“the growth of new green shoots from Mother Earth after a fire has come through the land.”
About
Wisahkotewinowak is an urban Indigenous garden collective building Land-based relationships across the Grand River Territory. We are a group of Indigenous (First Nation and Métis) Peoples and settler-allies who also wear many hats as gardeners, researchers/academics, teachers/educators, students and life-long learners. We exist in relation with each other, the wider community and our non-human kin (the Land, plants, animals, and spirit) in the urban spaces we call home. Collectively, we are Wisahkotewinowak (wisahk-tew-win-o-wak). This is a Métis word that means the first green shoots that come up from Mother Earth after a fire has gone through the land.
We are grateful to cultivate and care for the Land at four different garden locations across the existing cities of Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Cambridge. These gardens grow within the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples, the Treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit and the Haldimand Tract lands of the people at Six Nations of the Grand River. Our connection with the gardens that we have established on these lands is also in relation to the Dish with One Spoon Territory. In the spirit of this agreement, we strive to take only what we need, leave some for the next person, and to keep the dish clean.
As a collective:
We believe the Land provides a place for community and a sense of belonging.
We aim to nurture Land-based relationships to strengthen local food sovereignty and urban Indigenous food environments.
We strive to do this work in a good way, upholding our responsibility to All Our Relations.
History.
Seeding and sprouting: 2014-2016
The seed for Wisahkotewinowak was planted in 2014, when Dave Skene started gardening for the first time. After 30 years of leading youth on international trips in his role as Executive Director of Global Youth Volunteer Network (GYVN), Dave began to focus on local applications of social justice and community building work. As he navigated his identity and connection to place as a Métis living in the city of Kitchener, it became clear that supporting the local urban Indigenous community and strengthening Land-based relations was the new direction he wished to take. Dave recognized that growing a garden was one way for Indigenous people living in the city to connect to the Land.
With this idea, and limited gardening experience, GYVN created an Indigenous garden with Young City Growers (YCG), a grassroots initiative focused on creating urban agriculture opportunities for youth in the Waterloo Region, on a small 50x50ft plot. A few Indigenous students helped maintain the space, which grew ceremonial tobacco along with a few other garden vegetables. Quickly learning that things grew with a bit of soil, rain, sunshine and seeds, the gardeners enjoyed the small but fruitful harvest of new beginnings.
Known as the Métis garden by most involved, Dave wanted a name for the garden that reflected the true spirit of the project. In his Master’s research, Dave came across a word used to describe the Métis by Métis Elders: Wisahkotewinowak. Meaning “the first green shoots that come up from Mother Earth after a fire has come through,” Dave felt this word reflected not only the purpose of the garden, but of the work being conducted in the space.
GYVN managed this first garden for two years at YCG and wanted to expand the project, but they were unable to move beyond the size of the plot they had. They also feared that YCG would lose access to this space (due to a potential parking lot), so Dave began searching for other gardening spaces in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
Taking root: 2017-2018
In the summer of 2016, Dr. Hannah Tait Neufeld from the University of Guelph began putting together a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) research grant application designed to strengthen inter-generational knowledge pathways and explore Land-based education practices towards Indigenous food sovereignty. As such, Hannah was building diverse community partnerships on-reserve, in urban environments and in post-secondary institutional settings. Through this, she became connected to Dave, learning about his involvement in the Métis garden. She also learned that he was looking for more land relocate and expand the project. Hannah, as a board member at Steckle Heritage Farm, an educational farm located in Kitchener, was able to help secure a large plot of land at the farm in 2017 for the next Wisahkotewinowak garden. Bigger than the YCG garden, this plot provided more space to grow tobacco, the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) and additional garden vegetables.
In the same year, Dr. Kim Anderson - also at the University of Guelph - joined as a co-lead on the CIHR grant application. Having been involved in developing the medicine garden at the Aboriginal Resource Centre (ARC) on campus (now the Indigenous Student Centre) in 2010, she was eager to revisit her responsibility to the space as part of this work. The ARC medicine garden was one of the first on-campus initiatives to support Indigenous awareness and education for staff and students, but lost some of its oversight for programming and maintenance over the years. The CIHR grant provided an opportunity to create a partnership with the ARC to revitalize the space and develop Land-based programming right on campus.
Towering red amaranth at the Three Sisters Garden.
In addition to the ARC medicine garden becoming part of the Wisahkotewinowak collective, an additional garden site at the University of Guelph was established at the Arboretum. The staff there offered a section of land that was once a gravel pit, which they hoped could be replanted with more native species through this new garden, so the team decided to plant hearty perennial species that could be used for medicinal teas. Hannah, Dave, and Kim also expressed their interest in developing a site to grow produce nearby, but the Arboretum could not offer enough space to provide a high production of food. Instead, the team was referred to the farm manager at the Guelph Centre for Urban Organic Farming (GCUOF), who offered one of their hoop houses for the season. Excited by this opportunity, the team agreed to use it.
Flowering white sage at the Tea Garden.
In the spring of 2018, CIHR awarded the team with funds for the project, which helped advance the team’s aspirations for cultural food programming and research activities. The busy, labour intensive summer of 2018 that came with managing four gardens and a bountiful harvest allowed for the project’s first food processing workshops to be offered. Staff and students canned much of the produce harvested that year, including okra, eggplant, tomatoes, carrots, beets, hot peppers. Most of the harvest was shared with the ARC for students to take home, and certain heirloom seeds were collected for the next year’s planting.
New shoots: 2019-2020
In 2019, Dave established a partnership with the Waterloo Community Garden located at the University of Waterloo’s Environmental Reserve. They allocated part of their space for the project to grow produce to support canning workshops and food sharing. Its location at the University of Waterloo created an opportunity to forge new relationships with the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre and other Indigenous faculty and staff at the institution.
Dave also transitioned from GYVN to White Owl Native Ancestry Association (WONAA), an Indigenous organization providing cultural programming for the Indigenous community in the region, where he became the co-Executive Director. Soon after, WONAA hired Garrison McCleary as the Coordinator of Land-based education and programming, based at the Blair Outdoor Education Centre. In this position, Garrison developed the Teaching Garden at Blair in 2019, which focused on Indigenous foods and medicines native to Waterloo region, as well as from across Turtle Island (a.k.a. North America). Working closely with Dave, Garrison helped to support the work of the Collective.
Grasshopper at the Three Sisters Garden.
With these two new gardens established, the project team decided not to continue gardening at the GCUOF. The hoop house was more work than expected, and the team anticipated that the other gardens would require enough work with the limited support they had. Between the five gardens at Steckle Heritage Farm, the Arboretum, the ARC, and the University of Waterloo Environmental Reserve, and the Blair Outdoor Education Centre, the 2019 growing season provided a large yield of produce. Moreover, it allowed for a diversity of local events to be offered, including a medicine walk, food preserving workshops, and tea making.
In 2020, and in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, a shift in food sharing practices and programming was needed. As such, most of the produce grown in all of the gardens contributes to the WONAA Food Basket Program, aimed at responding to the local food needs of Indigenous students and families in the region.
It’s been five years since the first Wisahkotewinowak garden was planted, and new challenges and opportunities continue to shape the work of the Collective. We continue to grow and evolve in our work as new relationships develop, and more people support the work. As an interconnected web of relationships rooted in the Land, we continue to grow and evolve in our work through upholding our responsibilities to each other, our community, and the world around us.