by Rev. Houston R. Cypress, Otter Clan
Board of Directors
Love The Everglades Movement

Reconciliation work is an integral aspect of Greater Everglades Restoration because of the necessity to integrate indigenous knowledges into the overall process.  These knowledges include their traditional ecological knowledge, their arts, as well as their scientific work.

Even with the continued lack of awareness by the general public of the full history of indigenous community interactions with the USA and the State of Florida, communities like the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida are still very optimistic about the potential to build coalitions focused on environmental conservation.

This optimism is exemplified by the ongoing educational outreach of various Miccosukee community members,  such as people like Miccosukee Grandmother Betty L. Osceola of the Panther Clan, and Miccosukee Elder Michael Frank of the Otter Clan.  This optimism is founded on the joy which is sustained by the community's spiritual beliefs.

This optimism is what inspires us to action, and what we would like to explore with you here by sharing 2 important historical documents created under the leadership of the Miccosukee Chairman Buffalo Tiger of the Bird Clan.

On July 17, 1983, the Honorable Buffalo Tiger formally announced a Celebration of Peace.  The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida had recently settled Land Claims concerning their interests in a homeland for their people.  These Miccosukee  land claims go back nearly 400 years and are recorded in numerous treaties between their people and the European powers of Spain, Great Britain, and  eventually the United States of America.

Around the time of this Land Claims Settlement, the Miccosukee Tribe also initiated an environmental study of the lands over which they were now guaranteed, and thus began their twice-yearly Everglades Study, which eventually led to the Miccosukee Tribe setting the standard for Everglades Restoration.  This water quality standard is one of the foundational goals of Everglades Restoration, which is the target of reducing phosphorus levels to 10 parts per billion in the River of Grass section of the Greater Everglades.

First we'll look at the TREATY RELATIONS OF THE MICCOSUKEE TRIBE, and then we'll look at the CELEBRATION OF PEACE declaration by Hon. Buffalo Tiger.  Both of these documents were created in 1983.

As you can see, the Miccosukee Tribe's interest in caring for these lands and waters goes back a long time.

These days, the US Environmental Protection Agency is currently advancing a misinformed and clumsy position regarding the status of "Indian Land" and "Indian Country" that diminishes the Sovereignty of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.

This untenable situation is currently worsened with the recent transfer of permitting authority -- outlined in Section 404 of the Clean Water Act -- to the State of Florida.  This means that the Miccosukee Tribe's Government-to-Government relationship is weakened to that of a conversation with the State of Florida.

I hope that this historical review helps the public to better understand why our organization supports finding a solution to these problems.

This is why I feel like the message of Reconciliation needs to be amplified when talking about Everglades Restoration.  This is how we make Land Acknowledgements actionable.  This is how we can honor our promises as Americans to our Indigenous Hosts.  This is about healing our relationships with one another as people, and ultimately, our relationships with a healthy and thriving ecology.

When we can support the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida secure their rights, we will be able to see their environmental conservation efforts flourish even more. Everyone benefits from clean water, and that is what the work of the Miccosukee Environmental Protection Agency is all about.  A healthy Everglades benefits everyone.  When it comes to the environment, Indigenous Rights Are Everyone's Rights.

A Field Report
by Rev. Houston R. Cypress, Otter Clan
Board of Directors
Love The Everglades Movement

On the recent 4/20 Everglades research trip, I was concerned with updating the organizational understanding and practice of indigenous solidarity of the Love The Everglades Movement.  Our praxis.
 
I brought along my co-founder Jean Sarmiento, and a small group of friends who are also community leaders in the arts, such as Ray Orraca, multidisciplinary artist Franky Cruz, creative visionary and renaissance man DAZE of HIGHMERICA, artist Sofia de Cardenas, native plant landscaping leader Sunkeeper Environmental Solutions, and a heavyweight in creative literary publishing, so we could have a friendly discussion about the status of Miccosukee Hemp visioning.
 
We met up with TRISTAN TIGERTAIL, a gentleman from the community of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.  Tristan played an important role in setting up the regulatory framework for the Tribe’s entry into Hemp Production.

It’s been almost a year since the USDA approved the Miccosukee Hemp Plan.
Click this link to read the Miccosukee Hemp Regulations:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/MiccosukeeTribeHempPlan.pdf

Our airboat took off at about a quarter to 4pm.  Overcast, it’s been about a week that the rains have been returning to South Florida.  Droplets here and there, but no rain at all that day, as grey as it was.  The Dry Season is ending.  Soon it will be a New Water Year.  And the Indians will be celebrating special religious festivals to honor the Circle of Life.  In spite of it all, there’s always reason to celebrate our relationships with Nature.
 
As we zigzagged across the wetland home of the Miccosukee people, we stopped and said hello to a straggler alligator, as most of them have been congregating in the canals to the west, according to Tristan, who was also our airboat driver.  Jean reminded us of the challenges that high-water levels bring, and the ways that it negatively impacts tree island plant and animal life.

We cruised to a nearby Miccosukee village, and by 4:20pm, we were in-joying an eclectic gabfest about indigenous sovereignty, the economy of plant medicines, and yummy fruit snacks.
 
I don’t know what it is about the River of Grass, but when you’re out there, conversations inevitably turn to healing and medicine.  The conversation opened up by speculating on the potential for hemp plants to improve water quality, and turned to evidence of hemp cultivation on land to improve soil quality.  The focus zoomed in on the specific healing capacities of cannabinoids such as CBN and CBG as well as others.
 
I was impressed at this latest iteration of indigenous self-determination.  As we talked about the various interpretations and expressions of Treatment as a State, we discussed how that term was interpreted by the Miccosukee Tribe to create exemplary environmental regulations pertaining to Water Quality and Phosphorus, Flows and Levels, and Nonpoint Source Pollution Management.

As we rounded out the Everglades airboat ride with a visit to the edge of the Big Cypress forest, I thought of Betty Osceola, the Panther Clan Grandmother and environmental educator.  She always says that’s one of her favorite spots to visit by airboat:  the transition zone between the River of Grass and the Big Cypress forest.
 
Betty Osceola recently announced her newest brand with a Facebook post:   RedWoman CBD.  Betty will sell her CBD products at the 2021 Motorcycle Swamp Rally this weekend in Ochopee.

Betty explains, “RedWoman CBD will have a booth.  We will be showing our CBD Flower along with CBD Delta 8 Flower and Delta 8 prefilled cartridge pens.”  All of her products are lab-certified and she will provide a lab sheet with each purchase.
 
The 2021 Motorcycle Swamp Rally is an interesting choice to launch a CBD product line.

The venue for the event is the Trail Lakes Campground.  The Shealy Family have been longtime supporters of Betty’s environmental advocacy efforts.  As Gladesmen, they honor many generations of living in and caring for the Big Cypress forest and the Greater Everglades.  They have offered use of the campground on many occasions to support the public who attends the spiritually-based direct actions that Betty has organized over the years.  It’s a place that offers a variety of cabins, camping amenities, guide services, and intrigue, to all their visitors.

The Motorcycle Rally promises to be a rollicking good time with live musical performances by Cypress swamp musical legend RAIFORD STARKE, with footstomping good tunes by THIRD WHEEL, and SOUTHERN STAMPEDE.

Miccosukee family are keeping the legend of IONA'S FRY BREAD vibrant with their mouth-watering Indian Burgers.  And make sure to take home some of that famous SKUNK APE HOT SAUCE available in 3 flavorsl

Cruise on over to the 2021 Motorcycle Swamp Rally this weekend.  Saturday and Sunday, April 24 & 25, 11am to 6pm on both days.

As I reflect back on the 4/20 airboat ride with Tristan, I’m excited about the healing potential of the Greater Everglades. Soon it will be a site for cultivating hemp products that complement a healthy lifestyle through the Miccosukee Hemp project.  Tristan embraced my friends and opened up about business, culture, and his dreams for the future of the Miccosukee community.  Other community members, like Betty Osceola, have been manifesting their own CBD-infused dreams.
 
When it comes to environmental conservation, indigenous rights are everyone’s rights.  When we support the Miccosukee position on Everglades matters, we are supporting the indigenous-led science that underlies meaningful Everglades Restoration efforts.

A healthy Everglades supports the Miccosukee cultural practices, and benefits everyone else through the many ecosystem services that it provides, including the refreshing of the aquifer where our drinking water is drawn from.

How fascinating that the next steps in Everglades conservation include supporting Hemp cultivation by an indigenous community!

By Dorothy Downs,
​followed by a conversation with Rev. Houston R. Cypress

​I invite readers to Canoe Back in Time, to visit a Miccosukee family living in the Everglades in the early 1920s. The people believe that Breathmaker, or Creator, made the world and shaped for them the great open grass and watery plain known as the Everglades, and put animals and humans on the land.
 
The people learned how to live and care for nature, the trees and plants, the clean water, and all that inhabited the river of grass. They were told what they should grow or hunt to eat. This story tells how the family lived then and honored Breathmaker at the annual Green Corn Dance.
 
Miccosukee founding Chairman, Buffalo Tiger, told me stories and said he wanted a book written for children, telling them the family values he was taught. He asked me to write Miccosukee Arts and Crafts, published by the tribe in 1982. I have written and illustrated this book for him and the Miccosukee people. Canoe is a work of fiction, strongly based on real stories told to me and on real people with my mixture of first and last Miccosukee names and clans. I thank everybody.
 
In the early 1920s, the Miccosukees were worried about what effect the building of the road across the Everglades to be known as the Tamiami Trail would have. I have included in Canoe a story of an event at Green Corn Dance, during a time when the men talked about business:

​Canoe is set in a Panther Clan camp. Each chapter cover aspects of family life, told through a very creative ten-year old girl, Sally Osceola. She wakes up, remembering "Today is my special day." Her parents are going by canoe to Miami to buy supplies, including cloth and thread for sewing.

Sally can't wait to get to her mother's sewing machine to learn how to sew her outfit to wear to Green Corn Dance ceremonies. Breathmaker has told Sally she will be an artist and she wants to honor Creator. The story follows her and her family's activities up to the big events.
 
As an art historian, I have written about all of the arts of Miccosukees and Seminoles. Once a creative girl and artist myself, my special interest is tracing the history of patchwork clothing and the women artists who sew it. Sally Osceola's excitement about creating art is the spark for the storyline.

​Chapters cover:  busy life in the camp, children being taught in the outdoors, how to treat company, and collecting plants and learning about healing from Grandma, the matriarch of the camp. There are games, daytime and nighttime activities. Singing, dancing, and stories told by elders by firelight finish off their nights. The families and friends celebrate together a Happy New Year at Green Corn Dance.
 
I hope the reader enjoys the trip back to the beautiful Everglades we Love.
❤🙏
 
(Published by IRIE Books, Santa Fe, NM. Available on amazon.com.)

​I visited Dorothy Downs at her home office.  Ensconced amidst a stunning collection of Native American art that includes pottery, baskets, sand paintings, wood carving ...

​The jaw-dropper:  EFFIE OSCEOLA’s array of fiery patchwork grandeur.  An Otter Clan mother of many generations, Effie’s virtuosity weighs forth as massive textile wall panels.  It screams forth in a fiery gradient cascading thru scarlet, jacinth, & neon-goldenrod, offering just a hint of refreshment with a pure turquoise dash, boldly sovereign in a lush white foundation.
 
We had just finished re-watching Patterns Of Power, an hour-length feature produced by Dorothy on Miccosukee & Seminole patchwork, and the community that created this unique sewing technique in the Everglades.  It’s captivating to listen to the music inherent in the cadence of the Miccosukee women, firmly situated in the various institutions of a tribal community after 2-and-a-half decades of federal recognition and self-determination:  Delores Billie and Virginia Poole in the Miccosukee Health Department, Jennie O. Billie in the Miccosukee Indian School.
 
Dorothy Downs contributed to the momentum of Miccosukee artist Stephen Tiger’s art career by giving him his first one-man exhibition at her Four Corners Gallery in Coral Gables.  Stephen, and his brother Lee, are the nexus of the Miccosukee rock-&-roll band TIGER TIGER – they brought a psychedelic indigenous force to the stage in their day.  Today there are other Miccosukee music bands like TALKING DOGS, but TIGER TIGER blazed the path.  These guys, along with their father, Hon. Buffalo Tiger, started the annual Miccosukee Arts Festival, which celebrates indigenous culture in the Everglades for one week after Christmas.

​Dorothy and I are in the process of reprinting a beautiful catalog that she produced for Hon. Buffalo Tiger, Miccosukee Chairman in 1982 when it was first published.  
 
Times have changed for the Miccosukee Tribe these days.  The newest Miccosukee publication comes from their Fish & Wildlife Department:

The wire bound booklet clearly states “For internal use only, not for commercial purposes.”  In 1982, back when a whole different generation of elders were in key leadership positions, the Miccosukee were proud to share such treasures of their cultural traditions and artistic innovations.  These days, the Miccosukee community are taking time to talk about the importance of Data Sovereignty — guarding scientific data generated from tribal research activities.  Even so, this department had quite a bit to report at the recent GEER 2019 Everglades science conference.
 
With important film events featuring indigenous stories coming this fall with Borscht in Miami, & at FGCU in Naples, exploring Dorothy’s newest work underscores the importance of creative solidarity between communities, and the enduring sexiness of cinema.  

​H:
I’ve had the pleasure of getting reacquainted with your work over the past couple of years.  I deeply appreciate how you always show us love when we setup at different tribal festivals.  I love how the land and the Everglades shows up in so much of what you’ve produced in collaborating with the indigenous communities. Let’s talk about you as a writer.  
 
D:
At first I didn’t think I was literary.  But I guess I’m a writer HAH! look at all this.  (Gestures to her books.). The 1981 Miami Herald Tropic Magazine article, "Chickee Chic." It’s a nice big article.  I went to a high school reunion and a girl in my class happened to be an editor at Tropic.  "She said what are you doing now?"  I said," Oh well, I just finished my Masters Degree at UM in art history and I’m doing a little writing.“ She said, “Well write something for me.”  She called me in to The Miami Herald, and there was this room with a glass window.  There were people waiting, and I went in and she asked me questions.  She said, “There’s a typewriter, now go write it.”  I didn’t even type!  Much later, a friend told me, “I can’t believe what you wrote in the paper about Marjory Stoneman Douglas!”
 
H:
What has it been like learning from and learning with communities?
 
D:
I am so dependent on that and so fortunate the people would share with me so openly.  You saw in the video how Frances Osceola and all these people are happy to be able to share.  So I feel so fortunate that they are that open to me and I started this in 1976, a long time ago.  I didn’t bring gifts.  I’d just go in, sit down, say Hi, and start talking.  And they would just work.  Frances with Wild Bill.  Effie didn’t speak English, so Howard was there.  These people opened up to me and maybe they saw the importance of it, too.  The first person I interviewed was Howard Osceola, and I said, “Do you mind if I tape you?”  He said, “Oh no I tape my father-in-law all the time, Josie Billie.”  So I learned it was okay to tape, because they wanted this information saved, and I saw that I could help them do that.  I met Howard through the University of Miami, because he was working with Iron Arrow, the Honor Society at UM. 
 
H:
How has producing the film changed you since then?  Or how has it impacted you?
 
D:
When I would go out to interview people, I would leave the City of Miami and drive Tamiami Trail and suddenly things would change.  Suddenly you’re in the Everglades.  And I may have had some ideas and questions in my head, but I would get out there and let the people tell me what they wanted to say.  But just the environment of being out there, listening to them talk about what they love and do, but then coming back, just remembering what they said, not what I wanted to know.  And the beauty of the Everglades changed the whole thing.  Just going into it, experiencing it, and then coming back.  That was really important to my work.  I’d like to say how much I appreciate having this as a lifetime goal.  I feel so lucky to be able to do what I do and be accepted for it.
 
H:
What do you mean?  Tell me more.
 
D:
I believe that my mission in life is explaining the beauty of cultural diversity through art.  That is what I somehow recognize.  I feel chosen for that.  I don’t know why.  It’s just something I started doing and the path went on and on.  I met people. I met Miccosukee people.  I feel like that’s what I’m here for.  And yes it not only deepens me but it’s what I’m supposed to do.  Now I don’t want to sound strange about that, but, you know, sometimes you feel this is just right.
 
H:
You’ve had experience working with other indigenous communities, and I feel that my concerns are how traditional concerns and ecological concerns come together.  Do you have any experience with that in your relationships with other indigenous communities?
 
D:
I’m a Miami girl.  I was born in Miami and I so feel a love for the Everglades, for the whole thing, for the ocean, for the bay.  It’s very easy to be supportive of the Everglades.  The other communities I’ve worked with – say Navajo, or Pueblo potters – they’re different from here.  This is where I’m from, and to me that is really important, to tell the story of where I was born.
 
H:
Well, around here these days, in the circles I visit, people are concerned about the Environment, Climate Change, and Justice.  What’s the role of Art in this context?
 
D:
Making people stop and look and think.  Art is a way to introduce people.  This is the Everglades, this is how beautiful it is, and we need to take care of that.  Protect it.  And I think it can be done visually, more than any other way.  Or as equally as writing about it.  But visually you see the beauty of it.  That makes people stop and think, “Wait this is important, we can’t let go of this.”  And that’s the role art plays.