Valerie Goodness: Don't ignore indigenous ecological knowledge

Stories about dandelions have been told by Native Peoples of Turtle Island for thousands of years. For example, there is an Ojibwe legend about the South Wind falling in love with the dandelion. There are plenty of songs and stories sung and told from Grandma, Mother and Auntie to their Daughters as they use a digging stick to collect the delicious and medicinally important plant. I have heard many stories about the Indigenous peoples’ relationships with dandelions, but when I read a Canadian science article claiming mosquitoes, bees, earthworms and dandelions never existed in the Americas prior to the Mayflower landing in 1620. I almost snorted.

Meredith Kueny, from Cornell University, writes that dandelion seeds can travel more than 500 miles on the wind. If the nearest European country (Russia) is 55 miles from Alaska (America); then why would dandelion seeds wait for a ride on the Mayflower? Meanwhile the Bering Strait at its narrowest point, between Cape Dezhnev in Russia and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, was supposed to have been crossed by humans 10,000 years ago (Don’t get me started on the absurd claim that all Indigenous people of Turtle Island, came from monolithic beings crossing the Bering Strait), why wouldn’t a seed have hitched a ride or blown across prior to 1620? Many climate changes over millions of years would have allowed for this. We then cannot dismiss hurricanes that have crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas then back to Western Europe for millions of years or the jet stream where wind, over the Pacific Ocean, can blow over 250 miles per hour from Europe to the Americas and back.

Indigenous peoples of the Americas have been saying that dandelions are Native to the Americas; with many Native knowledge keepers intuitively calling chicory its nearest relative. Like chicory, sunflowers, daisies, asters, and Jerusalem artichokes all are considered among the Asteraceae family of North America along with dandelions.