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To: Bluedot Living
From: Clara at Creator’s Garden Birds
Subject: The Birds of Anishinaabe Aki project
Dear Bluedot,
Bineshiinyik (bin-EH-sheen-yick) means “Birds” in Anishinaabemowin. Anishinaabemowin is the language of the Anishinaabeg, who have always lived across vast regions of Turtle Island – from present day Newfoundland, across Ontario and the Prairies, all the way to Florida.
The Bineshiinyik project was created by a trio of friends: Joseph Pitawanakwat, Andrés Jiménez Monge, and Junaid Shahzad Khan. Through a shared passion for birding, ecology, and language revitalization, they started collaborating around the idea of a Birds of Anishinaabe Aki project back in 2019. Before officially starting the project, Joseph spent many years learning and documenting Anishinaabemowin bird names while working and visiting with hundreds of Indigenous communities.
The three are dedicated to regathering and the education of bird names and significant Indigenous bird knowledges. Whereas Western scientific naming of wildlife focuses on the most obvious of physical characteristics, geographic range, or paying homage to Europeans, the project is helping to reconnect the birds of Turtle Island with their Anishinaabemowin names.
To help do this, the friends created guides to Anishinaabe bird names that explain the names of familiar birds. For instance, the common grackle is the “Asiginaak.” As the guide explains, Sig means “to gather” or “to cluster,” so the name describes the way these birds gather in flight to form their murmurations.
Learning the names of wildlife in the traditional languages of an area helps us learn about these incredible flying beings: the roles they play within our world, and how best to help and support their populations for generations to come.
Joseph, Andrés, and Junaid have used their combined experience and skills to foster a project that has sparked interest and excitement from Indigenous communities, schools and school boards, environmental organizations, national and provincial parks, museums and more. So far, they have created two educational resources to share this bird knowledge: the Anishinaabe Bird Names Guide focused on 15 carefully chosen species, and most recently, an Anishinaabe Winter Bird Names Guide, featuring beautiful original artwork from Emily Kewageshig, an artist from Saugeen First Nation.
The Creator’s Garden project is an effort to provide land-based education, and to shift conventional paradigms of how we see and understand and manage The Great Lakes Region. These knowledges help us live the life The Great Lakes region has to offer: Mino Bimaadiziwin, a good life.
The friends regularly give presentations and workshops to engage birders and non-birders alike in an exploration of birds, ecology and language. You can learn more at the Creator’s Garden project website, or reach out by email.
About the Creator’s Garden Bineshiinyik Team:
Joseph is the Founder & Director of Creator's Garden, an Anishinaabe education business focused on plant identification, beyond-sustainable harvesting, and teaching everyone of their linguistic, historical, cultural, edible, ecological and medicinal significance through experiences. He has learned from hundreds of traditional knowledge holders and uniquely blends this knowledge with and reinforces it with an array of western sciences.
Andrés is a Costa Rican Canadian biologist who strives towards creating deeper connections between people and the planet. From leading the campaign to ban shark finning in Costa Rica, to building international funding opportunities for Costa Ricans looking to study in the environmental field in Canada, to managing conservation programs across Canada, Andrés’ journey into nature goes back over twenty years. Andrés has an infectious enthusiasm for nature, which he utilizes to help foster its stewardship.
Junaid is a Muslim-Canadian from the Indus Valley, from the region that is now Pakistan. Junaid has worked as an ecologist for over 12 years, on issues of invasive species, plastic pollution, habitat revitalization, insect conservation, and bird education. Through the ongoing learning of Anishinaabemowin, and working alongside community members looking to rejuvenate Anishinaabek cultural practices, he hopes to help support efforts towards Indigenous land sovereignty across Turtle Island.
