Changing Climate felt across native North America
By Charlie Otto Rasmussen
Overview: Future coming into unsettling focus
Oodenaang (Odanah), Wis.—North American Indians understand resilience. Outsider claims to native land, to culture, to lifeways, have festered for centuries. Through it all first peoples found ways to outlast an assortment of impediments, retaining their core identities.
In the 21st Century a different kind of threat is fast emerging as the leading challenge to tribal communities—to "being Indian." The earth's climate is changing. And with it, water resources, plant and animal communities, and humans are all being affected.
In 2011, an international collection of indigenous people brought their stories to Wisconsin Indian Country, discussing climate change impacts and assessing strategies on how to tackle shared dilemmas. From the Alaskan arctic down the length of Turtle Island to El Salvador, native people report a shift significant enough to rework ancient relationships with the land and water.
Climate scientists, including Atmospheric Sciences Professor, Dr. Donald Wuebbles, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, understand where they're coming from. Hard data reveals that 2005 and 2010 were the warmest years on record; the 2000s simmer to the top of the warmest decades. In the last 40 years, changes have been accelerating.
"There is no disagreement going on in the scientific community (about the existence of climate change); there's just no way around it," Wuebbles said at the College of Menominee Nation's 'Shifting Seasons' summit. "And it's largely dominated by what we're doing. The Midwest's heavy use of coal makes us one of the biggest emitters."
Carbon dioxide released from coal-burning power plants are a leading cause of global warming. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, other greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from human activity include methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases. Collectively, the gases act like blankets spread across the earth, trapping heat that would otherwise dissipate into space. Continued gas emissions translates to more blankets, layer upon layer.
"The emissions we've made already will impact our climate for the next thirty years," Wuebbles said. "Warming is not and will not be uniform. And it isn't all about temperatures," he explained. "The frequency of major storms is increasing. The 20-year-storm is now the 12-year-storm."
In the Ojibwe ceded territories, temperatures are expected to settle in between four and nine degrees higher by mid-century, according to climatologists at the Wisconsin Center for Climate Research. Southern tree species are expected to colonize northern forests and swings in precipitation levels will create water level shortages. Environmental and, ultimately, the human impacts are expected to be more severe with each added degree.
For so many Indian people that rely on traditional local foods, that are coupled culturally and spiritually to native homelands, adapting to an uncertain climate poses great challenges to the present generation and those that follow.
With climate in flux Mexicans look to adapt
Oodenaang (Odanah), Wis.—New invasive species appear in native homelands every year; medicinal plants are increasingly difficult to find in historically productive forestlands; major storms grow more frequent, more intense. Sound familiar?
For upper Great Lakes Indian communities the machinations of climate change are gradually being revealed. In southeast Mexico, however, indigenous people already feel the smack of a world growing warmer and unpredictable.
"The seasons ha
ve changed," said Jose Antonio Medina Oviedo (Medina). "We always did our ceremonies right before the rains came. We asked Mother Earth for a good harvest before planting our crops. Now we don't know when to do the ceremonies. The dates we used to do our ceremonies keep getting pushed back."
Medina, a Pueblo Masahua Indian, toured northern Wisconsin with a delegation that included the Mexican Forest Service, national conservation groups, and indigenous leaders. With three interpreters in tow, the group from temperate southern and eastern Mexico visited the Menominee and Oneida nations, wrapping up at Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission offices on the Bad River reservation July 28.
In conversations with GLIFWC staff, Medina revealed that important cultural resources used in ceremonies had become severely depleted by ecological changes and no longer available on native territories. In some cases, native and government officials execute agreements, transferring ceremonial wildlife from one region of Mexico to another. Iguanas are one such species. Captured in the northwestern Baja California, the lizards are sent to spiritual leaders in Pueblo Masahua and other communities in southern Mexico.
As indigenous people find ways to adapt with the changes, recent surges in wildfire and disease outbreaks hit native populations hard. Juan Manuel Frausto Leyva, Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, said a 50% spike in major wild land fires has scorched north-central Mexico in recent years. In the southern mountain ranges, communities previously insulated from tropical diseases now endure potentially deadly ailments like dengue fever (characterized by a sudden high fever). Drawn by warming temperatures disease-carrying mosquitoes are appearing with unsettling frequency in mountain villages and cities. Dengue fever increased by more than 600% over the last decade across Mexico where government officials struggle to keep pace with health costs and mosquito control efforts.
Bridges across Turtle Island
The US Forest Service International Programs sponsored the Mexican delegation, yielding a unique opportunity for foresters and native people to share ideas on managing climate change. The visit united both local stakeholders—Mexican Forest Service (or CONAFOR) and indigenous leaders—and their counterparts in Wisconsin.
"The lovely part of the exchange is when folks realize just how interconnected we are and how our actions can influence people or the environment on the other side of the world," said the Forest Service's Toby Bloom, Latin America and Caribbean Specialist. "I think everyone is interested to learn how others deal with similar challenges and situations."
Near the rural Bad River community Aspen Acres, the group visited a reforestation demonstration site, guided by Doug Tutor, a tribal forestry technician, and Bureau of Indian Affairs Forester Mike Fitzgibbon. The near-80-acre parcel serves primarily as a natural laboratory to determine the most effective white pine restoration techniques. Following extensive logging on the reservation a century ago, fast-growing deciduous trees replaced the pine-dominated forest. Foresters are experimenting with a track-propelled Bobcat outfitted with a cutting attachment that both mows competing vegetation, and breaks up topsoil to help pine seeds connect with rich mineral soil.
"We're looking to return large stands of pine to the landscape," said Tutor. Over their considerable lifetime—300 years and more—white pines store considerable amounts of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
Tutor said Bad River natural resources staff is also drawing up plans to plant non-native, southern deciduous tree species on the test plot. Should some trees in the reservation's current forest mosaic fadeout, mangers want desirable replacements like oak tested and available for planting.
Culture, science & Sustainability merge at 'Shifting Seasons'
Keshena, Wis.—Larry Merculieff scoffs at talk of global climate change. The Aleut from maritime Alaska has lived long enough to gauge anything amiss in his homeland of islands pressed against the Bering Sea.
"This is a climate crisis," he exclaimed. "Call it what it is." At the August 23-25 conference hosted by the College of Menominee Nation's Sustainable Development Institute, Merculieff led off a roster that included more than a dozen featured presenters. From the outset Merculieff struck an urgent chord, making clear to the 170-some participants at the "Shifting Seasons: Great Lakes Tribal Climate Change Summit" that our world is warming, and ecosystems are in flux.
In Alaska the dramatic loss of sea ice—a hallmark of climate change—is responsible for rising mortality among aquatic mammals, fish and some humans, he said. Ice forms later in the season and melts earlier. Thin ice, or ice that dangerously varies in thickness, make matters worse.
"We've lost experienced hunters because of the inability to read ice safety conditions," Merculieff said. "Approaches to
hunting used for 5,000 years are no longer practical."
Within the food web of Merculieff's Pribilof Islands, sea lions and fur seals lounge and dive for fish and mussels from ice sheets; Aleuts, in turn, traverse the ice to hunt the large mammals for their meat and thick hides. Merculieff said the hunts serve as the primary mechanism for learning how to be a man, a member of the community. As adult men and apprentice teens forego risky hunting trips, the broader impact of unsafe ice serves to degrade the social health of Aleut communities.
"Young people are not being acculturated, not learning about value systems," he said. As a result, the mortality rate for wayward 18-27 year-olds is skyrocketing. "They are self-destructing."
Along with struggling Aleut village life, Merculieff bears witness to an ecosystem reeling from rising temperature and climate disruptions. Sea lion numbers have dropped by a gut wrenching 80% over the past three decades; pure stands of invasive purple loosestrife supplant native marsh vegetation; massive, unprecedented wildfires sweep across the tundra.
"The North is the air conditioner of Mother Earth, and that air conditioner is being shut off," he said.
Growing with the changes
On the southern end of Turtle Island native people are working to resolve ancient agricultural practices with the erratic rains wrought by climate change in El Salvador. Historically predictable winter rains now appear later and later in the growing season. A holistic farming approach known as permaculture may help improve food security for indigenous communities that are also feeling pinched by large, international agribusinesses.
"It is permanent agriculture for a permanent culture," said Juan Rojas, Permaculture Institute of El Salvador. "We use ancestral and traditional wisdom with nature as the model—how everything is interdependent. The concept is to counter the actions by resource-seeking entities."
Multinational companies—with the backing of the Salvadoran government—have discouraged native farmers from using traditional vegetable and grain seed varieties in favor of engineered hybrids, Rojas said. Permaculture advocates hope to reverse that trend. Small-scale farmers are learning how to collect native seeds, and select the varieties best suited to the climate. For Salvadoran natives, that means identifying seed that can prosper despite the unpredictable rainfall that has thrown off planting schedules over the last two decades.
Rojas said native farming societies tend to identify with specific plants. In El Salvador, it's corn. "Our civilization is a civilization based on corn. A civilization of maize," he said. Rojas counseled that cultural survival is dependent, in part, on safeguarding and making traditional foods available. To be successful, people must act with humility before nature and make wise land-use decisions.
"Humankind (needs) to learn how to behave," he said.
Planning for the future
Scientists agree that climate change will grind along unchecked for the immediate future. While people can alleviate the severest impacts for grandchildren and generations beyond by slashing carbon emissions, this leading edge of the new climate regime is happening—the next three decades or so are in the can. How Indian nations and native communities, respond to the changes, however, is very much controllable.
Dr. Daniel Wildcat from Haskell Indian Nations University offered up some advice centered on living a traditional life and adhering to a sustainable, climate-friendly standard in native homelands.
"We have the opportunity to restore the symbiotic relationship between people and place," said Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma. "Are we talking about resources or relatives? The trees, plants, rocks and water are part of our communities."
Wildcat said indigenous people have a distinct cultural identity based on where they live. When tribal planners look to the future, they should consider how their actions impact everyone and everything in the environment.
"Sustainability is unique to each native nation. Tribes should develop what works best with them before a sustainability model is imposed upon them," he advised.
For more information on the Shifting Seasons conference and planning resources for tribal communities contact the Sustainable Development Institute, College of Menominee Nation: 715.799.6226 or www.SustainableDevelopmentInstitute.org.
Our evolving landscape
Wrapping your mind around what climate change looks like in Ojibwe Country is a little washy: unformed. Many notice that winter just isn't what it used to be. Low water on ceded territory lakes is becoming more familiar. But on a grand scale, a broad sweep across the forested landscape, what is climate change going to deliver?
Something a lot like Kansas.
The University of Minnesota's Dr. Lee Frelich, said the boreal forests of the upper Great Lakes are destined to become savanna—a countryside of coarse grass and scattered trees like the lower Midwest.
"Southern trees will outcompete and push out the native trees before they can adapt," said Frelich, UMN Center for Forest Ecology Director. That's especially in lighter, sandy soils, he added. Where the duff and leaf litter lies thick on rich earth, native trees should do better. But within this landscape, invasive European earthworms (the descendents of fishermen's leavings) all too efficiently process the epidermal soils into a thin layer that allows moisture to escape.
In Minnesota, Frelich said the climate is moving north at the rate of three miles a year.
