Ecological Incentives for Reestablishing Indigenous Influences in Northeastern Forests

Smoke visible via run rays through a forest canopyWritten by John J. Scanlon

There are many good reasons to support the emerging global and regional emphasis on sustainable forestry.1 The ecological benefit to be gained from bringing back historical Indigenous practices to the forested landscape is not typically viewed as one of these reasons.2 It should be.

A straightforward definition of Sustainable Forestry is provided by The Rainforest Alliance, which co-founded the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 1993 (an international body that develops and maintains a globally respected standard for managing forests and forestry businesses that meet strict environmental, social, and economic criteria3): “The complete answer is complex, but if we had to reduce it to one word, it would be ‘balance’. The hallmark of sustainable forestry, from a purely ecological perspective, is the extent to which forestry practices mimic natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration. Sustainable forestry balances the needs of the environment, wildlife, and forest communities—supporting decent incomes while conserving our forests for future generations.3″

The key phrase here is “…the extent to which forestry practices mimic natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration.” What are these natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration in Northeastern forests?

We typically think of processes like flooding, wind, insect infestation, and fire as natural disturbances that have historically influenced our forests, but Indigenous activities such as shifting agriculture, hunting and gathering, and dwelling construction have also impacted Northeastern forests for as long as there have been Northeastern forests.

The Historic Range of Variation (HRV) for Natural Disturbance Processes
During the early 1990’s, a relatively new concept of historical range and variation (HRV), started to be described by patterns of forest disturbance and regeneration. This brought understanding of past spatial and temporal fluctuations into natural resource management. The HRV describes the change over time and space in the ecological condition of natural vegetation (natural community) types (4) and the ecological processes that shape those plant communities. The concept of HRV assumes that historical variation represents the broad envelope of conditions that supports landscape resilience and its self-organizing capacity. The HRV of natural disturbance patch area can be used to design the size and landscape location for harvesting operations that mimic natural patch characteristics)4.

A map of ecoregions types in the Northeast U.S.HRV tends to change noticeably by broad ecological regions. Our Northeastern forests contain two major ecoregions: 1) Northern Forests (Beech, Birch, Maple, Spruce, and Fir); and 2) Eastern Temperate Forests (Oak, Hickory, and Pine), (Fig. 1)5. Natural disturbance patch frequency tends to be relatively high, but patch size tends to be relatively small in Northern Forests (e.g., ice storm damage each winter that opens forest canopy gaps of 0.1 – 0.25 acres), while patch frequency is typically lower but patch size is typically larger in Eastern Temperate Forests (e.g., microburst wind damage once or twice per decade that opens forest canopy gaps of from 0.25 – 1.5 acres).6

Disturbance Patch Size and Frequency of Indigenous Activities
Local disturbance impacts of many Indigenous activities seem to fit comfortably within the relatively high patch frequency and limited patch areas associated with Northeastern Ecoregion Types. For example, activities such as seasonal dwelling (wetu) construction (which used cut tree saplings set in the ground, bent together, fastened with vines and inner bark rope, and then covered with bark or mats made of reeds), hunting and gathering (which typically used bows and arrows fashioned of tree saplings and knives fashioned from animal bone or antler), tools and technology (such as snowshoes and birch bark canoe construction), and clothing fabrication (primarily of white-tailed deer hides and fur of beaver and otter decorated with porcupine quills, feathers, shells, and naturally sourced paint), and cultural customs involving music and dance), all occurred frequently but tended to impact only small patch areas at any one time. Indigenous activities like shifting agriculture and prescribed burning may well have impacted larger patch areas, with burning in pine barrens communities within the Eastern Temperate Forest Ecoregion Type potentially affecting patch areas of multiple acres.

The Land Ethic as a Rediscovery of Indigenous Ethos
Like many natural resource advocates of my generation, I have read Aldo Leopold’s ‘A Sand County Almanac’ multiple times – originally in 1970 after participating in the first Earth Day activities. And while I have always taken Leopold’s famous “Cogs and Wheels” quote to heart, I failed to recognize the full scope of that concept until very recently.

Quote by Aldo Leopold: "The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."Likewise, I have always interpreted Leopold’s “land mechanism” to primarily include plants, wildlife, climate, and ecological processes such as water, nutrient, and energy cycling. But I never understood until now that the “land mechanism” in Northeastern forests inherently include people as well. I do not know if (but do not think that) Leopold saw it that way, but the fact is that Indigenous people have lived intimately with Northeastern forests as long as there have been Northeastern forests. It is not simply that Indigenous people lived in the forest – Indigenous people were and are of the forest, seeing themselves and their community as direct blood relatives of all the plants, animals, waters, rocks, and earth they share their ancestral forested environment with.

Leopold contended that “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect7.” This was a bold new concept to descendants of colonizers in 1949 when A Sand County Almanac was published, but it was how Indigenous cultures of Northeastern forests had always seen the earth. I am exceedingly grateful to Aldo Leopold for his writings and will continue to enjoy them but have now come to see that colonial descendants like Leopold (and myself) were a little late to come to the land ethic party that has been celebrated continuously by Indigenous people for millennia. In January of 2021, Leopold biographer Curt Meine noted that “While Leopold did not explicitly recognize how the impacts of land exploitation fell disproportionately on the poor and on Black and Indigenous people and people of color, he came to believe that Western ethical frameworks had to expand to embrace land8.” Dr. Joshua D. Bellin, Associate Professor of English at La Roche College notes that “During his nearly fifteen years in the American southwest, Aldo Leopold came into contact with diverse Native individuals, cultures, and land-use issues. Though Leopold makes no explicit reference to how these contacts may have shaped his development as a conservationist and ethicist, contemporary scholars have begun to examine the relationship between Leopold’s culminating vision of a land ethic and the comparable visions traditionally expressed by Indigenous peoples9.”

Centuries of Indigenous activities like shifting agriculture, prescribed burning, seasonal dwelling construction, hunting and gathering, tools and technology, clothing fabrication, and cultural customs involving music and dance had perhaps unobtrusive but nonetheless consistent impacts on our Northeastern forests over time. If we want to practice sustainable forestry today and realize the ecological benefits of having the full range of natural disturbance processes influence our 21st century Northeastern forests, we need to reestablish the Indigenous influences that were brutally ended by colonization during the 1600’s and early 1700’s.

Photo of members of Eastern Band of Cherokee and oak treesHow Can We Reestablish Historic Indigenous influences in Northeastern Forests?
First and foremost, we should bring local Indigenous people to the table when considering land management goals and objectives for public lands. Second, we could expand or establish Stewardship Councils at the state and/or local level to encourage discussions between local Indigenous people and willing private forest landowners. Initial dialogues could be awkward and even difficult, but it is the right thing to do and is consistent with at least two major recent reports on the critically beneficial roles Indigenous peoples and Traditional Knowledge can play in forest restoration and conservation.10-11

Thankfully, some initial efforts to reestablish Indigenous influences in Northeastern forests are already underway on some public and private forestlands. Examples include involvement by Nipmuc people with forest management planning and harvesting activities on Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust properties in north-central Massachusetts12, interactions between the Nipmuc Nation and Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA13, cooperative efforts in prescribed burning between the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife Biodiversity Initiative and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in southeastern Massachusetts14, and incorporation of Traditional Knowledge in fostering resiliency to climate change15-16.

In addition, Nipmuc citizens are also working with state and local officials on collection of Atlantic white cedar from public lands for ceremonial purposes. However, problems remain as exemplified by a confrontation in 2023 between Nipmuc citizens collecting Atlantic white cedar from town lands in Natick, MA and local police17. Nipmuc citizens engaged in the collection had secured permission from the Natick Conservation Commission, but that permission had not been communicated to local residents or to the police.

My hope is that our Northeastern forest community of public and private landowners will collectively engage with and expand on-going efforts to reestablish Indigenous influences throughout our forests.

References
1. Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). 2024. What is Sustainable Forestry? Practices and Benefits.
2. Dockery, M. 2021. Learning from the Indigenous Roots of Sustainable Forestry in the USA: Promoting Sustainability, Community Healing, and Partnerships. 
3. Rainforest Alliance. 2016. What is Sustainable Forestry?
4. Keane, R.E., Hessburg, P.F., Landres, P.B., and Swanson, F.J. 2009. The Use of Historical Range and Variability (HRV) in Landscape Management. Forest Ecology and Management. 258(2009)1025–037.
5. Environmental Protection Agency (EPD). 2006. Ecoregional Regions of North America.
6. Lorimer, C.G. and White, A.S. 2003. Scale and frequency of natural disturbances in the northeastern US: implications for early successional forest habitats and regional age distributions. Forest Ecology and Management. Volume 185, Issues 1–2, 3 November 2003, Pages 41-64.
7. The Aldo Leopold Foundation. 2024. The Land Ethic: Uniting Ecology and Ethics by Living in Community with the Land. 
8. Meine, C. 2021. Aldo Leopold’s Call for a ‘Land Ethic’ is Still Needed. Trellis.
9. Bellin, J.D. 2011. Aldo Leopold, Native Americans, and the Land Ethic.
10. Dawson, N. M., B. Coolsaet, E. J. Sterling, R. Loveridge, N. D. Gross-Camp, S. Wongbusarakum, K. K. Sangha, L. M. Scherl, H. Phuong Phan, N. Zafra-Calvo, W. G. Lavey, P. Byakagaba, C. J. Idrobo, A. Chenet, N. J. Bennett, S. Mansourian, and F. J. Rosado-May. 2021. The role of Indigenous peoples and local communities in effective and equitable conservation. Ecology and Society 26(3):19.
11. Eisenberg, C., Prichard, S., Nelson, P., and Hessburg, P. 2024 Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge for Climate-Adapted Forests: An Ecocultural State of Science Report. Univ. of Washington.
12. Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust. 2023. Cultivating Kinship in Forest Stewardship. 
13. Harvard Forest. 2023. Indigenous Community Partnerships.
14. Town of Mashpee. 2022. Prescribed Burn in Mashpee Pine Barrens. 
15. Massachusetts Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC). 2023. Rooted in Nature: Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Resiliency.
16. Carr, J. 2024. Conservation and Community: Indigenous Land Management in Massachusetts. MassEnergize.
17. Natick Report. 2023. Natick vows changes following ‘really unfortunate incident’ involving Nipmuc tree harvesting.