Stories

By Lynn Hillberg

Sacred Nature - Indigenous Relations with the Earth (TESP 150) was born from three visions: my dream of reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass with my students; my dream of incorporating the Forge Garden as a major component of a religion course; and my dream of learning about native plants from the Ohlone through service. The first two were relatively simple to manifest, but it wasn’t until Amy Lueck (English), Becca Nelson (Forge Garden Manager), and Maia Dedrick (Anthropology) received an Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative grant to support the Ohlone Youth Cultural Camp at the Forge Garden that the opportunity to be of genuine service emerged.

Ohlone Culture Bearer Gloria Gomez and Ohlone SCU student Isabelle Gomez planting Woodland Strawberries in the Forge Garden

Each year, the Ohlone Camp meets on Santa Clara University’s campus, including the Forge Garden, to give teenagers the opportunity to practice the culture of their ancestors. At the inaugural Camp in 2023, one component was a scavenger hunt in the Forge Garden to encounter California native plants that the Ohlone used for food, medicine, and craft. Inspired by this activity, Amy, Becca, and Maia wrote a grant to greatly expand the Forge Garden presence of native plants that the Ohlone used. As a Forge Garden volunteer, I supported Amy, Becca, Maia, Lee Panich (Anthropology), Ohlone SCU student Isabella Gomez, and Ohlone Culture Bearers Monica Arellano and Gloria Gomez to envision and manifest a dedicated space in the Forge Garden. Here, Ohlone youth will encounter native plants and engage in ancestral practices with them in their Camp, beginning this June.

This dedicated Ohlone garden, for which Amy, Maia, Lee, and I won the 2025 SCU Center for Sustainability Champion Award, has become the focus of my Sacred Nature class’s weekly meetings in the Forge Garden. The native garden allows the students to learn actively about indigenous relations with the earth in a number of ways. They observe and sketch native plants and learn about the myriad ways that the Ohlone used them, including for food, medicine, repelling insects, cleaning, hunting, fishing, basketry, and rituals. They learn about, plant, tend, and harvest many foods that native North and South Americans developed and cultivated, including tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, sunflowers, squash, beans, and corn. They listen to sacred stories about these plants. They also maintain the native garden space as a service to the Ohlone people.

Sacred Nature students maintaining the Woodland Strawberry plants

In addition, this course, as part of the campus-wide Faith, Humanities, and Health grant from Interfaith America, teaches the students about the intersection of health, nature, and the sacred that pervades indigenous ecologies: both the role of native plants in indigenous practices of spiritual and physical healing; and the vital role that indigenous peoples’ understandings of and reverent interactions with the earth can play in healing the earth and the souls of the creatures who dwell on it.