Boston Flora

Tag: Wabanaki

  • Saturday, November 16, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm – Regional Impact Award Presentation and Talk

    The Native Plant Trust is pleased that Dr. John Daigle, a tribal member of the Penobscot Indian Nation, professor of Forest Recreation Management, and a program leader for the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism program at the University of Maine, will accept Native Plant Trust’s 2024 Regional Impact Award. The award recognizes individuals or organizations for regionally significant leadership and achievement in conservation, horticulture, or education. Director of Conservation Michael Piantedosi nominated Daigle for his role in the Ash Protection Collaboration Across Wabanakik, whose mission is to center, protect, and restore the sacred relationship between Wabanaki peoples and ash ecosystems. In Wabanaki culture, brown (aka black) ash (Fraxinus nigra) appears in the creation story and provides an important basket-making material.

    Daigle and his research team collaborate with Wabanaki tribal partners, the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, Brown Ash Task Force, private landowners, and others in order to manage and protect brown ash from destruction by the emerald ash borer. This project exemplifies Daigle’s ongoing efforts to facilitate conversations among individuals who bring unique ways of knowing to a common ecological question.

    Dr. Daigle will deliver a talk following his acceptance of the award. Please join us to celebrate Dr. Daigle and learn more about his research to protect brown ash. The event takes place November 16 at 3:30 in the Commonwealth Salon Community Room, Boston Public Library Main Branch, Boylston Street, Boston. Free, but registration required at https://www.nativeplanttrust.org/events/regional-impact-award-presentation-and-talk/

  • Tuesday, November 18, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm – Protecting the Ash Tree: Wabanaki Diplomacy and Sustainability Science in Maine

    Brown ash trees sustain the ancestral basket-making traditions of the Wabanaki people of Maine and play a key role in their creation myths. These trees are now threatened by the emerald ash borer, a beetle that has already killed millions of ash trees in the eastern United States. Wabanaki tribes and basket makers (see basket image below from Hood Museum at Dartmouth) have joined forces with foresters, university researchers, and landowners to develop and deploy actions aimed at preventing an invasion by this insect. Anthropologist Darren Ranco, PhD, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of Native American Research, University of Maine discusses how the stakeholders involved in this interdisciplinary effort are making use of sustainability science and drawing from Wabanaki forms of diplomacy to influence state and federal responses to the emerald ash borer, and prevent the demise of the ash trees that are so central to Wabanaki culture. The program will take place on Tuesday, November 18, from 7 – 8 at the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street in Cambridge, and is sponsored by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, in collaboration with the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Visit the exhibits in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museum of Natural History, open for special evening hours following the lecture. Free event parking is available at the 52 Oxford Street Garage. Free and open to the public.