When you look at this photo what do you see? Chances are you will see exactly what I saw when I took it last summer.  A beautiful sunflower and the most enormous bee ever!  I am from BC and have never seen a bee as big as the ones here in Saskatchewan which was why I took this photo last year to show my family and friends back home.  After a year in Saskatchewan, I have grown accustomed to the ginormous bees, their return signifying the start of warmer weather.  But my shock at the size of the bees is not the only thing that has changed this year.  I have as well, partly because of the courses I have taken, specifically ESCI 302.  When I look at this photo now, that beautiful sunflower and huge bee are not all that I see.

I see the interconnectedness of nature.  The sunflower needs the bee for pollination to occur ensuring its survival in future years while the bee needs the sunflower for its pollen to make honey for its hive.  I also see a connection between the human and non-human world.  By planting that sunflower as a gardening project with my daughter, we have helped to provide food for that bee who, in turn, will use it to make honey not only for its hive, but for us as well and that bee will help our sunflower garden to return year after year.  The sunflower, bee and I have all worked together to care for our respective families.  I now see, just as Indigenous cultures have for centuries, how we are all connected in “cultures of reciprocity in which it is understood that the receipt of the gifts which sustain us engenders a moral and physical responsibility to reciprocate those gifts i.e., to sustain the ones who sustain us” (Kimmerer, 2012).

So how do we reciprocate those gifts?  Robin Wall Kimmerer tells us that the way we can reciprocate the gifts is by “healing the land and our relationship with it” (Virtual Talk: Robin Wall Kimmerer).  But how do we do that?  The earth is hurting and clearly the ways we have been doing things and how we have handled environmental education up until this point is not working.  Growing up as a child of the 80’s, environmental education wasn’t really a thing, so anything I learned or was taught about the environment came from my family, friends and the media, which aren’t always the most reliable sources for information.  Luckily “environmental education arose as a complex and vibrant field of practice and inquiry into the meanings, problems, and potentials of human-environment relationships, and the role of education in this respect.” (McBride et al., 2013). 

By incorporating environmental education into my classroom, I can provide students with the opportunity to view the world not just in terms of scientific ecological knowledge, but also with traditional ecological knowledge, something they may not have the opportunity to experience outside of school.   In Building ecoliteracy with traditional ecological knowledge: do. listen, and learn, Lam shares the idea of “four domains of essential ecoliteracy: concepts, competencies, sense of place and respect for other (diversity).  The first two align with knowledge and skills…whereas the latter two align with “affect” (or feelings) and morals often omitted in science and literacy.” (Lam, 2014).

Just introducing my students to environmental education though is not enough.  For them to really develop ecoliteracy which “comprises an awareness of and concern about the environment and its associated problems, as well as the knowledge, skills, and motivations to work toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones” (McBride et al., 2013), they will need to make meaningful connections to the concepts taught and the environment itself.  As environmental education educators, we need to provide students with educational opportunities that “nurture(s) children’s innate curiosity about the natural world, that fosters their understanding of the interconnectedness of all living and non-living things and instils in them an abiding sense of care and responsibility for the well-being of their communities and planet Earth.” (Chiarotto, 2011). 

It is through the development of ecoliteracy that our ecophilosophies emerge.  “The aim of ecophilosophy is ecosophy or ecological wisdom.  The practice of ecophilosophy is an ongoing, comprehensive, deep inquiry into values, the nature of the world and the self” (Drengson, 1999).  As I expanded my ecoliteracy this semester, I felt a strong connection to traditional ecological knowledge, specifically Indigenous ways of knowing.  The interconnectedness of the human and more than human world, the honourable harvest, the culture of gratitude and reciprocity, and the Seven Sacred Teachings all speak to me on a level that I find difficult to put into words or explain.  Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess may have explained it best when he described how “Everyone…has their own ecosophy, and though our personal philosophies may share important elements, they are based on norms and assumptions that are particular to each of us.”  (Environmental Encyclopedia, 2021).

The best chance we have to heal the land and our relationships with it is through planting the seeds of awareness, social responsibility and activism through environmental education.  “The environment is fundamental to the functioning of all global systems – economic, political, social, and cultural. Students are better able to grasp the relationship between the environment and these other facets of life when Environmental Education is integrated throughout their learning” (Chiarotto, 2011).  Developing the relationship with the environment at an early age which incorporates both scientific and traditional ecological knowledge and continuing to nurture that relationship throughout the educational journey will create adults who are in not only in tune with their ecological identity but are eco-literate and have strong ecophilosophies. 

In Virtual Talk: Robin Wall Kimmerer, we are told of how children today can identify 100 or more corporate logos, but they cannot identify leaves or plants.  Society needs to change our ways of thinking and our priorities.  The world, the land, the plants, the animals, they are not here solely for our consumption or as a commodity to be bought and sold.  As Kimmerer described, “we need to think of the world as a gift and being rather than property or things…when we view it as an object, our consumption is unconstrained” (Virtual Talk: Robin Wall Kimmerer).  We cannot afford to continue unconstrained.  We are already starting to see the real effects of our actions.  Glaciers are melting, global warming, water shortages, and yes even my giant bee friend is now finding himself in jeopardy.  While the human voices may be loud and at times and change may feel impossible, perhaps we need to take a little page from my friend the bee. 

“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. It’s wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible” (Bee Movie 2007).

References

Chiarotto, L. (2011). Natural curiosity: a resource for teachers: building children’s understanding of the world through environmental inquiry. The Laboratory School at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Retrieved from https://thelearningexchange.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NaturalCuriosityManual.pdf

Drengson, A. (1999). Ecophilosophy, the Deep Ecology Movement and Ecosophy. Ecocentrism . http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/DrengEcophil.html

Encyclopedia.com. (2021, June 11). .” Environmental Encyclopedia. . Encyclopedia.com. 2 Jun. 2021 . Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ecosophy

IMDb.com. (2007). Bee Movie. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389790/quotes/qt1057580 

Kimmerer, R. W. (2012). Searching for synergy: integrating traditional and scientific ecological knowledge in environmental science education. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(4), 317–323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-012-0091-y

 Lam, M. E. (2014). Building ecoliteracy with traditional ecological knowledge: do, listen, and learn. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12(4), 250–251. https://doi.org/10.1890/1540-9295-12.4.250

McBride, B. B., Brewer, C. A., Berkowitz, A. R., & Borrie, W. T. (2013). Environmental literacy, ecological literacy, ecoliteracy: What do we mean and how did we get here? Ecosphere, 4(5). https://doi.org/10.1890/es13-00075.1

Minneapolis Institute of Art. (n.d.).Virtual Talk: Robin Wall Kimmerer. Virtual Talk: Robin Wall Kimmerer –– Minneapolis Institute of Art. https://new.artsmia.org/event/virtual-talk-robin-wall-kimmerer/