Native Lands- Yvonne Chamberlain-Marquez

 This week my 2nd grader started a unit on local history. The teacher began with the indigenous people who first lived in Riverside and jumped quickly to the story of the citrus industry. There was no mention of the land or how it was used and how it changed over time. The story of the Inland Empire is one of extraction from the land and it's people, but it's often presented as one of prosperity and growth.  Combined with this week's topic, I realized how fundamentally different Americans teach their children about the land around them compared to the ways in which indigenous people teach their children. We teach our children that the hill in the distance is called a mountain and of the settlers that passed through it. There is no creation story or explanation of how it gives life to the valley. Our histories often begin with the first "Great White Man" in an area and rarely include the native lands and people. This creates bias which often grows with us. Due to our own way of knowing, we reject valuable information. This is especially the case with scientific knowledge. 

This week's readings is what sent me off on that tangent. "The Integrating Native Science Into a Tribal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)" article in particular. The authors begin by addressing the ways in which the land near 29 Palms has changed inhabitants over time. The Cahuilla and Serrano people    had centuries of knowledge  and knew how to work with the land. Once a flourishing valley, the US systemically stole the land from it's caretakers, leaving only a small Reservation to the original people. Knowing the value of Native science, The Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians began to incorporate cultural knowledge into their Environmental Protection Agency to protect not only the land, but the physical, mental, and spiritual health of it's members. This is fundamentally different to the ways in which the US EPA operates and views human's relationship to the environment. 

As climate threats loom, it's incredibly important to value indigenous ways of knowing. We need a cultural shift that views the holistic relationship to the people and the land, much like the Tribal EPA. 

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