According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Indigenous people today safeguard 80 percent of our planet’s diversity, which acts as a crucial mitigator of climate change. Generations of Indigenous people, as well as Native American tribes, are critically concerned with the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity within their lands and territories upon which their livelihoods depend and in which their cultural identities are embedded. On this 53rd Earth Day, Natural Awakenings spoke with Betty Osceola for a Native American perspective on our SWFL environment.

A member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida from the Panther clan, Osceola is a Native American Everglades educator, conservationist, anti-fracking and clean water advocate. Born and raised in the Everglades, where at the turn of the 20th century the Miccosukee were still traveling coast-to-coast across subtropical wetlands by canoe, Osceola now captains and operates the Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours on Tamiami Trail, near Miami. Born 20 years before her birthplace and family home were named America’s first national preserve, Osceola quips, “I live in the Big Cypress National Preserve, but I was here before it. I consider myself fortunate to have grown up so connected to nature when we still had clean water, plenty of wading birds and we could still live off the land, growing crops on the tree islands. Today the waters are too polluted to do that.”

Everglades National Park was intended for preserving a sliver of what was once a pristine Everglades ecosystem. With the layout of a complex system of Army Corps of Engineer-built canals that drained the land to make way for sugar cane production and subdivisions, phosphorous-laden runoff now flows into Miccosukee territory, which much of sits adjacent to the protected national park. Nutrient-rich runoff encourages the growth of weeds and invasive species in the tribe’s waters and regularly floods land that has become uninhabitable. These issues, along with Florida’s population growth (more than 1,000 people daily) and aggressive development, as well as resisting the Burnett Oil Company acquiring state permits to drill for oil in Big Cypress, are why Osceola spends time educating people and using her fleet of airboats to help the tribe conduct a twice-yearly water quality survey, used at times to fight persistent government efforts to cut corners on water restoration efforts.

We Thrive When Nature Thrives

Osceola  advises, “Progress is learning from the past and understanding mistakes made. Progress is helping nature thrive. When nature thrives, we thrive because we are nature. The educational system teaches that nature is to be controlled by man and that humans are not a part of nature. In my culture, we’re taught that to know where we’re going, we must know where we came from. Florida’s influx of new residents is unfamiliar with Florida’s history and environmental issues. Today’s generations only know today. They don’t know that in my generation we had clean water, or how and why it’s now contaminated. They don’t know that the habitat for wading birds has been destroyed or eliminated by human development and agriculture. Lessons learned by someone’s past experiences and from their trials and errors are important to us. We can fall back on their guidance when we are moving forward. I’m one of last generations that was able to exist by living off the land. Today’s generations don’t know how to do that.” 

Storytelling

She explains, “In our culture, storytelling is very important. We pass down stories so that our children know the history of the land and their ancestors. If you want to know the history of this land, talk to someone that’s been here for many years, to someone that’s grown up hiking the land or making their way through the islands, people who are good observers of the environment. Talk to fisherman who’ve provided food for their family from the water. They’ve seen the changes, understand the water and fish and what conditions need to be in place for both to thrive.

“Indians have lived here for generations. We understand the necessary conditions for migration patterns, things that need to be understood for healing the environment. I’m not for the way the Everglades Restoration is being done. I’m for healing environment. People talk about saving the environment, they don’t understand what the environment needs. They are thinking management and control of things like where to send water, not where Nature needs it to be. Healing is different than fixing or controlling. In Big Cypress Preserve, Nature burns when it needs to burn. My late uncle said that nature is so confused. Mankind is creating fires, throwing off the cycle of nature.

“Experts have ideas on how to fix the environment, but they don’t understand the relationships between parts of an ecosystem, of which they are a part. People are disconnected from nature. They think they understand the environment, but they don’t. We need to step back and give nature the chance to heal itself. The COVID pandemic showed us that without human interference, nature started thriving.”