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President's Letter |
 Ethno-botanist Scott Herron mediates between the scientific and the mythic. Just as once in Eden when the garden produced its bounty without toil, so, too, did the maple tree produce syrup. All a person had to do was break off a branch and let the sweetness flow. But then the people became lazy and stopped giving thanks for this gift, so the part-human, part-spirit trickster Nanabozho climbed to the top of the tree and poured water in it, diluting the syrup. From then on, the people had to collect the sap and laboriously boil it down.
"What pushed me into this area was an elder in a ceremony when I was an undergraduate," Herron recalls. "He said, 'You're learning about plants in the scientific realm and about plants through our world-view I think you should specialize in this thing called ethno-botany, because you're one of us.' A lot of ethno-botanists get their training and go to the Amazon and other tropical regions to do research, but instead of studying others, I study my own culture." Reintroducing Eden From a crowded bookshelf in his office in the Arts and Sciences Commons, Herron grabs a stack of folded cardboard and old newspapers. Pressed between the various layers are dried stalks of wild rice. After maple syrup and sugar, wild rice is one of the most culturally important plants to the first people of the Great Lakes Basin. It's also a passion of Herron's. "Because of all the starch and proteins in it and the large quantities you could harvest, wild rice - or manoomin in Ojibwe language was traditionally a huge surplus food that was stored throughout the year," explains Herron. "Today, wild rice is part of a struggle over access to resources, which is a big issue for Native Americans. In some places, harvesting rice hasn't happened for generations, so there's a lack of traditional knowledge. My goal is to try to narrow that gap." To that end, Herron is involved in reintroducing the plant. Working with the Muskegon River Watershed Assembly, the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe and others, he has assisted with a "demonstration" replanting project at Muskegon Lake. Larger scale reintroduction will take much more work both in terms of the science and, just as importantly, the politics. "There are two different kinds of wild rice Southern Wild Rice and Northern Wild Rice. Nobody knows if they're the same specie or two different species because the genetics have never been examined. We're having a conference this year to look at a whole range of issues. We want to find out all the cultural issues about wild rice from all the stakeholders, not just the Indians landowners, politicians, municipalities, business people, developers.all of that." Since 1983, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan have been living with the effects of the Voight Decision. In that case, a federal court upheld the rights of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Chippewa Indians under 19th century treaties. "That led to the development of the inter-tribal Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which has been the primary funding source, and research source, to First Nation people to restore wild rice and other plants and animals," says Herron. Although several Michigan tribes are members of the GLIFWC, the state is lagging behind both Wisconsin and Minnesota in working out the complex set of cultural and legal issues surrounding some of these land access issues. "What we've done so far in Muskegon Lake, for example, is really just a beginning. Before restoration can happen statewide, we need to figure out all this other stuff," says Herron. To that end, Herron has received a grant from the Environmental Leadership Program funding meetings in Sault Ste. Marie, Houghton Lake, Manistee, Mt. Pleasant and Muskegon to discuss local rice-related concerns, gauge interest and recruit participants for a wild rice conference at Lac Vieux Casino Resort in Watersmeet, Mich., Aug. 8-11. A Deeper Understanding Although Herron doesn't teach a course specifically about ethno-botany at Ferris, his unique perspective forms a part of a holistic approach to the teaching of biology. Even the syllabus for his Biology 113 class is adorned with photos of wild rice. "I use my work with wild rice to get at a deeper understanding of a model wild organism how one plant can really drive all the other topics you're going to study," explains Herron. "You can hold an example like that up as the face of an ecosystem. When you know an organism really well, you find yourself pulling it in as a teaching resource." In addition to his unique perspective helping him in freshman-level biology courses, Herron also involves upper level work-study students who help him with research in the field and gives campus presentations on such topics as "Native American Culture From a Female Perspective" ("I do as best I can, being a male," Herron says). Also, for the last three summers he has taken his expertise to the University of Michigan Biological Station. At the UMBS, Herron teaches a five-credit ethno-botany course, as well as a one-week, applied mini-course. In both of those, Herron brings his applied knowledge of the natural world to bear.
Depending on the season, Herron guides his students in the harvest and preparation of teas made from Staghorn sumac, strawberry leaf and raspberry leaf (which is used traditionally in female medicines), as well as mint teas and teas made from the white cedar and other conifers. Herron also directed a plant dye lab using plants to dye virgin wool yarn. Between Worlds In 2001, Herron took part in the tri-centennial celebration of the founding of Detroit. As a Pilette on his mother's side of the family, he is descended from one of the French families that established what would become the Motor City. "The early French explorers who were almost all men took Native women, mainly Odawa, as wives," Herron says. "Some of this lineage is documented, some is not. A lot of our family assimilated. To survive in the 17th through the 19th centuries, it helped to be Caucasian. My ancestors were bi- if not tri-lingual, speaking Ojibwa, French and maybe English. They translated for treaties and other documents." Some of the treaties that Herron's ancestors translated formed the basis of law that today is helping fuel a resurgence in native plants. The inter-marriage Herron describes now is part of a complex cultural pattern of tribal membership or exclusion tied to documentation of blood-lines. The Pilettes' multilingual legacy is carried on in Herron's teaching of the names and function of plants in different cultures. Like the trickster Nanabozho, Herron is at home in different worlds. In his case, the worlds are of those indigenous to North America and the Europeans who "discovered" the New World: science and myth, politics and ecology. All of which makes fertile ground for exploration, very close to home. |
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