(AP) EVERGLADES, FL Talbert Cypress, a member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, used to fish in the canals, swim in the marshy ponds, and scrounge in the trees of the Everglades as a youngster when the water was low.
However, since Cypress was younger, the enormous marshes close to Miami have undergone significant transformation. Water levels are one of the most significant changes, according to Cypress, a 42-year-old chairman of the tribe council. Droughts last longer and are drier. Tree islands that are sacred to them are being drowned by prolonged rains. The number of native animals has decreased.
He said, “It’s basically extremes now.”
“The Everglades is beautiful, but it’s just a skeleton of how it used to be,” said tribal elder Michael John Frank.
The tribe has lived in the Everglades for ages. However, decades of extensive engineering efforts for agriculture and industrialization destroyed the ecosystem that supported the wetlands, reducing them to around half of their former size. Tribe members claim that water pollution, floods, and fires have been caused by poor water management in their communities and cultural places. There are still risks from climate change and the fossil fuel industry that contributed to it.
For a long time, the Miccosukee people have struggled to preserve and repair what is left. Because of America’s terrible history against Indigenous people, they have generally been hesitant to interact with the outside world. However, since a new tribal government took office, the tribe has taken a more active and cooperative part in restoring the Everglades.
In addition to successfully opposing a wilderness designation that would have restricted their access to ancestral sites, they are seeking to halt oil extraction. In addition to helping to control invasive species and reintroduce racoons, hawks, and other native creatures, they have advocated for a project that would reconnect the western Everglades with the broader ecosystem. They agreed to co-steward parts of South Florida’s natural areas in August. They have used airboat tours as public classrooms, organized prayer walks, and started campaigns to bring significant concerns to the public’s attention.
Nevertheless, a recent study on the status of Everglades work notes that there hasn’t been any continuous and meaningful interaction with the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes. In order to comprehend past and present ecological conditions, it is necessary to use Indigenous knowledge to restoration efforts and maintain a consistent engagement with tribes, whose lengthy, deep, and reciprocal relationship with the environment can be helpful.
The Miccosukee s past fuels their activism today
The Miccosukee have been traveling to the Everglades from northern Florida for decades in order to hunt, fish, and participate in sacred rituals. The tribe was better at navigating the wide landscape than the U.S. Army when the Seminole Wars started in 1817. The Miccosukee and Seminole people were forced to seek safety on tree islands deep within the Everglades when Col. Gustavus Loomis burned every tribe village and farm in an area known as the Big Cypress by the late 1850s.
We are here today for that reason. During that period, we frequently consider the Everglades to be our defender. Therefore, it is now our responsibility to safeguard the Everglades, Cypress stated.
The 1940s saw the drainage of the Everglades to make way for the construction of communities and the planting of crops, which led to many of the current issues. The ecosystems in which the Miccosukee people hunted, fished, and collected plants, performed religious ceremonies, and buried their dead have been devastated throughout time.
Much of the damage is intended to be repaired by a state-federal operation to rehydrate the landscape and clean the water. However, restoration projects and water management choices have dried up or flooded areas where tribe members reside and perform rituals.
The Western Everglades Restoration Project is the result of the tribe’s decades-long advocacy for a thorough response. Members have gathered with stakeholders to hear their concerns, lobbied with state and federal leaders, written letters to federal agencies, and spoken at public meetings. If all goes according to plan, the project will clean up contaminated water, enhance hydrology, guard against flooding, and lessen the frequency and intensity of wildfires. In July, the project’s foundation was laid there.
After a portion of the design was eliminated, there are still worries about the hazards of flooding in the town and whether the project will go far enough in improving the quantity and quality of the water.
After landowners refused to give up their properties, a second constructed wetland that would have purified the water was taken out of the project concept. Additionally, the geology of the region was judged to be too permeable to support it. Some people are concerned that the water will not fulfill requirements if there is no other option.
Despite this, Miccosukee Tribe chief of staff Curtis Osceola stated of the project: “If we get this done, we will have changed the future for the Miccosukee and Seminole forever.”
Victory in fight over wilderness designation
Betty Osceola, a Miccosukee tribe member and environmental activist, learned as a youngster to spear hunt and live off the land, just way her ancestors did, in an area of the Everglades now known as the Big Cypress National Preserve. She still resides there, in one of fifteen traditional villages that are also home to a few hundred Miccosukee and Seminole people.
They hunt, gather medicinal plants, and host significant events in its sawgrass grasslands and cypress swamps. It is home to the endangered Florida panther as well as ceremonial and burial grounds.
In order to shield the preserve from human influences, the National Park Service sought to declare it a wilderness. The tribe objected, claiming that it would have severely impacted their customs, restricted their access to their ancestral lands, and disregarded the vital stewardship they had been providing for millennia. Several studies have demonstrated that allowing Indigenous people to continue to be stewards of their lands and waters is essential to preserving forests, biodiversity, and combating climate change.
The tribe prevailed following a fierce battle that included campaigns, a petition, testimonies, and the backing of multiple government representatives.
“The Miccosukee chief of staff, Osceola, said the National Park Service heard the tribe’s concerns about the legal conflicts the designation would have on their tribal rights.” “They did listen to us on the wilderness designation, and at least they’re not, at this time, proceeding with any such designation,” he said, despite their ongoing objections to the agency’s advancing proposal to expand trail systems in the preserve, which the tribe claimed are near or past culturally significant sites.
By obtaining mineral rights in the preserve, the Miccosukee continue to engage with the federal, state, and local governments to prevent further oil exploration and to write op-eds advocating for the phase-out of oil drilling in Big Cypress.
Elders look to the next generation to protect the Everglades
Frank, the tribal elder, and 18-year-old Hector Tigertail were sitting beneath a chickee, or stilt home, on the tribe’s reservation on a windy afternoon. Near garden beds where flowers, chiles, and other plants sprang from the ground, a wooden swing shook. On the grass close by was a plastic deer with antlers that was intended to teach hunting skills to young Indigenous people.
Frank, 67, talked of his childhood on tree islands. When a softball game was in progress, he recalled the deer that came out to play and the times when the water was so pure that he could drink it.
He talked about the tribe’s past and a period of plentiful Everglades fauna. Regarding his mistrust of the government and the tribe’s ties to the land. He also frequently mentioned his grandfather’s remarks, which were made to him decades ago and are still relevant today.
We were told to never, ever leave the Everglades, said Frank. The only way to prolong your life, your culture, your identity is to stay here in the Everglades… as long as you re here, your maker s hand is upon you.
Tigertail heard similar stories from his uncles and grandfather growing up. They helped him feel connected to the Everglades and to his culture. Their stories remind him of the importance of being stewards of the lands that have cared for him and his ancestors.
Tribal elders are teaching youth what Cypress called the modern way to protect the Everglades with policy, understanding government practices and integrating traditional and Western science.
As a tribal youth member, Tigertail is doing what he can to preserve the Everglades for his generation and ones to come. He works with the Miccosukee Tribe s Fish and Wildlife Department to remove invasive species like pythons and fish like peacock bass. And he tries to be a voice for his people.
To hear that we re losing it slowly and slowly saddens me, said Tigertail. But also gives me hope that maybe there is a chance to save it.
By DORANY PINEDA and REBECCA BLACKWELL Associated Press
