Mashkiki: Part two

Just as I was finishing up in the manuscript for Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds I was invited to endorse Indigenous Critical Reflections on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, edited by Lara A Jacobs. I really wish I had gotten it sooner because while I was able to shoehorn in a couple of references to it, I really didn't have time to integrate the material in the essays in my own brain let alone into the manuscript .. but I was very happy to endorse it. You should definitely put it into your tbr pile along with this episode's books.

We live out our relations with the land wherever we are. It's not a relation we need to initiate, it is a relation we're already in that we need to assess on an ongoing basis. As Natalie Diaz says, it's not about blood and it never has been. It's about how you enter the land and build relations, and then it's about how you welcome others. In her volume, Jacobs invites Indigenous researchers to do that as well, to think about their own positionality in a variety of ways before presenting their research. We may all bend towards a common purpose, but it is important to think about where we are bending from and what may help or hamper our capacity for flexibility. Many of us may be Indigenous to this continent, but we're not a homogenous group and several writers reflect on belonging to one tribe and then working in the lands of another across all kinds of fields.

It's a position of humility, to know as Daniel said in last week's episode that we are often visitors on lands that are not our own. Two of the guests on this week's podcast, Ziya Tong and Mayam Garris, reflect on that in their own land relations and the work that they do in the context of those who are Indigenous to the places where they live and work. How do you find belonging on land that doesn't hold ancestral memory with or of your own ancestors?

Belonging is not determined by blood. You belong where you are. But that doesn't give you, as Mayam says, a claim of dominion but rather one of recogition and a right to stewardship. It's about how you enter the land, the relations you build, and then it's how you welcome others. Bad Indians know, we survive together, or not at all.

Episode 3 Bad Indians Book Club
Mashkiki, strength from the land (part two)

Patty Krawec: This is Patty Krawec, your host and the author of Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds. This podcast series, which formed the basis of the book, brought together marginalized writers and the people who read them. In part two of Mashkiki strength from the land we talk with author Ziya Tong, along with Dr. Jonathan Ferrier about food autonomy and the web of relations impacted and curtailed by settler colonialism. [This conversation also included Ben Krawec and Mayam Garris. The recommended books were Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People: Colonialism, Nature, and Social Action and Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States: Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health]

I am really excited about today. I read this one, Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People. I was going to read Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the US as well, but my kid took that one home with them, so I only had the one book, but it was really, it was a really interesting book. And what struck me was how through the whole book she's talking about how food sovereignty is about so much more than access to that really is just, one small, one small part of it.

And I also appreciated, and to be honest I didn't realize this when I first picked up the book that she herself is a settler she's a white, I appreciated that she situated that right at the very beginning of the book. She explained what her relationship is with the Karuk people, why she's writing this book, what she's hoping to accomplish, and I really appreciated her putting that in there and elevating Karuk voices, while acting as a bridge between Indigenous knowledge and what the academy wants to hear.

So it was, anyway, I really liked the book. So we're just gonna go around, I'll ask each of you to introduce yourself. You can say a little bit about the book you read, or thoughts that you have about the topic, little bit about who you are. And then now we'll go off to the next person.

Jenessa Galenkamp:   Okay. So yeah. Hi, I'm Janessa. I'm the chat moderator for Patty. And I was thinking about this topic just a little bit today, and I thought it was, so I work at the Friendship center. I am an executive assistant there. So I was like reviewing everybody's, been submitting board reports because we have a board meeting next week. Very exciting. A couple of the board reports I noticed that some people had listed as barriers:  access to good food for participants and food insecurity. And I just thought that was like, that was really interesting because of what we were, what you all were gonna be discussing tonight. And I like, I don't really have any really good thoughts on that.

I was just mulling it over a bit today. I'm mostly just here to listen to what all of you wonderful people are going to be sharing with us. But I was also thinking like this whole thing about food insecurity and then food security and then getting food, like what people consider good food and then where that good food comes from. And then it got me thinking about, like I live in Niagara and so there's a lot of like fruit farms and stuff like that, which also means there's a lot of migrant workers. So I was just thinking about migrant workers and like how they're, they are exploited by our systems and anyway, that's a whole other, I feel like that's a whole other big discussion that needs to be had.

Ben Krawec: Hi. Anii, boozhoo  I'm Ben. I am an urban Ojibwe, currently living in Nogojiwanong, Peterborough. I am an ecological restoration student, former firefighter. When I need money, I work in tree care. Yeah. So I read Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the US and it's a really good book. I would strongly recommend it if you haven't picked it up and you're interested in food, cultural revitalization, or just being a good ally to the land and the Indigenous people on it.  Strong message. Just reading it, I was really, I really liked how the book, it unpacked the word sovereignty and took, and it took it back to the European roots of the word and. Talked about how really Indigenous food sovereignty isn't, sovereignty's not really a word that applies to our systems strictly speaking, because it talks about how you want to build relationship with these foods, with food and places that it comes from, right? It's not something that you're necessarily exerting control over. Yeah. That really struck the chord for me. It seems to resonate really strongly with a lot of my teachers and mentors out here.

Jonathan Ferrier: Aaniin boozhoo. Jonathan Ferrier [introduction in Anishinaabemowin]. Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Hi, I'm a biology professor at Dalhousie University. Thanks for having me. And tonight I, I had the moment between intensive grant writing in the academy to sit down and listen to Living in the Tall Grass by Chief Stacey R Laforme and it's his poem of reconciliation. And I guess to describe it in a few words is well in our language, anishinaabemowin I feel like this book nii’kinaaganaa, it's a direct tribute to all our relations, all the relatives that we come into contact with in the territory. And it's very Mississauga involved, but he writes it for everyone because we're one and we're growing together.

And so many aspects that you can think of in food sovereignty with his writing or if you share some poems with me over the years and that was nice to listen to Stacy, this evening in my car. Miigwech

Patty Krawec: Sorry, I was just looking, I had some notes about the word nii’kiinaaginaa because it, it general generally means all, something like all my relations, but it can also mean, and just bear with me while I pull this out because I don't wanna get this wrong. Yeah. So my friend Josh Manitowabi, I asked him about how the word breaks down.

So ‘ni’ I am ‘kiinaa’ all of them ‘ginaa’ relatives and my relatives. So it can mean all my relations, but it can, or I am related to everything, but it can also mean I am my relatives, all of them. So it speaks to, and as such it reminds me that when we're talking about different languages, whether it's Anishinaabeg or French or like any different language and we try to bring it into English, we only bring part of it. So even just to say that concept of all my relations, it means that and so much more. I am my relative. I am all of my relatives. So I am, I am the food that I eat, I am the land that I walk on. And the more you think about it, it makes sense. When you're building a garden, you wanna put good things into it because you're taking those things up and eating things and it, I dunno, it was just that word that I actually start my book with it.

Ziya Tong: Hello everybody. I am Ziya Tong. I am the newbie to the group and also probably the newbie to Indigenous food sovereignty. I'm very happy to be here. I'm a science broadcaster activist, author, and the book that I chose for today's book club is Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States.

I had a hard time picking actually, because I was the latest, I think to join the panel. I tried to read both, but gosh, that's a lot of reading in just over a week. I started looking at Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People. But as Patty mentioned this was a white academic text and I thought, I've read a lot of those.

So I really wanted to take a different, I dunno, a different approach and really hear from individual voices. And the book is a wonderful survey. So many different peoples and cultures and different food knowledges, but so many commonalities as well that I love. And as you mentioned about all my relations, the thing that really that I loved about the book that I bet is a commonality between both books is really this notion of food and of seeds as being living beings and of being relatives and really the intergenerational sort of context of this life force was really wonderful. So lots of systems thinking that I could see in there, and lots of wonderful crossover between Indigenous thinking and new ways of scientific thought too. So yeah. I'm excited to join all of you today. 

Patty Krawec: Thank you. Actually, you have the observation about seeds, about food and seeds segues very nicely into Mayam and their work in New Mexico. 

Mayam Garris: Yeah. Hello. Greetings everyone. My name is Mayam. My pronouns are they them. I'm a grower, seed steward, seed sharer, seed keeper currently on Isleta Pueblo territory, also known as Albuquerque, New Mexico. And so I received both books and I was like, really trying to have this framework of not approaching it in a linear way, but just like thinking about titles, chapters that really spoke to me. So of course I read the introduction of both books because I wanted to ground myself in what was being presented. But then I was really drawn to Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People and the chapter of emotions of environmental decline, like that chapter like really jumped out to me. And also an Indigenous food sovereignty just reading the introduction in itself really just had me thinking about the ways that I show up as a grower here on Isleta Pueblo territory. And then also just what kind of relationships do I have as a grower, not only to food sovereignty, but to the people that I am in community and a relationship with.

So I was really thankful and grateful to receive the book and I'm gonna continue to read it. But with Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People, it was really eye-opening and humbling to just see that this idea about food and how it's not necessarily a commodity, but it's also a relationship. It's not something that one just consumes that we think about in a western capitalistic way, but also food can be seen as relationships,it can be seen as a point of just like bringing different webs of beings literally into connectivity with one another. So the chapter that really stuck out with me was emotions of environmental decline and how that was talking about just the emotional impacts of colonization on people. And I felt like on the Karuk people in particular but I also felt very similar parallels as a person of African descent and just the emotional impacts that I feel ancestrally as well as just it being brought up in the book as well and things ringing true for me as well.

So I'm very grateful to be a part of this group and to continue conversation and dialogue. 

Patty Krawec: Okay. Thank you, Mayam. Yeah, but the one, the interview, I think it's Robbie, somebody she interviewed. She talks about Robbie fairly often, and I think it's him. And he's talking about how, people will, confront them on eating the salmon. They'll say, the salmon are endangered. Why are you eating them? He says, they're, and he says at one we're like, the salmon are endangered because we don't eat them because we're not, from the Karuk point of view, if they're not enacting their relationship because then the salmon learn not to come and that, and so just, I had never, I hadn't thought about it in that way before, that this was a back and forth that by making the environment as such that it was conducive to fishing and to all of those things that was part of this relationship that the salmon too were expecting to be cared for and to nourish just as they would be nourished.

And so that, that was just a really interesting way to think. And then, yes, and then that chapter about the emotional impacts of colonialism. I read that one this afternoon. So where I want to go now is thinking in terms of what you read and the work that you're doing, the work that you're doing in community, whether it's academic work or community work.

How is that kind of changing or shifting your thinking a little bit because you've all mentioned things about these books or things about, the poetry Jonathan that you talked about that was new for you. So I kinda wanna hear a little bit about what's changing in terms of how you're looking at the work that you're doing.

Jonathan Ferrier: I think that, just to segue from salmon, I guess the latest work I've been doing is just preparing for fall harvest on the reserve. And so that involves keeping track of when the salmon are running in the territory coming up, the Credit River at the [intelligible]. And so when we're out there hunting salmon, we're keeping a close eye, but we're also paying attention to language and we're discussing amongst our ourselves and our friends. One particular friend that mentioned anit, the name we have for spear this has since been called on it since the old days when it was called many other things because since colonization this, the name for spear has changed 'cause the nature of fishing has changed in Toronto, waskodinach [unclear]

And so when I think of waskodinach [unclear], I think of the place for burning bright. And I think of the CN Tower and I think of, how that looked like a poplar tree at some point where you could wrap, pitch pine around it and then set it a fire and start your salmon hunt. So neat how you see the language change and how you adapt it to the current surrounding.

I think reflecting on that in the city as a Mississauga man hunting a salmon in the river, I think the language comes first and then, but noticing the change of the fish. Why are the fish having different fins in the water? Because they're farmed. And so this is relating to the economics that Canada has led in, in a way into a territory that I understand is seeded through all of the riverways, but we have free access to sell those fish whenever we want. And that's current topic here in mik’maki. And so I think with the language and how we see biology changing and how that nourishes our community and whether or not we have access to those things, I think that's the current dialogue that I am quite interested in and where we have jurisdiction to talk about that and when it's welcome and when it's not, and pushing those barriers forward for community and access to the language, our foods, medicines, material sovereignty, and how we can move forward in a positive direction, being all our relatives and appreciating all our relatives and keeping that system healthy and well.

Patty Krawec: Thank you. Yeah. When you talked about language that reminded me of something, from Salmon and Acorn where they talk about the different ceremonies that are associated with the different cultural tasks, with gathering acorns, with gathering mushrooms, with, dipping the nets for the eels or catching the salmon and the ceremonies that are connected to those things. And then when you can't do those things, you can't go out on the land because the fish and wildlife people will arrest you because you're going out of season. And we have this happening here too with Indigenous hunters. Or because the land is simply not the same. Salmon and Acorn also talks a lot about fire stuff, and I'm gonna wanna hear some of that.

And about the fire ecology. So when you stop going out on the land to do these things, or there's no salmon and so you can't do the forest salmon ceremony, then language drops off. Because if you're not doing the thing, then there's, you don't use the language associated with the thing. You're not doing the ceremonies part, doing the things of your material culture that are associated with those things.

And so then who do we become? Who do we become as Indigenous people when our language, oh, Ziya has a thought. Yes. We'll go to Ziya. 

Ziya Tong: Oh, just feel free to finish what you were saying, Patty.

Patty Krawec: That's just where I was going was then who did we become? When we lose all of these connections that are, that are encapsulated in food sovereignty, but so much more.

Ziya Tong: I just, yeah. I wanted to follow up on that only because luckily I'm reading this on a Kindle, so I can actually do a search and actually find the paragraph. But one, one paragraph that I did highlight was related to plant knowledge and language. And if I just read it to you, if that's okay. It says, 

“When we teach the plant knowledge, we do it in the language. “A’ha” that is cottonwood. And the name in Hualapai tells you that this plant grows by the water. “hamsi’iv” that is cattail, part of the word means star, for the knowledge that when the plant goes to seed and the fluff blows away in the breeze, the shape of that seed fluff. It resembles a star. If our children lose their heritage language, they lose part of their history. Where they are, where they come from. In the teaching of the ethnobotany to the children, we believe is important for them to think in Hualapai and connect to this land that is their heritage, because the language actually is almost like a coding device that codes plant knowledge.”  ~ the late Hualapai tribal elder Malinda Powskey on the significance of the Haulapai Youth Ethnobotany project cited in Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People

And when you lose that. Language, you lose so much of the ecological history of the food itself, which I found really quite powerful.

Ben Krawec: Yeah. So just piggybacking on the language and its connection to land. So in ecosystem restoration, there's a topic that we, there, there's a concept that we talk an awful lot about called the novel ecosystem, right? It's a, so it's a novel ecosystem is an ecosystem with no, without any preexisting analogs, right? to put it simply, but it's, it bit, the definition is a little bit more complex, but that's the basis of it, right? So if you imagine you've got like a city, right? Like a city is a great example of novel  ecosystem, right? You're gonna find a lot of plants that tend to do well with cliffs, right? Birds that tend to do well with cliffs, but it's definitely not like. Its, it's not like the Grand Canyon in there, right? So the function, now the way that things function in there, the way the nutrients are cycled is gonna be completely different, right? 'cause the plants and the animals haven't seen this before.

And there's a lot of parallels I've been noticing between that and a lot of the things that my partner has been talking about her with her work language, with language revitalization. She's been really putting in the time learning getting anishinaabemowin and it's it's still a living language, right? Just because the language is changing and the ways in which we can get out on the land is changing, the language hasn't died because of that, right? There's new words being added, right? And in anishinaabemowin  we've got words for power, we've got words for computer, right? We've got words for phone. And yes, as the land changes and as the land, as our access to that land changes, I think, we're, if we work hard at revitalizing the language and teaching it to each other and teaching it to our children. Then we'll have new words to reflect in the landscape. 

Patty Krawec: She does talk about that, that when we, you depend towards the end of the book where she's talking about the anthropocene and climate change and kind of these big make changes that we're facing, reminding us that for Indigenous people we have seen these cataclysmic changes and our language has changed and we have adapted and there's, which isn't to say that we throw in the towel and we just, like all these changes happen obviously we do the work that we need to do because we like this world, but she does make that point towards the end of the book, we have not, this is not our first rodeo with you know, with catastrophic change and so it, it's really important then that we listen to Indigenous voices. 

Mayam Garris: I feel like what the readings are really challenging me to do in my particular situation is to really see the interconnectedness between who are in sustainable ag spaces, urban spaces, and then spaces where acts of self-determination can be practiced. And a lot of these spaces that are sustainable ag spaces are predominantly white, but also in the underbelly of these spaces too are many of us who are Black or Indigenous stewards, community gardens or even folks with one to five square feet who have that ancestral knowledge of growing in relationship with beings we find ourselves tending to.

And it's funny, there's like a lot of demonstrations I've been going to recently that are highlighting like these new and innovative ways that a lot of folks are thinking that they've discovered, but have been practiced for generations, right? Like by Black and Indigenous ways of beings. And one of those examples is like priming a seed, which is like literally like soaking like a little seed in water and then planting it to give it an edge during drought. And I remember going to one of these demonstrations where a friend and I who, and a friend who was from Zuni Pueblo told me how his grandfather would plant corn, but he would put the corn seed in his mouth and then plant it. So seed priming isn't new technology. It's not anything that is being innovative. It's something that's been practiced as a way of that interconnectedness between the plant, right? Between our soil, between all the elements and all the beings that we're in relationship with. So while reading this book, and then also just being a participant as a grower in North Carolina, and now living in New Mexico and living in rural spaces and living in urban spaces, I see many similarities between the two states when it comes to who has access to technological resources, who has access to land, who has access to water and innovative learning spaces and time. And many of us may not have the newest Kubota tractor or the newest no-till drill, but we have our minds and our ancestral wisdom and our seeds that we are familiarizing ourselves with as well as the same seeds that are like welcoming us back into a relationship.

So I feel going back to what Ben was saying about sovereignty, like being and coming from European roots in the book Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the US and then also talking about language. I also wanna bring up maybe a lot of the somatic experiences that we have as people who are of this Earth and for example, and people who are of this land on Turtle Island. We may not necessarily have the language to describe our relationships, but we have that somatic experience of living generations and generations and being in relationship with the land and the plants and the soil and all the beautiful things that we're interacting with. 

So I feel like this book is really challenging me to think about, that I'm not, my people aren't from Turtle Island, right? We were forced over here but we also brought our ways of being and had to do it to survive, like through slavery, right? And, what can we do now as a way of being in relationship with our Pueblo relatives and learning with our Pueblo relatives and also refamiliarizing ourselves with ancestral ways that have been lost.

So yeah, this book is like galvanizing a lot of thought and also has me thinking and like trying to research as much as I can people from Cameroon who are my people, and just trying to find ancestral agricultural practices from the motherland. 

Patty Krawec: Really cool because she does talk about the racialization of land and the way that land is parceled and set aside and, and who's allowed to own it. And Mayam, you and I have talked about that, urban spaces or Black spaces and farms or white spaces and you, part of your work is sometimes we say it as Indigenous people, our existence, subverts colonialism and in that regard, yeah, by subverting kind of the racialization of land as I, she made so many interesting points in that book and highlighting the importance of relationship with Indigenous people.

Ziya Tong: Well, in terms of the work that I guess I've done in the more recent past I wrote a book a little while ago called The Reality Bubble. There is an entire chapter on food, but really what the book is about is fundamentally about our blind spots, but also about how we as human beings became so divorced from the natural world and started living in this quote unquote system that we really see with colonialism, we really see with capitalism, we really see with the formation of the state. And so what's interesting is, of course the state didn't always exist, right? This modern idea of the state is only a few hundred years old and in terms of my own thinking, really the power of food is, it is the first trap in the system and in the rat race because once you have a reliance on outside food, you are already in debt to this modern game and you have to play in order now to have your food.

And then taking away land also means you now must pay in order to have a place to live. And, that's why we often see so much poverty amongst those with so much great resource wealth, right? Because so much of that is, is tricked and taken away from people. So that's some of my thinking in terms of power relations and how that all works. But so much of the book for me, I have to say, was very personal because I'm a new gardener. I learned how to grow with seeds this year for the first time ever, and grow some food. And I have food in my backyard. And so while what I'm doing, and I'm happy to chat a little bit more about that later is on a really small scale for me, the book is a powerful reminder of resistance and really revolutionary politics because when you can really have power over your food, again, that's really transformational. So I was really happy to see, movements like Indigenous Seed Keepers, like I-Collective, all these different movements that are taking place right now. And last but not least, this is not my work, but I wanna completely encourage everybody who's listening today to check it out.

Two of my friends worked on a documentary that just came out called Food for the Rest of Us, and it's just a wonderful, beautiful film. It takes place in Hawaii. It takes a place in Tuktoyaktuk, it takes place in in the States. And it really looks at, it's really an empowering look at people who do and who are creating systems of food sovereignty for themselves. And it's a transformational doc. I highly recommend it. Again, for everybody who's listening yeah. Food for the Rest of us, definitely check it out. It leaps off the page. It's like everything we were reading, but you're actually seeing names and people and places and I think you'll feel really quite empowered after you see it.

Patty Krawec: Ben, some of what Ziya was saying made me think of you and urban spaces. 

Ben Krawec: Yeah, I think cities are really, they're an often overlooked place for I guess preserving biodiverse, like preserving and conserving seeds and generally as places of building relationships, right?

Like so many, so like right from the very beginning of north, like the ecosystem as we know it in North America. So like thinking about like just after the post glaciation, humans had been on the landscape planting and moving things and tending to the land, right? Allium, like the Canadian wild ginger. There's all kinds of pale-ecologists, just scratching their heads over how it managed to travel so far, so quick, right? Because if you look at the way it propagates, it moves very slowly. Like really, it should only have went to about 400 kilometers and in the span of time we're looking at. duh people, people put it there, right?

And so it's like when you include humans as part of the equation and ecology, all of a sudden cities actually look pretty sweet because you've got all of these people in one place who can be saving seeds, they can be swapped, they can be swapping plants, they can be, they can be taking care of like very particular species of insects that are known to be beyond decline, right? It's if everybody in this, if everybody in the city picked like one at risk plant to focus in on and learn, learn to take care of and take care of those seeds. Then like folks who are out working to restore larger wild spaces would have a much more genetically diverse seed bank to around for their restoration efforts.

And it would probably make their cities much nicer place to live. 

Jonathan Ferrier: I agree with that, and I think that ties into our governance architectures and the way doodems in the Anishinaabe aspect, the way doodems and our clan systems works, and the way those ancestral systems would have those natural relationships with those different seeds, with those different food sources like Bear Clan for Medicine and Fish Clan for teaching and Crane Clan for Leadership.

So I, I approach these aspects quite a bit, in designing teaching architectures for a diverse audience in the academy. For myself, I rely on my family's interaction with the land and that history behind that. 'cause what I feel is important is to help the student reconnect their relationship to those natural seed systems that is perhaps governed differently in their traditional territory or Indigenous territory.

And so I'm really quite interested in how this entire land back movement meets the city movements from Canada in our territory and how land is repatriated back to our people. So we have access to those food systems. And then looking at the teachings that are in quote, indigenizing the academy, what are they, we're seeing a lot of the medicine wheel and the seven grandfather teaching Yes. Important teachings. But what are the doodems [clans] telling us and how to, and how can we enact those traditional economics in our territories once again as we begin to assert jurisdiction in our territories. If you look at the industries built around things like maple syrup for instance, that is the time of our original pow wow when we come back from the quietness of winter and the sweet water starts running again. If you look at the scientific research that went into just producing maple syrup for our people, it tells a story that. We're scientists at heart indeed. And we're working in relation with the ebb and flow of the water living, breathing mother earth. And so when we harvest sweet water, that's one of the few times in the year when water is both a liquid and a solid form.

So if you think about falling a basswood tree and then putting all your Sweetwater in there, if you wait till the morning, you can pull off the ice and then you're left with a lyophilized product. In other words, a freeze dried product. We're making space with Anishinaabe territory and so this is this intellectual property that my people are really interested in knowing and regaining and revitalizing these food systems.

And it's something I think about when I see the city. And that's to get back to your point there with the city and how does that intellectual property develop our city, the city of the forest, the trees, our value was based on the height of our trees and the cleanliness of our water is, are we dealing with the right cash system?

Like Bitcoin is destroying more than the last one was. And so I'm interested in those systems and how they can come back to our nation and our people. The rare, the rarest of the rare people that's what I think about when I see those cities and teaching in the academy to people who have these different Indigenous topics to discuss in their home communities is something that I'm enjoying finding it complicated and challenging.

But that's that's the way she goes, miigwech. 

Patty Krawec: Indigenizing is really easier than decolonizing, right? Because if decolonizing, if we are going to follow Tuck and Yang, is not a metaphor and means giving it back, then nobody wants to give it back. So let's just hang some dream catchers and hire a couple of native teachers and they'll it, because that's way easier than actually dealing with restoring what was taken so well.

And I just, 

Jonathan Ferrier: The land is coming back. We get requests to, to have the land returned to us. Now. It's the system of dealing with the existing architectures. And so the Indian Act has different options, but then what about our way? How do we do that? And so that's what we're working on now. That's I think, a major topic of discussion amongst peoples of different nations.

Yeah.

Patty Krawec: Mayam,  What kind of things are you guys working on on the farm and with the Pueblo friends? You talked a little bit about activism that you are participating in. 

Mayam Garris: Yeah, so I'm a seed steward, so a little bit of what I do. It's not only just growing a plant to then save seed, it's also creating a relationship with the plants, the micology, the water, the insect ecology, the soil, everything. So realizing that, it's not just the plant that does the work and it's not just the people too, realizing there's a bigger picture involved. And my goal with saving seed is a process of humility, right? I've been growing plants that are adapted to and from the desert Southwest for the past three years, and a lot of those plants are from nearby Pueblos in New Mexico, as well as from the Tohono O’odham peoples, the Apache peoples and people from Northern Mexico. And then I'm also growing seed that's from the African diaspora as well as a way of reconnecting myself to something that isn't lost, it's just dormant for me. And all this growing of seed is then to be shared with community.

And mainly a lot of the seeds, specifically from the desert Southwest, are then to be given and shared back with friends from Pueblos who either added to their seed bank or continued to grow it back on their homelands or just grow it if they're living here in the city as well. And a big part of that is realizing that, there's a lot of memory in those seeds too, right?

And I think there's a beauty in how it's tended to and who gets to tend to those seeds, and then who gets to share those seeds. As a way of building, I don't wanna say resiliency because I feel like that word gets used a lot, but just as building this sense of memory that seeds are being grown in different locations that hold different genetic markers in those locations.

So I feel like saving and sharing those seeds is a way of envisioning our future because it's a very futuristic state of mind, of saving a seed for the next generation or the next group of growers who are then gonna share those and save those seeds. I'm also into teaching about how to save seeds too, particularly with high school students.

There's a high school literally right behind my house, and I think it's important that those kids also learn, just the process of growing plants and being in relationship with plants and growing seeds and realizing that it's an intuitive process as well. And it's not something that is way, way too complicated, I feel like western ideas about agriculture makes it seem like you have to have a tractor and you have to have the newest equipment to grow a successful crop when that's not just the case. So part of this of what I'm doing is rooted in accessibility, rooted in the futurism, and then also rooted in a sense of humility of being that I'm not from these lands, but I want to continue this work of being in relationship with my Pueblo neighbors, as well as being in relationship with my ancestors who grew specific seeds like okra and sorghum and black eyed peas and collared greens as a way of, paying homage to what we've gone through and that we still have the knowledge today.

Yeah, that's just a little bit of what I'm doing and yeah, 

Patty Krawec: Mayam, I particularly like the way you describe the same seed growing in different places, having kinda different genetic memory of those places and the importance of that diversity as opposed to just, these mass market tomatoes and everything that we get. 

Ziya Tong: I mean, gosh, I really like gardening people too, because people who tend and nourish gardens and seeds. I love the way you were just describing so much of that and it just made me think of how, in the book that I was reading about Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the US, this notion of not imprisoning seeds because they are living relatives and this notion of what you were saying of sharing seeds and how there has been a tendency to keep seeds locked up in seed banks or what have you away from people. And this need to rematriate seeds and bring them back to the people who will actually grow them. There was a wonderful chapter in there that I really liked I think it was the Mohawk Nation, where they went through this entire process where they didn't have any seeds and you go through it and you see how they managed to meet all these different people and all these different seed keepers and from all these different relationships, living relationships that they had, they were able to create living relationships with the seed.

And on top of that, I was just reminded, Ben, by something that you had said earlier too, what would happen if everybody grew a wild plant or an Indigenous plant, what we would be able to do. And with WWF Canada, I'm on the board there as well. And it's an Indigenous led organization now. Very proud and pleased to say that they're doing so much work there. They have something called the Go Wild Community Grants. And so this is the kind of thing where if you have an idea like that, it's also for people in schools,  secondary, university. Anybody who has an idea like that, those are the sorts of projects that they look for that tend to get funded and the deadline is October 25th. If you're a super keener, which is that thing you might be, and you might be like, in four days I will write up a grant proposal. But you could, you never know. Anyway, it's just invigorating and wonderful to see. 

Jonathan Ferrier: Ben, I just collected some mashkigibeg seeds that you've been looking for, and so you can come over and get some at our fall harvest. Mashkigibeg is one of the plants that we take from what's called the place of medicine mashkiig.

So in biology we have this name called mashkiig for a swamp or a bog. And so this is the medicine that comes from that swamp or bog. And so I've managed to collect some seeds here that we can share, but. Again, the difficult thing is access to these habitats. So on this, on our reserve there, there's no classic mashkiig the medicine place.So that, that is an ongoing challenge. And so getting those spaces in touch with those spaces is really important. And that's some of the work that we do with the Credit Valley conservation and some of those spaces along the Credit Valley Trail. And creating spaces where we can teach, learn about the land, and have those cultural gatherings to share seeds and things like this and get those connections back so we can get those gardens and food systems back up and running.

Patty Krawec: I wanted to pick up a bit on what Mayam was talking about regarding being being a person in diaspora, because Ziya, on Twitter, your handle is earthling. And you and I talked a little bit about that, about a both feeling like a global citizen. Which is an interesting, because like Ben and Jonathan and I are all, talking about, situating ourself here Nishnaabeg territory. Mayam is talking you, but that's, and I'm always mindful how that kind of, I don't know. I don't want it to feel like excluding people who live in diaspora as if you're not welcome. Because, when we talk about land back our original intention was always welcoming and joining together. The two row was the earliest treaty that was offered and it was about living together. So I always want to make sure that is clear as well when, whenever we talk about land back, that we're not talking and about sending everybody back. 

Ziya Tong Thanks. Yeah. We did have a chance to briefly chat about it when we were just DMing or I think in our previous private chat. But it, for me, it's very different because I'll never belong to any place. I come from former countries. I'm half former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonian, half former Hong Kong special administrative region of China, the nations that my parents belonged to, dissolved in the time that I was growing up. And so that's why I am not the biggest fan of nation states. When you meet biracial people like me, it's incredibly hard to be racist or nationalistic or feel particularly tied to any piece of land because I'm, I am an earthling, I belong to this planet, but I don't necessarily belong to bordered states as we know them today.

So it's good that you have that welcoming sort of notion with land back. 'cause otherwise I would be, there would be no place for me to feel settled. But at the same time, one thing that we all have in terms of lineages, no matter whether or not I have a nation state that I particularly belong to or not, is food. Certainly my mom's food culture in Macedonia, Croatia, the Slavic nations, goes back a long history and I have a very deep connection as we all do to those foods. But I also have a completely different dynastic history to Chinese food. So the connection to your belly and the connection to culture and all of that, those are long twined histories. So I may not have land, but I've got some food history that connects me to some of those lands, I think. Anyway. 

Mayam Garris: Yeah. Yeah. So there is something actually when we're just talking about, 'cause we're talking about just like land back and water back, and that's really been galvanizing, just like what is my role as a Black person in those movements, especially with a lot of Pueblo resurgent movements, Pueblo Action Alliance, like a lot of like Pueblo nationalist movements.

I was reading this book called Unapologetic, and it's by Charlene Caruthers, who is a Black queer Black queer feminist. And there's this quote in this book that I want to share. I actually have it written down here, but it reads, it's a great challenge, but we must continue to imagine and work for a world in which everyone is able to live with dignity and in right relationship with the land we inhabit.

And then she questions, what claim do Black Americans have to the land that native people call Turtle Island or what claims to indigeneity? As people who are descendants of enslaved and migrant people, our claim is not one of dominion to this land, but one of recognition and right to stewardship.

And she continues to say that we have to reckon with the history as well as that of slavery and understand that the majority of our people have lived and died under these conditions of state sanctioned terrorism. Our movement must foster transformative conversations among Black and Indigenous peoples.

And we should strive to aid in each other's harvest in a world with too much scorched earth. And I think that's just like a really beautiful and poetic way of thinking about, we're also, in this fight against, white supremacy and colonialism and what are the ways in which we can aid in each other's wellbeing, aid in each other's harvest in a world that just, doesn't want to see us live, so I thought, that's really beautiful to think about in the context of land back and water back. Living in the desert Southwest. 

Patty Krawec: Ben wanted to go to you to talk a little bit about the fire suppression, 'cause Salmon and Acorns talked about that quite a bit about fire suppression. As a tool of genocide and colonization because it ruins, it ruins the forest by not allowing them to burn in the grassland and the grasslands as well.

So I want, I'm gonna ask you a two part question. One, you can speak a little bit to what that means in terms of burning and how and agricultural burning, how that works. And I know the Nishnaabeg also have a history of that kind, that kind of fire as an agricultural tool. But also I want to put that in context with the eighth fire because now we're talking, Mayam has brought up seeds as futurism and you and I have talked about the eighth fire and how it is, it's a wildfire, from some of the teachings you'd gotten that it's very clearly a wildfire and that there's some choices to be made.

And so that's what I want us to reflect on in the last half hour of our conversation. 

Ben Krawec: Yeah. So for starters, like fire's been part of how we participated in the ecosystem for millennia, right? So right around where I'm like, where I'm situated right now, we've got what's, there's a remnant ecosystem left that we call Tallgrass Prairie.

The Tallgrass Prairie dates back to I think the holocene warming period. So there, there used to be quite dry and it was all grass land , right? And then it starts, starts to get more humid and it starts to hardwood force start to move in. So humans burned the area off to prevent the encroachment of hardwood because they had relationships with the bison and the grass that was growing there.

And a number of the progenitors or the ancestors of what we, the eastern agricultural complex, which is like the whole, like food systems of people east of the Mississippi, we can trace their origins back to bison, bringing in seeds and also reducing competition for these particular plants, right? It's like we're, it's like, the eastern Tallgrass Prairie is it's renowned for being diverse and beautiful and full of life and it's like and fire was very much part of that relationship.

The anthropogenic fires very much how that whole thing even came to be. And that's like really, that's true all over North America. We've timed our burned very carefully. You time your burn very carefully to achieve a specific end. And when you take people it, it keeps on coming back to like humans being participants of the ecosystem, right? You can't take human intervention out of the equation when it's been part of it since the beginning. Then yeah, like thing when the fires aren't timed properly, fuels will build up and we end up with catastrophic fire seasons like we're seeing out west almost on a yearly basis now. 

And so I think that kind of, that relates to the eighth fire where it's the eighth fire is a wildfire and what's it going to look like? And is it something that we, is it something that we spark with intention and with careful thinking and examination of the world that we're in and our role in it? Or is it some, or is it just like a tinderbox of build up energy that kind of goes off without any forewarning, due to some variable that isn't in our control rate, like a lightning strike for somebody flicking a cigarette butt.

Jonathan Ferrier: The way I approach fire through my experience, is looking at it through blueberry harvest. And so I see the different fire techniques that were used to encourage blueberry growth. And that's been a big part of my life history growing up. I was always collecting berries and I've followed these seeds and berries  intimately growing up, where blue and the many blueberry relatives grew. And so just waiting for those aspects and seeing how that changed. Lighting my own fires in the valleys, my brothers and I would actually set fields on fire and then we would harvest blueberries through the summer as soon as we could burn the grass, we would, and that you could see us picking the berries the next few months.

And interesting to reflect on that, but in a lot of ways that, that Eighth Fire for us, was being on the land, collecting berries. That berry has stayed close to me my entire career. I spent my postdoc looking at how our blueberry knowledge with blood treatment medicine, was able to treat preeclampsia, which impacts a lot of pregnant women and it's characterized by high blood pressure and the only treatment is to cesarean section of the baby and sometimes that leads to lower survival rates, but it's the only way to save the mother. So you can see that tending to those fires and to the eighth fire, which is a new concept to me, but I'm trying to relate to it in real time. You're just in my own personal experience and I think I see how that fire connects into that story in my life.

Ben Krawec: Yeah. I'm sorry. I just realized I misunderstood the question a little bit. And realized that some people on the chat may not know about the the prophecy of the seven fires. In the Nishnaabe history way, way back to when the people that you know now call it the Odawai, Botawadami, the Michi Saagig, Ojibwe, they were all, and sure I'm forgetting a few, were living on the east coast, north America and then they had a prophet who said hey guys, we gotta go west. Troubles brewing. And so the whole people picked up and started moving east and every, they would occasionally stop along the way and then hang out in one place for a while. It's a, this is a long story. I'm not doing it any justice in just a couple minute blurb, but basically every shift in the migration was the word, signaled or accompanied by a fire. Each fire could symbolize like a shift in the people's behavior. Or it's symbolized like a cultural shift or like a signal to Hey, get off your butts and get moving.

And so there, I think we're on our way up to seven. It depends on who you ask. Some people say that we're in the middle of the seventh fire. Some people say it's already happened, but the idea is that the seventh fire, the Anishinaabeg people are going to have two roads that they that they can, or again, there's so many different versions of this. It's the Anishinaabeg faced with the choice or the white-skinned racer or, settlers are faced with a choice between two roads, right?  One road is green and lush and inviting. Another road is blocked and charred and the prophecy, some people may decide to take neither road and turn back and reclaim the wisdom of those that came before them. Then, so the eighth and final fires it applies less to the Anishinaabe people in particular and more to everybody on TurtleIsland altogether. And if the eighth fire goes well. It's a good wildfire, right? It leaves everything clean like a clean and ready for new growth to occur. And if the eighth fire goes awry, then everything's gonna get black and charred and we're all hooped, right? 

And the eighth fire may very well be a very literal fire, right? We all see the way climate changes and that's no good. But yeah, so I think the, there's some analogies there between like fire ecology and like that intentional burning versus that like scorched earth and nuking that is happening every fire season, right? Like fire can be good, fire can be fire, can be terrifying.

Is the eighth fire gonna be, it’s up to us.

Ziya Tong: Yeah. Just following up on what Ben said recently, I was just listening to a talk. WWF invited Angela Kane, she's the CEO of the Secwépemc Restoration Stewardship Society. And it was interesting because what the Restoration Society does is they plant trees, they plant saplings, they're restoring all these, all these areas.

And what was devastating to hear from her was that all the seedlings, I think 90% of the seedlings that they went and planted last year were all destroyed in the fire. Despite all these, all the activity and all the hard work to replant, again, something like a wildfire can just wipe out all our attempts to even regrow more trees to, it's a deadly cycle at this point in time. So a little bit depressing, sorry to share it, but I was also really quite saddened to hear that not only is the fire or the, are the fires just wreaking havoc on people and communities, but also on restoration work, which is, makes it difficult. And I don't think people in conservation are recognizing that we're always like, don't worry, we're just gonna plant more trees.

You're gonna plant a billion trees, it's gonna be fine, but it's not gonna be that easy to plant trees in the future. 

Patty Krawec: I think there, there's some neat work being done with fire suppression. Is there not in terms of Indigenous fire suppression knowledge, I've seen some posts from a mutual friend about in work particularly that the Karuk are doing.

Ben Krawec: Yeah. I've been out of that league for a little while now, but I do know that there's some really great work being done over the Alderville Black Oak Savanna, not too far from where I'm at now, where they're, like the Michi Saagig of Alderville never stopped burning. It's just now it's being, it's very big. Things are moving where they can do it more above board and it's becoming more acceptable, really hoping that get some really good land back happening so we can start restoring, we can start restoring those fire dependent plants and get it going further. But yeah, the know the knowledge of how to do that stuff is being kept alive over an elder evolution, urging.

Mayam Garris: Yeah. I am thinking not necessarily about the literal fires, but desertification and drought. And just to really put it into context for a lot of folks, a lot of our listeners, we use this system of watering called flood irrigation through acequias , where essentially a lot of farmers will water with water coming from the Rio Grand Rio Grande. So that's the main water source that cuts all the way from Colorado that then goes all the way down to Mexico. That's usually water that is also in our municipal system. It's used for irrigation. It's used to power a lot of homes and things like that. And last year farmers were able to flood irrigate all the way until October.

This year our irrigation ditches were cut off in August. So that's literally saying that, there's less water that we're using now to grow and less water, then that means the plants are gonna have a really hard time growing as well. So a part of what adaption looks like for growers like myself, it's not only planting deeper, but also just trying to think about ways to sequester water with either using mulches or planting into meadows, or trying to create like a meadow-like scenario where crops can still maintain enough moisture to then live.

Another thing too is then saving seeds from crops that are, have already been adapted to this climate, this harsh desert-like climate. But then also, having plants that you know, are only surviving off flood irrigation and then saving those seeds and then sharing those seeds with others. So then that knowledge of decreasing water and it just getting hotter and hotter is then stored within the seed that it can then be shared amongst other growers as well. So when I think about that fire, I also think about the fact that, our deserts are expanding. 

And then also who has access to the water? Is it the farmers or is it companies that are moving in like Amazon and like Facebook that are buying up water stocks in small rural communities here in New Mexico? So that's part of what I thought about is like, of course the literal fires that are happening across us, but then also the ever-changing temperatures that are happening here too.

Patty Krawec: So when you look at the work that you're doing and the people that you're encountering I'll start with Jonathan. What gives you hope? What, what futurism do you see for us? 

Jonathan Ferrier: It's a great question. The projects that I really enjoy are the ones where our community is connecting with other neighboring communities and seeing how we can support each other's families and all of the different ways that expresses within the coming together of these different groups.

Like working with the Toronto Island group, for example, has been such an enjoyable way to, we've been sharing paw paw fruit. And talking about paw paws in Toronto is such an enjoyable thing because when you come home, you see after summer and another summer that now all these paw trees are starting to come up and people are sharing those fruits again.

And, that's through those community relationships where allies Indigenous and non-Indigenous are supporting each other and creating these really cool projects that come up and create a movement like this. And one of the Gitigan Garden Project by Counselor King Jameson is how we are embodying those different plants and our Indigenous species in that and mixing them together and sharing with different communities.

That, that's really a hopeful point for me. I enjoy seeing the, the technology of western science come to meet the old ways and seeing those come together and that's enjoyable. The translation and the fusion of those things is, that is quite interesting to me. And then the Indigenous blueprints just playing out in the ecosystem and the economics is really what I'm very passionate and caring about.

Yeah. Miigwech for having me. 

Ben Krawec: So yeah, I'm like, I'm up to my eyeballs in learning about all of the various ways besides climate change that the world is currently ending, and it gets extraordinarily overwhelming. Yeah, I, to be totally honest, it's this spot [shows a picture of wild growth in an abandoned, paved area]  right here adjacent to my house. It's believe it or not, so underneath all those plants is tarmac. And here's, this is that novel ecosystem thing I was talking about. It's. This is an area right close to where I, and you can see all on the sides here. It's pavement and tarmac. And you can see the plants encroach, encroaching in on the sides. And I just, I walk up and down here and it look, oh, there's a, there's another golden rod busting through the tarmac.

And you go a little further and there's a slightly older clump of golden rod and plants hanging out there. And you can see how [the pointing with my finger. You guys can't see what I'm looking at], but you can see close to the base. There's like more soil accumulating and like little by little, these plants are engineering their ecosystem to be more vibrant and full of life and more conducive to more life showing up.

And I look at these like New England asters that are growing literal tarmac. You can't see it through all the foliage, but it's just pavement underneath. It's just pavement underneath there. It's getting crumbled up. Plants are poking through, but it's not like actual soil beneath there. And I think, yeah, buddy, I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try to take the energy of this little New England aster into my life and find some hope there. Even if us humans are screwing some stuff up, I have to, in some ways, our plant relatives, like they're on it, right? Like I'm, we're not the only ones working to fix this whole mess. The plants are doing a lot of the heavy lifting for us. That makes me happy. 

Patty Krawec: And I love that. I love that. I love that so much. The plants and the way, whenever, so you, you had made a comment one time, I don't remember where we were if we were driving or just talking about driving about the weeds on the side of the highway. And that people look at those and they're just scrubby weeds, right? We like, we don't give, we don't give them any thought. I don't mean like the nice green space or the crown vetch that they planted. The weeds that are doing the exact, showing pushing up through the cracks and you called them bug highways, that they were unintentionally protecting bug life because they were allowing bugs to travel and move between communities and basically not breed themselves out of existence by being trapped in these little urban, in these little urban spaces where they can't move 'cause they need green space to hop along.

And so now whenever I travel and I see those things that I see them differently now and I see all these neat little, I love the way you framed that the plants are engineering their own ecosystem. I love that. It's just such a neat way of remembering that we aren't the only beings who have agency, right? That the plants and the animals, they know what they're doing and. We work together with them. 

Ziya Tong: What gives me hope is seeing a huge rising global movement that is starting to gain respect for Indigenous led conservation. And that it is flipping the lid on the traditional ideas of what nature is, what wilderness is, and what knowledge is. And starting, only starting, we're only at the beginning, I think, but I'm really glad to see this wellspring and respect, especially here in Canada for traditional ecological knowledge. I think that's making a big difference. Even when we look to places like Australia, I know that they had those crazy fires there, but based on Indigenous knowledge of the kinds of more fire resistant bushes, working with scientists and with Indigenous knowledge keepers, they're starting to plant those bushes to serve as perhaps a buffer.

Things like that are happening in Morocco. The knowledge, I was in Uluru when I was in Australia, which is known as Ayers Rock to some. There being with the people who totally understood how you could get food from what looks like a complete desert, 50 degree heat, but they could harvest in those places.

So as we come to learn more from people and we come to respect those knowledges, and it's starting to happen, and that, that really does give me a lot of hope because it's a very different space than it was even 10 years ago. And it's rapid and it's global, and the youth movements are really pioneering that. So that's good. I work in my own spaces to champion space for Indigenous leadership as much as I can. I always hope that other people can do that work too. But I think fundamentally, again, so much of this work is personal, very personal. Food goes inside of your body. And when I read this book, the thing that stood out for me is they talk a lot about diaobesity, like diabesity, diabetes, and obesity, which didn't exist in the past.

Purely coincidentally, right now I'm on a weird, I'm in doing this weird bootcamp thing, but in this weird bootcamp saying, I'm not allowed salt, I'm not allowed sugar, and I'm not allowed flour. And those are the things that changed with colonization. And so much of the book talks about what life was like and the health of peoples before salt, sugar, and flour. And for anybody who's listening today I really recommend if you remove those things from your body. Because what it's been doing for eons now is creating sick bodies and unhealthy bodies. And that weakens the people and it weakens well. It, it just has huge ramifications. So I think if there's a sort of personal sovereignty that can take place as people start to recognize that their health will improve once they get rid of some of those foods that can make a big difference too. So the personal being political, of course.

Patty Krawec: Thank you for listening. You can find me online at thousandworlds.ca where I write about traditional Ojibwe stories and how they connect with our career lives, along with the books that I'm reading or feel relevant to the story. This podcast series and the book that emerged from it changed me the way that good books and the conversations about them do. Remember the first rule of Bad Indians Book Club, always carry a book. 

These conversations originally streamed live and were recorded in 2021. Editing and transcripts completed by Tiffany Hill With the generous support of Dr. Eve Tuck, director of the visiting lab Lenapehoking.  Our theme is biindigan an original hand drum song composed and performed by Nicole Joy Fraser.

Baamaapii!

Excerpt from Booklist, a starred review which means the book is "outstanding in its genre": A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives.”

Order your copy of Bad Indians Book Club today in the US at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and in Canada: Indigenous owned GoodMinds, as well as Amazon, indie books, and Chapters Indigo. Get it wherever you get your books.

And if you want me to zoom into your local bookstore or bookclub? Talk with you on your podcast? I can do that. patty.krawec@gmail.com For larger professional settings you can email Rob Firing at rob@transatlanticagency.com

I've got some launch events! Click the link to register. Registration isn't open for all events yet, if you are in the area you can save the date and a link will be added when it's available.

September 27, 3pm EDT online event with the New York Society Library and the Seattle Atheneum.

September 29, 6:30pm. In person at the Lincoln Public Library in Fonthill, Ontario.

October 2, 7pm in Vancouver British Columbia: In person and talking Indigenous Geographies with Dr. Deondre Smiles at Massy Books. Land and Waters Back is not the ethnostate that people seem to think it is.

October 28, 6:30-8pm With Ben Krawec at the Peterborough Library in Peterborough Ontario.

October 29: 7:00-8:30pm at the Tweed Library in Tweed Ontario

November 17, 7:00 pm Burlington Lit Fest in Burlington Ontario.

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