Protecting & Respecting the Environment

Protecting and respecting Mother Earth is a basic principle of Indigenous culture.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is the on-going accumulation of knowledge, practice, and relationships between living beings in a specific ecosystem.

Indigenous people have been gathering this learning over thousands of years through direct contact with our environment. This knowledge has been handed down through generations to achieve a life-sustaining way of life.

“Our Fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full as also our woods, of turkies, and our coves full of fish and fowle. But these English have gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved.”

MIANTONOMO, NARRAGANSETT SACHEM, 1642

“How, in our modern world, can we find our way to understand the earth as a gift again, to make our relations with the world sacred again? I know we cannot all become hunter-gathers — but even in a market economy, can we behave ‘as if’ the living world were a gift?”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass