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Connecting to culture: here's what happened when elders gifted totemic species to school kids

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Thursday, April 13, 2023

Nicolas Rakotopare, Author providedIn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, a totem is a spiritual emblem from the natural world, such as a plant or animal. The totem is gifted to an individual by a parent or elder, usually around the time of their birth. Some people have several totems. The connection is mutually beneficial: the totem is a protector of the person, who in turn shows their respect for the totem by caring for it. We wanted to find out if totemic species, when gifted to schools by Traditional Custodians, could generate care for threatened species - while also embedding cultural awareness and Indigenous knowledge in the Australian science curriculum. We ran a pilot program to test the idea and build an evidence base. The program was successful. Care for the totemic species increased and students expressed enthusiasm for this approach. And there were other benefits too. Connecting kids with nature and culture: A totemic species for Carlton North Primary School. Read more: First Peoples' knowledge of 'mysterious fairy circles' in Australian deserts has upended a long-standing science debate Caring for the matted flax-lily The matted flax-lily (Dianella amoena) is culturally significant to the Wurundjeri people. The berries and leaves are used for food and tea, weaving and making whistles to deter snakes. But the species is critically endangered in Victoria and listed as endangered nationally. After land clearing for urban development, it is thought only 1,400 plants remain. Students in all year levels at Carlton North Primary School in Melbourne worked with Uncle Dave Wandin, a Wurundjeri Elder, to create habitat for the flax-lily and learn about the species. The program sought to embed both Indigenous and Western knowledge in a balanced and holistic way. Over ten weeks, the biology curriculum addressed sustainability and the environment, incorporating interactive and outdoor activities. In one activity, students helped to construct a grassland ecosystem habitat with plantings of the flax-lily. Other activities included interactive food web role play, scientific drawing, seed planting, learning about Indigenous land management and the use of native ingredients in modern baking. The grassland flax-lily has blue, star-shaped flowers from spring through autumn followed by purple berries. Shutterstock Connecting to nature We used surveys of students, teachers and parents to understand the outcomes of the program. After participating in the program, students had a better understanding of the matted flax-lily and its ecology. They also felt more connected with nature and indicated that they had learned about the Traditional Custodians and the importance of the totemic species. One student said: I really enjoyed science this term (and) I feel much closer to our Indigenous culture than I ever have. Students told the lead teachers that they wanted to bring the blue-banded bee back and plant native species in their own gardens: I never knew about the matted flax-Lily and that it was going extinct and now I’m planning to plant some in my backyard! Teachers also told us they felt better equipped to teach students about traditional ecological knowledge in a culturally appropriate manner. The main educators in the program thought the approach could be extended to other disciplines, including engineering, art and mathematics. Parents and guardians also felt positive, referencing their child’s high engagement as well as their own interest in learning more about Indigenous culture and totemic species. One parent stated their child started to ask regularly if they could “plant native plants because of how important they are”. Students went beyond the project team’s expectations and began to take care of the garden themselves, protecting their species during break times at school, showing the garden to their families and teaching them about the different species within it. Overall, the program improved student engagement with nature and science. This permeated through to parents and guardians. Weaving into the curriculum Our research has the potential to improve teaching of Indigenous content across Australia. The program shows how Indigenous science can be embedded into the existing curriculum in a holistic way. Student engagement with nature and science also increased along with personal feelings of connection and responsibility to the environment. Additional benefits included the creation of habitat for threatened species. Imagine if every school in Australia contributed in this way to the conservation of biodiversity? The murnong or yam daisy has white tuberous roots that may be eaten raw or baked. Nicholas Rakotopare, Author provided There’s also evidence that children playing in biodiverse schoolyards have improved cognitive function and reduced behavioural issues. Finally, greening our schoolyards can provide a critical cooling function. Key to the program’s success was recognition of the time commitment from teachers and Wurundjeri Elders and recompensing them appropriately. This was crucial for facilitating deep involvement. The school curriculum is already crowded with many competing demands. Expecting that an additional body of material can be incorporated without appropriate time and resources would have been impractical. Likewise, the time and knowledge of Traditional Owners is in high demand, so adequate provision of resources was an important feature of the program. Further, embedding the material into an existing subject school-wide meant the program did not impose further demands on the curriculum. Instead, it was an efficient and effective way to deliver the material. This also generated a sense of the topic being “core” to the curriculum, rather than an optional “add-on”. This alignment of the program with existing curriculum and the fact that the budget – while critical - was modest, mean it is entirely feasible to imagine implementation of similar programs in many other schools. We hope that the program will be picked up and implemented in other schools across Australia. Ideally, the concept of totemic species will ultimately become integrated into the Australian curriculum. The authors would like to acknowledge Emily Gregg, Benjamin May, Dave Wandin, Michael Harrison, Marnie Pascoe, Fiona McConachie and Alex Kusmanoff for their contribution to the research that underpins this article. Thanks also to the principal, staff, students and parents of Carlton North Primary School for supporting the project. Visit our website to download the Totemic Species in Schools resources, including the program curriculum, findings factsheet, and evaluation survey. Zadie was one of 283 students involved in the pilot Totemic Species in Schools program at Carlton North Primary School, which culminated in the planting of a native garden. Sarah Bekessy, Author provided Read more: Indigenous spiritual teaching in schools can foster reconciliation and inclusion Natasha Ward research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1).Bradley J. Moggridge is affiliated with the University of Canberra, is a Governor with WWF Australia and a Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists Georgia Garrard receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1). She is chair of Birdlife Australia's Research and Conservation Committee, a member of Zoos Victoria's Scientific Advisory Committee and a member of the Sustainable Subdivisions Framework advisory group for the Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment.Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and the Victorian Department of Land, Water, Environment and Planning. She is a Lead Councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a Board Member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF's Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.

The 10-week pilot program Totemic Species in Schools shows how Indigenous science can be woven into the existing curriculum. Students, teachers and parents provided positive feedback.

In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, a totem is a spiritual emblem from the natural world, such as a plant or animal. The totem is gifted to an individual by a parent or elder, usually around the time of their birth. Some people have several totems.

The connection is mutually beneficial: the totem is a protector of the person, who in turn shows their respect for the totem by caring for it.

We wanted to find out if totemic species, when gifted to schools by Traditional Custodians, could generate care for threatened species - while also embedding cultural awareness and Indigenous knowledge in the Australian science curriculum.

We ran a pilot program to test the idea and build an evidence base. The program was successful. Care for the totemic species increased and students expressed enthusiasm for this approach. And there were other benefits too.

Connecting kids with nature and culture: A totemic species for Carlton North Primary School.

Caring for the matted flax-lily

The matted flax-lily (Dianella amoena) is culturally significant to the Wurundjeri people. The berries and leaves are used for food and tea, weaving and making whistles to deter snakes.

But the species is critically endangered in Victoria and listed as endangered nationally. After land clearing for urban development, it is thought only 1,400 plants remain.

Students in all year levels at Carlton North Primary School in Melbourne worked with Uncle Dave Wandin, a Wurundjeri Elder, to create habitat for the flax-lily and learn about the species.

The program sought to embed both Indigenous and Western knowledge in a balanced and holistic way. Over ten weeks, the biology curriculum addressed sustainability and the environment, incorporating interactive and outdoor activities.

In one activity, students helped to construct a grassland ecosystem habitat with plantings of the flax-lily. Other activities included interactive food web role play, scientific drawing, seed planting, learning about Indigenous land management and the use of native ingredients in modern baking.

Native Australian dianella grass with flowers in a sunny backyard shot at shallow depth of field — The grassland flax-lily has blue, star-shaped flowers from spring through autumn followed by purple berries. Shutterstock

Connecting to nature

We used surveys of students, teachers and parents to understand the outcomes of the program.

After participating in the program, students had a better understanding of the matted flax-lily and its ecology. They also felt more connected with nature and indicated that they had learned about the Traditional Custodians and the importance of the totemic species. One student said:

I really enjoyed science this term (and) I feel much closer to our Indigenous culture than I ever have.

Students told the lead teachers that they wanted to bring the blue-banded bee back and plant native species in their own gardens:

I never knew about the matted flax-Lily and that it was going extinct and now I’m planning to plant some in my backyard!

Teachers also told us they felt better equipped to teach students about traditional ecological knowledge in a culturally appropriate manner. The main educators in the program thought the approach could be extended to other disciplines, including engineering, art and mathematics.

Parents and guardians also felt positive, referencing their child’s high engagement as well as their own interest in learning more about Indigenous culture and totemic species. One parent stated their child started to ask regularly if they could “plant native plants because of how important they are”.

Students went beyond the project team’s expectations and began to take care of the garden themselves, protecting their species during break times at school, showing the garden to their families and teaching them about the different species within it.

Overall, the program improved student engagement with nature and science. This permeated through to parents and guardians.

Weaving into the curriculum

Our research has the potential to improve teaching of Indigenous content across Australia. The program shows how Indigenous science can be embedded into the existing curriculum in a holistic way.

Student engagement with nature and science also increased along with personal feelings of connection and responsibility to the environment.

Additional benefits included the creation of habitat for threatened species. Imagine if every school in Australia contributed in this way to the conservation of biodiversity?

Closeup of a yam daisy or murnong, including the roots, held by a person with beautiful painted nails — The murnong or yam daisy has white tuberous roots that may be eaten raw or baked. Nicholas Rakotopare, Author provided

There’s also evidence that children playing in biodiverse schoolyards have improved cognitive function and reduced behavioural issues. Finally, greening our schoolyards can provide a critical cooling function.

Key to the program’s success was recognition of the time commitment from teachers and Wurundjeri Elders and recompensing them appropriately. This was crucial for facilitating deep involvement.

The school curriculum is already crowded with many competing demands. Expecting that an additional body of material can be incorporated without appropriate time and resources would have been impractical. Likewise, the time and knowledge of Traditional Owners is in high demand, so adequate provision of resources was an important feature of the program.

Further, embedding the material into an existing subject school-wide meant the program did not impose further demands on the curriculum. Instead, it was an efficient and effective way to deliver the material.

This also generated a sense of the topic being “core” to the curriculum, rather than an optional “add-on”. This alignment of the program with existing curriculum and the fact that the budget – while critical - was modest, mean it is entirely feasible to imagine implementation of similar programs in many other schools.

We hope that the program will be picked up and implemented in other schools across Australia. Ideally, the concept of totemic species will ultimately become integrated into the Australian curriculum.

The authors would like to acknowledge Emily Gregg, Benjamin May, Dave Wandin, Michael Harrison, Marnie Pascoe, Fiona McConachie and Alex Kusmanoff for their contribution to the research that underpins this article. Thanks also to the principal, staff, students and parents of Carlton North Primary School for supporting the project. Visit our website to download the Totemic Species in Schools resources, including the program curriculum, findings factsheet, and evaluation survey.

A student crouching in the native garden planted at her school — Zadie was one of 283 students involved in the pilot Totemic Species in Schools program at Carlton North Primary School, which culminated in the planting of a native garden. Sarah Bekessy, Author provided

Natasha Ward research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1).

Bradley J. Moggridge is affiliated with the University of Canberra, is a Governor with WWF Australia and a Member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

Georgia Garrard receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1). She is chair of Birdlife Australia's Research and Conservation Committee, a member of Zoos Victoria's Scientific Advisory Committee and a member of the Sustainable Subdivisions Framework advisory group for the Council Alliance for a Sustainable Built Environment.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and the Victorian Department of Land, Water, Environment and Planning. She is a Lead Councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a Board Member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF's Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.

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The Members of This Reservation Learned They Live with Nuclear Weapons. Can Their Reality Ever Be the Same?

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples are learning more about the missiles siloed on their lands, and that knowledge has put the preservation of their culture and heritage in even starker relief.

This podcast is Part 5 of a five-part series. Listen to Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here. The podcast series is a part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal. [CLIP: Music] Jayli Fimbres: You know what’s crazy? I’ve always had dreams of explosions going off in the west. And, like, we’re, we’d always be hunkered down in gymnasiums or, like, even in, like, ceremonies. I’ve had dreams we’re all, like, in a ceremonial setting waiting for an explosion to go off. Ella Weber: I met Jayli Fimbres at the recently opened MHA Nation Interpretive Center in New Town, North Dakota, the most populous town on the Fort Berthold reservation. While she says she doesn’t know much about nuclear weapons, she’s been dreaming about nuclear war. Fimbres: I think I’ve, even within those dreams, I had dreams of surviving those things as well. But there was, like, radioactive damage and stuff. And we were, like, mutating, but we, like, learned to get through it. Weber: You are listening to Scientific American’s podcast series, The Missiles on Our Rez. I’m Ella Weber, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, a Princeton student, and a journalist. This is Episode 5: “What Happens Now?” [CLIP: Music] Weber: This is the last episode of our series. Throughout the first four episodes, we learned about how nuclear missiles arrived on our reservation. We also learned how the Air Force failed to appropriately describe the human and environmental consequences associated with its plans to modernize existing nuclear missile silos.  Those plans included placing new missiles on our land for the next 60 years.  We discussed the risks associated with living with these weapons for the tribe —  and what it really meant  for our members—including my family—to live in a national nuclear sacrifice zone. In this final episode, I’m returning to my tribe, the MHA Nation, to share what I found. Weber: I met with my grandma, Debra Malnourie, to find out when she first learned about the missile silos. She grew up on the reservation and currently resides there. Debra Malnourie: Then, like I said, I was driving around, and I was like, “What are these places?” And then I don’t even remember who told me that they were missile sites, that missiles [are] down in there, and I was like, “How do you know?” And I knew nothing about it. It wasn’t even in my radar, actually. Probably still isn’t right now. Weber: Debra didn’t know much about this. Malnourie: But I always thought if there was a big war, we’d all end up going. And truthfully, I would not want to be one of the ones that didn’t go. Because what [are] you going to do? I don’t know. This is some scary stuff. And it’s real. [CLIP: Music]  Weber: I first came to the Fort Berthold reservation to try to figure out how the 15 missiles ended up on the rez — and how much the community actually knows about them. It was only eight months ago when I first learned about them in an e-mail from my Princeton University professor, Ryo Morimoto. I first went to the reservation in March of this year. That’s where I met Edmund Baker, environmental director of the MHA Nation. He knew a little bit about the missiles. Edmund Baker: What I’ve heard is that, yeah, there are nuclear warheads that are stored on the ground in certain places, silos, along the way.  Minot Air Force Base does regular trainings. I suppose that they have to, to keep the military up to speed and protocols or whatnot.  But anything beyond that is not information that I’ve ever read, or [it] was never really disclosed. I haven’t been privy to any meeting with the tribal council on anything involving this point.  Weber: As we mentioned in the last episode, Edmund would later find out from our Nuclear Princeton research team, and Princeton researcher Sébastien Philippe, that the entire 3,000-page environmental impact statement, or EIS package–first published in June 2022 in draft form–didn’t actually  go into a great amount of detail about the ramifications of potential nuclear strikes on the silos and the surrounding community. I returned to the reservation in June to continue to investigate the topic further. In the three months between the trips, I’ve had more time to learn about the history of successive assaults against our tribe and land by the U.S. military. As I mentioned in Episode 2, the Garrison Dam, constructed in 1947 by the Army Corps of Engineers, was built adjacent to our land — and against our will. There’s a famous picture of chairman George Gillette crying as he signed the agreement in 1948. When the dam flooded in 1953, countless tribal families were displaced, and our homes were destroyed. It separated our remaining reservation into five areas—another assault on our language and culture.  It turns out there’s actually a link between the historical destruction of our community by the U.S. government and the loss of our language. People such as Jayli Fimbres—who you first heard in the beginning of this episode—are trying to bring our language back. Fimbres: There’s no writing. We’re speaking. It’s—we’re learning a language. And so sometimes I’ll have, like, my flash cards and stuff. I won’t even write on a board or anything. But that’s been a powerful thing, like, getting people to speak. Weber: The thing is, this nuclear modernization project is going to deeply affect our tribe again, including people such as Jayli, who are fighting to save the last remnants of our cultural heritage.  If our people are used as collateral damage, our language also dies. And that’s after so much damage has already been done. Even the Air Force admits that the project will have consequences, but not completely. Here’s a clip from a video about the project. [CLIP: Ground-based strategic deterrent (Sentinel) draft EIS video: “As a whole, the proposed action would likely result in significant adverse effects on cultural resources, public health and safety, socioeconomics, and utilities and infrastructure.”] Weber: In every single resource area listed in the EIS’s environmental consequences summary, the “no action alternative” has effects that are either equal to or less negative than the proposed action. Despite the negative effects associated with the nuclear modernization program that the Air Force listed in the environmental impact statement, I found that the impacts are much farther reaching than what is described in the scope of the document. Baker: What’s the purpose of a nuclear warhead? Depends on who you talk to. “They defend freedom.” No, they’re meant to kill. They’re meant to destroy. That was never in part of our land, intentional land spirit. Weber: That’s Edmund Baker who says that not only do warheads go against our land spirit—but they also go against the core concepts in our Hidatsa language. Baker: How you speak also informs the concepts in your mind.  Our Hidatsa language is—just as an example, everything is moving and flowing. Okay, so that affects your worldview, how you look at things. Things don’t seem so discrete, separate, objectified. And the relationship between you and that becomes different because you’re also moving, flowing. The breath of life is moving through you, the elements. These are all encapsulated in our language. Silos, buildings, projects, all of that—we’re investing in things that are going to crumble and neglecting the things that should last beyond us…in here [taps chest]. Weber: Unlike in the 1960s, when the missiles first arrived, the state of affairs with Indian nations has changed. We live in a post–American Indian Movement, or AIM, and post–Dakota Access Pipeline era, meaning there is much more advocacy around Native and Indigenous issues. The former tribal historic preservation officer Pete Coffey—who turned out to be a relative of mine—was part of AIM’s occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. Pete Coffey: AIM did what it was intended to do. It made everyone an activist. It made all Native people an activist. Weber: Pete helped start the local radio station, KMHA. He gave a voice to the community. He was also the MHA Nation’s tribal historic preservation officer until November 2021. The Air Force claimed it consulted him as part of the EIS process in 2020. According to Pete, it didn’t. Coffey: [The year] 2020? No, I don’t recall that. I was still in the office. I don’t recall that. Weber: As a 20-year-old student and member of this community, I have a question. Why would we allow something whose sole purpose is to destroy to be housed on our land? Edmund agreed with me. Baker: Why would you want a killing machine within your homeland? Weber: Although neither Edmund nor Pete recall being consulted, our chairman signed an agreement with the Air Force. In it, the Air Force promised not to disrupt cultural and historical sites while undertaking this project. [CLIP: Music] Despite all the depressing things I learned, I also found out about the hard work and advocacy that was taking place on the reservation, helping the MHA Nation reclaim its identity and relationship with the land. That could be language revitalization through teaching Hidatsa. Or, cultivating community gardens that played a central role in sharing intergenerational knowledge and ways of life — before the dam. [CLIP: Walking sounds; Eagle calls] I met Melanie Moniz tending the community garden in Twin Buttes. Melanie Moniz: I have realized that the most important thing that we can do is reconnect to what has been not taken, right, but has been attempted to be taken from us because we carry the blood memory of our ancestors. So we have all the knowledge. We just need to reconnect to it. Weber: Melanie’s gone through a long journey to end up where she is now. She’s done policy work, ran for office and is a community organizer. But at the forefront, she is a mother who has realized the importance of reconnecting with our culture. Moniz: Having my kids right there with me and watching them with their hands in the soil reconnecting and learning about how we mound, how we mounded one time, how when we plant, we plant facing the sun, and, you know, all of these things are so important. It’s going to be the only thing that gets us through. Weber: Throughout this project, I came to understand how the story of the U.S. government’s land theft and attempts at destroying our culture are directly related to the history of how the missile silos got here. And our community has been fighting to survive for as long as we’ve been around. This is just another test. Moniz: So, in closing, should something go wrong, should something happen with all these warheads that are on our tribal nation, our children, our future generations, what we’re working to reclaim and reconnect and revitalize will all—could be diminished. It could be diminished. Thinking about that and thinking about what could go wrong–what could happen–really puts things into perspective, and in closing I would urge…not encourage, but welcome more folks to the work. And let’s keep going and let’s get this out there. People need to know what’s happening. Our people need to know what’s happening. Baker: For the future, to keep our people, our land, intact, what’s left of it–our unity…to try to give some space to work on our values, and re-remember who we are… it would make it this much easier if you just get these silos out of here. You know, you’d help that way, if you really care about us, federal government. Weber: Lastly, I talked to my mom, Jenipher, about the research that I’ve been doing: Weber (tape): What do you think about the project? Jenipher Weber: I hope it opens a lot of eyes. I hope it…I would like to know how it came about and how the silos got here and why and the effects of everything. I always thought they took the silos out because the Cold War was over. So that’s how always— Weber (tape): They just took out the Grand Forks ones.  Jenipher Weber: Yeah, they never take out ours, huh? Hmm. [CLIP: Music] Weber: Will things continue as they are but with people now being aware of what the missile silos mean for us? Could the silos be removed from the reservation? Could communities in North Dakota, Native and not, work together towards a different future—with no missiles in the state? I don’t know. What makes me hopeful, though, is the new generation of people willing to continue the fight for our tribe, our land, our rights, our culture, and our futures. For the rest of us, the question is simple: What will we do? While this is the end of the podcast series, it may be the beginning of a new chapter for the tribe. Resilience and survival runs deep in the MHA Nation, and one thing is certain: things can change. This show was reported by me, Ella Weber, produced by Sébastien Philippe and Tulika Bose. Script editing by Tulika Bose. Post-production design and mixing by Jeff DelViscio. Thanks to special advisor Ryo Morimoto and Jessica Lambert.  Music by Epidemic Sound. I’m Ella Weber, and this was The Missiles on Our Rez, a special podcast collaboration from Scientific American, Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, Nuclear Princeton, and Columbia Journalism School. [CLIP: Music] 

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First They Mined for the Atomic Bomb. Now They’re Mining for E.V.s.

Serge Langunu is a graduate student in botany at the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In May, he and I were sitting on a bench in the parking lot of a hospital just outside Lubumbashi’s downtown, looking at photos of plants on his laptop. I met Langunu at the hospital to see an experimental plot of metal-loving plants cultivated by the university’s agronomy department. This understated garden was growing in the shadow of a massive chimney, looming across the street in the mostly abandoned grounds of the old copper smelter named after the state mining corporation, Gécamines. Lubumbashi is Congo’s second-largest city and the capital of Katanga province, founded in 1910 by the Belgian colonial regime to exploit Katanga’s otherworldly mineral wealth. For about 80 years, the smoke from the smelting of ore from the Étoile du Congo copper mine drifted out of that chimney over the homes of mine workers and their families on the west side of the Lubumbashi River, while mine administrators and other colonial officers enjoyed the cleaner air on the other side. As a result, the soil at the hospital and throughout the surrounding neighborhood is heavily contaminated with copper, cobalt, lead, zinc, and arsenic. The university’s experimental garden uses species from Katanga’s endemic flora, much of which has evolved to be resistant to, or even dependent on, concentrations of metals that would stunt or kill most other plants, to decontaminate the poisoned soil. “This one is Crotalaria cobalticola,” said Langunu, pointing to an image of an angular, pea-like flower with a vivid yellow hue. “It grows mainly in zones with a high concentration of copper and cobalt.” I leaned in to look closer. Crotalaria is what is known as an obligate metallophyte—it requires the presence of cobalt in order to survive. Cobalt has become the center of a major upsurge in mining in Congo, and the rapid acceleration of cobalt extraction in the region since 2013 has brought hundreds of thousands of people into intimate contact with a powerful melange of toxic metals. The frantic pace of cobalt extraction in Katanga bears close resemblance to another period of rapid exploitation of Congolese mineral resources: During the last few years of World War II, the U.S. government sourced the majority of the uranium necessary to develop the first atomic weapons from a single Congolese mine, named Shinkolobwe. The largely forgotten story of those miners, and the devastating health and ecological impacts uranium production had on Congo, looms over the country now as cobalt mining accelerates to feed the renewable energy boom—with little to no protections for workers involved in the trade.The city of Kolwezi, which is 300 km (186 miles) northwest of Lubumbashi and 180 km from the now-abandoned Shinkolobwe mine, sits on top of nearly half of the available cobalt in the world. The scope of the contemporary scramble for that metal in Katanga has totally transformed the region. Enormous open-pit mines worked by tens of thousands of miners form vast craters in the landscape and are slowly erasing the city itself. The U.S. government sourced the majority of the uranium necessary to develop the first atomic weapons from a single Congolese mine, named Shinkolobwe.The global shift toward renewable energy has hugely increased the world’s demand for metals for batteries, creating a new opportunity for Congo, the world’s largest producer of cobalt. Companies like Tesla, Apple, Samsung, and Chrysler source significant percentages of their cobalt from the country. Much of the cobalt in Congo is mined by hand: Workers scour the surface level seams with picks, shovels, and lengths of rebar, sometimes tunneling by hand 60 feet or more into the earth in pursuit of a vein of ore. This is referred to as artisanal mining, as opposed to the industrial mining carried out by large firms. The thousands of artisanal miners who work at the edges of the formal mines run by big industrial concerns make up 90 percent of the nation’s mining workforce and produce 30 percent of its metals. Artisanal mining is not as efficient as larger-scale industrial mining, but since the miners produce good-quality ore with zero investment in tools, infrastructure, or safety, the ore they sell to buyers is as cheap as it gets. Forced and child labor in the supply chain is not uncommon here, thanks in part to a significant lack of controls and regulations on artisanal mining from the government.Congo’s mineral resources are found in two broad geographical curves, arcs of mineral-rich surface-level rock that converge on the city of Lubumbashi. This region, known as the Copperbelt, has been mined for more than a century for minerals like copper, cobalt, nickel, gold, and uranium. Some of those deposits are among the richest of their kind in the world, and the workers in those mines are among the most exploited on the planet. Conditions in the mining regions have changed little in the century since the opening of the Shinkolobwe mine, whose highly concentrated uranium ore supercharged both the U.S. and German military projects to develop atomic weapons during World War II.For the 15 years after its use in the bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of the uranium mined for the Manhattan Project’s subsequent bomb-building efforts came out of the Shinkolobwe mine, sited at the edge of the arc of Congo’s richest metal-bearing soils. Shinkolobwe’s intensely powerful ore was essential to the rapid design, development, and detonation of the world’s first atomic weapons, and the construction of the thousands that followed. Shinkolobwe was opened in 1921 by the Belgian colony’s minerals consortium, Union Minière. Although many of the Katanga region’s mines were focused on veins of copper-bearing malachite, Shinkolobwe was mined for decades for its radium, which was used in cancer treatments and to make watch dials glow in the dark. The masses of bright-yellow uranium ore that came up along with the radium were initially discarded as waste rock: There were scant commercial usages for uranium until the war began.When later atomic research found that uranium’s unstable nucleus could be used to make a powerful bomb, the U.S. Army’s Manhattan Project began searching for a reliable source of uranium. They found it through Union Minière, which sold the United States the first 1,000 tons it needed to get the bomb effort off the ground.The Manhattan Project sent agents of the OSS, precursor to the CIA, to Congo from 1943 to 1945 to supervise the reopening of the mine and the extraction of Shinkolobwe’s ore—and to make sure none of it fell into the hands of the Axis powers. Every piece of rock that emerged from the mine for almost two decades was purchased by the Manhattan Project and its successors in the Atomic Energy Commission, until the mine was closed by the Belgian authorities on the eve of Congolese independence in 1960. After that, the colonial mining enterprise Union Minière became the national minerals conglomerate Gécamines, which retained much of the original structure and staff.Dr. Celestin Banza Lubaba, a professor of toxicology in the School of Public Health at the University of Lubumbashi, researches the health conditions of mine workers in southeast Congo’s minerals sector. What complicates his work, he told me, is that many of the ores in the Copperbelt are amalgams of different metals: the richest cobalt veins occur in heterogeneous masses that combine cobalt with copper, manganese, nickel, and uranium. The intermixing of the ores makes assessing the specific health effects of working with one or another metal very difficult. Dr. Lubaba showed me the small battery-operated Geiger counters that he uses in the field to measure radioactivity. He had begun the process of trying to find and interview the descendants of the Shinkolobwe miners, but he explained that tracing the health consequences of working in that specific mine would be difficult: Many long-established villages in the area have been demolished and cast apart as cobalt extraction has torn through the landscape. His initial inquiries suggested that at least some of the descendants of the Shinkolobwe miners had been drawn into the maelstrom of digging in the region around Kolwezi.The miners who extracted some of the most powerful stones ever found with rudimentary tools and their bare hands are hardly mentioned in histories written about the bomb. In her book Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade, historian Gabrielle Hecht recounts the U.S. Public Health Service’s efforts to investigate the effects of uranium exposure on people who worked closely with the metal and the ore that bore it. In 1956, a team of medical researchers from the PHS paid a visit to Shinkolobwe while the mine was still producing more than half of the uranium used in America’s Cold War missile programs. Most of their questions went unanswered, however, as Shinkolobwe’s operators had few official records to share and stopped responding to communications as soon as the researchers left.The miners who extracted some of the most powerful stones ever found with rudimentary tools and their bare hands are hardly mentioned in histories written about the bomb.The invisibility of Shinkolobwe mine workers in the historical record arises partly from the culture of secrecy imposed on the mine and its products during the production of the bomb. In Dr. Susan Williams’s book Spies in the Congo, a history of the Manhattan Project in Africa, she describes how the OSS was engaged in a complex and lethal struggle against the Nazi military to deny it access to the Shinkolobwe ore. After the Manhattan Project commandeered the mine in 1943 and forced miners to work round-the-clock shifts in the open pit under searchlights, the mine’s name was formally interdicted from reproduction and erased from maps. “Don’t ever use that word in anybody’s presence. Not ever!” Williams quotes OSS agent Wilbur Hogue snapping at a subordinate who had said the mine’s name in a café in Congo’s capital. “There’s something in that mine that both the United States and Germany want more than anything else in the world. I don’t know what it’s for. We’re not supposed to know.”“We don’t know what the health consequences are for prolonged exposure to many of these metals,” said Lubaba. “We do know that the fish that people used to get out of the rivers next to these mines are all gone. The water is undrinkable.” One of the few medical papers describing the consequences of lengthy exposure to cobalt dust, based on research in Katanga, was published in The Lancet in 2020; it found a correlation between exposure to high levels of cobalt and arsenic and the high rate of birth defects in the region’s children.Lubaba showed me photos of artisanal miners in the shadow of massive tailings piles near the town of Manono. Canadian company Tanatalex Lithium Resources is currently processing the tailings for the lithium left behind by previous operations. Manono sits at the southern end of the other major arc of Congolese minerals: the Tin Belt, which stretches north toward Rwanda and yields huge quantities of lithium, tin, and coltan, essential for various forms of high-tech manufacturing. Many artisanal miners find their work digging through the leftovers of industrial interests that have moved on. “There’s something in that mine that both the United States and Germany want more than anything else in the world. I don’t know what it’s for. We’re not supposed to know.”I asked if I could visit Shinkolobwe; Lubaba told me the site itself is restricted and off-limits to foreigners. I mentioned that I had noticed a new operation adjacent to Shinkolobwe’s abandoned pit while surveying the area via Google Maps. He said that could be one of the many new Chinese-run operations that have opened across Katanga over the course of the last 15 years. “They say they are mining gold, but many presume that they are also pursuing uranium,” he said. “They are certainly after cobalt, like everyone else.”Chinese metals firms took over the old Gécamines smelter in Lubumbashi, along with many of Congo’s industrial mining operations, after Western mineral interests like De Beers, Freeport McMoran, and BHP Group cut their losses following the financial collapse of 2008. Over the next decade, deals between Chinese metals consortiums and former President Joseph Kabila saw some tens of millions generated from the sale of state-owned capital funneled directly to the president’s family. Corruption probes into these deals resulted in further consolidation, with firms like China Molybdenum closing deals worth $3 billion to extract Katanga’s cobalt. At the abandoned Shinkolobwe mine, the activities of artisanal miners are visible on Google satellite images; concavities and tunnel mouths where miners have been digging for cobalt in recent years stipple the satellite images of the 60-year old refuse heaps surrounding the collapsed mine shaft at the center of the site. The national army closed the mine and burned the nearby villages after a lethal tunnel collapse in 2004. The government limits access to the area now, Lubaba said, but they are allowing people to dig the site in secret, usually at night.Professor Donatien Dibwe Dia Mwembu of the History Department at Lubumbashi University wrote his dissertation in the 1960s on the history of mine worker health in the Katanga region. “During my research into the morbidity and mortality of miners in Katanga, I found myself reading about silicosis in the Gécamines archives and was chided by the director not to publish what I read,” he told me. “Some months later that entire archive was disappeared by the authorities—and this was simply information about silicosis, the most common mine worker ailment. The effects that uranium had on the miners were much worse.” The delayed onset of the effects of prolonged exposure to the dust of cobalt and uranium has made it difficult to accurately describe the health problems that people face, he said, and mining interests have always been eager to avoid responsibility for worker illness.It’s not just Congolese miners who felt health impacts from the making of the bomb. In the U.S., Shinkolobwe’s uranium has left a deadly impact on towns across the country where it was processed, as residents still grapple with the cancers, blood diseases, and soil pollution that the contamination caused. There is a common story about Shinkolobwe miners, which I heard from Dibwe and from several other sources across Lubumbashi, including artists at the Picha Art Center, scientists at the office of the Atomic Energy Commission, and taxi drivers. The story goes that men who had worked in the Shinkolobwe mine would return to their villages on the weekends for rest, and that when those men entered the village bar for a beer, the signal on the television would distort and the screen would fill with static. “According to the story, this happened in their homes as well,” said Dibwe. In the hospital parking lot, Langunu scrolled through photos of a team of graduate students in white coveralls and yellow plastic helmets, posing around a battered pickup truck full of native plants in a landscape of bare, scraped dust. Under one of the few environmental rules that regulate Katanga’s minerals sector, newly licensed industrial mining operations are required to invite teams from the university to survey for the endangered plants that rely on metallic soils. “When we find the endemic plants,” he said, “we either relocate them to a site established for their maintenance or try to collect and preserve their seeds. After the mining concessionaires finish extracting the minerals, we reinstall the plants in the disturbed site.” At least one plant, Crepidorhopalon perennis, is now found only in the university’s gardens, its entire habitat having been destroyed by the Étoile du Congo mine.I recalled the city-size holes that I’d seen from the air on my approach to Lubumbashi airport. How much was it possible to preserve? “We save what we can,” said Langunu. “The hill no longer exists, and the plant is functionally extinct, but we hope at some point to restore it.”

Culture

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Outrage at plans to develop Turkey’s cultural heritage sites

Archaeologists fear dangerous precedent if court approves new beach facilities at site of Phaselis on the Mediterranean coastThe construction of tourist facilities on two beaches that were part of the ancient city of Phaselis – a tentative nominee for Unesco world heritage status – has caused outrage at what is claimed to be the latest example of the Turkish culture ministry sacrificing heritage for tourism.The Alacasu and Bostanlık beaches, on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast in the province of Antalya, were part of Phaselis, a Greek and Roman settlement thought to be the birthplace of Plato’s student Theodectes. Despite having ruins dating back to the second century BC, the beaches have never been subject to an archaeological dig. Continue reading...

Culture

Why the Remote-Work Debate Stays So Heated

The conversation often foregrounds large-scale issues such as productivity and company culture, but the question of where an employee works is intensely personal.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The physical space in which a person works, or hopes to work, intersects with their most personal choices. Today we’re checking in on the remote-work debate and why it remains so heated.First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic: The businessmen broke Hollywood. Goodbye to the prophets of doom. I have cancer. I can’t put my kids first anymore. Joe Lieberman weighs the Trump risk. Better Together?In the summer of 2021, I started going back to the office. It was not the allure of watercooler chatter or the promise of juiced-up productivity that pulled me in. At the time, I just really wanted to sit in the AC. It was June; it was hot. Access to a desk in a freezing-cold Midtown tower—a far cry from my living room, which tended to get steamy on 90-degree Brooklyn days—seemed like a major perk. I was living with roommates, was vaccinated, and had no child-care duties. Each morning, I strapped on my mask and packed my backpack with canisters of coffee and sandwiches to sustain me through the day. I often felt better when I got home: When you’re going into an office, I found, it’s harder to have a day where nothing happens.My desire to return to a routine that involved leaving my home was inspired, in part, by my now-colleague Ellen Cushing’s 2021 Atlantic article about what the monotony of the pandemic was doing to our brain. “Sometimes I imagine myself as a Sim, a diamond-shaped cursor hovering above my head as I go about my day. Tasks appear, and I do them. Mealtimes come, and I eat. Needs arise, and I meet them,” she writes in one memorable passage. In another, she quotes an expert saying that “environmental enrichment”—seeing new people, observing new things on a commute—is good for our brain’s plasticity. After reading the article in March 2021, I became fixated on the idea that observing random humans on my commute would keep my mind sharp.Then the fall came around, and so did more of my colleagues. It was great to see them. It was also great, sometimes, to return to the relative solitude of my home and take walks in Prospect Park at midday. I was lucky to have that flexibility. Now that I work for The Atlantic, I go into the office almost every day. I have enjoyed meeting new people and, again, sitting in the industrial-grade AC.I’ve given you this narration of my personal experience because, for all the talk of productivity and metrics and company culture, the topic of returning to the office is intensely personal. My needs and desires, for a variety of reasons relating to my age, finances, circumstances, health situation, and lifestyle, might be very different from those of workers who fall elsewhere on any of those axes. Some working parents have said they might value flexibility at school-pickup time. Some workers of color have raised the benefit of being free from in-office microaggressions. Recent college graduates may want to go into the office to make friends. And of course, not all workers are able to work remotely. The physical space in which one works, or hopes to work, intersects with one’s most personal choices. It collides with and reveals what people value most.Nick Bloom, a Stanford economics professor who studies remote work, told me that “research and evidence are slowly catching up” to the work-from-home debate. In five years, he predicted, the topic will be less controversial. Bloom and two colleagues, Jose Maria Barrero and Steven J. Davis, published a working paper earlier this month that collects some of the existing work-from-home research, pulling both from their own work and from other papers. One interesting finding is that although fully remote work has been correlated with a drop in productivity, hybrid work (which occurs widely in white-collar fields such as tech and business services) was not linked to any productivity loss—and could actually help with recruitment and retention.Workers gained freedom over their working conditions in the past few years. Now many bosses are trying to wrest that power back. And workers and managers don’t always see eye to eye about the stakes of returning to work. Bloom and his colleagues asked managers and employees about how working from home affected productivity. Workers, on the whole, said they were 7.4 percent more productive on average while working from home; bosses said that they thought their employees were 3.5 percent less productive. Managers tend to most appreciate what they can see in front of them, Bloom told me over email: “It’s like those restaurants where the kitchen is open and on display—it feels more like you are having a fantastic culinary experience, but it’s really just a mirage.”Companies’ rationales for calling people back to work can seem mushy, beyond that it simply seems like being together would be better (or, in some cases, that employers want to fulfill expensive real-estate obligations). One argument for working in person is the idea that younger workers can learn from, and be mentored by, more experienced colleagues in the workplace. Bloom told me that senior managers over the age of 50 provide about 50 percent of the mentoring minutes when working from home as they do while in the office. “A lot of mentoring is casual, relaxed conversations and, yes, it’s spontaneous—taking somebody aside and giving some quick advice,” he said. A Pew Research Center survey from March found that 36 percent of teleworkers said remote work hurt their opportunities to be mentored. Positive remote mentoring can happen (I found a formal mentorship program conducted mostly over Zoom very useful). Bloom said that although in theory—and with the right software—these types of relationships can blossom, “practically this does not happen as much online.”Bloom’s point (and my reaction to it) reinforces how personal experience can color perspectives on this issue: In my case, I both relish time away from home and believe in the potential of remote mentor relationships. But how those dimensions of work fit into our lives can vary widely. Change any inputs—personal commute time, age, nature of work, child-care responsibilities, goals—and the resulting approach may be unrecognizable.Related: The surprising effects of remote work How to mentor young workers in a remote world Today’s News Russia is halting the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which ensured that Ukraine could export its grain by sea despite a wartime blockade and helped stabilize global food prices. Senator Joe Manchin’s decision to headline an event with the No Labels organization is fueling speculation over a potential third-party presidential run. Firefighters are battling several wildfires in Southern California that ignited this weekend amid excessive heat warnings. Evening Read Millennium / Gallery Stock Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’By Allie Conti On a Sunday last year, I was walking through a suburban neighborhood in Pennsylvania, heading home from an early-afternoon meditation class. One of the nondescript stucco houses had a curious sticker on its mailbox reading mac’s club. I checked Google Maps to see if I was standing next to a cleverly disguised business—what might pretentiously be referred to in a city as a speakeasy—but nothing popped up, so I peeked inside the house. That’s where I spotted a pool table and a middle-aged guy sitting at the end of a long, mahogany bar, drinking a Bloody Mary by himself. Apparently I’d stumbled upon a social club meant for residents of the neighborhood. Though at first the bartender was incredulous that I’d just walked in, he soon rewarded my sense of adventure with a Guinness on the house. The Eagles weren’t playing in the NFL that day, and he was grateful for the additional company. We talked about the upcoming deer season, and upon learning that I was a new hunter, the two guys showed me a rifle that was kept in another room. … Besides giving me the feeling that I’d flexed a muscle that had atrophied, the interaction was special to me because I’d found a classic “third place” in the suburbs, where I least expected it. The term, which was coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s, essentially refers to a physical location other than work or home where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry and where conversation is the primary activity. Read the full article.More From The Atlantic Elizabeth Bruenig: Alabama wants to kill Jimi Barber. The most shocking aspect of RFK Jr.’s anti-Semitism Delivery apps just did the impossible. Culture Break Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty; Hulton / Getty; Imagno / Getty. Read. Mozart in Motion, by the British poet Patrick Mackie, explores the secret to Mozart’s lasting appeal.Watch. Beneath the hijinks and lewdness, the show Dave (streaming on Hulu) constructs an unlikely model for male friendship.Play our daily crossword.P.S. I like to bake, and find doing so relaxing. But in the summer, when my apartment is hot, I turn to treats that don’t require baking. (In case it hasn’t become clear: I do not enjoy the sensation of being overheated.) One very easy and fun one I have returned to is these chocolate-peanut-butter cups, courtesy of Samantha Seneviratne. I don’t have a double boiler or a microwave, so I boil water in a saucepan and melt chocolate chips in a metal bowl on top of it. And I like cashew butter, so I use that instead of peanut butter. The effort-to-reward ratio is high: These take just a few minutes of active work and render delightful little treats.— LoraKatherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

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Microsculpture

Microsculpture is a unique visual experience. A 10mm insect is shown as a 3 meter print, revealing minute detail and allowing the viewer to take in the structure of the insect in its entirety. The beautifully lit, high magnification portraiture of Levon Biss captures the microscopic form of these animals in striking high-resolution detail.

Animals

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Coding for Crayfish

Communities in the red and a fishery on the brink of collapse. Coding for Crayfish explores the notion of Rethinking Sustainability through technology, told through the Story of traditional fisher David Shoshola.

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Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse

A documentary that examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, illegal hiking adventurers (known as “stalkers”), extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the mysterious, ghostly landscape, where trees and forest animals have reclaimed land abandoned by villagers. Even as survivors continue to reckon with a dishonest government’s attempts to cover up the extent of the disaster, and as humanity faces new nuclear incidents in place like Fukushima, the Chernobyl site has turned into a bizarre tourist attraction, drawing seekers with a taste for the post-apocalyptic. (a Cultures Of Resistance film)

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Eco Arts in Action

Eco Arts is a creative practice that recognises that we are all part of the Living World. This film provides an overview of the practice of Eco Arts in community. Perspectives of First Nations Elders and artists are interwoven with examples of intercultural and environmental events. Musicians and creative thought leaders discuss the role of arts and culture in strengthening communities against the backdrop of ecological degradation and the climate crisis.

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Juskatla

Juskatla weaves together perspectives of the people who live on the islands of Haida Gwaii—an archipelago on Canada’s Northwest coast, and the ancestral territories of the Haida Nation. From industrial loggers who harvest trees from ancient forests, to Sphenia Jones, a Haida matriarch who bears an intimate knowledge of her People’s territories, Juskatla meditates on the divergent ways of being that shape the islands and its people.

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Why the Remote-Work Debate Stays So Heated

Suggested Viewing

Microsculpture

Coding for Crayfish

Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse

Eco Arts in Action

Juskatla

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sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

Connecting to culture: here's what happened when elders gifted totemic species to school kids

Caring for the matted flax-lily

Connecting to nature

Weaving into the curriculum

Related News

The Members of This Reservation Learned They Live with Nuclear Weapons. Can Their Reality Ever Be the Same?

First They Mined for the Atomic Bomb. Now They’re Mining for E.V.s.

We eat ultra-processed foods all the time. So, why does lab-grown chicken feel so different?

Outrage at plans to develop Turkey’s cultural heritage sites

Why the Remote-Work Debate Stays So Heated

Suggested Viewing

Microsculpture

Coding for Crayfish

Stalking Chernobyl: Exploration After Apocalypse

Eco Arts in Action

Juskatla

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future