The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teaching for Sustainable Living

by Nancy J. Turner

Book by Turner, Nancy J.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous, Nature, History, Anthropology

298 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Nancy Turner is an ethnobotanist whose research integrates the fields of botany and ecology with anthropology, geography and linguistics, among others. She is interested in the traditional knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of Indigenous Peoples, particularly in western Canada.

Reviews

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indigenous Ecosystems 101...

Preamble:
--January 2025: with the capitalist media covering the upcoming Trump circus and the ongoing Los Angeles fires, I’m reminded of another book's title: We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope
…Beyond survival, what can we learn from societies nurturing and living within their ecosystems?
--Robin Wall Kimmerer has found success popularizing a synthesis of environmental sciences re-discovering indigenous knowledge in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013). Recently, Kimmerer has also touched on the social world (capitalism vs. gift economy) in The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024).
--Nancy Turner (who taught at my alma mater) provides a more-structured (yet still accessible) overview of how indigenous science and culture nurture ecosystems, demonstrating how indigenous rights/knowledge are foundational to ecocultural restoration.
…As our Mother Earth rapidly sickens amidst record quarterly profits, it’s time we rediscover common sense and rebuild our value system. As Kimmerer writes: “We restore the land, and the land restores us”…

Highlights:

1) Humans within Nature:
--Turner, an ethnobiologist, starts with her science lens to describe the material conditions of British Columbia (a laughably colonial name), Canada, to explain how this province’s natural environment is that of change/diversity due to forces of geology/geography/climate, esp. from glaciation.
--Thus, the indigenous inhabitants have survived and thrived due to diverse adaptation; with Turner’s anthropology lens, we can start with the 3 “Culture Areas”: Northwest Coast, Plateau, and Subarctic.
--Crucially, the following distinction is made:
a) Untouched nature:
--European colonizers viewed the environment as separate, thus assumed indigenous peoples provided no labour to co-create the ecosystems.
--Note: we can dig deeper to John Locke’s (“father of liberalism”/Enlightenment) “labour theory of property” on how property originates from labour put into natural resources. Given the above assumptions, this conveniently justified colonial dispossession.
b) Caretaker/Stewardship:
…“Being keen and vigilant observers, scientists in the broadest sense of the word, indigenous peoples have not only used the resources around them but maintained and enhanced them in various ways.”
…“Her people understood these ecological connections long before ecology was a recognized science.”
--As active participants in the ecosystem, indigenous societies didn’t just develop skills but also sensitivity and value for the ecosystem’s interconnections. I really appreciate how Turner provides concrete structures/examples:
i) Burning:
--This is a dire topic as today’s uncontrolled fires increasingly threaten settler colonial countries.
--Previously, indigenous stewardship leveraged the use of controlled burning from understanding nature’s cycles (which indeed includes fires, where destruction is controlled by diversity’s resilience, providing opportunities for regeneration: ex. seeds adapted to fires) to co-create a mosaic of diverse ecosystems (new growth/new pastures for grazing, etc.).
--Since colonization, forest ecosystems are manufactured for monocrops (i.e. timber, lacking diversity’s natural firebreaks), with natural fires suppressed and indigenous burning banned; thus, colonization has manufactured a continental tinderbox (incredibly high fuel load). Fires are now prone to becoming uncontrollable, occurring during the hottest/driest times, destructively burning off organic material in the soil and jumping into tree crowns.
ii) Harvesting:
--Unlike crude assumptions of “hunting-gathering”, this involved much more care/labour than just picking berries. Indeed, science is rediscovering this with the field of agroecology, given our biodiversity crisis and destructive industrial agriculture. I’m eager to read Nature's Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty. Turner writes:

Anthropologist Eugene Anderson, in his book Ecologies of the Heart, points out that Northwest Coast peoples had the technologies, in the form of fish traps, nets and weirs, to completely eliminate the thousands of individual stocks of salmon in creeks and rivers up and down the coast. Yet when the Europeans arrived they found thriving populations of all of the different salmon species everywhere they looked. Not destroying the salmon populations was a conscious choice—borne out in careful observation and practice and sometimes encoded in ceremony and social sanctions—to ensure that enough salmon returned to spawn each year.

2) Rooted Cultures:
--Despite modern science rediscovering indigenous knowledge, how do we encode this knowledge into our culture (i.e. value system)? Let’s contrast:
a) Capitalism:
--The environment has no value (market “exchange-value”) until it is commodified (privatized/sold) to create capitalist wealth. See: Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
--Capitalism’s extreme division of labour has increasingly severed most of us from direct socioecological relations. This dislocation is also at the root of addiction:
-The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
-The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit
--Turner also mentions Western tales of pre-industrial Europe: “In fact, most of the fairy tales taught me that the woods and forests are scary and unfriendly places for people to be, that they are full of fierce, wild animals and dangerous witches
…Note: to unpack this one-liner, we can start with materialist anthropology on how societies better harmonized with nature’s abundance have positive depictions of nature and vice versa. I’d be curious to unpack the stories of heretic/pagan movements, etc.: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
b) Reciprocal Socioecological Relations:
--Active and direct observers/participants with ecosystems have increased sensitivity to interconnections and their part in Earth’s wealth. This is encoded in their culture’s value system through:
i) Stories:
--Rooted to local settings (rooted to place) and encoded with land ethics.
--Kin-centric stories use personification (human traits) metaphors (elsewhere called animism) for all members of the eco-system (animals/plants/non-living).
--Origins stories can feature no distinctions between humans/animals (indeed, transformations), where animals teach humans and sacrifices were made to provide nature’s gifts which need to be cared for. Every member of the “society of beings all around us” have unique talents to contribute. Mocking nature can lead to disasters.
--Quoting James Teit, ethnographer who studied Nlaka’pmx:

Flowers are the valuables of the earth […] Flowers, plants & grass especially the latter are the covering or blanket of the earth. If too much plucked or ruthlessly destroyed [the] earth [is] sorry and weeps. It rains or is angry and makes rain, fog & bad weather.

ii) Ceremonies/Rituals/Protocols/Sanctions/Taboos:
--These cultural practices (practicing recognition, respect, responsibilities, reciprocity) include potlatches, training for transitions to adulthood, sacred areas, first food ceremonies, protocols for gathering medicine, etc.
--Turner highlights the importance of elders time with youth to pass on their experiences, the use of local languages, ownership of intact hereditary territories, etc. All of these have been directly attacked by colonization (ex. residential schools).

…see comments below for rest of the review…

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an astonishingly lovely read.

[Dominic Piacentini · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is ... fine. If feels a bit like an outdated anthropology - an anthro and her natives. Although at times, the author expands beyond her descriptions of sustainable living practices to address the unsustainable foundations of EuroWestern colonialism, it still manages to feel remarkably apolitical and uncritical. Rootedness is one of Turner's principals of sustainable living, but this book doesn't feel rooted at all, moving around culturally and geographically as she presents all the wisdom she's collected over the course of her career. Skip this and read Braiding Sweetgrass instead. It's leagues better.

[Seneca]

Read for my Ethnobotany class. I enjoyed it thoroughly it was a great way for me to retain ethnobotanical knowledge through reading the stories connected to the original people of this part of the world.

[Bin Lev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nancy the goat

[Victoria Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is another installment of "vic's obsessed with trees" and I really really enjoyed it. Nancy J. Turner does a great job of writing about traditional Indegenious practices that have shaped the way BC's native lands have thrived for years, and the cultural importance around sustainable living.

I've read that a few critiques of her book urge readers to revisit novels written by actual Indigenous authors, which I don't disagree against, but I also want to acknowledge that Turner has been very vocal in her experience and ignorance as someone who did not grow up Indigenous and is only learning through the stories of others. I also think whats important (and also emphasized several times throughout the novel) is acknowledging that knowledge doesn't belong to any one person, nor should we deny others the ability to learn and speak about things that interest them. So yes - read Indigenous stories - but I think Turner does a great job of being respectful and giving credit to all the individuals she spoke with and taught her about their cultures and experiences.

Overall - really good read, not overly dense information wise, and easy to get through and learn from. I tend to write notes a lot in my books, and this one had me annotating passages left and right.

[Luce Cronin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much knowledge packed into this book. The author is an ethnobotanist and she shows the reader all the intricacies and interconnectedness of all life on the planet. She gives the following suggestions to help the Earth; human beings need to live within nature, not outside of it; cultures must be deeply rooted within individuals; elders' wisdom and experience must be honoured and heeded; youth must be educated to the needs of the planet; local languages must be preserved as a guarantor of culture; communities mus recognize relationships with ceremonies; patience and persistence - go slow, and make no mistakes. There is so much to think about in each paragraph of this book.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. So well-written. I appreciated how tidily Turner ties up all introduced concepts at the end - this strong conclusion is a component I have found lacking in many of the other books I have read as of late. I appreciated her immediate acknowledgement of the many contributors to this body of work. This book takes many of the same principles and world views introduced in the now-popular book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and explains them in a deeper way with more examples and primary accounts. Would recommend this book as well as Kimmerer’s work to anyone.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating compilation of stories, philosophy and beliefs that evoked a stronger sense of place than I had acknowledged I possessed. An optomistic plea for return to respecting and connecting with our local environment.
“I believe that wealth—real wealth— is found among people who have a sound sense of their place in the world, who link their actions and thoughts with those of others and who are strong, vigorous and co-operative actors in their communities and ecosystems.”

[else fine]

I want to love Nancy Turner. Her topics always interest me. But the writing is so boring! Why must I have no discipline?