Oh, Tansy.......

I was recently visited at my home by a white man working to eradicate ‘invasive species’. The group had done extensive work on the main road to dig up and remove the tansy during the previous summer. I had been silent and resisted participating in killing the plants. They had noticed that there was tansy growing where I live along a fence line and beside the driveway. Feeling concerned this tansy would reseed the road, some options were presented to me such as, if I didn’t want to take the time to dig up the plants, I could spray them with high concentration vinegar and they would die. Standing on the deck looking out at the tansy, I didn’t feel very good about these options. I felt uneasy and torn. On the one hand I wanted to be a ‘good neighbour’ and get along with the group. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be a ‘bad neighbour’ to the tansy and destroy it. I had always understood tansy to be very beneficial to humans medicinally and without agriculture crops around for miles and miles, it didn’t seem really necessary to get rid of it. With nothing from me, he asked, when do you think we can we start spraying them? I replied that I was feeling uncertain because it seemed more humane to the plant to have your head chopped off quickly than to burn to death slowly with acid. He then said, Ah I get it now, you are right, I am always trying to conquer things. Let me know when you want to dig it up and I will come and help. I hadn’t said all I felt; I was silent like the tansy. I didn’t want to dig them up. They are very pretty and act as a powerful bug repellent, I have often credited these four-foot-high plants as being the reason I don’t have mosquitos from the creek down below. I went inside and researched the tansy. Why was it on the invasive species list? As it turns out many useful, healing plants are on this list; even chamomile. It said tansy came here in the 1600s and was used in food storage and coffins as a bug repellent and preservative, but is also used medicinally for many human ailments. I think it was the term invasive species that was also bothering me. Was the tansy the problem, or was it us that was the problem? Thinking about our readings about the Blackfoot; gaining knowledge situationally, asking for knowledge through ceremony, being in relationship, and respecting all life, I went back outside to the tansy line. At one time I might have wondered, oh tansy what am I going to do about you? But this time I wondered, oh tansy what are we going to do? The answer suddenly seemed very clear. The tansy grows in human disturbed places like road sides through a web of roots and rhizomes holding the soil together while it recovers form the disruption, wind-blocking the potential for erosion and protecting vulnerable plants from the sun’s heat and predators. Soil has a chance to heal because of the protection tansy offers it. In its own way, it is repairing the earth where we have damaged it. If we were to plant more trees along the roads and fences, there will be less tansy partly because they don’t appreciate the shade. By applying these ways of being-with, perhaps a solution has been found where we can all live in right relationship. I haven’t yet proposed planting more trees to limit the tansy, but I think I can find the courage to bring it forward -on behalf of the plant. In the Blackfoot language, this level of connection is called aokakio’ssin (an engaged-awareness) of events and conditions unfolding in the moment. When you can recognize the life in anything, you can then identify with it and potentially develop a relationship. In our way, it is this relationship that is most significant, because within that context there can be mutually beneficial, and therefore ethical, exchange.