Paradigm: Mushrooms, Colored Cotton and a Lakota Garden: An Indigenous View of Reversing Climate ChangeApril 23, 2019 at 5:30–7:30 p.m.

Cante Suta, Francis Bettelyoun, is Lower Brule/Oglala Lakota, and is an enrolled member of the Ihanktonwan Sioux Tribe.

He is an educator of Indigenous history, biological, and environmental knowledge. He is a staunch advocate for healing Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth) to reverse climate change rather than "adapting" as a means to continue the destructive path of western agricultural practices and unbridled consumerism. He demonstrates Indigenous land use management practices that restore balance and revitalize the environment.

Cante Suta shares Indigenous knowledge that is transformative. He is a trained public speaker who uses his voice to bring out difficult truths for public discourses in order for healing to begin. He calls for a return to Indigenous knowledge systems that restore our connections with plant, animal and microbial relations and provide the balance essential for Indigenous food sovereignty and true Indigenous sovereignty. Cante Suta also openly discusses the long-term effects of sexual abuse on children, living with mental illness, and paths for healing based on his own journey and work with Buffalo Star People.

Coordinating the Native American Medicine Gardens on the University of Minnesota St. Paul campus since 2005, Cante Suta currently fulfills the role of community outreach specialist. Additionally, he is a popular guest lecturer across campus and he hosts thousands of people at the garden each year, taking every opportunity to educate in ways that challenge the status quo of systems that are based on patriarchy, consumerism and greed. As a result, he receives hundreds of speaking invitations.

He just completed his second year working with Backyard Phenology, a UMN Grand Challenges Research grant project that engaged citizen scientist in collecting plant data related to climate change. Expanding that role, Cante Suta developed a curriculum based on a roster of professional and nonprofessional, Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators who gathered audiences at the UMN Native American Medicine Gardens to participate in educational talking circles.