Lessons from the Tongass forest | A March note 🌲

March 10 • view this email in your browser • unsubscribe
 

Nourishment

The Spoken Forest
– Ernestine Hayes
 

I was thinking about the forest one day and it came to me—
our stories,
our songs,
our names,
our history,
our memories
are not lost.

All these riches are being kept for us
by our aunties, our uncles,
our grandparents, our relatives—
those namesakes who walk and dance
wearing robes that make them seem like bears
and wolves.

Our loved ones.
Those beings who live in the spoken forest.
They are holding everything for us.
 

“The Spoken Forest” by Ernestine Hayes, via the Alaska Arts & Culture Foundation. This poem is permanently installed at Totem Bight State Park in Ketchikan, Alaska. 

Ernestine is a professor emerita and prolific writer in a variety of genres, who belongs to the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Eagle side of the Tlingit nation. She is best known for her autobiography Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir, which tells the story of her journey back home to Juneau after a twenty-five year absence. It won an American Book Award in 2007.

What we’re listening to this week

Artwork created for A Matter of Degrees by Rose Wong.

The season finale of A Matter of Degrees takes listeners to Southeast Alaska and the Tongass: the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world and a vital carbon sink.

The Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people have lived on and with these lands for over 10,000 years. Listen to find out how Tribal leaders and partners are healing the wounds of extractive industry and growing a regenerative economy in which the forest and local communities can thrive.
 

“When we talk about the trees of the Tongass, I feel like I have those roots — into the ground, into the dirt, into the rocks — that the trees do. I belong to these lands, and I have a responsibility to take care of these lands.”

– Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson, president of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska
 

Listen now →

Project updates

• 🌱 Upcoming community event:
  Spring Equinox Community Connection, March 16, 11am–12pm ET
  
  Join us for our spring Community Connection — the first event in a new series of online gatherings designed to foster reflection and relationship, as we honor Earth’s changing seasons.
  
  We’ll share poems and songs, connect in small groups, and reflect independently. Our hope is that you leave this experience feeling more attuned, alive, and connected.
  
  Learn more + register →
   

• 💫 Gratitude + a team transition
  
  For the last two years, Madeleine Jubilee Saito has shepherded this newsletter and helped shape our work in myriad ways.
  
  This month, we’re bidding Madeleine a warm farewell and sharing our gratitude, as she transitions into new things. You can follow her wonderful art and comics here.
  
  Check out the newsletter archives →

Until next time,