The Aunties Dandelion Season Five begins with a full house, a generous conversation, and stories grounded in land, memory, and care. Last fall at the Cambridge Public Library, Kahstoserakwathe moderated a sold-out evening with celebrated author and media creator David A. Robertson of Norway House Cree Nation. This was TAD's first episode recorded with a live audience.

Together, they explored how land shapes emotional health, how identity unfolds through writing, and how family stories guide us across time.

David is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, recipient of the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, and the Writers' Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. In this conversation, he shares tender memories of his father, Dr. Donald Robertson, a pioneering educator whose influence continues to shape his work and life.

We also speak about David’s powerful six-part podcast Kiwew (S/he returns home), which became an unexpected and moving tribute to his father after he passed away during its creation.

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What a dynamic visit this month with Tuscarora Turtle clan scholar, curator, historian, and artist Dr. Jolene Rickard. At Cornell University, she teaches in the History of Art and Visual Studies and Art Departments, where she has long guided students through Indigenous studies leadership and practice. She co-curated two of the four permanent exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Across her work, Dr. Rickard centers Indigenous knowledge, lived experience, and visual sovereignty.

Jolene is the curator of the ambitious outdoor exhibition Deskaheh in Geneva 1923 to 2023: Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignty, which opened along the Quai Wilson in Geneva in 2023. The exhibition marks 100 years since Deskaheh Levi General sought to speak for the Haudenosaunee Confederacy at the League of Nations. Working with the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee, the City of Geneva, and Docip, Dr. Rickard highlights the ongoing struggle for Indigenous sovereignty. Her work also addresses the health of her homeplace, including the impacts of the Niagara Falls Power Project and Love Canal on the Tuscarora community, bringing these conversations into museums, classrooms, and public life.

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Betty Osceola (Miccosukee, Panther Clan) grounds us in the spectacular land and life of the Everglades in this visit with host Kahstoserakwathe. She explains how the region’s natural filtration system protects fresh water for millions, carries cultural memory for the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, and sustains plant, animal, and water relatives.

Betty is well known for her prayer walks that became especially urgent when the cruelty of the “Alligator Alcatraz” outdoor immigrant detention camp surfaced last summer on traditional homelands in South Florida, and her research is instrumental in ongoing lawsuits around the facility. She says our struggle for equitable treatment cannot be separated from the health and well-being of the natural world.

Betty spent decades living what environmental justice looks like from an Indigenous perspective: caring for water as kin, community mobilization as a responsibility, and finding joy in walking, guiding, laughing, and listening. She asks us to consider how we reconnect to our own sources of care and to show up when the land says it needs us. This conversation is a clear invitation to walk our lands and raise our voices to protect the natural world and the humanity of our hearts. Stay to the end for her cute stories about mama ‘gators and their babies.

Key Takeaways from Our Conversation with Betty Osceola

1. The Everglades is a living relative, not a resource.

Betty reminds us that the River of Grass is alive, speaking, and essential for the fresh water that sustains millions of people. Protecting it is not just an environmental act; it is a kinship responsibility. The "river" is a slow-moving sheet of water, full of swamp grasses, that flows from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, moving only about a quarter-mile per day.

2. Ceremony is a form of resistance.

Through prayer walks and gatherings, Betty and her community practice ceremony as a form of activism. Each step, song, and offering re-centers human presence within a network of life that has been disrupted by extraction and control.

3. Alligator Alcatraz is part of a larger pattern.

Betty describes the proposed detention facility as one more example of how industrial and political systems see Indigenous land as empty or disposable. Her organizing through prayer, education, and direct presence helped bring national attention and legal action to pause construction.

4. Environmental justice and Indigenous rights are inseparable.

The conversation links the Miccosukee Tribe’s struggle for full federal recognition with the broader movement to restore balance between governance, ecology, and Indigenous sovereignty. Justice begins when Indigenous knowledge leads.

5. Joy and community are forms of survival.

Even amid ongoing fights for land and water, Betty’s stories centre laughter, family, and collective prayer. Joy is not a distraction from struggle; it is what keeps the work alive.

Photo by Lisette Morales, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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