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In “Land as Pedagogy” (Simpson, 2014), young Kwezens watches Ajidamoo perched above her, nibbling on a branch of Ninaatigoog. Upon returning home, Kwezens recounts the interaction with her mother, who then tells the aunties to gather round the Ninaatigoog the following day. Kwezens shows her community how to tap the tree for sap, modelling the knowledge she observed from the small tree-dwelling mammal. 

In Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg epistemologies, Simpson explains, knowledge comes directly from relationships with the environment, which flow in non-linear ways from the young to the old and from non-human beings to humans; hierarchical ways of thinking are not useful in ecological relationships.

In Western epistemologies, ecological theories of cognition challenge the long-standing computer-based models which view knowledge as input and output. Instead, learning is viewed as a relationship-building process that is specific to a social context, and occurs within multiple interconnected ecosystems (Bronfenbrenner, 1993). Van Lier (2004) brought ecological thinking to second language acquisition theory, where research was mostly conducted in microsystems (e.g., classrooms, homes), because these high-contact zones were considered extremely influential for learner development. Interaction, however, was not limited to human interlocutors, and the field saw an explosion of research with objects, like signs (semiotics) and technology. Ecosystems provide opportunities for communicative relationships to develop, enabling the learner exploratory opportunities to attune to their learning environment, leading to a more sophisticated perceptual navigation system. The more opportunities afforded to learners, the stronger their relationships grow, and the converse is also true: the less we interact with someone or something, the weaker our bonds become.

Ecological perspectives are now linked to Complexity theory (Larsen-Freeman, 2020), which views linguistic systems as interactive and nonlinear; hierarchical ways of thinking are not useful in such interconnected relationships. 

It has taken linguistic theory nearly half a century to catch up with Indigenous ways of knowing, which means that many practitioners, myself included, have had more relationships with hierarchies than with circles of interconnectedness. How can we undo this?

Last fall, I followed Simpson’s approach to non-linear intergenerational learning by letting my child lead the learning process. Together we explored the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh proverb, voiced by Cease Wynn, that rocks are our oldest teachers. We learned that the land has three major movements:

1) convergence - the concentration of crust to create mountains. 
2) divergence - the stretching of plates to create valleys. 
3) transformation – the shimmying of plates together where friction is at a minimum. 

The rocks teach us that social convergences can serve as foundational communities of practice, divergences are our social valleys, and transformative communicative acts are those transactional moments in between.

In mapping the lands that made us, however, we noticed our family’s history was one of continents colliding in ways that rocks don’t. Colonialism had extracted and displaced us onto lands we didn’t belong to, creating motion sickness with respect to the land instead of belonging.

In ecological terms, my ancestors are mostly allochthonous to the Americas, but we have been in a long-term relationship with these lands for at least 200 years, engendering parautochthonous relationships. Because these lands have taken care of my family for generations, I wondered how our relationships with plants might offer avenues of belonging to lands we are not from, since, as Cease says, plants are our second oldest teachers.

With my child heading our investigation again, we learned that the primary root is the first to sprout from the seed, anchoring the plant and domiciling it into place, making it foundational to the plant’s livelihood. The secondary roots grow horizontally, transporting water and minerals from the more numerous and permeable, hair-like tertiary roots.

The plant teaches us that our oldest members anchor us, while the younger ones—fragile as they are in comparison—nourish us and grow our network. Those of us in between these stages of development act as both transport and guardians between our older and younger members.

We then decided to get our hands dirty—literally—and began re-potting our house plants now that the days have grown longer. Punctuating every step of our process, I would ask him what the plant was teaching him.

When it comes to removing the plant from its container, what is the plant teaching you?

“To be gentle with it.”

And so, we gently squeezed the nursery pot until the plant slipped out of its confined space. We noticed and discussed how the roots take on the shape of the container that they are in, showing us how they adapt to their environment.

When he accidentally broke a leaf during our repotting, he got very emotional, expressing regret for having harmed the plant, worrying that the plant would die. When he calmed down, I asked him, what is the plant teaching you?

“To be careful next time.”

Then we discussed how that leaf was just one member of a community of leaves who would work together and repair the plant, securing its survival, enabling future generations of leaves to proliferate.  

Before we repotted our final plant, I had him observe it first. It wasn’t very large, so I asked him if he could estimate the size of its roots. He motioned with his hands that they were probably the same size as the plant itself.

Following the first and second teachings, he carefully squeezed the container, gently releasing it into the basin. I asked him to unfurl the coiled roots and check if his hypothesis was correct, but they were so tangled that he became afraid to manipulate them. I took over the task and started to feel the burn in my upper back from being crouched over for so long. I remarked that the roots were so entangled that we might have to break them apart.

His eyes widened, “Mommy, what is the plant teaching you?”

I laughed because the answer was obvious: patience. And as soon as I uttered the word, the last of the roots twisted out into my hand.

We held onto the bundle of roots like a ponytail, smoothed it down with our hands to compare it to the stems and leaves on top. The roots are nearly twice the size of the plant, he exclaimed. And so, I asked him, what is the plant teaching you?

“The size of the plant on top doesn’t tell you how long its roots really are.”

When I circle back to last fall, where I reflected on the process of untangling my family’s roots, I am struck by how these principles of gentleness, caring, and patience both guided and supported me throughout. If plants are our second oldest teachers, then they are teaching me how my family has adapted to the container they were placed in, how our survival is linked to the health of our community, and how our family’s roots stretch to five of the seven continents—you can’t tell that just by looking at us.

The strategic déracinement of the British empire toward my ancestors was intended to make sure our dépaysement would make any enracinement difficult in the territory we were transplanted to. But endeavouring on this plant-based project has turned that assumption on its head.

As I wrote over two years ago, I am made of the world’s many people. And it has always been the community of plants that has fed my family even when we were no longer in our native territories. My ancestors’ relationships with plants crosses continents and timelines. When my child and I connect with plants, imagining all the species across those five continents, we get a glimpse of the magnitude of an intelligence that came well before us and will certainly outlive us.

You don’t have to be from the land you live on to care about it, but you do have to be from that land to know how to take care of it: “In our [Okanagan] language, the word for our bodies contains the word for land…the land feeds us, but we feed the land as well…we impact the land: we can destroy it, or we can love the land and it can love us back.” (Armstrong, 2021, p.29)

References

Armstrong, J. (2021). Listening to Indigenous voices: A dialogue guide on justice and right relationships. Novalis.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1993). The Ecology of Cognitive Development: Research Models and Fugitive Findings. In R. Wozniak & K. Fischer (Eds.) Development in Context: Acting and Thinking in Specific Environments (pp. 3-44). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2020). Complex dynamic systems theory. In B. VanPatten, G. D. Keating, & S. Wulff (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction (pp. 248-270). Taylor & Francis Group.

Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 1-25.

Van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Springer.