Tree Bark Stories

There are many ways to understand nature. Nature journaling uses a few of those ways – art and science. Native peoples use traditional knowledge like storytelling as another way to understand nature. These activities will give you the opportunity to try out traditional and scientific ways of thinking. Both work together help us to understand the natural world better.

The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum is located on the traditional and treaty lands of the Dakota people. Indigenous people were the first people who cared for this place and its plants and animals. They also called it home. The name for the city of Chanhassen comes from the Dakota name for this place, chanhasen, which means sugar maple tree. These sugar maple trees are now some of the best loved trees at the Arboretum. We recognize the importance of this land and all that lives on it to the Dakota people, and we seek to honor their knowledge of the trees, the plants, and their connections in this place.

Can you find your home on the map? (Try typing you address into the search bar!)

Which Indigenous people also call that place home? (Use the territories setting to see Indigenous nations' traditional homelands.)

Can you find any other important places on the map? (Perhaps somewhere you lived before or a place where a family member or friend lives?)

Read the sources below and compare the Indigenous answers to these questions about trees losing their leaves to the ones scientists have discovered. Then, talk about these questions:

How is the Seneca story similar to the explanations of the scientists? How is it different?

Do the scientists know all of the answers? Do you think they might someday?

Do you think both kinds of explanations could be right?

How does the Seneca story use trees to help us understand how to act as people?

Plants and animals do so many surprising things! Write a story to explain something you have noticed an animal or plant doing in nature.

1. Go outside, and observe nature closely.
2. Decide on the characters in your story and the place where it will happen. Is the main character a maple tree? or maybe a bird?
3. Decide on the lesson of your story. What will you explain? What will the plants or animals learn?
4. Decide on what will happen first, second, next, and finally in your story.
5. Write your story or tell it to a friend!

Practice drawing in scale by adding part of a real plant to your nature journal and completing the picture by drawing. You might try a leaf, a branch, or a piece of bark.

Remember, some branches come in pairs and some take turns. Will the branch or leaf that you draw be exactly the same as the part you glue into your journal? Here is an example: