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the ocean by coastal tribes, or from salty interior get along. I found out later by my older sister California
lakes, as it was from Owens Lake by the Paiutes. that Mother wasn't just talking about Indians,
1
but the plants, animals, birds — everything on Indians
INDIGENOUS this earth. They are our relatives and we better depended
LAND STEWARDSHIP VALUES know how to act around them or they'll get after on biological
California Indians depended on biologi- us.”
cal diversity and continued abundance in the diversity and
landscape to meet their needs. They developed M. Kat Anderson, PhD, has been working with continued

a management system that provided for and and learning from California's Native Ameri- abundance in
maintained the health of the ecosystem that they cans for over twenty-five years and is author of
so fully engaged in, through a moral and ethi- Tending the Wild. She will be a speaker at Wise the landscape
cal cultural value system that saw participation Traditions 2012. to meet their
with and responsibility for nature as relationship needs.
with kin. Enrique Salmón, Rarámuri, used the Jennifer House has been practicing indigenous
term kincentric to describe this indigenous value management of her organic farm in Northern
system. California for the last several decades. She will
9
This Native American kincentric approach, be a speaker at Wise Traditions 2012 including
immersed in and committed to participation, is a demonstration of acorn preparation.
expressed when elders respond to the question,
“Why have all the plants gone?” with “Because REFERENCES
people don't use them anymore.” 1. Thomas Jefferson Mayfield, Indian Summer: Traditional
Life among the Choinumne Indians of California's San
This kincentric view, one of interaction Joaquin Valley, Heyday Books, 1993.
and responsible treatment of other species, can 2. M. Kat Anderson, Tending the Wild: Native American
be contrasted with an anthropocentric view, Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural
Resources, University of California Press, 2005.
the dominant Western model, in which nature 3. M. Kat Anderson and Eric Wohlgemuth, “California In-
is seen as a resource stockpile to be mined or dian Proto-Agriculture: Its Characterization and Legacy,”
Biodiversity in Agriculture: Domestication, Evolution,
extracted, and again contrasted with a biocentric and Sustainability, Paul Gepts et al. (editors), Cambridge
view in which nature is seen as existing for its University Press, 2012, pages 190-224.
own sake, expressed by the American wilder- 4. Margaret Dubin and Sara-Larus Tolley, Seaweed,
Salmon, and Manzanita Cider: A California Indian Feast,
ness movement, which arose in reaction to the Heyday Books, 2008.
destructiveness of the anthropocentric approach. 5. Samuel A. Barrett and Edward W. Gifford, 1933 “Miwok
Material Culture,” Bulletin of the Public Museum of the
The indigenous kincentric approach is rela- City of Milwaukee 2(4):117-376.
tionship-based; by its very nature it is based on 6. Catherine Holt, “Shasta Ethnography,” Anthropological
directly available knowledge, and leads in time 7. Records 3:4, page 309.
Thomas R. Garth, “Atsugewi Ethnography,” Anthro-
to a deep and intimate understanding, respect pological Records 14(2):129-213, 1953.; Edward W.
and obligations for the landscape and all its par- Gifford, “The Coast Yuki,” Sacramento Anthropologi-
cal Society Papers 2, Sacramento State College, 1965.;
ticipants. Mihilakawna Pomo elder Lucy Smith, Frank J. Essene, “Cultural Element Distributions: XXI
recalling her mother's teachings, describes this Round Valley,” Anthropological Records 8:1 University
culturally supported learning process, “[She 8. of California Press, 1942, page 1-97.
Gladys Ayer Nomland, “Sinkyone Notes,” University
said] we had many relatives and, . . we all had of California Publications in American Archeology and
to live together, so we'd better learn how to get 9. Ethnology 36(2), page 153.
Enrique Salmón, “Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous Per-
along with each other. She said it wasn't too hard ceptions of the Human-Nature Relationship,” Ecological
to do. It was just like taking care of your younger Applications 10(5):1327-32.
brother or sister. You got to know them, find out
what they liked and what made them cry so you'd
know what to do. If you took good care of them
you didn't have to work as hard. When the baby
gets to be a man or woman they're going to help
you out. You know, I thought she was talking
about us Indians and how we are supposed to
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