Why planting black ash trees is so important for P.E.I. and the Mi'kmaq

Charlottetown Rural High School students took a field trip behind their school Wednesday to make a mark on P.E.I.'s ecological and cultural landscape.

The students were planting black ash trees. Once prominent on P.E.I., there are likely only a few hundred left across the entire province.

"We are really replanting and reintroducing a very culturally significant species to this area," said Aleida Tweten. 

"Black ash, for many like thousands of years, has been used by Mi'kmaq people for various things, most notably the baskets. So it's a very special kind of wood and it's very rare."

Tweten is of Cree ancestry and now lives on P.E.I. working on the P.E.I. Forested Landscape Priority Place project as a Mi'kmaw engagement co-ordinator. 

The project protects species at risk and their habitats, and while it's hard to know how many black ash are left on the Island, Tweten said 450 is a good guess.

"It gives me hope that there's a future for our black ash here in the Atlantic region," said Julie Pellissier-Lush, a Mi'kmaw educator and storyteller.

"To know that our traditions, our customs, our artistry with our baskets, our ko'jua sticks, all the different things that we would use traditionally, is going to be available for the future generations."

Ecological, cultural significance

The effort to repopulate the province with black ash has been underway for a few years.

The tricky part? The trees only produce seeds about every seven years and the window to collect seeds is narrow.

The trees planted this week at Hermitage Creek are already about three years old — raised with the help of nurseries at the MacPhail Woods Ecological Forestry Project and Lennox Island First Nation.

And students have also been learning about the ecological rarity of black ash, as well as what it means to the Mi'kmaq.

"It was really fun to hear how they were able to turn the trees into those beautiful baskets," said Grade 10 student Emily Shi. 

"Planting the trees is, like, definitely important to me.… We're currently on their land right now, so I'm really grateful for, like, what we could do."

Classmate Morgan Norquay agrees.

"The fact that they're going to be here for a long time and it feels great to say, like, 'I planted a tree,'" she said.

"It just feels great to be a part of helping bring it back to its former glory."

Some Mi'kmaq from across the Island made the trip to Charlottetown just to witness the celebratory occasion. 

"I think it's amazing. The one thing that all Indigenous clans across Canada are really trying to rebuild is the knowledge of their culture and be grounded in that," said Em McFadyen, a First Nations Guardian from Lennox Island.

First Nations Guardians are people designated through a federal program — and given funding — to support Indigenous groups in exercising their rights and responsibilities to the lands, waters, and ice of their traditional territories.

"The adults of today are fighting really hard so that youth, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, can understand and connect to the Indigenous culture."

Tweten said the project feels like reconciliation in action.

"I'm a hopeful person," she said. 

"I do believe in change for the good and when we have opportunities like this to come together, it is a start of something more."