In the past few decades, there has been a shift in how we think about plants and garden planning. Native species — especially those that encourage bees, butterflies, and other insects to visit — have become more popular to plant. In the same vein, interest in foraging has grown. Because of both economic factors and a general desire to reconnect with nature, the idea of collecting food or therapeutic items from the land around us is an enticing one. One may wonder: how can we engage with the land in this way responsibly?
Traditional knowledge
David Scott is an elder and a spiritual leader at Swan Lake First Nation. His knowledge of the environment and farming practices also extends to foraging. As a member of the Indigenous community, his expertise is deep-rooted.
For Elder Scott, the first step of foraging is to be mindful of one’s impact.
“If you think of the word foraging, it doesn't mean go and wipe out an entire area,” he says. “There are certain things that plants need — they need to seed, they need to spread, . . . so you have to watch all of those things. There's an awful lot within that teaching alone.”
Elder Scott illustrates his point with the plum tree root.
“We use plum tree root in some of our medicine, so you take the tree at a certain time, usually when it's dormant in the wintertime or late fall, and you don't kill the tree, you take part of the root system, and then you bury it [again]” he says. “You only take what you need. And that's the thing about foraging — only take what you need. You never do more than that. If you do, you're going to wipe out a whole colony of plants.”
Elder Scott says that when he teaches people how to forage, a part of the lesson is to never take everything in front of you, but rather to begin at the centre of a plant colony and move outward, mindful of the fact that other creatures need their share, too.
“[Plants] provide food sources for the insects, butterflies, even flies. They need to support that,” he says. “Unfortunately, not a lot of people know about that kind of thing, so [sometimes] when one of our people needs some medicines or something, I ask them to ask me and then I go and pick it for them. I don't tell people where certain plants are. They can wipe out an area because certain plants are being paid for at $300 a pound.”
Elder Scott notes that often, people do not have bad intentions, but over-harvesting can cause irreparable harm, nonetheless.
“It might not even be a malicious thing, but if they don't know, it could be very, very damaging to plant colonies,” he says.
Foraging in southern Manitoba
When it comes to foraging in our region, Elder Scott says that plants of great value can be found in certain areas of southern Manitoba, but he recommends a water and soil assessment before collecting. One abundant forage item in the area is the chaga mushroom, which thrives on birch wood.
“[I] keep a good supply of that in my house. It's kind of widespread now that chaga is a good benefit for supporting cancer treatments,” he says. “I myself am a cancer survivor . . . . I used medicinal plants and Western medicine at the same time, and here I am.”
While the sweetgrass season has passed, prairie sage, buffalo sage, and creeping juniper are also in season to forage. Elder Scott says these plants are used for calming meditation and ceremonial purposes.
“The other thing that we're collecting now is the cranberries. They can't be overly ripe. [Once we’ve picked them,] we'll leave the rest of the plant, and then we'll pick those when they freeze,” he says. “The only competition we have there is cedar waxwings. They come out in hundreds, and they will just wipe everything out really, so we have to get ahead of them.”
For Elder Scott, the competition with cedar waxwings is friendly.
“It’s lovely to see them. It's really, really lovely to see them come every year,” he says.
Another friendly competitor is the ants that love to feast on wild plums.
"Once they start to ripen, you've got just a couple of days to pick the plums, otherwise, they will fall to the ground, and then the ants and everything get into them,” he says. “I'll pick the good ones up off the ground, [but] I still have to share with the ants. They need that too.”
Elder Scott says that he also collects rat root in marshy areas.
While there is a good selection of nature's bounty to collect in the region, unfortunately, some items that have been collected in the past are avoided today, such as bullrushes.
“The bullrushes here are now hybrid. They're actually different in terms of their structure, so we don't pick them anymore, and plus, these sloughs that we have around here or the ones that are still left — a lot of them have been drained —they collect pesticides and herbicides. They're very good at that.”
Foraging traditions
Today, Elder Scott travels all over the province to forage. He often meets with friends for the practice that is as social as it is practical. The social aspect of foraging is something that runs deep for Elder Scott. There is history behind it.
“The way it used to work is our groups would split into [smaller] groups and then they would go and . . . harvest medicines in the east, and then there'd be fish in the north or water plants, that kind of thing,” he says. “Then we would all come together for a summer event.”
The gathering in summer featured a ceremony as well as trading foraged items, meat, and hides.
“We made sure that everybody had enough for the winter,” says Elder Scott.
While trades no longer happen on the same scale, the community aspect of gathering remains. The ceremony continues to be an annual occurrence to this day.
A background in Indigenous farming practices
Beyond his knowledge of foraging, Elder Scott is also a practiced farmer who continually adds to his stores of information even as he shares it with others.
“What I teach is the interconnections of all things in the environment — trees, plants, grasses, insects, animals, water, all of those things. As an Indigenous person who lives out on the land, I don't separate any of those things. I don't compartmentalize them in any way. Everything works together, so that's what I teach.”
Elder Scott’s areas of interest are soil and contour gardening, which is a practice that makes use of the natural features of a piece of land to form a garden rather than imposing a structure onto it.
“We go according to the land . . . . It's [also] important to understand the movement of water and soils, so that's one of the things that I teach — how does water and soil interact with the plants around it or in it?”
Elder Scott says that knowing these intricacies of the land is important to understand where and when certain things should be planted, such as medicinal cultivations like sages and cranberries.
“Even with all the agricultural activity in Southern Manitoba, there are large areas that are still safe from chemicals and pesticides and herbicides and all of those kinds of things,” he says. “[If you] compare [the non-agricultural areas] with the land where there is agriculture, you start to see the differences in the plants [and] where not to take plants for consumption or where to move plants for consumption. That's all part of the environmental knowledge that I have.”
In Elder Scott’s view, for farmers, it’s essential to understand how crops affect the environment in which they are grown.
“There are plants that are being grown — and I'm going to touch on a touchy subject with local farmers — that are not for food, they’re cash crops, like soybeans, and the worst one that I've seen so far is the canola,” he says. “It’s a serious problem. This year, the canola crops were [growing] everywhere. . . . It’s a monocultured plant, so it only invites one particular type of insect."
Even though he has concerns about canola, Elder Scott is also sympathetic about why it’s grown.
“I do understand the economics of farm operations. It's not a simple thing to explain or a simple thing to find answers to. I do understand the need for farmers to do certain things,” he says, adding that he has encountered farmers who would prefer to adopt more environmentally conscious practices, but face barriers to this.
“Everybody is in financial straits these days, so they do need a large injection of money into their operations,” he says. “When you get to that point where you're able to pay off your debt and provide for your family, really, really consider the chemicals that are going on the land. Where does that chemical go?”
While Elder Scott's main area of interest is Indigenous farming, he says that he also incorporates the Western way of thinking about plants into his knowledge base. One relationship in particular is instrumental to this side of learning — his adopted “traditional son.”
“I never take the Western part of it out of the equation,” he says. “I have a young man . . . from the Morden area who lives on the reserve here with me that I'm actually teaching, and he went through land and water management through [Assiniboine Community College]. Now he supports my knowledge by teaching me some of the Western understandings of the environment.”
In addition to synthesizing different ways of understanding the land and farming it, Elder Scott also generously shares his expertise with anyone interested in learning it.
“There are quite a few people that live in villages [and] even the city that come out and seek information on that, and I'm always glad to help them," he says.
To connect with Elder Scott on these matters, he invites emails to scotta.research@gmail.com.
Protection for generations
Both Indigenous and Western ways of looking at farming and the environment agree that the state of things is not ideal. Because it can be difficult for those of us who stay indoors or inside towns and cities to see the extent of troubling environmental trends, it’s always valuable to hear the impressions of nature experts like Elder Scott who are on the frontlines.
“We should be aware of lakes and streams drying up and those kinds of things [and say], ‘okay, there's something happening out there, and we better understand it,’” he says. “[Plants and animals] are disappearing already. We're getting lots of invasive plants and then you're getting . . . plants that are totally out of control. That's what I see right now in the environment, and it's very, very, very concerning.”
Elder Scott adds that it’s essential to think about the future.
“You can't think about these things as, ‘just how much money can I stuff in my pocket today?’ and not care about grandchildren or great-grandchildren and so on,” he says. “That's not the way we should look at the land issues.”
While a general lack of knowledge of the delicate balance of nature is often a topic in our technological age, what perhaps garners less attention is that this deficiency is both easily corrected and in the process of being corrected. Elder Scott himself is a testament to how — his inbox is always full. Many community members are interested in his teachings, and that number is always growing.
“I take people out on the land and actually show them these things, and that's the best way for people to absorb information: [with] their hands in the mud,” he says.
Between the mud, plants, earth, and water that continue to exist right outside our doors, and community members like Elder Scott who are willing to share knowledge graciously and generously, it’s always possible for good things to take root.
~With files from Ty Hildebrand~