By Rebekah Brunham
CUE Departments of Biological Sciences and Environmental and Physical Sciences, and the kihêwak kâpimihâcik (IKRC) teamed up to create the prairie restoration project along the front of the Allan Wachowich building. Students have the opportunity to join a meeting, get their hands dirty and help cultivate a prairie garden.
“Us, in biology, want to use it as a teaching resource,” says Matthew Churchward, Associate Professor and Chair of the Biological and Public Health Sciences. “And with kihêwak kâpimihâcik, [the question was] can we bring and incorporate any plants that are significant to the community?”
The area, which used to be covered in turf grass, is now being replaced with a prairie garden. The space will include native plants such as Labrador tea, sedges, shrubs, flowers, and grasses. The turf was torn out last spring, and sage is already thriving in the area. In addition to sage, there are also pine trees, various types of grasses, onions, native sunflowers, and a cactus.
As the garden develops, the kihêwak kâpimihâcik centre will have opportunities to collect and harvest some of the plants and to create knowledge-sharing activities. Churchward credits the kihêwak kâpimihâcik with saying, “it’s a literal act of decolonizing land.”
The meetings are impromptu and depend on when there’s enough material to plant, such as in the spring, summer, and early fall. Students and faculty can sign up to receive emails about the next meeting.
“It’s still at a state where it needs a lot of weeding. Until we really get a handle on that, that’s going to be the big challenge year over year,” says Churchward. “Over the summer, it was lovely.“
CUE is stationed in a prairie parkland ecosystem — it’s a mix of trees and prairie land — so there will mostly be grassland plants being added. “As much as we want it to be like a native ecosystem, we also want to look at it,” says Churchward, so flowers that bloom at different times throughout the year are also added and included in the planting.
“I just think it enriches the campus space.”
The next step is interpretive signage around the grasses to allow others to come through. Participating students are encouraged to adopt a plant and create signs for it, which include a short blurb about the plant. The signs will be written in Cree to connect them with the Cree language program.
“We’ve had interest from students in being able to participate in projects, to get involved in things,” says Churchward. “Making it an activity for students is great for community building.”
Link to join: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1cB-8EjLJdwqZZRQE0Y9Wo_kThqayRtvoilX6-v7_70nDiw/viewform
