III. Biocultural Heritage & Ecocultural Relationality

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When species of plants and animals move across the world, it is often called migration, introduction, or invasion. However, when a people with a shared homeland and culture migrate across the globe, it is called diaspora. Our team conducts research on the diasporic spread and culture, thus diaspora, of the Bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa), the tree of enlightenment in Buddhism, on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i. This research includes three facets unified under a transdisciplinary approach: a genetic analysis of Bodhi tree DNA lineages, the invasive trajectories and implications of the Bodhi tree on Kaua’i, as well as overview of the contemporary Japanese culture in Kaua’i that considers these trees to be sacred. This presentation will share our ongoing analysis and illustrate a holistic view of the plant’s impacts in a non-native region, and introduce our future goals to extend research to two more Hawaiian islands, O’ahu and Maui.

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The Sierra Madre Occidental has served as a North-South conduit for people and plants for millennia. Its dissected altitudinal gradient of more than 2800 m is cloaked with tropical and temperate floras with more than 2200 vascular plant species of which more than a quarter contribute to the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) people's corporal and spiritual well-being. The interactions and relationships between the Rarámuri and their vegetal world are manifested through interregional trade between communities in the “sierra” (mountains) and those in the “barranca” (deep canyons) as well as contrasting agrobiodiversity. Analysis of ethnobotanical documentations by “Relaciones Topográficas” (1700s), Edward Plalmer (1885), Carl Lumholtz (1890s), W. Bennett and R. Zingg (1930s), Campbell Pennington (1950s) and our team (since 1970s) reveals distinctive patterns of continuity and discontinuity of biocultural resources resulting from climate change, deforestation, immigration, and tourism.

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The Hualapai Indain Reservation of northwestern Arizona has four species of yucca characteristic of the Mojave Desert. The majority of the fifty yucca species thrive in the American Southwest, while others extend into Mexico and Guatemala. Yucca species have an extraordinary relationship with nature--a story of survival and collaboration. With little exception, each species depends on a specific moth for pollination, creating an exclusive bond. This mutual dependence, known as obliage mutualism, represents one of nature's most delicate and enduring partnerships. For millenia, the Hualapai and other Southwest Tribes have cultivated a deep connection with yucca for food, fiber, basketry, fuel, and sandals. These sandals, among Puebloan groups, were often woven with intricate geometric designs mirroring patterns found in pottery, textiles, and baskets, showcasing an extraordinary cultual artistry. This presentation explores the enduring connection between Tribes and yucca species of the region, tracing its significance through history to present-day.

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Reciprocal caretaking relationships between people and the environment support equity and sustainability by reinforcing social norms like sharing, not taking more than you need, and showing gratitude. While reciprocal caretaking includes emotional bonds, little research has explored the role of emotion in shaping such relationships. Here, we draw from interviews with smallholder farmers in the Philippines to understand if and how reciprocal caretaking occurs between farmers and the endemic pili tree (Canarium ovatum), and to explore the role of emotion in shaping such caretaking. We find that farmers love and cherish pili as kin, due, in part, to its faithful persistence as a source of livelihood and thriving across generations. This kincentric love then reinforces and strengthens material and symbolic caretaking practices such as weeding, smudging, and singing to pili. This study helps illuminate the importance of emotion in creating and sustaining people-environment relationships that support sustainability.

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Citrus farming has been a defining industry on Jeju Island, shaping its ecology, economy, and daily life for several decades. However, the commercialization of citrus as a widely accessible fruit only began in the 1960s. This transformation was sparked by Koreans in Japan—displaced from Jeju during and after the colonial era—who sent Japanese citrus trees as gifts to aid the economic revival of their impoverished homeland. Since then, Jeju's citrus farming industry has flourished, supported by Japanese training programs, the introduction of new citrus species, and technological advancements. This paper addresses the growing need to integrate native citrus species into Jeju's farming landscape. Drawing on a year of archival and field research conducted in Jeju and Japan, it examines the ecological and economic implications of "nativeness," considering intellectual property rights and cultural connections to local territory and the natural environment in Jeju, South Korea.

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Almanacs are prophetic: they speculate on agrarian futures through close attention to the present. Almanacs have rich agricultural histories and new “counteralmanacs” (Blanchette and LaFlamme 2019:59) play on their form to creatively respond to contemporary uncertainties like social inequity and environmental degradation. Playing in the Dirt is a collaborative art book featuring work from over two dozen queer midwestern farmers. Not unlike the zines of punk and queer communities, this alternatively-published book and participatory research project explores the worlds and ecologies of queer growers through a counteralmanac form. LGBTQIA+ landworkers have much to share about joy, relationships, futurity, and biology - and counteralmanacs became a powerful tool for exploring, co-creating, and disseminating their knowledge(s). From hand-dyed paper to a sliding scale contribution for sale, we bring forward how “playing in the dirt” transgresses metaphors, mediums, and methods.

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This presentation provides highlights of a 7-year collaborative effort with Touchwood Agency Tribal Council Elders of central Saskatchewan, Canada to document Plains Cree (nêhiyaw) bird stories and cultural meanings. Birds are relatives, sources of food, messengers, allies, and possessors of power. Elders recognize that all birds are related to the thunderbird, the allies of the Creator and possess mysterious powers of flight, speed, vision, and speech.  Waterfowl, including ducks, geese, and swans contribute tremendously to community economies through their contributions of eggs, meat, and bones and are hunted from their spring arrival, breeding, molting, and fall migration periods. Numerous birds including turkey vulture, grebe, owl, American crow, and sharp-tailed grouse acquired their appearance from humorous interactions with the Older Brother (Nânapohš). Others including black-capped chickadee, common loon, western meadowlark, and great-horned owl have calls that sound like Cree words that amuse, frighten, and remind listeners of cultural meanings.

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Subsistence farming and hunting are an integral part of the Lotha way of life. Foraging for banana shoot and wild herbs, collecting longhorn beetle from bamboos, and hunting wild birds are all elements that contribute to the broader food culture and practices of the community. Centuries of engaging in these practices in their ancestral homelands have created a Lotha manifestation of Ogden’s “Hunters’ Landscape” an arena for the entanglements of a multispecies of the human, non-human, and beyond-the-human, creating multispecies becomings and possibilities. Today, these landscapes across the state of Nagaland are subject to an influx of monocrop plantations such as rubber, and more recently, oil palm. Within these shifting physicalities lies the political ecology of hunting and farming set in the context of a contemporary state and economy. How has this multispecies landscape changed - and how do the Lotha negotiate their nature-dependent identities - within the context of the plantationocene and a broader changing environment?