Episode 74: Nature as Kin with Skye Augustine
“How would I be behaving if I were here to stay?”
-Skye Augustine The Everything Belongs Podcast
Today on the Everything Belongs Podcast, Madison is in conversation with Skye Augustine. Skye is from the Stz’uminus Nation and is a Hul’q’umi’num’ scholar, marine scientist, and mentor whose leadership supports people to reconnect with ancestral lands, waters and ways of knowing. She is currently finishing her PhD with the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, and she holds a Masters of Science in Geography from the University of Victoria. Recently, Skye led an award winning restoration project in coastal British Columbia – a collaboration between Hul’q’umi’num’ and SENĆOŦEN speaking knowledge holders, scientists and resource managers. This landscape-scale restoration effort examines the impacts of revitalized ancestral clam garden practices on intertidal ecosystems and human communities - and helps us understand how we can care for the lands that sustain us into the future. Skye is passionate about supporting Indigenous peoples to reclaim connections with their ancestral territories and foster resilient humans and landscapes during times of rapid change. In this episode, Madison and Skye speak on the impact of colonization on land stewardship & care on the clam garden and beaches on the west coast of Canada, what reclamation and the resurgence of the ancestral ways can look like on the land, "going low" and getting close to land as a way to foster belonging, health & reciprocity, remembering that we are animals a part of the land and ecosystem and so much more.
Listen -
In this episode, we talk about:
Skye's work as a marine ecologist and indigenous scientist
Growing up on the West Coast of what is now known as Canada as an Indigenous child
How Skye is combining ancestry, land stewardship and science to positively impact beach ecosystems
The impact of colonization on land stewardship & care on the West Coast of Canada
The separation & legislation of Indigenous people from land, oceans, food, language, ceremonies and even children, through residential "schools"
How recent these impacts are and how recent the reclamation is beginning to occur
What reclamation and the resurgence of the ancestral ways can look like on the land, together
Our responsiveness to the land we inhabit and how it can speak to us over time
Shifting the narrative of dominion over the land to seeing nature as kin
Spirituality in the ways of nature and how there is perfection in the ways that nature operates.
The dance of intellectualism and the spirituality of being kin to nature
"Going low" and getting close to land as a way to foster belonging, health & reciprocity
Practical ways to practice reciprocity with the land and indigenous communities
Skye’s invitation to remember that we are animals and a part of these ecosystems
Indicators of health that are transcending the beach ecosystems and impacting the people inhabiting and tending them
Being good neighbors and good visitors of the land
