- Right around the last freeze, these trees are gonna suck all that water into the tree.

It's gonna go all the way to the top.

And then as soon as it gets above freezing all of that SAP is gonna come back down and that's when all the sap is gonna flow.

- [AJ] And when it does, that's when the Detroit Sugarbush Project will get their sweet reward.

But for those hard at work tapping these maple trees, the work itself is most rewarding.

Dr.

Shakara Tyler says tapping maple trees is about much more than getting syrup.

- The sugarbush process is a very sacred ritual where we commune with our trees as ancestors, as the kin that they are, as they gift the sap to us so that we can consume it however that we see fit.

And I wanna emphasize the ritualistic part of it because we offer gifts to the trees in the process of them returning the sap, or giving the sap to us.

It's about sustaining the mind, body and spirit.

It's not just something that we consume because it tastes good.

This is a very spiritual process where we can honor our sacred histories and honor the ancestral energy that's present.

- You can live off the land.

Our ancestors did it, and so we're just trying to keep those traditions alive.

- [AJ] Antonio Cosme, who works for the National Wildlife Federation, is one of the Detroit Sugarbush Project's organizers.

He helps to bring the NWF together with native American communities to carry out this annual tradition.

Alexis Chingman-Tijerina, who is Anishinaabe, says hauling these buckets and doing this work is about paying homage to her culture and staying connected to her roots.

- The food sovereignty initiative with my tribe, you know, if we want to be living our culture, then we need to be doing what we would do in terms of like food harvesting and gathering and all the ceremony that goes into that.

That is our culture.

So if we're eating our foods, our heritage foods, then we are reconnecting and that's a really powerful way that we can do that - [AJ] For Cosme, bringing sugarbush tapping to Detroit is helping to heal deep wounds in communities of color, those who are native American and those who are not.

- We're really trying to build relationships between native communities and urban communities.

Between black communities and native communities.

Because we think a lot of things these communities are facing, they're parallels, you know?

And a lot of that comes from the sadness, the hurt, the pain, the disconnection from our ancestral roots and nature, and the land.

- [AJ] And Detroit's Rouge Park has proven to be the perfect place to do so.

- Rouge Park was the most natural destination for us.

We came out here, we walked a little bit out on the trails, and I mean, these are just huge maple groves.

It's just a perfect maple tapping spot.

And so we went to the city, and we said, hey this is a part of our heritage, our culture, our religious and spiritual rights to do this every season.

To honor the nature, the season, ourselves and our ancestors.

And so the city was like, "Wow, yeah, that's dope."

And so, we're out here doing it now.

- Yeah, I love that smell when I like come in the house and it's still on me.

- [Cosme] That's what humans are supposed to smell like.

- [Alexis] Yeah.

- [AJ] Today the fire is the beginning of a long process.

- The fire is kind of like the center of the community.

We wanted to get the fire going today to keep you guys warm and keep us warm while we're working.

- Next, is going tree to tree.

So this fire here is to keep us warm, and then in a little while you're gonna build a separate fire.

- Yeah.

- Then that's going to boil everything down.

- Yeah, we're gonna need a lot of heat to boil down the maple sap.

Like I said, it's gonna take a long time, like five to 10 hours.

Sometimes we have boils, depending on how much sap we're gonna have at any given point, it could take up to 24 hours.

- It looks like over here is where the real work begins, and you're gonna start actually tapping into those trees.

- Right.

We've got about 50 gallons already pulled from from the taps already.

It's gotten a little bit colder so the trees have slowed down.

But we're gonna go collect right now what we've got out here in Rouge Park.

We're gonna add that to the tote and then later this week we're gonna be building a large cooking pit over here for the maple syrup.

And my friends are going out to collect the sap right now.

- [AJ] Tapping maple trees for their sap is a tradition that goes back thousands of years, but doing it today is especially important, and it's a labor of love.

- Reviving these traditions are part of the reclamation process, culturally, politically, socially, even economically.

And so it's a huge aspect of what it means to decolonize the way we center indigeneity and center indigenous futures and histories in the present.

And so this is not something new that we're trying to figure out.

We're pulling from a very ancient lineage of practices, and stories and cultures, to learn in the present today.

- Now we turn to honoring one of the most iconic female vocalist in history.