[birds chirping] [birds chirping] man: everything that we see around us today is a descendant to those ancient people that have a spirit. before the earth was even here, a couple spirits were going through the galaxies. kwahn is the silver fox and jmul the coyote, and they met up with each other. they wanted something. they wanted something, which is the earth, and so, they sang and prayed and used the power of their mind, and that created the earth. they weren't done. they wanted something to be on there, and so they envisioned water, and they sang water songs, and there was water. they looked at it, and it's beautiful, but it just needs more. so they did it again, and they thought of creatures and beings, and then they put in the life in the water, all the fish. well, they looked at it, and they still weren't done because they have all this land. they used the power of their mind, and they created all the beings that live on the land, all the deer, everything that we see here. they created that, and they still weren't done, and so they filled the skies with birds, air, but those things can't help each other. so they created humans, and you can help each and every one of these entities that these beings created. that's our job because they can't help each other. they could live there, and stuff will get out of whack, but that's our puose, to keep stuff in balance, to help l of them. woman: california has always been a populace place. it's home right now to 109-111 tribes, but back then, you're talkg about tribes everywhere. there is no empty space of wildernesthat exists in this place that we currently call, california. the way you know that there were california indians everywhere is that every place had a name. there was not, like, a mountain or a field or a region that there wasn't a tribe who had already named it. so we had been everywhere, and we were everywhere. when a lot of people learn about us, they learn about us as primitive hunter-gatherers, but we were everything, and we really thought about what does it mean for us to care for the world? we don't separate ourselves from nature. in fact, we're part of one big, important system, and we have a really important role to play in that system. man: in native american belief, the importce to have connection to the land is essential for survival. without the land, we are not connected to the earth, we're not connected to the universe. we need that support and serenity and stabilization that the earth provides. man: good. different man: ecological knowledge isn't something that can just be quickly learned. it's a multigenerational thing, and it gets passed down. indigenous knowledge is developed over hundreds or thousands of years of doing the same practices in the same place and having that connection to land. man: it's engaging with the environment, engaging with the resources that are relatives to us. you know, like maintaining their health so we could be healthy. it's like this reciprocated relationship on a day-to-day level, and that comes with land management. practices as a form of our religion. man: understanding where we come from and the people we come from is important for everybody, you know, to be able to understand the direct areas that our people originate from and also to educate people who aren't from here about these living connections to a place, and that goes all the way back from before colonization, all the way into those ancient times from our creation times. woman: traditional ecological knowledge is understanding that our indigenous science is connected to a very ancient knowledge, thousands upon thousands of years, if not more, of scientific observation, experiments, and ideas. it's something that is tied to our language, our basketry, our food systems and teaches us how to connect those things together in a meaningful way that says we're responsible for the earth. woman: this is what we're looking for. so each sedge runner needs to be split down the center lengthwise, so i make a little slit with the knife at one end and then just carefully... here in monterey area, land of my ancestors, baskets, as elsewhere in california, were used in practically every aspect of daily life. when a person was born, they began their lives being cradled in a basket. obviously for food preparation, for eating from, storing gathering, carrying. i mean, if you think of all the implements that we use today as modern people--our backpacks and our plastic containers to store our foods, all of these things that we can't live without, right? in the past, those were created in the form of baskets. in the times of my ancestors, baskets were absolutely vital. yohad to have them. that would have been as important as people going to their daily jobs in this day and age to earn wages to pay the rent. we have to do those things today, and people of the past had to have those baskets. for me, it became so important to bring them back into the world because i'm driven to bring something back to life. i want to honor our ancestors by doing it their way because that's what it's all about. it's about the connection with the past, doing things the way they did so that we can carry it on. sling-baldy: when we lea about basketry, don't just learn about the plants that go into the basket but that what you're putting into it, the life that you're creating by creating that basket, the story that you're going to share with other people, the ways that that basket will be passed on, and when you approach the land, you always say thank you, and that to me, is a traditional ecological kwledge that sort of says humans aren't the most important thing on the planet. in fact, we're part of one big, importansystem, and that's what we need to be reminded and really humbled to, i think, for a lot of what we do. yamane: people have asked me if there are any ohlone songs that have been sung when we are gathering materials, but the fact is if there were,hat knowledge has not been passed down to the present time. i have actually created my own song using our language that i always sing before i leave, and it is telling the sedges thank you and telling it that the sedges are beautiful and it's a beautiful sedge place, which it is. ha ha! [singing in ohlone language] risling-baldy: there's a lot of california indian stories that talk about how human beings were given the voice, so our job was to speak on behalf of all of the animals, all of the trees and the rivers and the rocks to make sure that they were going to be safe. so i think our languages, being that place-based and being that old, what you see is that our knowledge is really enveloped into that. so when we have a name for something, it will generally tell you things like where does it grow, why does it grow that way, what does it do, what do we use it for? we'll have different words for different uses of things, so there's the plant when it's in the ground, there's the plant when you pick it, there's the plant when it's ready to be used for basketry, there's the plant when you're going to eat it. so it kind of tells you a lot about what we think through our languages. bommelyn: my life work has been in our language. we speak the dee-ni' language, a tolowa dee-ni' language. we've been restoring our language and trying to revitalize the language to kp it in the present. we have a verb for musseling, for example, so when you collect mussels, you rock them loose. you pry them and rock them loose. you don't scuff them off the rock and take all generations. [speaks tolowa-dee-ni'] means to move around. it's a verb specifically for gathering mussels. you never take the largest of any species. you always leave it because they create the largest offspring, and you are very cautious of the young ones, the [speaks tolowa-dee-ni'] because they need to continue to grow. so you usually harvest the middle-aged things from the ocean. you're just taught to always respect the food because it's our sustenance. it's a way of life. you have a relationship with them that's very important. so it's a very, very different view of the world having that relationship. that's why the language, i think, is so important, as well, so we can share those concepts that come from the language itself. everything's house is their house, is their home. the language helps us see that and understand that we are in the same realm. it's not a nest. it's not a web. it's not an anthill. it's their home. risling-baldy: our native foods are really important to who we are as native people in terms of they tie us very clearly to the places that we're from, and i think the complexity of that is when you feel almost indebted to the food that you eat because you need to take care of the things that give you that strength, that centeredness. alvarez: well, this place, it's where my roots are. it's where my whole being comes from. i don't see a separation between me and this land. i'm part of this land. i did a coming-of-age ceremony. i lived up here for about a month all by myself, you know, just to be with the land, the spirits that are here. a lot of spirit activity up here. this is my store. everything that i need to survive for a good, long life and all my kids is right here, you know, and so it's meant to be taken in a sustainable way. man: can you take that over there, and-- alvarez: yeah. slap it on. man: slice it up and season it up. you can use to hold deer for everything--leather, rawhides, ropes, shelter, water bags, containers, the horns for making tools, the hooves for rattles. a lot of the old people like the liver and the heart, choice cuts. heh heh. usually, we have a lot of--a lot of deer meat, you know, but we send it to our families in the cities who can't make it up here. so we get a 5 or 6 deers at the butcher shop. alvarez: the elders, i'll give that to them, and their face is, like, "oh! it reminds me of my youth, you know," because they haven't had it in so long. makes me feel good. that brings back memories for them. woman: we always knew how to hunt. we always knew how to take care of our food, and we don't waste it. we give it to everybody. we didn't just nt for us. we hunted for our families. boy: that good heart meat. luis: smells good. parrish: mm-hmm. alvarez: a lot of people, if they've never tasted venison before, they don't like it. they don't like that gamey taste. well, that gamey taste nature. it's not gmos and the red dye they put it in cows to make it look like really pretty meat. this is nature's meat, how meat's supposed to taste. it's a good, hearty meat, you know, really good for you. a lot of times, you know, nowadays, everybody's eating beef all the time, and that's why we're plaguewith diabetes right now because we're getting away from that and getting some more modern foods, and that's what's--you know, it takes a long time for that--for generations to go by to get used to changing a diet like that. this used to be all we used to eat, this and a lot of roots and fish and berries and all that stuff. so, you know, we got to try to keep this here, preserve it for not only ourselves but, you know, our younger generations, so... my kids read about and learn about native americans in schools, and they'll tell me about "hey. did, you know this?" i'm like, "you're hewisedawi, you're on top people. you are what you're reading about. you're not just in the history books. you are you," and that's why i take her out here. i'll take them out here, and, you know, you got to be part of the land. you are the land. it's cool to see that cycle, and so it's real personal when my kids get out there like that. risling-baldy: i think there's something really telling about the fact that during colonization they really came after our food and they really watched and focused on how we cared for each other through food. with colonization, everything changes. it's an invasion of who we are as a people. it's an attempted destruction of who we are. man: when settlers came in, they saw a land that was empty, and so they said, "hey. this is an open land. we get full reign of it," and yet it wasn't. every piece of this land was being used in some way, some capacity. it was truly our garden. land was no longer able to be accessed in ways that were done in the past. water was all of a sudden being used by someone else, and they were saying it was theirs to use and couldn't be used for other purposes. with the loss of land and the loss of water meant the loss of food, and the loss of food and starvation. woman: in the 1850s, it was illegal to own land if you were a california native person, and it was also illegal to be homeless. so you were not allowed to own land, and you were not allowed to own a home, but it was illegal to not own a home, and if you were caught vagrant, which if you didn't have any land and didn't have a home you were considered vagrant, you could be picked up for indentured servitude and serve for free for years, and then, you know, you'd come to the end of your period and be vagrant again and get picked up again. people lived their whole lives like that, and then on top of that, they are setting up a political system and a state system of laws and governance that will legalize the genocide that they want to commit against california indian people. so california becomes a state. one of the first things that it does is it passes a law to instill the volunteer militia. these are mostly men who will register so that they can hunt indian people and kill them and get money for their scalps and heads. when you look at advertisements, what you see is that, they're advertising them at things like $5.00 a head and 25 cents per scalp. the first year that they do this, the state of california says that it has paid $1 million for killing indian people. the second year they do it, it's $1 million. between around the 1700s to the 1900s, they know that our population was reduced by 90%. so you're talking about a massive scale of genocide. [man singing in native language] woman: a lot of the original people of this land carry a woundedness. we are in a constant state of mourning. that distracts from being able to just live and smile and laugh and sing and dance and build. you're in a high-stress environment, that urban environment that everybody suffers from stress. we suffer from it in addition to having a lot of this intergenerational unresolved historical grief, the loss of land, the loss of language, the loss of community. we're hanging by the skin of our teeth. risling-baldy: i think about how easy it would have been to give up and that when you think about the ways they wouldn't give up, they knew they couldn't remember everything, but they were going to remember one thing, and if that was a song or a recipe, a story, they were going to take that thing forward, and they were going to tell somebody else, and from that ability to be able to say that there was going to be a future comes the rest of us. [singing softly in native language] man: this is our weekly sweat process for our men's sweat. it's about purification. we come down and take care of ouelves. it's about the unity of the group, about coming together, and, you know, maintaining our sobriety, so living a clean and sober life. it's kind of like traditional clinical work because it's a safe place to come, it's a place where you can process anything, any problems that you have going on. you have support. man: we pray together, sing our songs, and, you know, lift each other up. man: support--support people and then be supported by, you know, the fellas that are in there. lewis: yeah, it's nice. i really enjoy it. mcconnell: as an addict in recovery, you know, there ain't no better feeling than to kind of participate in something like this. one day at a time. all i can do is one day at a time, you know. few more hours, and i'll have another day down clean and sober. feels good to feel good. ferris: throughout the week, taking just our normal hygiene, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the preservatives, you know, we build up toxicity, and so when we go into the lodge, we're able to purge that and purify when our pores open up and push that stuff out. risling-baldy: all the things that we use in our sweats and in our steams come from our environment and the space in which we are from. you use water from the river or the streams. you use rocks from the places that you are from. you are king in the herbs. you are taking in the water, you're taking in the things around you. they're becoming a part of you. the things around us feed us not just physically but spiritually and mentally. mcconnell: being clean and sober, i see the beauty of everything, you know. i mean, our water, our salmon, our deer, our pepperwood that we got right there. that's our medicine right there. they say that harmony, brings harmony to the group when we burn it and then we breathe it in and we smudge ourselves off with it. it's peace and harmony, camaraderie. no, no--everything bad can't come in. lewis: our regular ceremonies come around every year, summertime. you know, we have our regular brush dance, and then every two years, we have our white deerskin dance and jump dance, and this is a way we can get into ceremony every week. you know, every week, we get in touch with our creator. mcconnell: that's what our native american community's about, you know. support and be supported. it's awesome. the kids are our future. there is a ceremony called the flower dance for these women that are coming of age, when they start their moon. in the last few years, it's been, you know, 4, 5 families have had flower dances, their kids coming of age, and that's a big thing to be a parof. me and boyd, we've been in a few, and it's a awesome feeling, i mean, dancing for those girls that had become women. woman: there's a number of things today that i am preparing for a ceremony. there's some regalia that we're going to be making with maple bark. that's a tl'oh-kya', which would be bark skirt. risling-baldy: the flower dance is a women's coming-of-age ceremony. we usually celebra it when a girl starts menstruating. it's aommunity sort of celebration of this young woman because she is becoming a woman, she is moving through her adolescence, and it is a way to sort of help her see what that's going to be like, the decisions that she's going to have to make, the life that she's going to have to lead, but what i see through the ceremony a lot is it actually is showing her that she is able to make those decisions for herself and that there will be a community to support her along the way. woman: you kind of want to find a spot that's kind of flat with no, like, knots because the knots when you're peeling it will make it so that it has a little hole in it, right? risling-baldy: in the flower dance, the young woman actually has a bark skirt, it's like a maple bark skirt, and the maple bark skirt because they're going into the water, it absorbs the water, it takes on the water, and then the water runs down their legs, and they can still remember those moments of feeling connected to that water as they're carrying it with them. george-moore: so what you're after is this inner cambium. man: yeah. george-moore: and that's where the sap runs, and that's the one that will split, and it's smooth, too, because if you're going to wear these it's not gonna be scratchy. ha ha ha! woman: and then it just breaks down just like this. different woman: wow. george-moore: and so you can actually get a dress done--if you have all the bark laying in front of you, you could do it in a day. risling-baldy: during adolescence, a young girl's self-esteem plummets. this is not just for native girls. it's for any girl, and so that's the study that's been done. they've also done studies that show you can actually combat this lowering of self-esteem among young women just by sharing positive stories of adolescence and menstruation with them. that's what a flower dance is. it's bringing these girls together for people to talk to them and tell them about what a wonderful moment of their life this actually is and all the things they can lookorward to and all the ways that people are going to be there to suprt them. with this particular ceremony, too, that it's not just about this one young woman, although that's important because she is the reason why we are coming together, but what's happening in that regard is it asks her family to come together, it asks then her

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