- Angela Fitzgerald: When viewed from outer space,
the borders of the Menominee Reservation
stand out as a patch of deep green.
It's a place that attracts visitors from around the world
who come to learn how its forests are managed.
- These are 180-year-old trees.
And it's time for them to regenerate.
- Angela: The thick woods have been kept healthy and full,
even while supplying the lumber mill
that helps sustain the tribe.
- Take a little walk in here.
As a part of the treatment,
we got butternut in here as well.
- Angela: While many have sought the tribe's know-how,
more and more visitors are being introduced
to Menominee ways of knowing.
- We hear a lot now
about traditional ecological knowledge.
- Most of us, maybe all of us grew up
with the Western ways of knowledge,
Western ways of knowing.
And what we are doing here is
introducing awareness of our Indigenous ways.
- We're looking at the insights of the agriculture
of the Menominee ancestors for, like, the past 800 years.
- Angela: Indigenous ways of knowing
have been passed generation to generation,
in a culture whose measure of time is also its own.
- We follow a 13-moon calendar,
and each of those moons has their own name.
They provide environmental cues.
- Angela: Environmental cues seen by visitors
on an autumn tour during Falling Leaves Moon.
They would see very different things on a summer stroll
during Raspberry Moon.
Those changes are what's explored
along the phenology learning path
at the Sustainable Development Institute
on the campus of the College of the Menominee.
- As you study phenology,
you would want to come and observe
from when the plant emerges in the spring
until the plant dies back in the fall.
- Angela: Phenology is the study of life cycles through seasons.
It's an established method of science
and a traditional practice of Native people.
The phenology trail brings the two together.
- And we work really hard to make sure
that we're braiding all of those ways together.
They have to work together in this modern world.
- Angela: Braiding together science
and traditional knowledge
is seen in the signs that dot the winding trail.
- It includes the scientific name, the common name,
what we call them in our Menominee language.
- And the plants that we specifically identified
to observe are plants that have meaning to the Menominee people.
The Menominee meaning for this tree is "Grandmother's lung."
- Angela: The inclusion of Menominee names
helps add a dimension to understanding.
- Our language is a way to see the world
the way that our ancestors saw the world.
It's a way to connect with things around us.
- Angela: Kohkomaehsah Naehpan,
or the name "Grandmother's lung,"
draws in meaning shaken off
by the English name "quaking aspen."
- The quaking aspen root system
lives for thousands of generations.
It's a key indicator for the health of Grandmother Earth.
- There's a deeper connection and a deeper understanding
associated with all of these things we have around us.
- Angela: A deeper connection
because the phenology trail helps illustrate
the interconnection between all living things.
- That's a whole life change,
to start viewing the world that way.
It gives you purpose to come out and to form those relationships
with those plants.
Nothing lives in this world by itself.
I hope that people start looking at the world around them
a little bit differently.
[wind blowing]