The land remembers: Indigenous views of sustainability

Sustainability isn’t a modern concept; it’s an ancient way of life that has guided Indigenous communities for generations.

For Mi’kmaq Elder Donna Augustine of Elsipogtog First Nation, my grandmother, sustainability is about respecting the land as a living being and understanding our role in a larger cycle of care, connection, and responsibility.

Born and raised in Big Cove, also known as Elsipogtog, Donna came from a large family shaped by both hardship and strength. Her father, Sam Augustine (my great-grandfather) endured the violence and loss of the residential school system. Taken from his home at age six after both his parents died, he was placed in Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, where he survived years of abuse, displacement, and forced assimilation. By the time he was sixteen, he had endured so much that he lied about his age just to escape. He joined the army and was sent overseas to fight in the final years of World War II.

That decision, a desperate act of survival, was also a turning point. After the war, he returned home and built a life with Donna’s mother, Vangie. They raised 10 children at a time when opportunities were scarce, and racism was rampant. “No one would hire a native in the nearby towns,” Donna recalls. “We were very poor.”

But even in the middle of poverty, she remembers joy. Summers were spent digging clams, raking blueberries, and picking potatoes to afford winter clothes. She and her siblings made toys from scraps: matchstick dolls, carved wooden boats, paper figures from catalogues. They lived simply, but never without imagination. These early experiences — of working the land, sharing food, surviving with very little — laid the foundation for Donna’s understanding of sustainability: take only what you need, and always give back.

That principle runs deep through her teachings. Her grandfather was the first to show her the sacred relationship between people and the land. He taught her to harvest natural medicines with care, to dry them properly, and to always offer a prayer before taking anything. “Don’t take too much,” he told her. “Respect the plant. Give thanks.”

To Donna, sustainability is inseparable from this kind of relationship. It is not about fear or restriction; it’s about reciprocity. She carries the wisdom that what we take from the land must be balanced by what we return, not just physically, but spiritually. That’s why Mi’kmaq families return lobster shells and fish bones to the water, not only as a gesture of gratitude, but as a way of restoring calcium and balance to the ecosystem. It’s why they never pick fiddleheads from the same patch, never harvest female moose or lobsters with eggs. These practices are not rules; they are acts of care.

“Our people lived in balance with the land by always giving back,” Donna says. That balance was present in every part of life. It meant not overfishing, not damming rivers, not clear-cutting forests. It meant knowing the seasons, listening to the land, and respecting what was offered. Sustainability wasn’t something to learn; it was something you lived, something passed on through hands and stories, work and prayer.

Colonization tried to erase that way of life. Ceremonies had to be hidden, songs silenced, medicines outlawed. There were times when just practicing culture could be met with violence or death. But the teachings survived. People like Donna carried them quietly, and now, they are being shared again.

She speaks of the Sweat Lodge as one of many sacred spaces that embody this connection. Before cutting saplings, tobacco is offered. Stones are heated in a sacred fire and brought inside, where water poured over them becomes steam, cleansing not just the body, but the spirit. “When we exit the sweat lodge,” she says, “it’s as if we’re born again.” This cycle of offering, receiving, releasing is what sustainability truly means.

Donna’s teachings remind us that the land is not a resource; it is a relative. It is alive. It remembers how we treat it.

Donna Augustine’s life is proof that sustainability is not a trend; it is memory, it is ceremony, it is survival passed down through generations. It lives in the way she harvests medicine with a prayer. In the way her people return shells to the water. In the way they refuse to take more than they need, even when they have so little.

She carries the wisdom of those who were nearly silenced; of children stolen by residential schools, of songs once whispered in the dark. And still, she sings. Still, she teaches. Still, she reminds us that the land is not beneath us; it is part of us. To listen to Donna is to remember that everything we touch is sacred. That to care for the earth is to care for ourselves. That the old ways are not behind us; they are waiting to be returned to. The land remembers. So must we.

Haiti Augustine is a St. Thomas University student and a member of Elsipogtog First Nation.