The landscape that my ancestors thrived on was once a sprawling prairie that provided plenty and allowed for more than just human convenience, but life and health for all creatures and non-living relatives. Throughout generations, we’ve carried the impact of colonization on our backs and see the many changes that have already been made through our grandparents’ eyes. Traumatizing doesn’t even begin to describe the absolute apocalypse that our grandmothers and grandfathers went through in their lives. 

A landscape that was once full of nourishing, clean food and buffalo that roamed for thousands of miles across the land without fences is no longer a reality for anybody.

Now, I see climate change further threatening what’s left of the landscape; plant species are going extinct, confused, or having a harder time, water is polluted beyond belief, and seasonal weather patterns have become unpredictable.

Our traditional 13-moon calendar used to tell us when certain foods were ripe, animal behaviors, and what weather patterns were to be expected; but now we can’t rely on this cycle as much due to climate change. Reality struck me when I realized that what we have left of traditional knowledge – how to survive and practice our culture – could all be lost once again due to climate change. If the Earth continues to heat up and change patterns we will lose so many precious aspects of our way of life. For my culture, we need the land to be healthy to learn our language and our culture, and practice our overall way of life.

What my ancestors went through before was their own form of a massive and traumatic change, but they remembered what they were taught for us so that we wouldn’t be lost. The traditional knowledge was never lost, it has just been waiting to be found again. What we could lose permanently due to climate change is immeasurable.

Lessons from my ancestors are my way of life. 

We’re told from a young age to always think of the future generations, and how our actions today will impact them. We are meant to think ahead to the next seven generations that come after us, and if a decision we make today will impact the 5th, 6th, or even 7th generation negatively, then we’re not meant to do it. When I see that we as a society continue to rely heavily on a finite resource such as fossil fuels, we know that this is not sustainable, that it is harmful, and that it will not last. I’ve asked myself from a very young age what can we do to make things better for them?

After my family lost my Ina (mother) to an extremely rare cancer that usually only affects uranium miner’s hands, I realized it was because of where she grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation and how the uranium mining in the Black Hills polluted the water she grew up with. I realized that environmental harm and the further threat of climate change are very real.

My mother always loved our culture. After her passing, it became a reality for me that only trying to stop the damage of fossil fuels, water pollution, and treating all things on Earth as a commodity is not sustainable unless we continue to dream, reimagine, and completely change ourselves as well. Indigenous people have been dealt an unfortunate hand, that is true, but we have our culture to rely on, we have our language, our values, and our way of life, and it is beautiful. Without building and revitalizing our culture while also protecting Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth) we will forget the next generations.

Jen is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

Jen (Nape Mato Win) is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. Since the KXL pipeline threatened treaty territory of the Dakotas, Jenna has been passionate about a world beyond fossil fuels and centering Indigenous voices, culture, and history. Jen is also a beadwork artist, Indigenous gardener, and received a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Augsburg University. She believes that positive cultural and ancestral based knowledge are vital components to Indigenous resiliency. Currently, Jenna is the Environmental Justice and Stewardship Programs Manager at Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi, an East Side St. Paul, Minnesota – Indigenous led environmental nonprofit that stewards the sacred site known as Wakan Tipi.

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Čaŋtewasake – Fortitude