Che Jim: Alaska Natives don't need to see the headlines to know climate change is happening. They've been reading the signs for years. 

Sea ice gone "rotten" in winter—too thin to walk on. Seals, belugas, and salmon migrating earlier and earlier. Shorelines getting swallowed up by the ocean. All within a generation. 

Indigenous knowledge like this is crucial for understanding the threats of the present. But can it also point the way forward?

Hi, I'm Che Jim, and welcome to Crash Course: Native American History. 

[Theme music]

Today's world is under massive threat from climate change. Heat waves, hurricanes, cold snaps, wildfires — they've all intensified. Endangering not only the environment, but also us. 

I'm feeling very chill about this. 

It's a complex problem that's going to require a lot of coordinated solutions. 

Just ask Crash Course: Climate & Energy. 

But one hugely important place to look for solutions is... Indigenous communities. 

See, no matter where we've lived, Indigenous people have become experts on our environments. 

Some of us learned how to grow crops in the desert. Others figured out which animals went on the move and when. Still others were able to find food in every layers of the forest. 

All of this is what we call traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK for short. It's information about the world around us that has been passed down from generation to generation since time immemorial. 

You can think of TEK as systems of knowledge formed in relationship with a specific place. 

You might say we're all TEK-ies. [Tries to do the Ta'al, fails] Look, it's the last episode, I'm just going for it. 

As I was saying, this knowledge is particular to different locations. 

For example, how do you build a boat? 

Near the Great Lakes, you strap sheets of birch bark around cedar frames, then waterproof the seams with a goo of pine sap and animal fat. 

But up north, Arctic peoples built out of driftwood or whalebone wrapped in sealskin—which is light and elastic enough to take a hit from an ice floe. 

Same question, different answers, depending on what's around you. 

But while Traditional Ecological Knowledge is incredibly place-specific, it's also about the big picture. It's built on the understanding that everything is connected by a web of relationships. 

[Chris Columbus, the explorer, slides in]

Yes, even you!

[He slides away]

Even him. 

So, Inuit Elders might talk about belugas in the ocean in the same breath as beavers in the rivers. 

They understand that more beavers means more dams, means less spawning habitat, means fewer salmon, means fewer belugas. 

That's what I mean by big picture; it's an ecological view, all about relationships. 

Now, in episode 8, we explored how Indigenous people figured stuff like this out, hundreds of years before Western scientists did. 

And there are so many ways this knowledge remains useful today, and for the future. 

Let me tell you a story...

Native nations in California — like the Hupa, Yurok, Karuk, and Mono — have known for generations that you can fight fire with fire. 

Historically, they burned small, low-intensity controlled burns as a way of curating the landscape.

You see, after these burns, plants that were good for food and medicine grew back stronger. And burning kept space between the older, taller trees, so flames didn't rage through the whole forest. 

But when colonisers laid eyes on these lovingly curated landscapes, they thought that was just how trees grew. And that the fires were pointless, backwards. 

The state of California outlawed intentional burning in 1850, while forcing many tribes off their lands. 

Meanwhile, the forests were logged and replanted — this time, twice as densely. 

Fast forward to today.

Thanks to climate change, wildfires are a serious threat. These denser, warmer, drier forests are like a box of matchsticks. And Western scientists are starting to understand what tribes have been saying all along: good fire can prevent bad fire. 

Thankfully, the government is coming around, too. In 2022, the State of California affirmed tribes' right to practice cultural burning. 

Today, some tribes — and their good fire — are being welcomed back on the land that hasn't been touched by cultural burning in over 150 years. 

And that is the story of good fire. [Drinks cocoa]

So there's some good stuff happening!

But there's much more to be done. And while climate change affects everyone, it doesn't affect everyone equally.

Native nations along coasts and in the far north are already being disproportionately impacted, as their homes are being hit first and more severely by climate change's effects. 

Alaska Native communities are getting a front-row seat to shorter winters, earlier springs, changes in migration, and thinning ice. 

Because of these changes, it's getting harder to hunt and fish. Which is a huge loss. 

A recently coined term — solastalgia — describes the grief of witnessing the environment change in ways you don't want and can't control. 

Anybody can feel this. But as the climate changes, Alaska Native communities are especially at risk of harms to their mental health.

These communities already experience disproportionately high suicide rates. And not being able to hunt and fish, or practise their traditions, impacts their sense of community, connection, and self-worth. 

On top of that, tribal communities living on coasts are at risk of losing their homes altogether, at sea-level rise washes away low-laying land. 

As of 2024, thirty-one Alaska Native villages are in imminent danger of erosion, and at least a dozen to relocate altogether.

In what's now Washington State, the Quinault Tribe and the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe are working to relocate for the same reason. 

And that's just to name a few. 

Many tribes are seeking environmental justice, which involves recognising and supporting groups who suffer disproportionately from environmental damage, through no fault of their own. 

Often as a result of ongoing legacies of colonialism and racist policy. And for more on that, check out episode 1 and 2...3... 4... all the episodes. 

But from an Indigenous perspective? Environmental justice is more than that. It means taking in, and taking care of, the whole picture. 

In the words of Dina Gilio-Whitaker — a scholar and member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, "justice for Indigenous peoples is about restoring balance in relationships that are out of balance."

I'll give you an example. 

For generations, the Ojibwe have had a reciprocal relationship with wild rice — which they call manoomin. 

In their oral tradition, a long-ago prophecy predicted their people would move west, to a place "where the food grows on water." 

The prophecy also predicted light-skinned newcomers would either bring brotherhood, death, or death-disguised-as-brotherhood. 

Are those... the only options?

Anyway, the place in the prophecy was the Great Lakes region. The "food that grows on water" was manoomin. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the rest. 

Manoomin is a sacred plant, but a sensitive one. It grows best in cool, shallow waters, after long freezing winters. 

Under climate change, those conditions are getting harder to come by. And manoomin has been in decline in many lakes and rivers for decades, for lots of reasons. Dams, pollution, commercial overharvesting, disease—it's all in the mix. 

But in some places, its hard to pinpoint any single cause. And the Ojibwe understand that embracing this complexity is the answer.

You can't talk about manoomin without thinking in terms of the bigger whole. 

In recent years, a partnership to save manoomin has emerged between the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and researchers at the University of Minnesota. 

Joe Graveen, a scientist with the tribe, has encouraged non-native researchers to embrace an ecological view of what’s going on with the rice.

To study entire watersheds, not just specific lakes.

To look at historical documents, not just last year's data. 

And to build relationships with tribal members who know this land and have observed tiny changes over time that newcomers might not notice. 

Tribal members and researchers haven't yet figured out why manoomin is declining at Lac du Flambeau. But partnerships like this might just point to the path forward. 

And the Ojibwe are far from the only tribe using Traditional Ecological Knowledge to respond to a climate changed world.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have created a plan that emphasises sharing TEK with other Native nations, and securing funding to make housing more energy-efficient. 

The Yakama Nation's Climate Adaptation Plan includes buying back farm land to support food security for tribal members, and restoring some of it to native habitat. 

And the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network is working to restore relationships between Native nations and their ancestral crops. Bringing back seeds that haven't been grown in their communities of origin for many years. And using them to help feed future generations. 

So, where does this leave us as we reach the end of our journey together? 

I guess, somewhere not so different from the prophecy the Ojibwe ancestors foretold. Light-skinned newcomers; brotherhood, death, or death-disguised-as-brotherhood. Check, check, check, and... check. 

[Che wrings his collar and gulps]

But those were just the first four predictions the prophecy made. It was also predicted that there would be struggles, grief, and promises broken. 

These guys were good. 

And there was another prophecy — one that foretold the forests and prairies would disappear, and the water would be polluted. 

And again, the Ojibwe would face a choice between two paths: brotherhood or destruction. The people would only find the right path, the good one, if they retraced their steps, farther back on the trail. 

Which is what we've been doing this whole time.

Throughout this series, we've explored just a fraction of the hundreds of timelines that make up Native American history. But we've retraced as many steps as we could, to try to uncover a bigger picture. 

Not just of the past. But of the present. And the future, too. 

You've caught me talking about five hundred years ago and last year in the same breath.

And I hope now you understand why. The past and present are connected, much more closely than you think. And there's knowledge all around us, just waiting to lead us further up the trail. 

Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course: Native American History, which was filmed at our studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.