Dr. Thom Alcoze relates easily to the forestry students at Cherokee High School. The half-Cherokee from Oklahoma is associate professor of Native American Ecological Restoration at Northern Arizona University.

Alcoze spoke to the forestry students last week about intern positions with NAU’s restoration program.

“If you’ll come study with me in Arizona in the winter, I’’ll get you a job in Cherokee country in the summer. We could create a Cherokee Ecology Team. I’m here to impress upon you that you can do this. Someone should be working on your land — it should be Cherokees,” Alcoze told the students.

Alcoze said the “paradise” of giant trees and abundant game early European explorers wrote so prolifically about were the result of centuries of Native American stewardship.

He said an elder in Canada where he was studying told him of a prophecy that states there would be a time when the four races of human beings would come to Turtle Island and learn to care for her again. Native Americans call the earth mother, Alcoze said, because she sustains us. And since we are all feeding from the same mother we are all related.

Alcoze said he ran into some roadblocks when he declared that he wanted to study Native American resource management for his Ph.D. project.

“There’s a problem, Thom,” he said his major professor told him. “You can’t call it Native American resource management because that implies science, and Native Americans didn’t have science.”

Alcoze told the students he didn’t know what it was if it wasn’t science. He pointed out the Native American use of medicinal plants. “When the civilized people in Europe were using leeches to treat headaches, Indians were taking aspirin,” Alcoze said.

He told the students that Indians used fire to manage the forests, to make nut gathering easier and to create browse for game like white-tailed deer. When whites first came to the Americas, Indians were the only people in the world eating corn, tomatoes, potatoes and squash, Alcoze said.

Nikki Cooley, a Navajo, is a senior at NAU. She is a student in Alcoze’s restoration program. Last summer she began interviewing Cherokee elders regarding traditional Cherokee management practices like burning and crop rotation. Cooley said she would return to Cherokee this summer to gather more data.

Alcoze told the students their high school diploma was a ticket.

“If you don’t have a ticket, you don’t get on the bus,” he said.

“But you bring me some decent grades — there are assistantships available. You can learn ecology across the country, in Arizona, Texas and Cherokee. We can do this. It’s good to learn about your own land.

“You will be responsible for teaching your grandchildren about their land. But you have to learn it before you can teach it.”

Cherokee High School forestry teacher Micki Powell said the program had been well received by students. He said the environment has been degraded and needs restoration.

“That work in Cherokee country should be done by Cherokees,” Powell said. But reiterating what Alcoze had said, “You gotta have that ticket.”

Pat Smith, one of the Cherokee students, said the program was great.

“I love being outside. That’s why I’m in forestry class. This will motivate me to try and improve my grades so maybe I could participate in the restoration program,” Smith said.

Alcoze touted the program and NAU to the Cherokee students. There are some things at NAU that aren’t too common, like an entire floor dedicated to Indian studies, Alcoze told the students.

The Native American forestry program is designed to get more Indian kids interested in continuing their education, said Alcoze.

“But it’s bigger than that. I believe we have to teach people how to live in our land.”

 

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The Smoky Mountain News