Indigenous Plant Nurseries Look to Revive Landscapes and Cultures Apr 16, 2021
These nurseries are looking to revegetate wildlife habitats with native plants. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation grows native plants that go towards revegetating natural wildlife habitats. Photography by Catie Joyce-Bulay
The nursery at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) is not your typical nursery.
CTUIR grows only native plants defined as indigenous species that evolved naturally in an ecosystem and its sales to landscapers and home gardeners make up only a small portion of its business. The nursery’s main mission is to grow native plants that will go towards revegetating natural wildlife habitats in the high desert, upland and wetland areas of eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington.
The Tribal Coalition Fighting to Save Monarch Butterflies
Habitat loss and climate change are decimating the species. What can the U.S. learn from Oklahoma tribes’ efforts to restore their migratory path?
Butterflies winter at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán, Mexico.
Seventeen years ago, Jane Breckinridge came home. A citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation with a great-grandmother who was Euchee, Breckinridge had left Oklahoma after high school to attend Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she decided to stay after graduation. Some two decades later, she’d secured a good-paying job in publishing, working as a vice president on the business side of a magazine. She had a nice house in a pleasant neighborhood, an office in a shiny downtown Minneapolis building complete with a heated parking spot in the basement garage the works. “And then I really just sort of chucked it all away to come live at the end of a dirt road,” she said with