian Affairs we have a climate resilience funding opportunity every year and our category list has been expanding so now we also include implementation which has been a real hindrance because a lot of tribes are planning or doing vulnerability assessments but they don't have the funds to actually do the work and so now we have a category so people can do the work but we also look at other sources of funding whether that's federal like FEMA or even private donations from foundations to do the work and it really just depends on what you're trying to trying to do so some of the workshops we've done more recently with the the TAM is with the Tribal Forest Protection Act and getting forest service money to help with projects with the forests and the tribes that are associated with them but yeah one of my jobs as a liaison is to try to find those sources of funding and bring it back to the tribes I love the Great Lakes but particularly Lake Superior and I would love to see a concerted effort of all the tribes not just Wisconsin but the U.P., Michigan, Ontario to protect the watershed of Lake Superior and I think there's some tribes up in the Kiwi that are interested in that and it's a major effort but I think Lake Superior is the gem of the planet and it still has a lot of its natural tributaries that haven't been polluted do you have any thoughts on how to expand the breadth and take a look at Lake Superior as a global resource to protect? Yeah I mean the Great Lakes in general are really important to protect I don't have a favorite but I do know you know tribes up there like Kiwana Bay they do an annual cleanup day for the lake a lot of times what the issue is is it's not the tribes that are contributing to this issue it's the communities surrounding it whether that's agriculture other things as well and so I know there are some working groups maybe not specifically for Lake Superior but for the Great Lakes in general including tribes and First Nations and other partners that try to work really hard to you know keep them clean since they are such a big source of fresh water and we rely on them so much but I don't know specifically you know what groups are called for the tribes and First Nations that are working on that and their partners but I do know that there are efforts going I just don't know specifically what the groups are called Hi there especially after all of the other great questions this feels a bit juvenile but on one of the first slides you had a picture of a mushroom up and I have a very good friend that's a big interest of hers and I know you mentioned that it had some significance within the culture and I was wondering what the name and the significance of that particular plant was so during my research and I'll go back to that one I didn't have a lot of great pictures of the mushrooms I was working with so a lot of the ones I used in my presentations are ones I am like on a hike or something I don't know why but they just turned out better for some reason photo photo wise one really great book and it's out of print so it's a little hard to get but if you want to do interlibrary loans that's how I got the book it's called Pupui for the People and it's about traditional perspectives on mushrooms in our region which was really hard when I was doing my research because there aren't a lot of documents about mushrooms or tribal stories about mushrooms as much in our region and so that's what I was researching was what are the viewpoints specifically for monomony on mushrooms and Pupui for the People is a really great resource it's illustrated really nicely too but it talks about how they used to use things like puff balls for like a lighting source where you could set it on fire or using shelf mushrooms to carry umbers around so that would be a really good resource I would point out interlibrary loan it because it's very expensive online I think it was like a hundred some dollars for the book but it's because it's out of print thank you yeah any other questions from the room I have one online someone asked if there's a TAM for other tribes other groups of indigenous peoples yeah so I mentioned that we're working on one with the New Mexico Puplos and then we have another one in the works for New England Maine over there they're very preliminary they're in the beginning stages of it so I don't know when those will be published but those are the ones that are in the works right now thank you so much we really appreciate this thank you you