Learning From Teaching
Equity Through Stories intern branches out with many roles
Duke junior Tigerlily Kelea Shanti Kaynor has played an integral role in Duke Gardens’ programs for children, adults and fellow Duke students. She has taught workshops for students and the public, led summer camps, been a garden guide for school and youth programs, helped with planting in the Discovery Garden, greeted visitors at the information desk, shared her knowledge at festivals, and created educational resources including handmade magazines known as “zines.”
As with many of our work-study student partners, Tigerlily has grown professionally through her projects here, including her Equity Through Stories internship. But we have also grown through the perspectives and knowledge she has shared.
Sample the audio clips below to hear about some of Tigerlily’s most memorable experiences.
Tigerlily Kelea Shanti Kaynor
An introduction in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi & English
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Good morning, everybody. My name is Tigerlily Shanti Kaynor. I’m a junior at Duke University, and I’m studying cultural anthropology and psychology, and I’m also interested in marine science and sustainability. And I work at the Gardens as a work-study student.
Inspired by the Garden
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Relationship with Indigenous Culture
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In developing my workshops, I surveyed the students on what plants they would like to have a relationship with and access to at the Gardens. So, I’ve tried to incorporate as many of those plants into my work as possible, not only from the zine perspective, but also using those plants in the workshops so people get to have hands-on relationship building with them. This year I’m serving on council for the first time for NAISA. So I’m working as a co-events chair, which has been really exciting. And I feel like it’ll complement my work at the Gardens pretty well also.
Creating Learning Materials
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It’s definitely a process trying to develop materials that are an accurate and well-developed representation, and also being respectful of what should be kept private and what is not necessarily for sharing. Obviously, my zines are from my perspective, so it doesn’t represent all Native people or even like different people that come from different communities or even within my own community. It’s very much from my perspective and from the knowledge that I have. I chose to use Cherokee Language—Tsalagi—in the development of my zines. Duke University had a Cherokee boarding school. Trinity College originally was a boarding school for Cherokee people, so Duke played a really large role in the forcible assimilation of people that I come from. And in that, I felt like it was really important and powerful to use my platform at Duke to play a role in revitalization and to acknowledge that history.
As far as storytelling goes, a lot of the zine development is storytelling, and I try to incorporate medicinal uses and I guess like cultural practices that relate to the plants, but there’s some contention in what I feel is appropriate and what others might feel is appropriate. I personally don’t feel comfortable sharing any ceremonial knowledge, so all of the stories that I share and uses of the plants that I share, I don’t share anything about ceremony.
Moving Beyond a Harvest Perspective
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So, I think that there’s potential to incorporate and facilitate other ways of relationship with plants. I believe that the way the garden is set up, it does foster that harvesting perspective, because people are coming to look and to gain something from the Gardens. It’s not negative at all, but it’s just different from some of the ways that I see the Gardens could grow.
Part of what I’m trying to do with the zine is to introduce other perspectives, and it’s hard to introduce other perspectives to people who come from a place of wanting to harvest and wanting to, I mean, wanting to learn and having questions is a very positive thing, but it’s also not necessarily how teachings happen in all spaces. In Hawai’i when you’re being taught by an elder, you don’t ask questions; you take the knowledge that is given to you. And some will encourage questions, but unless questions are encouraged, it’s kind of inappropriate to ask for more or to just request things. I think it’s really hard to think about building a relationship with a plant unless you’ve grown a plant without the intention necessarily of harvest. Like if you’re doing forestry work and you’re thinking about, “What can I do to make this place better and to support the growth of these plants?” I think work along those lines can kind of introduce that perspective.
Like when I was in school, we would go work with DLNR [Department of Land & Natural Resources], and we would spend days in the mountains putting up fence lines to keep pigs out of the plants, and planting native seeds. And we never harvested, but we would, you know, write poems about the plants and come back every month to see how they were doing and to measure them and to see if they needed more sun or less sun, or more water, or to try to adjust things to support their growth. And I think that that’s kind of where I got my perspective of, you know, plants are something that we eat, we make medicine out of, we use them for everything, but they can also use us. And we can play a role with endangered plants, helping them to survive. But also just in plants that we interact with every day, we can have a relationship with them that isn’t just about what we can take. So I think another way that kind of does blend in to starting to harvest from the plant [is] thinking about knowledge and stories that have been shared about plants and relationships. I think encouraging people to build deep relationships with the plants, touch the leaves, smell them, visit them and see what they look like in different seasons. Those are all ways that I’ve been taught to respect plants and what they have to offer, and places.
And I think part of my zine is like storytelling in a way that I hope encourages people to do that, and to try to build connection without harvest. You know, like I say very clearly in the zine, don’t pick any leaves, go visit the plant, and maybe encouraging people to see plants as individuals. Like, this is a life, this is a being. And trying to build relationship as if it’s like building relationship with a person.
Plants, Identity & Generational Lessons
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One of my one of my favorite plants is coconut. I’m actually wearing coconut fiber jewelry right now that one of my uncles at home made me. This one is for protection. These ones are just because they’re pretty. But coconut is one of those plants, like if you asked me, “If you’re stranded on an island and you can have one plant, what would it be?” Coconut, every time. It’s considered one of the plants of life. You can build shelter out of it. You can make jewelry, you can make rope. It provides water, it provides sustenance. You can make beverages out of the roots. You can do all kinds of stuff with coconut.
I really love that there’s mai’a [banana] everywhere. There’s banana plants in a lot of different areas of the garden. And every time I see them, it makes me so happy. I’m really hoping that this year when some of them might get cut down, I’ll get to harvest of some of the trunks of the plant. I’ve been taught how to make cordage out of it, which can be used for lei making, so I’m really hopeful and excited about that. All plants kind of remind me of home, I think. Just when plants are something that you love and care about so much, even if they’re not your plants, it just makes you happy to be around them and to get to learn about them.
Sassafras: A Deeper Connection
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Growing Roles
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I would say, you know, an experience in any role, you grow. Like doing any new thing or even something that you’ve been doing a long time, continuing to do that thing, you’re going to grow. I think just doing stuff makes you grow. So, it’s been really fun. You know, I’ve worked with kids outside of the Gardens context. I’ve tutored, I worked as a therapeutic riding instructor. But I think, you know, I’ve grown in the ways that I interact with kids, the ways that I interact with the public. Normally, well, in my previous experience, like if I was telling the public about plants, it would be like orally if I was having a conversation or doing a presentation. And, you know, maybe with some visuals. But it’s been really interesting to get to take on the role of, you know, teaching people how to—like, some people in the workshops have never harvested a plant before. They’re like, “Oh, how do I, like, what do I do?” So, like, well, you know, here are some ways that you can start to learn how to harvest. So, it’s been really interesting to, I guess, like take on the role that I have been taught from so many times and in different spaces.
I think also just in like skill building, you know, with my Equity Through [Stories] project, I’ve been sending out surveys to the Native student population and working on advertising to get people to come, and trying to build relationship between the Gardens and those students. So that’s been really interesting as well. I guess that’s not really something I’ve had to have experience with in the past. I think, you know, also with age, like I’ve been working here for about two years now, so I also know that I’ve matured and developed as I’ve aged and grown up a little bit. And I’m really glad that some of that has happened here.
I think I’ve been introduced to a new language. Kavanah’s been really great at helping me with this, but in talking with kids about gender fluidity, how do you explain to a 5-year-old that someone might be non-binary? I have no idea. But there’ve been some really creative ways that I’ve been encouraged, I guess, to facilitate learning and growth for people that may not have been introduced to a topic or may be talking about a topic that’s uncomfortable or foreign or just not something they’re used to. So, I think it’s been really interesting to get to experience all of these different things and try to develop language and I guess like a system for teaching different things.
Exploring New Academic Paths
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Fostering Inclusion & Understanding
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I also have been so impressed—talking to 5-year-olds about, you know, gender fluidity that came up at the Duke Gardens summer camp—with my co-teacher and one of the kids that I was working with that was in an internship role. There were two people that identified as transgender, and a lot of the kids were like 5 years old and, like, not really sure what language to use. Not necessarily trying to be offensive, but just not having I guess a background and an understanding of what that experience might be like. And it was really beautiful to see the development of how the gardens handled that situation. I had already included “Sassy Sassafras” into my programming, and the intern that I was working with was like, “Wow, that was so amazing. I really felt represented and excited that the kids were learning about this.” And so one of my bosses read a story like “The Grouchy Ladybug” and was like, “So, you know how they’re called ladybugs?” And all the kids were like, “Yeah.” And she was like, “Well, do we know if ladybugs are boys or girls?” And they were like, “No.” There’s so much room and so much creativity in teaching kids these things. It’s been really amazing to see different ways that it can be done and like in a really palatable and age appropriate way, because, I mean, I’ve never had to talk to a 5-year-old about that. But yeah, it’s been really cool.
