Befriending all of Creation as an Outdoor Enthusiast
Reframing the lands we play on to begin to mend our relationship with Indigenous peoples
The mountains have always held a special place in my heart; a place where I feel aligned with myself and the world around me. However, recently, I have been thinking a lot about my relationship to these places in conjunction with the Indigenous communities who's stolen land we play on.
An article I stumbled on by Patrick Lucas states:
'Throughout British Columbia and across Canada, recreation and adventure sports have supported and benefited from colonialism and the erasure of Indigenous peoples from the land.’
As someone who regularly plays on these lands, this sentence stirred something I already knew at my core but perhaps was too scared to look at.
For the last couple of years, I have been researching about the areas I visit and have found it difficult to find information about their Indigenous names and histories. Perhaps this is in part due to various views of sharing this information amongst Indigenous communities with outsiders or that Indigenous language was historically oral but I suspect it is largely due to colonial erasure.
Although I use the Native Land app to acknowledge the stolen territories of the places I visit, this practice has begun to feel too small and at times even empty. Studying under Charlotte Townsend-Gault at the University of British Columbia, I repeatedly learned the power that language has in colonization. Changing the names of places and people works to obscure rights to land and systematically dismantle Indigenous culture. Not surprisingly, research into Indigenous names of places or peaks I visited has largely been unsuccessful.
Last weekend, in another attempt to better acquaint myself to the place, I took photos of every flower, shrub, tree, mushroom, moss and lichen I found to identify them when I returned home. I was inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an Environmental Biologist and member of the Potawatomi Nation, who states:
’Names are the way we humans build relationships, not only with each other but with the living world. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like going through life not knowing the names of the plants and animals around you…I think it would be a little scary and disorienting - like being lost in a foreign city where you can’t read the street signs. Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection ‘species loneliness’ - a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship.’
This idea of befriending ‘the rest of Creation’ resonated with me. I am so grateful for my time in nature but I am simultaneously aware of the impact the recreation industry is having on these landscapes. From arriving to a trail via a road surrounded by a graveyard that was once a forest to braiding trails resulting in crushed flora to human waste improperly disposed of around campsites, there are reminders of our impact everywhere. We tend to move quickly through these spaces, looking for the most Instagrammable spot and Strava-ing our outings to upload our ascent times and elevation gains in hopes of getting that ‘King/Queen of the Mountain’ reward (a painfully ironic concurrence). We use words like ‘conquer’ and ‘bag’ when it comes to getting to the tallest point further engraining the capitalist idea of landscape as economical resource rather than a place gifted to us by Mother Earth.
These seemingly small gestures risk minimizing our experiences in these places to mere escapism from our everyday lives and make them devoid of the reciprocity that builds relationships between people and place, but more importantly, amongst community.
Back at home, excited at the prospect of matching names to flora, I again found myself sitting with the realization of how deep colonization runs. In retrospect, it’s obvious, but because I was not yet thinking about matching these plants with their Indigenous names, I am again confronted with Latin and attributions to Europeans such as ‘Tolmie’s Saxifrage.’ Again, I am face to face with the uncomfortable reality that these spaces and my activities are part of a system of oppression.
Kimmerer states Indigenous elders recalling that ‘the problem with these new people is that they do not have both feet on the shore. One is still on the boat. They don’t seem to know if they are staying or going.’ By starting to deeply understand these spaces we recreate on perhaps we can begin to mend our relationship with the earth and those who have cared for her since time immemorial. This past weekend as I stepped stone to stone through an alpine meadow, I notice I am moving more carefully. With intention, I move slower as if to have the time to intimately take in my surroundings. I am reminded of the spirituality I find in these sacred places and hope that others will begin to tread softer and slow enough to listen.
'Saxifrage' comes from the Latin saxum (rock) and frangere (to break) and William Fraser Tolmie (1812-86) was the Hudson's Bay Company physician at Fort Vancouver in 1832 and a botanical collector in Northwestern North America (Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Pojar & Mackinnon, 1994)
References:
The Myth of the Bike Savour, Patrick Lucas (Patagonia)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013
Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Pojar & Mackinnon, 1994
Also Inspired By:
Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, 2021
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Suzanne Simard, 2021
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