Family speaks about ‘traumatic loss’ of fruit and traditions in groundbreaking climate case

Every year, Shane Doyle looks forward to picking chokecherries. The tiny fruits with shiny, dark skin and astringent flesh are abundant near his family’s Bozeman, Montana home. His daughters Ruby, 15, and Lilian, 12, take the lead on crushing the berries into sticky, sweet syrup, which they pour onto pancakes and other foods all year.

Usually, the chokecherries are ready to pick in late summer, just before school begins. But in recent years, the fruits haven’t ripened on that schedule, Doyle testified on behalf of Ruby and Lilian at a seminal climate trial on Wednesday.

Thanks to drought and heat, the fruits’ season has become less predictable, Doyle told the first judicial district court of Montana. One summer, his family didn’t find any at all.

Ruby and Lilian are two of the 16 youth challengers in the 2020 lawsuit Held v Montana, which is being heard in the state capital, Helena, this week. The plaintiffs allege that state officials have violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment,” which they are guaranteed by Montana’s constitution. The trial, which began on Monday, marks the first in a constitutional climate case in US history.

Doyle’s family doesn’t just find chokecherries delicious; they also have a deeper significance to his family, he said while testifying on behalf of Ruby and Lilian. As members of the Crow people, an Indigenous tribe based primarily in Montana, chokecherries have a deeper cultural importance.

Traditionally, the fruits’ ripening has coincided with the annual fair on Crow Indian Reservation in the center of the state, where Doyle has family members. Every year, Doyle takes his daughters to the celebration, where they eat chokecherry soup, do traditional dances, march in parades, and sleep in teepees.

“I don’t think there’s anything comparable in American society to what kids experience at the Crow Fair,” he said.

But recently, chokecherries haven’t been ripe in time for the festivities.

“It’s something that people have so closely associated those two things for so long, over 100 years, and now we’re seeing a shift,” he said.

Extreme weather has also taken a major toll on Crow Fair, Doyle said. In several recent years, it’s also been extremely hot and smoky due to wildfires. That can make it much more difficult to engage in the Crow Fair’s many outdoor activities, such as doing traditional Crow dances, which Doyle said “require athleticism” because dancers must “keep time with drum beat which is usually pretty fast”.

Twice in the last decade, the event has also been “washed out” and cancelled by heavy rains. Having to miss a celebration that connects Crow Indians with their heritage, is a “traumatic loss” for Lilian and Ruby, he said.

Ruby, 15, has asthma, said Doyle. Asthma and respiratory conditions can be hugely exacerbated by exposure to heat and wildfire smoke, physician Lori Byron, an expert witness for the plaintiffs, testified earlier in the day.

But the stress and anxiety associated with experiencing climate-related weather events can also take a serious psychological toll, especially on children, whose brains and bodies are more vulnerable than adults,’ said Byron. This can lead to cascading health effects.

“Mental health and physical health are always related,” she said.

Another expert witness invited by the plaintiffs, Michael Durglo, testified later on Wednesday. Durglo, the department head of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Tribal Historic Department, has spent years studying the effects of climate change on Indigenous peoples, and has helped tribes develop climate adaptation plans.

For people who rely on natural ecosystems for food and medicine, he said, the climate crisis poses a physical threat.

For many, he said, witnessing dramatic changes in “the nonhuman relatives that we rely on” – like plants and animals – also takes a spiritual toll.

Sariel Sandoval, a 20-year-old member of the Salish tribe and another plaintiff in the case, also testified on Wednesday. She is now a student at the University of California Berkeley, but she often feels homesick for her home in the Flathead Indian Reservation in the north-west corner of Montana

When she graduates, she plans to move back home to pass down her cultural traditions, like digging for bearroot, a root found near her home that her tribe uses as a medicine for cough, cold and stomachache. Many of these practices depend upon a stable climate.

“It’s been something that’s been very much ingrained in me,” she said of the cultural practice. “It makes us who we are.”