Photo: Wing-Chi Poon | Wikimedia
The National Tree Seed Centre, which collects and catalogs seeds in Canada, are recently focusing their attention on tree species valued by the First Nations. Over the next few years, the center will train volunteers from Indigenous communities to identify and collect seeds, and offer help in repopulating trees and plants that have become rare in some places. The Mi'kmaq ad Wolastoqey in New Brunswick says that black ash, a wood historically used in Indigenous art, is becoming rare to find. It also becoming difficult to find white birch trees large enough to to create traditional birchbark canoes. "I really relish the idea that we're going to have Indigenous people across Canada who are going to be a part of this process of collecting the seeds and planting the seeds and growing trees," says Cecelia Brooks, seed keeper for her community of St. Mary's First Nation in Fredericton.
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