PELLSTON, Mich. — “My name is Black Feather and I’m from the Little Traverse Bay Band here,” said Dr. Steven Naganashe Perry to the Ethnobotany class at the University of Michigan Biological Station in northern Michigan.
Perry is a guest lecturer who has been working for decades to ensure that Native traditions, history, culture, art and the language (Anishinaabemowin) are preserved.
He joined UMBS students during the week of June 2 at the research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake, sharing stories and expertise surrounding the region’s plants, biodiversity and historical connections to native people in the region.
Perry introduced them to the four “sacred Native American plants”: cedar, sage, tobacco and sweet grass.
He taught them how to make birchbark medallions and hair ties, with sweetgrass sewn around the edges.
Students also learned to craft porcupine quill birchbark medallions from Jacob, Aspen and Yvonne Keshick, local Anishinaabe birch quill box artists.
“This is completely new to me,” said Colin Gregersen, a UMBS student who will be a senior in the fall at U-M studying ecology and evolutionary biology. “I’ve sewn many things in the past before but never actually with sinew or making things like this.”
Students in Dr. John Benedict’s Ethnobotany course spent the spring 2024 semester traveling around northern Michigan, too, learning all about the plants of this place.
“Ethnobotany is, as I think of it, the study of people and plants, and interactions that have evolved together,” said Isabella Shehab, teaching assistant for the Ethnobotany course during the spring 2024 term. “In our class, we think about the plants that are indigenous and native to Michigan, and also the people who have evolved and inhabited the land alongside them.”
On Thursday, May 30, the class visited the shores of Lake Huron at Cheboygan State Park, to explore the flora of dune ecosystems.
Over the four weeks of the course, students learned how to identify 59 different types of plants in the field along with memorizing specimens’ family, English name, Latin name, Anishinaabemowin name and botanical properties.
Beyond that, students learned plants’ traditional and contemporary uses by Indigenous people and examined the change in plant species in northern Michigan pre- and post- European contact.
“It’s really fascinating to combine culture and science, and science and art,” said Eva Bugnaski, a UMBS student in the Ethnobotany class who graduated from U-M in April with degrees in Program in the Environment (PitE) and German.
“We’re very lucky to bring in some Indigenous guests throughout our term, specifically from the Anishinaabe,” said Shehab, “and to learn some of their stories and their interactions with plants that really deepen the students’ understanding of these plants in this place, and the cultural and other related uses.”
“I’ve been taught how to do so many things in my life by my family. And one of the things they made me promise is that I had to pass it on,” Perry said. “If people in the Indian community don’t continue to teach those things, then they’re going to get lost.”
Ethnobotany students attended a natural dye workshop on Saturday, June 8, at Three Pines Studio and Gallery in Cross Village where they learned how to use indigo and walnut dyes and manipulate natural fabrics to create patterns using the Shibori method.
“The important thing about Ethnobotany is that you know not only what the plants are, but what the plants give, and what humans do to use them,” said Joann Condino, the owner and an artist at Three Pines Studio and Gallery in Cross Village, Michigan. “And that’s why I love having the students here. It gives them a different perspective.”
On Saturday, June 15, students spent the last day of class preparing a “Foraging Feast,” working with many of the plants that they learned about throughout the spring term.
“We get to bring people on campus together to celebrate the beauty of the plants and the ways that it's possible to use them,” Shehab said.
After spending all day cooking in the dormitory kitchen, the class and members of the wider UMBS community enjoyed the fruits of their labor, digging into a spread that included wild rice mushroom soup, sautéed sensitive ferns and cattails, ramp pesto and an assortment of teas foraged by students for their final class project.
“For our final project in Ethnobotany, we foraged for different medicinal teas around the area,” said Emmaline Allen, who studies environmental science and will be a junior in the fall at Oakland University. “And we made a little booklet called ‘Ethnobotanical Guide to Medicinal Teas of Northern Michigan.’”
Other final projects included baskets woven from cattails, a birdhouse made from foraged autumn olive branches, a painting created with foraged pigments, a booklet highlighting plants that the class learned and their look-alikes, and a first-aid kit made from local plants with medicinal properties.
All were on display at the Ethnobotany dinner, representing a culmination of everything learned by the students throughout the spring semester.
“There’s a lot of technicality in learning the plants and getting to know things in the ‘scientific way,’” Bugnaski said. “But I think the deepest and most important part for all of us is learning more about how the people here use these plants, and continue to use them for cultural reasons, and for art, and for spiritual purposes.”
Exploring northern Michigan’s incredible array of diverse plants and fungi through this lens allowed students to develop a deeper understanding of surrounding communities and ecosystems.
Watch the video and scroll down to view the photo gallery.
Founded in 1909, the U-M Biological Station is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
Laboratories and cabins are tucked into more than 10,000 acres along Douglas Lake to support long-term climate research and education.
