CSPB-SCBV acknowledges the Indigenous peoples of Canada who lived here before us, live here now, and on whose traditional and ancestral lands we continue to live. As the author of this column, I live and work on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
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Miranda Meents
Biological Sciences Department, Simon Fraser University
Education Director, CSPB-SCBV
My teaching has been changed irrevocably. Back in 2020, when I started my position as teaching faculty at Simon Fraser University, I started reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and a Citizen of the Potawatomi Nation. I was captivated by the stories she shares, with each chapter weaving together Western and Indigenous knowledge of plants. Her work painted a compelling picture of how I might foster a deeper appreciation and respect for plants in my teaching. This was a pivotal moment, launching my ongoing journey of learning from Indigenous peoples about their knowledge and experiences, and how Canada’s colonial history continues to shape our society.
Along the way, I have been inspired to make meaningful changes in my teaching, integrating Indigenous knowledge into my courses in ways that have positively impacted both my students and myself. However, taking these first steps was daunting, and I often struggled with how to approach this work in a respectful and authentic way. Today, I want to share a few small steps that worked for me, in the hope that they might help you on your own journey. I’ve also included some of the resources I find most helpful in the ‘Indigenous Knowledge and Ethnobotany’ section of the new Education Resources Forum on the CSPB-SCBV website.
Common Names
I began capitalizing the common names of organisms, treating them as proper nouns. I also share Robin Wall Kimmerer’s short Note on the Treatment of Plant Names with my students, explaining the importance of extending the same respect to the organisms around us as we do to humans.
Indigenous Names
I discuss with my students how common plant names typically reflect those assigned by the dominant culture, often contributing to the erasure of names used by minority or marginalized communities. In Canada, Indigenous plant names—used for millennia—are rarely recognized outside their communities. To support language revitalization, I now include plant names in local Indigenous languages alongside their Latin and English common names. It took time for me to find good resources that had been shared publicly by members of theses communities, but when I did, I made sure to share these with my colleagues and students.
Local Examples
A key tenet of Indigenous pedagogy is grounding teaching and learning in the land where we are. Initially, I found this challenging because many of the model species foundational to Western plant science are not local to the place where I teach. To counterbalance this, I have gradually incorporated examples of native plants into my courses. While this requires some additional research, it has enriched my teaching, and my students engage more deeply when learning about plants they encounter in their surroundings.
Indigenous Knowledge
When discussing local plants, I strive to incorporate Indigenous knowledge in a respectful way. I believe this is best done when students learn directly from Indigenous voices through readings, videos, or other resources. I prioritize materials from Indigenous people in my region but also include knowledge from more distant Indigenous communities when local resources are unavailable.
Land Acknowledgements
At the beginning of courses, meetings, or events, I acknowledge the Indigenous peoples on whose land we live. I explain to my students why land acknowledgements matter, particularly in courses focused on local biology. When sharing my own photos of plants, I include a land acknowledgment for the location where the photo was taken. When I talk about these local places, I have also started using their names in Indigenous languages. To normalize this practice, I also encourage students to incorporate land acknowledgements in their assignments, providing resources such as native-land.ca to help them craft their statements.
Through this process, I have learned that decolonizing and Indigenizing teaching does not require an immediate, all-encompassing transformation. Taking small, intentional steps helped me move in the right direction and provided a foundation to build upon. As educators, we have a responsibility to do better for our students and to contribute to redressing the harm done to Indigenous peoples in the name of an ‘education’ at residential schools. The lessons shared in Braiding Sweetgrass make it clear that a braiding of Western and Indigenous knowledge will help us build a better future for everyone – and I think this is a good place to start.
