photo by Lisette Morales McCabe
Betty Osceloa
A Wise Native American Perspective by Linda Sechrist
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ccording to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Indigenous people today safeguard 80 percent of our planet’s diversity, which acts as a crucial mitigator of climate change. Generations of Indigenous people, as well as Native American tribes, are critically concerned with the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity within their lands and territories upon which their livelihoods depend and in which their cultural identities are embedded. On this 53rd Earth Day, Natural Awakenings spoke with Betty Osceola for a Native American perspective on our SWFL environment. A member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida from the Panther clan, Osceola is a Native American Everglades educator, conservationist, anti-fracking and clean water advocate. Born and raised in the Everglades, where at the turn of the 20th century the
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Miccosukee were still traveling coast-tocoast across subtropical wetlands by canoe, Osceola now captains and operates the Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours on Tamiami Trail, near Miami. Born 20 years before her birthplace and family home were named America’s first national preserve, Osceola quips, “I live in the Big Cypress National Preserve, but I was here before it. I consider myself fortunate to have grown up so connected to nature when we still had clean water, plenty of wading birds and we could still live off the land, growing crops on the tree islands. Today the waters are too polluted to do that.” Everglades National Park was intended for preserving a sliver of what was once a pristine Everglades ecosystem. With the layout of a complex system of Army Corps of Engineer-built canals that drained the land to make way for sugar cane production and subdivisions, phosphorous-laden runoff now flows into Miccosukee territory, which much of sits adjacent to the protected national park. Nutrient-rich runoff encourages the growth of weeds and invasive species in the tribe’s waters and regularly floods land that has become uninhabitable. These issues, along with Florida’s population growth (more than 1,000 people daily) and aggressive development, as well as resisting the Burnett Oil Company acquiring state permits to drill for oil in Big Cypress, are why Osceola spends time educating people and using her fleet of airboats to help the tribe conduct a twiceyearly water quality survey, used at times to fight persistent government efforts to cut corners on water restoration efforts.
We Thrive When Nature Thrives
Osceola advises, “Progress is learning from the past and understanding mistakes made. Progress is helping nature thrive. When nature thrives, we thrive because we are nature. The educational system teaches that nature is to be controlled by man and that humans are not a part of nature. In my culture, we’re taught that to know where we’re going, we must know where we came from. Florida’s influx of new residents is unfamiliar with Florida’s history and environmental issues. Today’s generations only know today. They don’t know that in
