Amid a thicket of tulip poplars that shed their fall foliage for winter’s barren bark, volunteers bend cedar saplings as renovations are underway.

The group is restoring wigwams to honor Maryland’s first people, especially the tribes native to the Baltimore area, as part of the coming “Indigenous Peoples Celebration” at the Irvine Nature Center’s Native American Educational Site.

The Baltimore County nonprofit has dedicated Sunday, Nov. 23, to honor Maryland’s first people, such as the Piscataway

The Sunday event, and the nature center’s efforts to pay homage to the region’s heritage, are a welcome recognition to La Stelshia “Talking Bird” Speaks, a Baltimore native and member of the Cheroenhaka tribe.

“What they’re doing is truly a statement of integrity,” she said. “The culture is being uplifted as it should be — in spirit and in truth, as we say.“

The nature center has a close relationship with the Baltimore American Indian Center, which helps educate Irvine’s staff on various traditions and develop those lessons into a curriculum that the nature center can share with the greater public.

Brittany Rogers, Irvine’s manager of school programs, explained that the nature center’s educational site — complete with three wigwams, a longhouse, a firepit and a garden — is intended to show visitors how deep the bond is between Indigenous folks and nature.

“Being connected to the rocks, the trees, the plants, the animals is directly intertwined with the first people,” Rogers said.

Primitive naturalist perspective

On a sunny Thursday afternoon in mid-November, self-described primitive naturalist Jeff Gottlieb leads the volunteers repairing the thatching on one of Irvine’s wigwams.

Over the past several decades, the Long Island native has immersed himself at the intersection of the natural world and anthropology.

He’s built around 65 primitive structures across the country since 1988 — all in the same style that Native American tribes did centuries before him.

“I think so many people think about this space as a lens into the past, and what we’re always amazed with is it also gives us an opportunity to really think about our present,” Gottlieb said. “And then also envision our future.”

“It’s not a historical site, it’s not a historical event. It’s a learning opportunity,” he added.

The wigwam restoration at Irvine is done with ancestral technology, namely, the trees: cedar saplings for the frame, tulip poplar bark to cover, hickory bark to lash materials together and birch plus grass for insulation.

“Primitive living skills require deep ecological knowledge. And people that live that way are taking care of everything,” he said. “And that’s us being short-sighted nowadays. We don’t think like that.”

Everything is intentional

Irvine entertains and educates local campers, schoolchildren on field trips, and visitors and volunteers of all ages year-round.

Rogers explained that Sunday’s celebration will feature a cooking demonstration with maize grinders, cordage tutorials — rope braiding using material from a yucca plant — and Indigenous children’s games that double up as life lessons.

Take, for example, the atlatl, a spear-throwing game that mirrors the real-life arrowhead-tipped tool that many tribes used to hunt wild game. A technological breakthrough, the atlatl looks like a love child between a javelin and slingshot.

“It’s great for entertainment, but it also served a purpose,” Rogers said.

That, the program educator explained, is at the heart of Indigenous tribes’ ethos.

Gottlieb agrees.

The Indigenous ”are doing prescribed burns and they’re harvesting in a smart way ... they want there to be a deer herd next year,” he explained. “They want there to be shad running up the river next year and they act accordingly.”

Irvine’s staff tries its best to honor that tradition. For example, leftover bark from wigwam restoration becomes wood shavings to help start a fire at the educational site.

“The connection between life and what it means to take care of the Earth is deeply intertwined with the first people,” Rogers said.

‘Honor the sacrifice’

Speaks, an Irvine consultant, said the work the nature center is doing is imperative.

“We’re all on Indigenous land ... we must honor the sacrifice that a lot of our ancestors made to be sure our land is preserved, even if it was through colonial state,” she said.

Reflecting on America’s racist relationship with Indigenous peoples also drives Rogers. “From a social justice perspective, we need to acknowledge the damage that was done not just in the colonial period, but all the way up to today,” she said.

Acknowledgement includes everything from teaching visitors about the Indian Removal Act of 1830 — a U.S. law that forcibly relocated and killed hundreds of thousands of Native Americans — to helping a third grade class learn how to start a fire with a bow drill and wooden spindle.

“We want to show support for our tribal community members,” she said. “They’re our neighbors and they’re our friends and they’re still here.”

Speaks, whose paternal grandfather was born in Piscataway country in Maryland, has dedicated her life to teaching others about the Old Line State’s first peoples.

The educator, who works at Baltimore County’s Seneca Elementary School, said she’s currently researching the history behind the Chattolanee people — a tribe without federal or state recognition indigenous to Owings Mills that likely assimilated into other nations at some point.

“Their home base is down the road from Irvine,” Speaks said. “There’s a spring and river named for them and colonial settlers in the area would go to the tribe when they were ill and say the waters were truly healing waters.”

Rogers hopes Sunday’s event will provide attendees with some perspective on Maryland’s first people, whom she has grown to cherish.

“They still have their connection to the same Earth that we care about so much,” she said. “It would be disrespectful and just silly to not keep celebrating their wisdom.”