Indigenous views at native plant summit
THIS YEAR’S CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY CONFERENCE FINALLY TURNED A PAGE ON DIVERSITY
SOMETHING’S happened in the four years since the California Native Plant Society — CNPS — had its last statewide conference. The state’s premiere environmental group “dedicated to the preservation and celebration of California’s native flora” finally got the memo about diversity and inclusion.
In 2018, most of the 900 attendees were affluent white folks listening to presentations from mostly white members of the state’s environmental establishment — namely researchers and scientists from universities and government agencies. This year’s conference in San Jose sold out with 1,200 attendees, the largest gathering in the organization’s 57-year history, and at least a quarter of the attendees were students and/or people of color, beneficiaries of about $50,000 in funds donated to improve racial and age diversity at the conference, said Liv O’Keeffe, the organization’s director of public affairs.
This year’s conference radiated inclusivity, starting with the introduction of CNPS’ new executive director, ecologist and former U.S. diplomat Jun Bando, the first Asian American to hold that post. Pronoun preferences were prominently displayed on everyone’s name tags. When queer attendees discovered there wasn’t an official gathering for them, they quietly spread the word about an LGBTQ mixer, and 26 people attended. Community science was celebrated. Lay scientists were included as speakers.
And, for the first time, Native people played a significant role, not just as attendees but as speakers and presenters at multiple sessions, as part of CNPS’ quest to include new perspectives, such as the traditions of many California Native people who call for respectful human stewardship of native plants.
“There’s a growing understanding that the 20th century conservation movement is the byproduct of colonialism — that idea that humans created the problems in nature so nature has to be protected from humans,” O’Keeffe said after the conference. “But that mental model is changing. There are people across the world giving voice to the intersection of humans and nature, how we have to think about protecting ourselves and nature together, because we are in this together.”
The changes at CNPS have been evolving for years, with the formation of committees to address issues like equity, justice and Indigenous engagement, said Cris Sarabia, conservation director of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy and CNPS president in 2020 and ’21.
“We still have a long ways to go — in general, the whole conservation movement has a long ways to go — but we are trying to build a path that others can follow,” Sarabia said.
The new priorities were on full display at the conference, starting with the opening ceremony on Oct. 20, when Alexii Sigona, a UC Berkeley graduate student and member of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band near Santa Cruz, challenged attendees to rethink their relationship with nature and how land is managed.
Sigona is firmly planted in the practical (his doctorate work is in environmental science policy and management), but his dissertation on collaborative management and land access for Indigenous peoples has an essential spiritual piece. “For us, a lot of natural resources are cultural resources as well, and we think of them as relatives,” he said. “Colonialism caused us to see our relatives as resources for exploitation.”
This struggle between Indigenous and European perspectives came up repeatedly during the conference, even during its $80-aplate celebration dinner (also sold out) with a menu created by the Chia Café Collective, an Indigenous grassroots group that published a cookbook called “Cooking the Native Way: Chia Café Collective.”
One of the cookbook authors, Tongva cultural educator and artist Craig Torres of Los Angeles, said he was taught to see plants and animals as “natural relatives, not natural resources . ... We learned that stones were the first people to emerge on the Earth, then the plant people and the animal people, and who was last? The humans, and we were given the major role to take care of everything that came before us.”
It’s hard to imagine those views getting much traction at previous conferences, but “the whole conservation community is going through a sea change,” Bando said after the conference, “from a place that really emphasized certain types of formally acquired expertise [to] the recognition that we need to broaden the types of expertise that inform our work.” One example: increasing research that supports some Native traditions, such as the value of controlled burns in cleaning out wildfire fuel.
Meanwhile, Sigona focused on the value of using land trusts to help tribes without federal recognition reclaim access to some of their ancestral lands. The Amah Mutsun people were splintered years ago by colonists and missionaries, he said, but creating the Amah Mutsun Land Trust on about 50 acres of their ancestral lands has allowed alienated tribal members to rediscover their “dormant” traditions such as gathering plants for medicine and basket making, performing traditional ceremonies and stewarding the land by removing invasive trees.
The process is healing, he said, especially to members fighting addiction, because it gives them purpose and direction. But it’s also challenging. Small tribes such as his will need partners and/or funding, he said, because they lack the numbers to manage large tracts of land.
“So far, [non-Indigenous] locals are skeptical about what we will do, and there are also stereotypes about Indians building casinos that come into play,” Sigona said. “The driving question is: What changes are needed to support Indigenous access to their ancestral lands?”
Here are eight other top takeaways from the three-day conference.
1 30X30 FUNDS ARE COMING TO THE RESCUE
Ecologist Jennifer Norris, the new deputy secretary of biodiversity and habitat for the California Natural Resources Agency, offered some hope for funding and resources. Norris’ position was created in June 2020 to help shepherd funds and programs to satisfy the state’s 30x30 pledge to ensure that 30% of the land and coastal waters in California are set aside for conservation — i.e., “durably protected” by government ownership, land trusts or some other conservation means — by the year 2030, as part of the global 30x30 initiative.
The state Assembly has set aside $1.1 billion to $2 billion to help with land acquisition, divided among various agencies, she said; that money could, for instance, help small tribal bands create land trusts to manage and freely access some of their ancestral lands. The rules for applying for those funds are still being written, but Norris said she expects them to be finalized by the end of the year. Find out more at californianature .ca.gov.
2 COMMUNITY SCIENCE NOW HAS CRED
It used to be known as “citizen science,” a paton-the-head reference to people who did research without scientific degrees. Their work was often ignored or discounted by scientists, but thanks to new apps such as iNaturalist that allow users to pinpoint the dates and locations of their photos in the wild (or even their neighborhoods), and the sheer volume of data that’s required for land and plant studies, several presenters said lay scientists have become a crucial part of today’s environmental research. One of the most popular speakers at the conference was L.A. artist, photographer and selfdescribed community scientist Krystle Hickman (@beesip), whose stunning photos of live native bees in the wild have both laypeople and scientists abuzz.
3 THERE’S NOW TRAINING TO ‘DECOLONIZE IN 12 NOT-SO-EASY STEPS’
Colonization was devastating to the Indigenous people of North America, pitting European standards of land ownership and exploitation head to head against a Native perspective of stewardship and open access. Those colonial values continue to color interactions and perspectives today, said Brenda Kyle, a California certified naturalist and interpretive guide and community engagement manager at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley. Kyle said she’s gotten so many requests from people who want to “decolonize” their thinking that she’s created a short presentation based on Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step program, starting with “Step No. 1: Admit there is a problem. If you cannot see the lasting effects of colonialism as a problem, you are not ready to decolonize.” She’s happy to share the presentation for a fee. Contact her on Instagram @chaparralchick.
4
A PRE-FIRE CLEANUP SAVED THE COUNTRY’S LARGEST OAK TREE A hot-shot fire crew of 30 inmates from Vallecito Conservation Camp saved what’s believed to be the biggest oak tree in North America, a canyon live oak known as the Champion Oak, standing 97 feet tall, with a canopy nearly 100 feet wide, about 3,000 steep feet above Oak Glen in the San Bernardino National Forest.
The area hadn’t seen wildfires for 150 years, said Tim Krantz, conservation director of the Wildlands Conservancy in Oak Glen and retired University of Redlands environmental sciences professor, but in the summer of 2020 it was threatened by two backto-back blazes. The first, known as the Apple fire, shifted away from the tree, allowing the crew to climb the steep slope carrying chainsaws and other heavy equipment in “blazing-hot temperatures.” They spent the day “raking up the duff ” like fallen leaves, removing nearby brush and trimming the oak’s lower limbs. The Apple fire never touched that canyon, but their Herculean efforts paid off a month later, when the El Dorado fire roared through. Researchers had to wait 10 days before they could enter the area, where most of the trees and shrubs were burned to smoky stumps. But the Champion Oak was unscathed, Krantz said, except for a few singed leaves.
5 YOU NEED TO KNOCK DOWN INVASIVE GRASSES BEFORE THEY SMOTHER NATIVE PLANTS
At least three presenters suggested using cattle or even wild horses to reduce stands of invasive grasses, which typically grow faster and denser than native plants, especially after wildfires, denying native plants space and sunlight as they try to emerge. For instance, Stuart B. Weiss, chief scientist at the Creekside Center for Earth Observation in Los Gatos, said most people don’t realize that the atmospheric nitrogen from vehicle exhaust, smog and other emissions acts like fertil
izer on invasive grasses, significantly goosing their growth to the detriment of native plants. Cattle grazing, he said, cuts down the invasives, giving native plants a fighting chance.
THERE’S A NEW L.A.-BASED BIPOC GROUP DEVOTED TO NATIVE PLANTS
The native plant world hasn’t always felt welcoming to people of color, said Sarabia, so he and Blanca Diaz, manager of the native plant nursery and maintenance at Willow Springs Park in Long Beach, started a group in February 2021 to help members of the BIPOC community interested in native plants find a safe and encouraging place to learn more. Membership is free, but you have to sign up on Instagram (@BIPOC.ifornia) and identify yourself as BIPOC to join events, which this year included hikes, field trips, presentations and making origami artwork that resembles native plants.
DEMAND FOR NATIVE PLANTS IS STRONG
CNPS launched its Bloom California campaign in the fall of 2021 to help lawn removers relandscape with native plants. More than 100 nurseries in California joined the online campaign, agreeing to display the Bloom California logo and sell the native plants featured on the website. The marketing paid off in a big way, especially in Southern California. Participating nurseries reported a 67% increase in native plant sales compared to two years earlier. The website offers design tips and specific plant suggestions for a variety of native gardens, from privacy hedgerows and pots on a balcony to a shady retreat or a sunny pollinator paradise.
Late fall is a great time to shop for California native plants and get them in the ground, to establish themselves during the cooler and (we hope) wetter months of the year. For more information about November native plant events in and around Los Angeles, visit