to know the land

Dani Kastelein-Longlade and Amina Lalor along with with guest artists Katherine Rae Diemert and Brenda Mabel Reid have created an inspiring and beautiful exhibition, Journey With Our Kin,  at the Queens Square Idea Exchange gallery in Cambridge Ontario. The exhibition is open until Feb. 5th, 2023.

I got to talk with Dani and Amina about their work at the exhibition, and about how getting to know the lands where we live may interrupt the colonial frameworks we daily navigate. We discuss relationships with the land, the Nokom’s House project we have all been a part of, and about their place in the world along with varied identities, passions, and work they take up.

This episode is also formulated on the questions Dani and Amina pose with their exhibition:

What does it mean to care for the land that cares for us? How do we foster kinship among all our relations — the interconnected network of creation that encompasses the earth, water, air, sun, moon, plants, fungi, and animals?

How do we reconcile and bring together multiple perspectives to build community in connection with the land?

How do we strengthen our capacity to care for the land? What skills do we need to do so?

How do we creatively express our journeys of (re)connection with our other-than-human kin?

To know the land is to understand colonialism and its impacts, as well as to know efforts in decolonial space making, which inherently roots relationship with the more-than-human world as a foundation. Understanding histories, and futures, of lands and those who have, do, and will continue to live on them, human and non, is a cornerstone of this “to know the land” project I am working within. The confluence of these conversations, my own project, and the artistic expressions from the exhibition help in conceptualizing, building, and centering intimacy with the wilder world. Naturalist knowledge, or using a different frame, interspecies relationship building, is about healing broken ties and creating new reciprocal approaches between different bodies (human, water, fungal, vegetal, etc). This is what I believe Dani, Amina, Katherine, and Brenda are touching upon in their work. I am grateful for the reflection their creations evoke in me.

Big thanks to Dani and Amina for their time, and to Toni Hafkenscheid for taking the photos of the artwork.

Without much snow so far this winter, my tracking has been shifting towards other sign out on the land. Lately this has been signs on plants, scats, rubs, with a focus on Pileated Woodpecker feeding sign written in the bodies of the trees.

I first noticed this kind of sign along the Bruce trail many years ago, and then again in Algonquin Park. These days, I just see it everywhere, and through sharing what I am noticing with friends, colleagues and students, I am coming to realize that others just aren’t as excited as I am. So, maybe this show is just me sharing the excitement with potential others who may also get stoked to find this awesome sign of a pretty large bird who has made a pretty big comeback.

To learn more :

I have a big affinity for the suburbs (I know, it’s weird), and the Eastern Screech feels like a suburban bird. They hang out along the riparian corridors with the tall older trees, hunting mice, crayfish, songbirds, and whomever else they can catch. I did the same when I grew up in Brampton, Ontario, but instead of mice, crayfish and songbirds, I was hunting for feral Apple (Malus domestica) trees, Wild Grapes (Vitis riparia), and anything else I could eat. I bet there were Screech’s along the Etobicoke Creek, too.

Last year, 2022, on January 4th, I recorded a show about Eastern Screech Owls (Megascops asio), which I only played on CFRU, 93.3 fm, which is the campus-community radio station where my show is broadcast. Turns out I never put it out online for some reason. Now this year, 2023, I was reading in bed when I heard the tell-tale monotonic trill of an Eastern Screech Owl out my window. This inspired me to record this new episode all about Eastern Screech Owls.

I hope you learn as much as I did.

DickDaniels  http://theworldbirds.org Eastern Screech Owl RWD at CRC2.jpg. Image. 1.4MB. Wikimedia.org. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Screech_Owl_RWD_at_CRC2.jpg. Creative Commons License (CC BY-ND 3.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Here we are again, in the deepest of the doom season, yet with light on the way. The rebirth of the Sun. A time for our seasonal celestial celebrations with stories, food and fire. Celebrations to beat back the cold. The winter solstice is such a special time for me these days. I used to get so depressed in the Winter, feeling like all was dead and empty, but through ongoing relationship building with the land I live on, I am coming to know that the wild heart of the Earth still beats, no matter the long night of the season.

The past couple of years have been wrought and wrenched by sickness and isolation. Many celebrations have broke down, broke up, or been cancelled. Yet as with the solstice, new ritual is born in the dark gestation times.

To learn more :

Alison Mcleay obituary

It started with a suggestion that I could learn a little about how to differentiate between Canada Yew (Taxus canadensis), Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), and Balsam Fir (Picea balsamifera), but then it turned into a zany rabbit-hole of discovery, confusion and awe.

This episode details a lot of the complicated information I have been coming into while trying to learn more about Canada Yew, and the Yew family, Taxaceae, more broadly. A beautiful family, holding long lines of mythos and medicines. I keep being challenged in my assumptions as I pull the threads of knowledge, and it excites me more and more. Even when I am confounded in my research, it still offers a lot in the way of explanations, even if it more so leaves me full of questions (hopefully to return to in the future).

What does Canada Yew look like? How does it harm with ingested? Is it always toxic? What about the aril? What the hell is an aril? I really try to get into it, but I am only just scratching the surface.

Here are some of the articles and papers I mentioned in the show :

Many of us have been there. You find a nest, you look inside, and there huddled amid the grasses, vines and twigs are small nearly naked nestlings. Maybe the nest isn’t familiar, or soon as you realize it is occupied you get out as fast as you can so as to not disturb.. but later when reviewing some photographs you begin to wonder who is was in the nest?  Or maybe you are a wildlife rehabilitator, and someone calls your team with a baby bird, separated from their kin and they aren’t sure what to do next?

It can be really hard to identify a baby bird, and that can be problematic in trying to identify the exact care needs the bird requires to flourish. Some birds may only feed their nestlings seeds, where as others require insects. Identification is key to the survival of many of the species of birds found across North America/Turtle Island every year. There are few resources and fewer accessible texts outside of academia to turn to, but with Linda Tuttle-Adam’s new book “Baby Bird Identification - A North American Guide” things just got easier.

This weeks show Linda and I spoke about her motivations for the book, some nestling identification clues to get started with, and some general nestling ecology. She reminded me a couple of times of the role of wildlife rehabilitators as agents of conservation, doing the work that may allow an individual member of a potentially threatened species to reach independence and, hopefully, to reproduce.

Thanks again, Linda!

To learn more :

“Fewer ramps per pound means more ramps in the ground”.

Ramps? Wild Leeks? Allium tricoccum? Whatever you call them, they are a type species for foraging and everyone wants to be in relationship with them. Often that means everyone is looking for them and trying to bring some home, or sell them at markets or fine restaurants, sometimes without care or consideration as to what is best for the Ramps themselves. This hasty desire to be in relationship, through foraging and consumption, can lead to dangerous results like overharvesting(1) or even poisoning through misidentification(2). But when we slow down, study, and learn the best ways to know and be in connection with a plant then it may even be possible to support plant populations while harvesting from them.

Sarah E. Nilson and Eric Burkhart join me for a conversation around when is the best time for commercial growers to be harvesting and why we it might be better to be harvesting at certain phenological stages rather than others. We talk about Ramps, their general ecology, why it is important to maintain relationships through harvesting, but in good ways that give the plants the best chance at sustained growth and genetic diversity.

Patience seems to be the big lesson here, and what a great way to teach us.

To learn more :

This episode is a bit of a vulnerable one. I talk about some profound lessons which really impacted me, and shook some of my self image. I also feel a bit exposed by acknowledging I have honestly received some profound lessons from interactions with a dead Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus).

Essentially the show is about theft, and honouring our values & commitments to the world around us, and how we want to be in relationship with those we share this world with and with those whom we teach and mentor. I feel that this story telling is because I did something I believe to be a grievous and intentional act against another, but it is also about learning from my mistakes and working towards repair.

I recorded this one back on September 15th, but wanted to wait a bit to release it. It felt suitable to release it today, being Halloween, when that liminal space between the living world and the world of the dead is reportedly thin.

Thanks for listening to this one.

Tis’ the season to be considering the concepts of death and decay. We can smell it in the cool wet woods, and we can see it draped across the doorways along our streets. Skeletal trees sway with boney branches scratching at grey skies, and the dark is ever creeping in. Why not celebrate some of the most profound and interesting parties involved in this death and decomposition : Fungi!

This weeks show I zoom in on a game, “Death and Decomposers” to help teach about how essential these factors of life are, as well as the Deadly Galerina (Galerina marginata) aka Funeral Bells mushroom, and it’s toxic capacities. Lastly I read about wood decay fungi like White Rot and Brown Rot from the amazing book Polypores and Similar Fungi of Eastern and Central North America to elaborate a little more on the decomposition capacities and processes of this amazing kingdom.

It really is a fungal world out there, and is certainly blowing up. Get out there and look for the fungi. It may take a second for your eyes to adjust, but soon enough you’ll be seeing them everywhere.

To learn more :

“One of the things we tend to do culturally, the framework is to separate humans from the earth and to see them as two separate entities, rather then seeing that as an interconnected relationship..”

My experience with Memona is that she is all about challenging that feeling of separateness and working towards restoring and remediating that disconnect between the sacred Earth and us humans who may have forgotten it. She has described Ecopsychology in the past as “the area of study that explores the connective, holistic relationship between humans and the Earth,” and her passion really drives that home, albeit in a very open way, often allowing the land to lead in that remembering and reconciling.

Memona Hossain is a mother, community activist, Muslim, woman, and a PhD candidate who cares deeply for the Earth and all the varied human and more-than-human communities which share this collective home. I would call her powerful, quick and someone with a profoundly holistic view of the world who seeks to know other the worldviews of other communities.

I feel like this interview is just a launch pad for more conversations I would like to have with Memona. I think she would be a great person to talk with on the harm in our work, and the building of better relationships with indigenous folks, and hopefully that will happen soon.

To learn more :