Chansasa Revitalization Project: Co-Designing, Alongside Community, Revitalization Efforts, and Ways Forward

• In Event: Research for the Next Generations: Doctoral Education for Black and Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper highlights the process of storytelling and learning from Elder wisdom on ways to rebuild and revitalize paths forward towards (w)holistic community well-being. It focuses on the Chansasa (red osier dogwood) Revitalization Project which uses Ochethi Sakowin lifeways to offer insights and protocols for living sustainably with the land and with each other. The Chansasa Revitalization Project was created in collaboration with the Mni Wichoni Health Circle, an organization born out of the #waterislife movement in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Nation.

Perspective(s) and theoretical framework:
Using land as pedagogy, this papers engages land-stewards, in a Master-Apprentice model of storying with Elders on the land, while identifying our theoretical anchors of our intelligence (Simpson, 2014), and the transmission of knowledge. Teachings around Chansasa, traditional tobacco, were shared and a project to harvest sustainably was identified. This study is guided by Indigenist Community-Based Participatory Research (ICBPR) which involves the “co-commitment to the well-being of the community” while uplifting community cultural protocols and practices (Walters, et. Al., 2020).

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry:
This paper challenges the insider/outsider dynamics (Smith, 2012) and fosters democratic participation (Wallerstein, 2018) of Elders and knowledge keepers to co-design and transform the community in a meaningful and radical way reflecting the relationship between community members and the land. The project used Indigenous research methodologies through storytelling within a focus group of nine (9) land-stewards (three (3) masters/elders and six (6) apprentices), critical ethnographic and autoethnographic accounts, and observational field notes (Bhattacharya, 2017).

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials:
The data collected on the land with the land stewards draws upon Laura Harjo’s (2019) four methods of futurity: radical sovereignty, community knowledge, collective power, and emergence geographies, to refocus and recenter the Ochethi Sakowin lifeways and experiences of (re)imagining our community and epistemologies through a decolonizing methodology.

Results substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view:
By gathering the land-stewards on the land, they were able to share stories and the history associated with each sacred place on the Standing Rock Nation (Deloria, 1995). The study co-created and co-constructed four (4) objectives based on original teachings, history, personal experience, and storying on the land at various locations (Marin & Bang, 2018). The objectives were: 1) map out two natural creeks to replant chansasa; 2) create natural walking trails at each site for future propagation; 3) purchase and plant chansasa at each location; & 4) develop a protocol for harvesting chansasa in a traditional and sustainable way using our original teachings and protocols.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work:
By uplifting traditional protocols and cultural practices of harvesting chansasa, it shares ways of sustaining the land and our relationships to the land, and ultimately to each other. Other Indigenous communities will find this study useful in their own revitalization efforts and that Native education and health fields will gain valuable insights for other ICBPR projects alongside communities.

Author

• Alayna Eagle Shield, University of Washington
  Presenting Author