Sacred Places in the Arctic and Beyond

This chapter sets out the organising framework for the book based on a synthesis of cultural ecology and customary law. Cultural ecology because it is a framework through which we can understand how people engage with their surroundings, make sense of them, live and work in them, and create narratives that connect and sustain both themselves and their environments. Customary law because it deals with established patterns of behaviour within social settings that are locally endorsed, thus offering the possibility of localised protection that is culturally inclusive rather than imposed. The introductory chapter also explains the relationship between the core Arctic chapters in part one, and the broader con

Romona’s chapter focuses on the representation of sacred landscapes in two works by Guyanese writers – Pauline Melville’s novel The Ventriloquist’s Tale and Wilson Harris’s collection of poetry, Eternity to Season. Melville’s novel centres the perspectives of her main Indigenous characters, including their relationship with the circum-Roraima landscape of the wider Guiana region. Wilson Harris, a major Caribbean literary theorist, novelist and poet, also features the diverse landscapes of Guyana throughout his oeuvre. Many of his works, including some of the poems in Eternity to Season, acknowledge and celebrate the ‘living’ Guyanese interior landscape, a reference to the Indigenous ancestral presence, but also to the continuity of close relationships between Indigenous peoples and that landscape.

In both Melville’s and Harris’s works, these landscapes are sacred places, and the chapter examines what constitutes such ‘sacredness’ and how it relates to the Indigenous characters within the texts. For example, how do Indigenous culture, history and memory connect to these landscapes within the texts?  Extractivist industries such as gold and diamond mining and logging continue to change and affect Guyana’s interior landscapes and Indigenous Peoples in many ways. It is therefore important to examine how literary writers such as Melville and Harris represent these landscapes and what these literary texts might contribute to current discourses about protecting these sacred places for future generations.

This chapter explores the reclamation of Indigenous Sámi knowledge as a response to the epistemicide inflicted by colonial governments, particularly on indigenous spiritual traditions. It focuses on the sacred places of Vaapste—a region encompassing sacred mountains, rivers, stones and other persons spanning the Norway-Sweden border—and their significance for Sámi identity and cultural continuity over 9 000 years.

Central to this exploration are the ceremonial practices in Arts represented by the Vapsten gievrie (South Sámi drum), the gåetie (the turf-hut), and storytelling from the sacred mountains Aahkansnjurhtjie and Atoeklimpoe. These practices strengthen connections between Vapsten maadtoe, the landscape, laahkoe, the family, ancestors and other human relations, and saajve, the saajve-birds, saajve-fish, saajve-animals and saajve-persons emphasizing as persons in South Sámi cosmology and worldview. The chapter is a study of holy landscapes from a pluriversal perspectiv, and the complexitiy recognizing the landscape as a common or shared landscape.

The identification of sacred landscapes by historical sources, oral traditions and visual art as a way of beeing and making yourself in the world, demonstrates Sámi cosmology and reaffirm cultural identity.

The chapter addresses the complexities but also the possibilities with Indigenous Methodology and purpose a pluriversal perspective as a way to coexist in common or shared landscapes trough generations.

The question of how to go about sacred sites or places of spiritual importance to a people has been widely debated within the anthropological literature. As it stands, there are often no obvious or concrete answers, especially when we think about the different actors that shape the use of such places. This is similarly observed in the example of collaborative management (co-management) which Grazia Borrini, Paul Nadasdy, Fikret Berkes to name a few, have explored broadly in their work. While this question remains a challenge and certainly, an issue of interest, for many scholars in anthropology, I would like to situate this problem in my work with people of the Mount Cameroon National Park (MCNP) in Sub-Saharan West Africa.

I focus on ethnographic experiences, drawing excerpts from an earlier study I published in 2022 entitled “Knowledge Integration in Co-management: A Study on the People of the Mount Cameroon National Park”. Some of my thoughts on this matter, I have briefly shared through a contribution “Preserving Sacred Sites in the Arctic: Lessons from elsewhere?” published in 2022 in the Journal Nordicum – Mediterraneum. However, I hope to advance this discussion even further with the subject of “reconciling the ‘sacred’ in state-protected forests”, using a book chapter publication. I believe there are many lessons we can gain from the MCNP case. In this example, I was opportune to work with the Bakweri people for over seven years, understanding their coping mechanisms, and capability to continue their spiritual use of forest despite the complex nature of a State-induced system for managing forest. From my work with them, I was able to reveal some of the knowledge they mask beneath their day-to-day practices allowing them to maintain certain spiritual practices without jeopardizing the preservation of biodiversity which is often of difficulty as observed in previous literature.

Within this chapter, I explore how and why modern forms of land-use such as tourism and extractive industries can co-exist with people’s spiritual practices, and its relevance to maintaining biodiversity and a culture. By differentiating between conservation specialists’ perceptions and local people’s spiritual meanings, I discuss how spiritual places are categorized, used, and managed. One revelation from this chapter, is that, in complex settings of co-managing State-protected forests, it is possible to promote multifaceted uses among diverse actors such that people’s connection to sacred sites may endure even when sacred sites incorporate other interests at hand. This observation, however, depends on what kind of norms, values, and taboos people associate with such places. I hope the chapter will be a useful contribution to the problem of going about sacred sites as well as adding to advance scholarly literature on the subject matter.

Within this new paradigm of research into sacred places, a broad focus has been placed on the use and status of locales as such connected to Sámi culture, which are linked with earlier sacrificial and offering practices. These places are called sieidi in the north Sámi language and are chiefly large boulders, small lakes and in some cases whole mountains designated as sacred landscapes. For decades, little has been known about both the activities and kinds of offerings dedicated to the particular. Now, as the Sámi in Finland and further afield revitalize languages, cultures, beliefs, traditions and practices the visibility of sacred places which are connected with certain supernatural powers has increased significantly, as has research into both past and present subsistence activities connected with sanctuaries as such. This, on the one hand has been important, but on the other hand it means many sacred places have been put into the public domain and subsequently become exotic as tourism destinations. More broadly speaking, which means that because of in what ways some of the most revered places have been appropriated into the tourism industry there are a number of problems which have arisen as a consequence. These for example are connected to acts of vandalism where some boulders have been damaged by fire and maltreatment. In addition, whilst some places bare evidence of contemporary use by the Sámi, tourists have also taken it upon themselves to place offerings on or around them causing litter which means these conservation areas often look as if they have been contaminated and filled with clutter, thus, making it difficult to know who has offered what? Sacred sieidi shrines are also illustrated on Sámi noaidi drums from the seventeenth century, thus stating obvious links between both tangible and intangible cultural heritage within Sámi culture.

The research focus and aims present evidence of different types of maltreatment of three Sámi sacred places in north-west Lapland, Finland, which are protected by law, and a discussion is likewise included regarding other kinds of threats from a proposed widescale mining project in the same area.

The cult of stones and mountains among the Nenets is very well developed and has a significant role in their culture. In the Polar Urals there are several sacred mountains that are especially revered by the Nenets. In general, the veneration of stones and mountains among the Nenets can be associated with the cult of ancestors. This cult of stones and mountains is connected to worshiping the spirits of the land and its custodians, who can help humans and protect them from bad spirits. The soviet ethnographer Lyudmila Khomich wrote that it has many similarities with the same cults of mountains among the Sámi people. In one of the Nenets legends, a stone could appear from a coal of a family hearth, perhaps explaining why some of the Nenets religious objects are represented by stones.

In the Nenets culture people worshipped mountains as representatives of male and female deities which manifest as local land spirits. There are several sacred mountains in the Polar Urals. The most important mountain is Pe Mal Hada (grandmother of the edge of the mountains). There are also other sacred mountains: Minesey, Yengania Pe (in Nenets: yanganya means ‘special, unusual, uncommon’, pe ‘a stone, a mountain’). This chapter tells the story of the singing mountain Yanganya Pe, which was destroyed In the 1970s to extract deposits of marble. Later, in the 1990s, during the construction of the Ob-Bovanenkovo railway, the stones from the same Nenets sacred mountain Yanganya Pe were used for building embankments. Even several years after its destruction, Nenets elders remember the Yanganya Pe mountain as one of the important sacred places in the Yamal peninsula.

Locals people have very respectful attitudes about the Nenets sacred places, because they have a special power that helps a person maintain good luck and prosperity. Such places are comparable to a living temple, a symbol of eternal time, well-being and purity. They are always associated with the supernatural aspects of the universe, which build a harmonious relationship between man and nature. Many sacred places in Yamal are still not officially recognized by state bodies, so they are poorly protected and are in a vulnerable position. Therefore, the work to protect the shrines of indigenous peoples is very important. This will help preserve this important part of traditional culture, their memory of places, people, as well as songs and stories – oral traditions associated with them.

The ‘Linguistic Relativity Principle’, also called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, sets up the idea that the relationships between language, thought and culture are realised across cultures. Cultures do not have different ‘realities’, but ‘reality’ is structured and understood in different ways. Such realities are ‘languaged’ in different ways. To language is a verb, something you do.

Language families around the world have grammars which have evolved over time. Languages with complex morphologies construct the world through grammars which challenge a ‘western’ cosmology. Oral cultures language the world differently to literate cultures. Restricting the way we language different cultures to the premises of a specific (western) culture, encoded in an analytic language (noun) is to reduce the complexity of how the world is understood by people who are not of ‘the West’. The language of the West has gained international purchase on intellectual thought, governance and politics, together, with the languages of science and the Law. There is a problem of translation.

I want to set up an alternative framework to thinking, exploring different cultures and different ways of languaging those cultures, so that when we come to understand the present circumstances, other tools, other than the dominant cultural determinants, are available.

A sacred space becomes. Conjured through languaging and thought, that creates a culture.

Sacred spaces emerge through languaging the land, through custom, ritual and  performance.

By Melissa K. Nelson (Turtle Mountain Chippewa), Arizona State University (melissa.k.nelson@asu.edu)

Native America is a land of sacred places. Considered “Turtle Island” by many Native Americans, the North American continent is a dynamic and diverse landscape made up of complex Indigenous territories, homelands, and sacred lands. Sacred places are doorways where normally unseen worlds can be revealed, if one is in the right frame of mind. Mountains, waters, skies, valleys, springs, and so many other places are revered as sources of life and spiritual power where humans are reminded of our radical relationality with the Earth and Cosmos, and a Great Mystery.

In this chapter, Nelson will articulate an understanding of sacred lands as places of radical relationality and portals of humility, an essential quality for being fully human as these places remind us, we live in moral landscapes.  Through narrative scholarship, stories, and case studies, Nelson will explore the relationship between sacred lands, Indigenous languages, and kincentric cosmovisions.  The Turtle Island case studies (in the United States and Canada and US/Mexico border) will include Native sacred lands in the Great Lakes, the Sonoran and Great Basin Deserts, and the West Coast, where many historic sites are threatened by energy development and climate disruption while also being in processes of tribal protection and biocultural restoration.

Even among international human rights circles there is a total neglect of a particular form of ongoing colonization of non-European societies, which is hardly noticed or even discussed. This is the worldwide destruction of traditional religions, beliefs and worldviews of indigenous peoples. The background to this development is the radicalisation of EvangelicalChristianity and partly also non-Christian (Hindu, Muslim) fundamentalist groups, for which so called ‘traditional ethnic religions’ are an expression of a primitive and pagan way of life. In many parts of the world, individuals are threatened or intimidated in order to stop them from practicing their traditional religions; sacred objects are confiscated or destroyed; and sacred places and areas are desecrated or access to them is denied. These patterns of religious intolerance, harassment, and persecution do not only violate the religious freedom of indigenous peoples, but they undermine other important rights like the spiritual foundation of indigenous land, territorial and resources, the religious background of many forms of indigenous self-government, and the right to cultural existence and the protection of cultural heritage.

In this chapter, I will take a closer look at the connection between the threats to sacred places and attacks on traditional religions of indigenous peoples. I will explain the extent to which standards defined by the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are being breached, and how indigenous peoples and their organizations are developing legal and other strategies to defend themselves against the violation of their rights. My work is based on cooperation with selected indigenous organisations in three different regions Brazil, Ecuador, and Kenya.

Åsa Andersson Martti

This chapter explores the visual landscape, significant sacred places, and the invisible, imaginary, immaterial landscape within the Sámi mythical Saivo sphere, juxtaposed with the materialization and increasing demands of raw material usage in Sápmi in the Swedish north. The fieldwork is conducted in two mineral-rich locations, Kiruna and Saivovaara. The research is grounded in participatory observation, engagement with historically significant sacred places, and the incorporation of folkloristic storytelling and narrative-based Indigenous research methodologies to revitalize knowledge and connections lost in the colonial past and neocolonial present with green sacrificial zones. Kiruna has been actively mined since the turn of the century, while Saivovaara remains untouched but will be assessed for rare earth mineral deposits in 2025. The thematic analysis uncovers forgotten knowledge, memories, and ancient practices evident in the liminal, mythical saivo sphere. The findings suggest that within nature and habitus, the relationship between humans and landscape culture deteriorates when severely compromised; this damages the connection and threatens the foundation of Indigenous knowledge, leaving people disconnected from their lived and traditional cultural practices. This process is conceptualized through “Mountain whispering” as a suggestive metaphorical approach to understanding the saivo sphere’s supernatural relationship with mountains and humans.

The concluding chapter will draw together the major arguments from all the contributions and integrate them into a new, integrative framework of legal pluralism, with the intention of it becoming a manifesto for action. Legal pluralism is a framework for reconciling customary ways of being in environments with statutory forms of governance. The Western legislator often depreciates “the soul of the land”. This brings social conflicts, misunderstandings, and personal pain. Traditionally, in indigenous cosmologies, lands are both material and spiritual entities, both nature and divinity. These places are special in every possible sense. The framework of legal pluralism and cultural ecology proposes that local spiritual practices can be respected by reconciling statutory legislation with customary law, a step towards inclusive protection of cultural heritage. Indigenous or “pagan” sacred places should be “protected” in the same way as e.g. Christian sacred places (or sacred places of other religions), and this involves rethinking the relationships between traditional practices, their linguistic and behavioural expressions, and dominant hegemonies and ideologies.

Researcher

Ayonghe Akonwi is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Forest Science, University of Helsinki. He is currently pursuing a research project within the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science entitled ‘Future ‘Ecotopias’ of Sustainability in Nordic Forests Systems’. He uses Ernest Callenbach’s ‘ecotopia’ concept to examine different perceptions about a near-utopian future of using ecologically balanced principles in sustaining people’s relations with forests. He has also worked with indigenous people and their connection to protected forests in the past years of conducting his doctoral research and has continued to explore these issues. For instance, his ethnographic work with people of the Mount Cameroon National Park in Sub-Saharan West Africa illustrates the agency of indigenous residents and persistence in their ways of knowing the land in a National Park. More recently, he has worked closely with colleagues from Lund University, Copenhagen University, and the University of Helsinki, within the project GreenPole to assess forest policy outcomes over the last two-three decades in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. He also engages his research with anthropological insights to evaluating Nordic Forest Policies.
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Researcher

Åsa Andersson Martti is a researcher and Master’s student in the History of Religions at the University of Gävle (HiG). She is an Indigenous Sámi and Tornedalian artist, traditional healer, and academic researcher based in Kiruna, the northernmost town in Swedish Sápmi. Due to expanding mining operations for rare earth minerals, Kiruna as a town is undergoing relocation, dismantling, and reconstruction. Åsa´s research examines the existential, spiritual, and emotional health aspects of utilitarianism and technological applications related to extractivism and colonialism, focusing on how industries, stakeholders, and politicians address the voices of people, places, and more-than-human entities.

Additionally, Åsa is the founder of the historical and animistic pilgrim trail, the Sámi Trail of Tears, inspired by her mother´s childhood memories from the village of Lainio during the state´s forced dislocation of the North Sámi people, understanding the landscape as a living archive.

Researcher

I started my academic career as a linguist, then became an educator. I spent my professional life pursuing the inclusion of minorities within mainstream education. I have rediscovered my roots in language and am beginning to understand that ‘indigenous’ is about the way we ‘language’ our world. ‘To Language’ is a verb. I cannot render my Grandmother into glue, but I can reduce a mountain to obtain a tonne of lithium. I language my Grandmother as venerable. If I language mountains, as sacred spaces then I cannot reduce them. ‘Languaging mountains’ is the same as ‘languaging’ children (people, culture, histories) who are different. Indigenous languages do strange things -one they challenge a hegemonic (western) world view; secondly they produce a (grammatical) connection with the world that may offer hope against alienating minorities and an inexorable destruction of the planet.

Researcher

Romona Bennett is Guyanese, of Lokono-Arawak heritage and she currently works in the Department of Language and Cultural Studies at the University of Guyana. She completed her PhD in English at the University of Leicester in 2022. Her PhD research focuses on representations of Indigenous women in cultural texts set in Guyana from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. While her background is in Literature, her PhD and current research are influenced by Indigenous studies, including Indigenous feminism. Her research interests include postcolonial literature, especially Caribbean and Guyanese literatures; decolonising the curriculum; Indigenous Guyanese heritage and culture, such as the safeguarding and preservation of Indigenous languages; Indigenous Guyanese history; social justice for Indigenous Peoples, especially in Guyana. She has a special interest in research that focuses on education for Indigenous Guyanese children, particularly at the secondary level. Romona also has a passion for archival work, and enjoys rummaging through old diaries, letters, photographs, museum collections and anything of interest. Romona has worked on collaborative projects with the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research (SDCELAR) at the British Museum, and her work appears in SDCELAR publications, including in Mapping a New Museum (Routledge, 2021). She has also published in the Victorian Studies journal in a forum on ‘Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom’.

Associate Professor

Dawid Bunikowski holds a PhD from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland (2009), and resides in North Karelia, eastern Finland. Dr Bunikowski is an Associate Member of the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford (www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk). He is an Associate with the Centre for Law and Religion, Cardiff University. He serves as a Professor (Law) at the State University of Applied Sciences in Wloclawek (Poland) and a Visiting Lecturer in the University of Eastern Finland School of Theology. He is also a part-time Lecturer at the University of Guyana (Department of Law) and Karelia University of Applied Sciences (Finland). He was granted the Docent title in the philosophy of law in the Arctic (by the Rector of the University of Lapland on the request of the Arctic Centre; Finland). For example, he was also a Visiting Professor at Carleton University (Department of Law and Legal Studies, Ottawa, Canada) and a Visiting Scholar at Cardiff University (School of Law and Politics, UK). He was a Postdoctoral Researcher (Law) at the University of Eastern Finland. Before he had been a Vice Dean and an Assistant Professor in Torun School of Banking as well as granted ministerial awards for an “outstanding young scholar” in his native Poland. He works on legal philosophy, ethics, law and religion, legal pluralism, Arctic indigenous rights, Nordic welfare state and migration, and other issues like law and language, etc.
His recent publications include: 1) “Philosophies of Polar Law”, ed. D. Bunikowski, A.D. Hemmings, Routledge 2021, 2) (with A. Szpak) “Saami truth and reconciliation commissions”, International Journal of Human Rights, 2022, vol. 26, issue 2; 3) “Why Religion? Towards a Critical Philosophy of Law, Peace and God”, ed. D. Bunikowski, A. Puppo, Springer 2020; 4) “Immigration and the Survival of Nordic Welfare State: Can the Welfare State Survive in the Time of the Last Refugee Crisis?”, in: “How to Deal with Refugees? Europe as a Continent of Dreams”, ed. G. Besier, K. Stoklosa, Berlin 2018.

Researcher

Born and in Aarbortsne, Hattfjelldal, in the South Sámi part of Saepmie, Hege Dalen returned to her ancestral home 30 years ago to take over her grandparents’ farm after a career as a marketing manager and years living as a “western Nomad”. Since 2018, she has worked as an independent researcher and author in art history, focusing on amplifying the impact of Indigenous knowledge in society, particularly through the intersection of science, art, and spirituality—fields she recognizes as fertile grounds for innovation and knowledge creation.

In 2024, she completed a Master’s Thesis in Art History at the Arctic University of Tromsø (UiT) titled “Spirituality in Saepmie: Recovering Indigenous Belonging and Identity.” Her research examines the creative processes of multimedia artists Sissel M. Bergh (Saepmie) and Bodil Mette Louise Amalie Fontain (Kalaallit Nunaat), drawing on Indigenous methodologies.  Personally, Dalen’s journey to reclaim her lost Sámi identity has profoundly influenced her work, combining deep research with a personal connection to Sámi culture and spirituality.

Emertius Professor, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Exeter, formerly Professor in the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Eastern Finland.

My first degree is in biology, and my early research was in human impacts on ecological systems. This involved studying changing patterns of land-use, and was the subject of my PhD in environmental history. My involvement in teaching drew my attention to social and educational systems. This has led to work on how people experience the world and how they come to understand it. The common theme through this research is how people engage with the resources, affordances and constraints of the environments in which they live, work and learn. I call these patterns of engagement ‘cultural ecologies’, and an account of the research will be published by Routledge in 2025 in Cultural Ecologies of the Land. A restless dynamic of people and place.

As well as jointly editing Sacred Places in the Arctic and Beyond, with Francis Joy and Dawid Bunikowski, I am contributing a chapter on the Uffington White Horse in the UK. This is a huge piece of land art, built about three and a half thousand years ago into a hillside. Current archaeological thinking is that the figure is a sun-horse image, tracking the passage of the sun through the sky, reflecting what would now be termed an ‘animistic’ worldview. What is remarkable about the place is its survival. The shape of the horse must be renewed every decade otherwise it will overgrow with vegetation. This renewal has happened over about 100 generations, during which the original sacred context has transitioned into cultural heritage.
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Researcher

Francis Joy is a visiting post-doctoral researcher from the United Kingdom, currently working as a member of the Arctic Anthropology Research Team at the University of Lapland Arctic Centre. The focus for research has been an extensive study of Sámi religion, history, culture and traditions in different settings which includes beliefs, practices and cultural heritage. Furthermore, within the research field a study of sacred sites, prehistoric rock paintings in Finland and what appear as links between cosmological landscapes on sacred Sámi drums from the seventeenth century has been another topic of enquiry and subsequent investigation. Data and materials from these fields of enquiry have been presented in Siberia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. Francis has also published three books of poetry and is currently engaged in a two-year funded research project in a study titled: Gifts from the Sentient Forest: Communication and Collaboration between Trees and People in Northen Finland.

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Law Professor

Dr. René Kuppe is a retired law professor from the University of Vienna/Austria, whose academic work is concentrated on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, with a focus on Indigenous legal philosophies; Indigenous legal systems; protection of traditional Indigenous beliefs and religions; and sustainable development and Indigenous Peoples.

He has been involved in international law practice and legal policy work related to Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including work on the development of Indigenous autonomy arrangements and jurisdiction systems in Latin America, demarcation of Indigenous territories in Venezuela, and promoting the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ property systems in the Arctic. In January 2022 he became a Baoard Member of the international human rights organization IWGIA.

Researcher

Roza Laptander is a sociolinguist and linguistic anthropologist. Her research interests are based on documentation of the Nenets language and spoken history of the Western Siberian nomadic Nenets. In her works she explains why the elders’ memories about the past are important for the young generation of the Nenets people and describes different roles of silence and silencing in the Nenets culture, offering a new approach to understanding how small indigenous societies keep memories and stories about their past and present life in the Arctic. Additionally, she describes how tundra people talk about contemporary changes in the Yamal tundra, impacts of recent changes in climate and weather on the Nenets’ traditional way of life in the tundra and their work with reindeer. Laptander holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Lapland.

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Melissa K. Nelson Ph.D. is an Indigenous ecologist and award-winning scholar-activist and media-maker. She is a professor of Indigenous Sustainability at Arizona State University (ASU) and Professor Emerita of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University. She is the founding executive director of The Cultural Conservancy (TCC), a Native-led organization she directed from 1993 to 2021, and currently serves as their board chair. Her work is dedicated to indigenous rights, protecting biocultural heritage and Indigenous food systems, elevating Indigenous knowledges and land stewardship, and renewing community health and cultural arts through higher education, activism, and philanthropy. She is the co-founder and leader of the  Global Future Laboratory’s Indigenous Knowledges Focal Area at ASU and Principal Investigator for a National Science Foundation grant focused on Racial Equity in STEM.

Dr. Nelson’s research examines the epistemological roots of the global polycrisis and Indigenous strategies for regeneration, including land rematriation and other forms of Indigenous-led conservation. Her edited publications include Original Instructions – Indigenous Teachings for A Sustainable Future (2008), Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability (2018), and What Kind of Ancestor do you want to be? (University of Chicago Press (2021).  Melissa writes for public and academic audiences and hosts and produces the Native Seed Pod podcast. She is the Bundle Holder and President of the Native American Academy and serves on the boards of the California Academy of Science, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and Sogorea Te Land Trust.  Her work has been featured at UNESCO, the National Museum of the American Indian, and by PBS, BBC, and others.   Melissa is Anishinaabe, Métis, and Norwegian and is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.