How US native groups are repairing lands damaged by colonisation

Mashpee Wampanoag Kerri Helme, of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, using plant fibre to weave a basket while sitting next to a fire at the Wampanoag Homesite at the Plimoth Patuxet Museums. Photos: AP

Asa Peters marched into a thicket of Japanese knotweed in the woods of coastal Massachusetts, the United States, this month and began steadily hacking the towering, dense vegetation down to size.

The 24-year-old member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe was among a cadre of volunteers rooting out invasive species and tending to recently planted native vegetation on a wide swathe of forest acquired on behalf of his federally recognised tribe and other Wampanoag communities.