Rhythms of nature can lead us through winter
Indigenous communities know about surviving Canada’s cold months
Without looking at your phone, do you know what time the sun rises and sets? Ever pay attention to when the geese start migrating south?
Focusing on the rhythms and patterns of nature — and drawing meaning from them — is just one of the simple things Indigenous scholars suggest people can do to help get through the long, dark days of winter and isolation during this pandemic.
“It’s a way to kind of place yourself in a larger context of these big questions, like: Why are we here? Who are we?” says professor Alex Wilson, a director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Aboriginal Research Education Centre and a member of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation.
In recent weeks, major media outlets around the world have turned to hardy Scandinavians for lessons about how to survive COVID-19 winter, homing in on the Norwegian concept of “friluftsliv”: the embrace of the open-air life.
“What is ‘friluftsliv’? How an idea of outdoor living can help us this winter,” read a headline in National Geographic. The Guardian followed with its own story: “Fjord focus: is Norway’s friluftsliv the answer to surviving a second lockdown?”
Lonely Planet jumped on the bandwagon with: “Embrace winter like a Norwegian this year by practising friluftsliv.”
But here in Canada, Indigenous scholars responded with the verbal equivalent of a shrug. No question, Scandinavians are credible sources when it comes to winter survival, they said.
But Indigenous communities know a thing or two, as well.
“It does sound romantic, romanticized, to learn from the Norwegians,” Wilson said.
“The one thing to note in all of this is us, in our traditional territories, we’ve survived and thrived for tens of thousands of years. So there’s a lot of knowledge — Indigenous knowledge — that has yet to be validated by Western institutions.”
Wilson is part of a growing movement in Canada to introduce Indigenous land-based education into school curriculums that relies less on textbooks and more on developing greater connections with our natural environment and finding ways to protect it.
It’s a style of teaching, she says, that goes way beyond “the junior high outdoor education class we all had to take where you go snowshoeing or crosscountry skiing, which is more about, ‘OK, let’s go outside and get some fresh air and do some physical activity.’ ”
Wilson says many of the lessons she and other land-based educators try to impart to students are useful for surviving the looming winter and ongoing pandemic isolation.
“Even though we may seem like we’re by ourselves, the thing about the land is it that it reminds us that we’re not,” she said.
Take this moment as an opportunity, she said, to slow down and explore your natural surroundings. She suggests “micro travel: travelling around your little environment where you are, learning all the relationships that exist outside your door or in your local park, or even studying the sky.”
She encourages people to ask themselves: Whose traditional territory are you living on? What’s the history? How did that history unfold and how did that impact the land? What can be done to repair some of the damage?
There’s a certain humility that comes from this sort of exercise, Wilson said.
“There’s so much loneliness right now and depression because of isolation, and social media is one way that people are reaching out. But I think it’s also contributing to some of it because of some of the toxicity online. This is a way to say, ‘Yeah I’m part of something bigger and I do have meaning here.’ ”
Wilson cites the writing of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In 2014, she wrote a chapter for the journal Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, titled “Land as Pedagogy,” in which she describes the ongoing challenge of getting land-based learning recognized.
“I distinctly remember being in grade 3 at a class trip to the sugar bush, and the teacher showing us two methods of making maple syrup — the pioneer method which involved a black pot over an open fire and clean sap, and the ‘Indian method’ — which involved a hollowed out log in an unlit fire, with large rocks in the log to heat the sap up — sap which had bark, insects, dirt and scum over it,” she writes. “The teacher asked us which method we would use — being the only native kid in the class, I was the only one that chose the ‘Indian method.’ ”
In her adult life, Simpson describes the many years she spent with Curve Lake First Nation elder Doug Williams, who taught her to hunt, fish, trap, harvest birch bark and make maple syrup — the “most profound educational experience of my life.”
“Doug has invested more time in my spiritual, emotional and intellectual education than anyone else in my life. Yet it is completely unrecognized, unsupported and disregarded by academic institutions.”
One institution that is trying to break that mould is Dechinta: Centre for Research and
Learning. Based in the Northwest Territories, the school offers post-secondary courses centred around Indigenous law and politics, language, landbased education and community research.
The school’s regional programmer, Noel-Leigh Cockney, who is Inuit and was raised in Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik, says it’s annoying when Western media outlets turn to Scandinavia for lessons about winter survival and ignore sources in the Canadian Arctic.
“Being on North America, I believe that we should get more credit for having survived up here for such a long time, but southern Canada and the U.S. don’t immediately think about that,” he said.
Living on the tundra can be dark and cold during the winter, he said. That’s why having a connection to the land — learning the migration patterns of caribou, for instance — was critical to his ancestors’ survival.
Asked what advice he has for surviving this upcoming pandemic winter, Cockney suggests not only adapting to the weather but adapting your lifestyle: finding activities that you enjoy doing outside.
It can be as simple as scheduling time to go out for a walk and exploring your backyard, he said.
“Everybody comes from a nomadic or land-based culture,” he said. “For us to really get back into that will allow us to not only learn about ourselves and the land we’re on but also reconnect to a part of ourselves that people may have long forgotten.”
Technology allows us easy access to a lot of things, he said. Try getting back into the “core” of learning: walk on a trail, touch things with your hands, learn about the plants and their uses.