(light ambient music) - I've been told that our people were hunter gatherers, and that is a myth that I definitely want to dispel.

(ambient music) We have always shaped and moved the land.

We are the land.

That's a Sts'ailes motto.

(ambient music) We are the land.

(light ambient music) (footsteps) Just clear away some of these.

I grew up in Seattle.

I grew up away from my family.

I am the first generation in my family to not attend residential schools.

My grandma figured it was better and safer for her to take the kids somewhere else.

As kids, we would come up and visit frequently.

I always was very welcomed and very included.

Every time I would come to visit, my aunties and uncles would let me know, like, this is our territory, you belong here.

(light ambient music) I jumped ship finally from Seattle in 2018.

Best decision I ever made.

(ambient music) (car door shuts) (light ambient music) (car door shuts) (light ambient music) We've got a lot of areas that are identified by our elders as traditional gathering and harvesting spaces.

Places that particular families or individuals have stewarded and continue to steward.

So this is the forest garden.

So basically it's like being in a grocery store.

- [Dawn] I was gonna say.

(Stephanie laughs) - Everything you need is right here.

Forest gardens consists of crabapple, hazelnut.

Usually there's some kind of root vegetable in there.

Huckleberries, highbush cranberries.

So it looks like it's been chomped on a little bit, but that's okay.

I'm not afraid of the bugs.

(laughs) Extra protein.

That's a big one.

I'm gonna take this one.

Usually when you find one, you'll find many others.

- Whenever I come into the forest, I always say my own personal prayers of gratitude.

So it kind of connects me from the beginning.

So whenever I'm in the woods, I feel like I'm kind of a part of something else.

Yeah, and I just, I feel like I don't have to worry about anything when I'm out here.

Kind of forget it and leave it behind.

(light ambient music) - Pretty much all of these dips would've been, are are likely cooking pits.

A lot of our cooking pits are in the areas where those plants grow and may contribute to biochar that helps the uptake of nutrients back into the plant.

(ambient music) I had a soil scientist come through to examine the soil and he was like, this is some of the most complex soil systems that I've ever seen.

Everything here basically would've been utilized by our people to eat, but also would've contributed to the building of the complex soil systems that the soil specialist was so impressed with.

Yeah, that's so cool that so many of the mushrooms are growing in the cooking pits.

Probably helping with the exchange of nutrients with the trees as well.

Burying the things that you're burning and that releases less smoke into the air and it keeps a lot of those nutrients in the ground.

(light ambient music) So when you're thinking about western science, a lot of that is looked at in a very prescriptive way, in a very calculated way.

But to do that, you have to have a lot of control over the environment in which that happens.

And we don't.

We don't have control over a lot of things.

In my opinion, it's not a coincidence that somewhere between 80 and 90% of the world's biodiversity exists on lands in which indigenous peoples who are actively stewarding.

And that's where the heart becomes really important and the spirit becomes really important.

That is a big part of indigenous ways of knowing, is making sure that your heart and your head are in a good place when you're working.

It makes our environment more resilient to climate change.

Metal socks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How long do you want them?

Like is this too short?

I guess I'm just carrying the torch, like it's our generation's responsibility to kind of pick that up and continue carrying it forward to make sure that our ancestors can heal and that future generations can heal.

(light ambient music) Oh, whoa.

- Makes that happen?

- Yeah.

I think that's actually what it is.

It's been really valuable for me to reconnect.

(ambient music) that's okay, they'll be tea crunchies.

(laughing) Sometimes you can't prescribe how to cultivate a plant necessarily.

You just gotta watch it and listen to it and put your love into it, have a good heart and mind and be flexible.

(light ambient music) That tea's starting to look good.

I feel like that might be the approach that we need to take with climate change, and every little bit that we can do to kind of figure it out together.

(light ambient music)