Eating in the Oil Sands: Indigenous Plant Kinship in the Canadian Oil Sands

In what is now known as northern Alberta, sakawiyiniwak (Northern Bush Crees), who tend to the boreal forest with ancient and adaptive reciprocal traditions, are asked to quantify and justify their traditional land use through the consultation process with government and corporations who actively extract natural resources from Treaty No. 8 territory. One problem that is that many of the cultural keystone plants for sakawiyiniwak are not charismatic for settlers. Many of the same plants, which are used for food and medicine, are now being sprayed with glyphosate by logging companies during the reforestation process. This talk will describe a few of the plants, and community-based initiatives to protect them and overall health.