Join us for a reflective walk with Director of the Southern Miss Center for American Indian Research and Studies Tammy Greer on Friday, April 12th, 10am-12pm. In this walk, we will reflect on how creating and tending wild spaces, co-creating with other forest beings, and celebrating diverse and wild landscapes wherever we see them – in our yards and on our campuses, in our board rooms and in our families, in our forests and in ourselves – ensures their survival just as they ensure ours.  The event is free, but registration is required below! 

Our Southeastern Native ancestors lived in communities near waterways, separated from one another by forested areas that were tended wild spaces – burned to manage underbrush, reduce tick, flea, and other insect infestations, promote growth in our fire-adapted long-leaf pine trees and enable others of the standing ones, like oaks, to have a competitive advantage.  These tended wild forests provided food and drink, shelter and defense, medicine and clothing sovereignty to our ancestors, just as she provides, as well, for all the needs of other forest dwellers.

Tammy Greer, Ph.D. (United Houma Nation) is a faculty member in the School of Psychology and Director of the Southern Miss Center for American Indian Research and Studies. She is faculty advisor to the Golden Eagles Intertribal Society, a Native focused student group who works with the Center to host a yearly powwow, Native Ways School Days and other Native-focused events on campus. In 2005, Dr. Greer, along with other tribal folks and Southern Miss faculty, built a 1000 square foot native plant tended wild garden on the Southern Miss Campus.

She recently completed a Library of Congress Grant titled, “And We Are Still Here: Indigenous Culture Bearers of the United Houma Nation” with a goal of making Houma material culture visible in a national venue so that Houma youth, for seven generations, can see and hear their elders speak to Houma experiences and culture. She, along with an intertribal group, is working with Prospect New Orleans bring back our mound-building culture and is currently working to build an earthen mound on the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans. Dr. Greer is trained as a statistician and works with Mississippi INBRE to train Native students to research health issues in our Southeastern tribes. She is Co-PI on an NIH grant titled “Okla Achokma” (Healthy People) with a goal of integrating spiritual and socio-emotional components that are rooted in culture into typical healthy ways interventions to make those interventions more holistic.

This program is funded by The New Orleans Town Gardeners.