Women, Water, and Wild Sustenance
By Mia Glover
Women, Water, and Wild Sustenance: What I’ve Been Working On This Month
This past month, I’ve been spending time thinking about how we understand water, food systems, and conservation in inland communities, and more importantly, whose perspectives are shaping those conversations.
As part of my coursework at SUNY ESF, I developed a proposal for a guest lecture in a class focused on wild food systems and hunting in upstate New York. The course is grounded in conservation and hunting protocols, but I saw an opportunity to introduce Haudenosaunee perspectives, bringing in context that is often missing from how these topics are taught.
In Haudenosaunee communities, relationships with land, water, and wildlife are deeply interconnected and guided by governance systems that are traditionally matriarchal. Clan mothers play a central role in decision-making, leadership selection, and maintaining balance within the community. That structure shapes how responsibilities to land and water are understood, having real implications for how we think about conservation.
Hunting, for example, is part of a system of relationships with animal nations, seasonal cycles, and place. And those relationships are inseparable from water. Wetlands, rivers, and watersheds sustain the species that communities rely on, and in turn, shape how harvesting practices are carried out.
What stood out to me in developing this lecture is how often these relational and governance dimensions are left out of conservation education. We tend to focus on regulation, species management, and technical approaches, without fully engaging with the cultural and ethical frameworks that have sustained these systems for generations.
At the same time, I’ve been reflecting on how this connects to the work we do at Inland Ocean Coalition.
Inland communities are very tied to water systems, even when the ocean feels far away. The way water is treated upstream through agriculture, land use, and daily practices has direct impacts downstream. Inland stewardship is ocean stewardship.
Within that, women continue to play a critical role.
Across many Indigenous contexts, including Haudenosaunee communities, women are central to water stewardship, food systems, and knowledge transmission. Their roles are cultural and structural. They shape how decisions are made, how resources are cared for, and how relationships with ecosystems are maintained over time.
This resonates strongly with our work, especially in programs like Ocean-Friendly Farming, where behavior change, community engagement, and long-term stewardship are key. The solutions we are working toward are both technical and relational. They depend on how people see their role within a system and their responsibility to it.
What I’ve been working on this month sits at that intersection: thinking about how we bring more place-based, culturally grounded perspectives into conservation spaces, and how inland communities can better understand their connection to water systems that extend far beyond where they live.
There’s still a lot of work to do in bridging these conversations. But it starts with expanding what we consider valid knowledge and recognizing the leadership that has always been there, especially from women.
Water connects all of it.
