Sustaining the Ethnosphere & Wisdom in Indigenous Languages

ThIS DIALOGUE AIRED ON March 28, 2022.

As we moved closer to wrapping up our Reconciling Ways of Knowing: Indigenous Knowledge and Science online dialogue series, we were pleased to bring together a conversation on the importance of the diverse ways of being and ways of knowing of peoples around the world - which panelist Dr. Wade Davis describes as the ethnosphere, or cultural web-of-life that envelops the planet and nurtures our relationships with the lands and waters we call home.

Dr. Taalgyaa'adad Betty Richardson (Xaayda Kil Doctor, Haida Nation), Gisèle Martin (Cultural Lifeways Activist, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation), chuutsqa Layla Rorick (Community Language Activist, Hesquiaht Language Program), and Dr. Wade Davis (Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic) joined Moderator Dr. Nancy Turner (Ethnobotanist, University of Victoria) in a conversation on the importance of the ethnosphere, or diversity of lifeways, knowledge systems, and languages to sustaining our relationships with the places we call home and carry out our relationships. It explored the relationships between sustaining the ethnosphere and biodiversity, stewardship practices retained within Indigenous languages, and what is needed to protect and revive Indigenous languages and the great wisdom they hold about our ongoing relationships to place and planet as we face an increasing range of instabilities and crises across the world.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Taalgyaa'adad Betty Richardson

Taalgyaa’adad (Betty Richardson) was born to Rosalind and Fred Russ on May 11, 1935 in Skidegate. She and her family lived with her paternal grandmother until she was 13. Her grandmother spoke fluent Xaayda Kil. Her mother attended residential school for eight years. Taalgyaa’adad married Miles Richardson, Chief Cheexial (a hereditary Chief of the Haida Nation) in 1954. They have six children and 13 grandchildren. She is an Eagle from the Ts’aahl clan. She owned and operated her own travel agency from 1978- 1995. She started teaching at SHIP in 2000. She is a fluent Xaayda Kil speaker and now teaches four-and five-year-olds in the nursery school.

Gisèle Maria Martin

Gisele Maria Martin (they/she) is from the House of ʔiiḥw̓asʔatḥ of ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ / Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Gisele is a cultural Lifeways and Indigenous language activist, Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks guardian, public speaker, educator, outdoor guide, Nuu-chah-nulth canoe captain, artist and photographer.

Gisele continues lifelong learning and traditional work with their family to uphold intergenerational ecological responsibilities for the continued protection of future generations of life.

Chuutsqa Layla Rorick

chuutsqa L. Rorick is a Hesquiaht First Nations woman and a founding member of the grassroots organization Hesquiaht Language Program alongside all remaining fluent speakers of this Nuu-chah-nulth language. chuutsqa completed a three-year language Mentor-Apprenticeship and went on to host an immersion space for families for two more years of language immersion learning. A graduate of the Masters in Indigenous Language Revitalization Program at the University of Victoria, chuutsqa now trains and supports a number of Mentor-Apprentice teams in BC and Canada while teaching her language.

chuutsqa has hosted a number of grassroots language immersion camps in partnership with Hooksum Outdoor school in recent years. Prior to language learning, she was an outdoor guide and instructor in Clayoquot Sound and Haida Gwaii for more than a decade.

Dr. Wade Davis

Wade Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Australia, Colombia, Vanuatu, Mongolia and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland. An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international bestseller later released by Universal as a motion picture.

Dr. Nancy Turner

Dr. Nancy Turner is an ethnobotanist whose research integrates the fields of botany and ecology with anthropology, geography and linguistics, amongst others. She is interested in the traditional knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of Indigenous Peoples, particularly in western Canada. She has worked with Indigenous Elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 40 years, collaborating with Indigenous communities to help document, retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and habitats, including Indigenous foods, materials and medicines, as well as language and vocabulary relating to plants and environments. Her interests also include the roles of plants and animals in narratives, ceremonies, language and belief systems.

Emeritus Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, Dr. Turner was awarded a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Fellowship in 2015, in support of discussion amongst multiple informed groups on the roles of ethnobotany and ethnoecology in policy, planning and decision-making in the legal and governance arenas around Indigenous Peoples’ land rights and title. Turner has authored, co-authored or co-edited over 20 books and over 150 book chapters and peer-reviewed papers, and numerous other publications, both popular and academic.