(gentle instrumental music) - So, this is the Band's blueberry patch.

(gentle instrumental music) We have a beautiful place to pick blueberries.

You know, it's very accessible.

(gentle instrumental music) These are the dead (indistinct) plants that are old and these are the newer plants that we brought back with the fire.

Yeah.

These produce, but they don't produce very well.

Not very well.

They just need that fire and they need those nutrients.

They need the sunlight, of course, and water.

(emotional instrumental music) (speaks indigenous language) Hello, my name is Vern Northrup.

I'm an elder here on the Fond du Lac Reservation.

I'm a retired wildland firefighter.

(gentle instrumental music) Right now, we're out here on, the English name for this lake is called Dead Fish.

The Anishinaabe name is Zhaaganaashiins Odabiwining.

And Zhaaganaashiins Odabiwining was, they're mentioning my grandfather's great-great-grandmother.

She was from Canada, so that's why they called it Zhaaganaash.

What it is is "Where the Little Canadian Sits or Lives."

This was the name the Ojibwe had for this lake.

My grandfather was just born over here on the shore, Mike Shabiash.

So, it was five generations, six generations.

Counting my children and my grandchildren, there'd be eight generations that lived within 10, 15 miles of this spot.

We as a people, you know, the Anishinaabe, they have a cultural closeness to the Earth because it provided everything for us, so that's, you know, we already have that built into us, but I have this connection out here through my photography because I take a lot of my photos out here, but it's just so beautiful out here.

You know, it's just, this is one of the places I can get away, and actually, no matter what time of the year it is, it's beautiful out here to me.

Akinomaage just means we gain all the knowledge we need to survive and to live from the Earth.

Everything we needed that provided us food and these plants out here that provided us medicine, our entire pharmacy was out here.

The photos of all of the plants are teaching of the Earth because they are all medicine or they all were food or had another purpose.

So, I think all my photos are, you know, just encompass that in ways that it shows our resilience as a people and how we sustain.

And that's over, you know, a millennia as a people, you know?

So, there's quite a bit of knowledge that they had.

It was lost, and it's coming back.

It's coming back real good, and one of the ways is through our language, you know, it's the more we learn about our language, the more it teaches us about everything out here, and it's coming back.

Yeah, it was kind of beat and forced out of us and starved out of us, and, you know, massacred out of us, all that knowledge.

Now I'm really glad to say that I can share some with my grandchildren some of the medicines, and it helped them.

And I'm like, you know, that's incredible because I didn't know that little bit of knowledge, you know, 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

I grew up where there was, you know, a lot of speaking done, but my mom and dad didn't want us to speak because they knew if we had to get ahead, we had to learn English and learn, you know, that way in the world, in the present world.

And that's not true that, you know, we could have had both, but there was no curriculum for it.

There was no one seeking out these first speakers to have 'em translate for us or anything like that.

My grandfather wrote stories, and he wrote for wrote 'em for a reason, and the reason would be he wanted people to read his stories to understand where he come from.

I never got that creativity where I could write or anything, but I was just blessed to have this where I can take photos, you know, and this is all I used.

I use nothing else.

It was a gift to me, and why not give it as a gift to everybody else?

You know, it's not meant to be, you know, hoarded or put away or put into a album and forgot about.

No, it's not that.

See you later, Tom.

- Right now, we're at the Cloquet High School in Cloquet, Minnesota, and I was asked to bring my photography over here for a month or two, bring a little color to this hallway.

That's one of my favorite photos that I've taken.

The story, the backstory on this tipped-over tree was the government in between 1912 and 1915 wanted to get more of our land here, but they knew the only way that they could do it was to remove our food source like they did to the Sioux.

You know, they removed the bison, and the Sioux, you know, just kind of melted into the earth.

What they did in our case here was they straightened out our water drainage system, our watershed, the way the the river drained into the lakes.

They made straight channels, and what that would do was not only decrease the size of the lake, but also in the summer when we get those thunderstorms of an inch or two inches, we get what's called a water bounce, and in a critical time in June and July when the manoomin is floating on top of the water that bounce like that with that current, it's gonna pull that rice right out of the bottom, and it has done that for, you know, since they built those.

But the Anishinaabe, what we do is build dams, you know, on portions of the lake, you know, to slow that down so we could control the water, and we have a area on the north side of the reservation there that we can impound water, we can stop it, and we can hold it until we need it.

As a result of that water being up there, that standing water, you know, sometimes three-, four feet deep, trees would blow over, and this was, I just happened to be kayaking up there one summer, and it was just amazing and magical to see.

But again, that showed our resilience.

Boom, they're gone.

It was a way to take our land.

It was just another way to get us moving.

They tried all kinds of different ways.

We're still here.

As long as we stay on that true course of, you know, getting our language back, and, you know, celebrating our ceremonies, and then we are healing as a people.

If we don't use that gift that's out there, we're going to lose it.

It needs people out there ricing it.

It needs people out there knocking that seed into the water> That, yeah, that spirit needs to be celebrated and honored.

(Walsh speaking indigenous language) - Hello, my name's Kaitlyn Walsh.

I'm Eagle Clan, and I'm from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

I am a descendant, so that means my grandma's enrolled, and I'm Ojibwe, and I'm also working full-time for the Band in food sovereignty, primarily working with the Gitigaan program.

We're here at Gitigaaning, the Place of the Gardens, specifically at the cannery, which you call Na'enimonigamig.

When we built this facility, I knew it was important to have space for our seeds.

Our seeds are our relatives.

They're a critical part of tribal food sovereignty and they also are ones that want to be coming home.

We have our own seeds that our ancestors kept, and this gives them space to be able to come home and reunite with us, the human relatives over here.

So.

So, that's a Miami squash, and tonight, I'll be working with one of our elders who's from Red Lake to process these squash so we can save the seeds on the inside and also preserve the squash itself, too, for soups or gifts or whatever.

And then this is a squash from the Miami people, and that's part of seeds is knowing their stories and where they come from.

We are just down the street from where my grandma lives, from where my namesake is buried, from where my grandma's grandma is buried, and just down the street from where her allotment was.

I did not grow up on the reservation, and this has really been me trying to learn our foodways.

I don't know.

It blows my mind.

That's your mom.

- It's historical.

- That's her kettle.

And there it is.

- [Grandmother] And there it is right there.

- I'm not sure I know exactly what brought me back, but I know it really starts with my name.

I'm named after my great-grandma.

She grew and gathered our foods and medicines and she's really why I'm here and why this place pulls me so much and holds me so much.

I learned that the kettle that she used to parch rice was put in the museum, I think to be kept safe, and I also felt really strongly that I didn't want our foodways to be put in a museum that way.

I want items like that, our foods like that, to be alive and in our hands.

A really big moment for me to really see who I am and the role that I play in continuing our foodways was seeing a picture of my great-grandma ricing, and I knew that my ancestors grew and gathered foods, but I think seeing it in a picture and seeing it so alive like that, it really stirred something in me.

I wanted to learn how to grow food and I wanted to continue my great-uncle's legacy, my great-grandma's legacy, my grandma's grandma's legacy, and make sure that we still have those foodways in my family in my generation and for my descendants, too.

There's a part of my story that isn't my story to tell.

It's also important to know that my grandma missed out on learning our food and life ways from her grandma.

I mean, Grandma talks about being in her grandma's kitchen, hearing Ojibwemowin.

I know that that knowledge was there and started to be passed on.

Grandma played in these woods with her cousin and her brother.

- I went through my whole life on the outside.

I tried to find places to learn about Indians.

Even when I was in high school, there was nowhere.

In college, I wanted to learn the language.

Nothing.

So, when she came back and started asking questions, I was just beside myself.

I was so excited that here, for me, that gave me life because it's carrying on a line that has been lost for a very long time, and to have it come to life again was, I think all the adventures and things in my life, that was the part of coming home for me.

- I know I would've learned a lot of these things absent of colonization and genocide, and that's what really drives me to just keep learning.

So, because disconnection was something that was done by design, it wasn't a failing on my relatives' part, it wasn't a failing on our tribe's part, it's just something that was done by design to try to break us up, keep us separated, try to get us to assimilate.

Another big part that kind of got me to move here was Grandma and I went out to the ditch banks.

I had been going to the ditch banks ever since I was little and hunting for agates, but I'd never asked my grandma to gather food or medicines with me there.

And so I was 30 years old, kinda acting like a little kid and asking Grandma, like, "Hey, I learned this from one of my teachers on how to gather foods.

This is how you lay down tobacco.

This is how you introduce yourself.

How were you taught, Grandma?"

And it's that moment of having to be kind of humble and then try to approach things gently, because there is so much held in that knowledge and how it's been protecting itself.

That was really the first time I had asked Grandma directly to teach me those things.

When you're not with your community, when you're not with other Ojibwe people, it can sometimes feel hard to learn, and it's just tied to so much trauma that you have to face a lot of that in order to learn sometimes.

And so it was really some kind of blessing to be out in the ditch banks with Grandma and to be able to do it gently like that, and that it just kind of happened.

It kind of lined up at the right time, and that's another reason how I know I'm on the right path is because it's just unfolded so easily that way.

So, that was really it, and it's my name.

It's carrying my great-grandma with me everywhere I go, not being able to forget that I'm Ojibwe and that she survived so I can be here doing this work, because that's really my ancestors who are driving me forward.

My great-grandma, my great-uncle Leland Debe who started the Gitigaan program.

I just felt so strongly that connection I have with her and all those ones who came before her, too, whose names I might not even know.

We like to try to focus on parts of our culture, and a lot of times our push to kind of professionalize our culture to help it survive, to help us survive because of the systems we're living under, and for me, it's really, I just, it's our way of life.

Our foods are what nourished us.

It's what drove us.

That is ceremony to be out in the woods, gathering our foods and medicines, to be with our community gathering wild rice, burning out blueberry patches.

That's how we came together.

Food sovereignty has truly been how I've been able to connect with who I really am, to get back in my body after a lot of lived and inherited trauma that's there.

I love you.

I hope that some of the hard work that I'm doing now and some of the burnout I experience and isolation I experience and also the joy that I can kind of continue making pockets of that joy so that we're able to continue our way of life which is so much driven by our foods.

That's really it for me, is I just want to be able to live.

(laughs) I just want to live and be Ojibwe.

(gentle music) - My (speaks indigenous language) here was gifted to me, and we smoke that.

The prayers that we put into that, they go up to the creator in our way.

Sage is, we use it at as a form of medicine.

It's to get rid of some of the anxiety, any kind of feelings that might be attached to you.

While you're you know, walking, it might just open up the doorway.

The little kids, you know, they're only like three, and they already know how to smudge themselves because it's kind of like a routine that we have in my own house, and we have that here in Aazhoomon where we smudge the building, because, you know we serve the community and we serve the homeless.

We serve people that are in crisis.

(speaks indigenous language) My name is Natasha Kingbird, and I reside here in Bemidji, but I am from Red Lake.

My clan is Eagle, and right now, I'm working at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center as director of the Ombishkaa program, which is men and women's reentry.

We're working with Native American men and women who are transitioning home from incarceration within the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

A lot of it is spiritually-led work, and so when I'm here, I'm able to get in tune with that piece of my identity and really promote it to the people who are coming into these doors.

This is just our intake place where they...

I was actually incarcerated myself, and so when getting out and figuring out, you know, like, you have to work, you have to reunify your family, and so I was kind of out here really struggling.

And I was approached by an elder that worked at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center.

She asked me to come bead, and I said, "Really?"

I said, "All right," and, you know, you're still in your shell, and I wasn't sure if I was qualified or if I had the experience enough to do it, and she just encouraged me to come in and volunteer my time, so we made earrings and we made some pouches.

- My name is Randina Stately.

I'm from Red Lake Band.

I was asked to come here and teach beading.

When I was younger, I didn't really understand the importance of it for my culture, and then like a year after I got back into recovery is when I started beading again, and it's really been healing for me and it felt like a whole different experience for me than when I was beading before.

- Beading is a part of the Ombishkaa program.

They come on a weekly basis because it helps them, whether it helps them mentally, spiritually, and just being around people is a really big part of healing.

Plus, you can make some money off of your bead work if you're really good, you know?

And instead of going out hustling, or if you don't have a job, you know, this is another type of income for yourself.

And so we're able to show many different teachings with beading, right?

- The Ojibwe word for a bead is (speaks Ojibwe), which is small spirit.

It's reconnecting with the past with ancestors, 'cause that's what our ancestors did.

That's part of our heritage and our culture, and I'm teaching my son that, yep, right along with me.

And so that's what we're doing is we're celebrating our gifts.

- All my relatives beaded or did some type of craft.

I don't want what my aunt taught me to disappear.

And I want my kids to know, you know, everything that I learned.

This program really helped me a lot in the past.

I wouldn't be where I'm at if it wasn't for these guys.

They help me through a lot of stuff.

That's kind of like what beading does, too.

Lets me sit there and just not worry about everything.

Just worry about the next move.

(chuckles) The next bead.

- I lost my dad in 2014, too, and I was actually incarcerated.

And so when I had got out, like, I wasn't able to attend his funeral.

I wasn't able to attend anything, and so being able to be here, learn, and possibly let go of some of that grief helped me build my spirituality and build my self-esteem.

So, in our culture, our drum is really sacred to us.

My last name is Kingbird, and so we we're a drum family.

I grew up listening to my dad sing all the time.

I grew up at powwows.

I grew up with jingle dresses, seeing, you know my mom's regalia, my brother's regalia.

All of us dance, but somewhere down the line, you know, I got sidetracked and kind of lived on my own without the culture in my life.

We were having weekly drums here at NWICDC.

I would take my family when I wasn't working, and we would just go enjoy a meal and sit around and listen to the drum, and it was for a good two hours, and I think just being around that reminded me of who I was as an indigenous woman.

I didn't know that I was healing at that time, but I feel like, you know, that drum was helping me, you know, let go some of that grief, and just being around community, seeing people laugh, and our letting our little kids sit at the drum.

You know, I'm still learning.

I'm still learning a lot.

My brothers are all singers, and on my spiritual path, I've been able to find my own voice.

Adrian Liberty is a really big, he's my, I would say spiritual advisor.

He works here.

He's really encouraged me to find my voice and find that spirituality.

He created the words to put on our pamphlets for our program, and so what I did with that, you know, on really taking it to the heart, I created the harmony.

I created the, how it was to come together and where I was gonna sing it, so I'll just share a song with you.

(sings in indigenous language) And so the words to that are, "Bringing our women home," and I use that, you know, reminding myself of, like, why I'm here, and what I do this work for.

Sometimes I may be on a ride, and I think about some of the women that we work with, and I, you know, use that to help me heal, and remember that there's more women out there that we have to bring home, and that somebody's thinking of them.

I'm really proud to have stepped into this doorway and been able to learn that piece of my identity.

(gentle music) You know, one of our elders who recently passed away, his name was Murphy Thomas, he heard me sing for a missing and murdered gathering, and, you know, he said, "As long as you're singing from the heart," he said, "that really matters."

And, you know, as long as we're doing things here with our heart, it's really intentional and it's okay.

You know, it's okay to be who you are.

It's okay to not feel ashamed, and you know, there was a time where I did feel ashamed.

Like, when you pick, gathering medicines, you're like, is this okay?

You know, to pick there without somebody judging you or saying anything to you.

And so that's really what I want women to do when they come in here.

It's a part of who they are, like, to find their voice.

I want them to show that to their kids, to their family, to their moms, to their brothers, and to anybody out there that they can be somebody, you know, and that they are somebody.

(gentle instrumental music)