Historians were once defined as “people who mix up what we know”. Hopefully, they are already rewriting the history books when it comes to the Coast Salish Peoples.
A recent archaeology project in Tla’amin (Sliammon) territory in Desolation Sound is just the latest confirmation of what our Elders always told us. Whether it was using fish weirs, traps, nets and spears, building clam gardens or ‘grooming’ camas beds, our ancestors knew what they were doing and they did it well, using sophisticated, complicated and appropriate technologies that sustained them for millennia.
“We can now prove what our old people have always said – our territory supported thousands of people, more than live here now, that owned and managed vast tracts of lands and resources including waterways, mountains, islands in a sustainable manner. They found ways to do this without destroying the landscape and depleting the resources around them by seasonal family sharing and trading what they had with neighboring nations. This was a very complex system steeped in protocol.”
That is Michelle Washington talking about a project that partners Tla’amin and Simon Fraser University (SFU) in an archaeology and stewardship program. It is a community-based, participant-driven exploration of what archaeology is and what it does.
Now in its third year, the program brings together the Tla’amin oral traditions with information gained from archaeological investigation. One of the stated aims of the program is: “To advance Tla’amin goals of self-governance, self-determination, and self-representation”.
All around the Salish Sea, we are discovering old ways of doing things through the oral teachings of our Elders and research by academic people. The look into the past is also revealing ways that could help all Coastal people sustain themselves in the future.
‘Using the rhythm of nature to feed our people’
Work started in 2008 at Kleh Kwa Num (Scuttle Bay), a place where Elders knew was used to gather and process foods such as herring and Saskatoon berries. Excavations showed stone and bone artifacts, the remains of plant and animal foods, indications of numerous longhouses and a petroglyph.
This year work is continuing in Desolation Sound where mapping has shown that Tla’amin ancestors were changing beaches to trap fish, to increase shellfish habitat and make smooth places for canoes.
“We now have several sites at the 8,000-year mark,” said Washington. “These inter-tidal sites still work today after hundreds to thousands of years. Some of them were actually outlawed when the canneries came in.
“We have lost a lot over the years to industry and development but there is still so much that we can learn from,” she said. “There are so many catch phrases now about the 100-mile diet, the growing of native plants… people are starting to wake up to the damage we have done to our surroundings by ‘manicuring’ everything and being so wasteful.
“Many of the beaches they are on are no longer viable due to industry contamination or the destruction of habitat. These sites were natural ways of gathering that used the natural currents, seasons, and several year-round species and they did not have to destroy everything in order to work.
“We can bring them back and use the rhythm of nature to feed our people and balance with nature again.
“The funniest part is that our old people always said this in all of our teachings and our stories, songs, but nobody wanted to listen because they didn't have an academic background.”
Respect and awe
Dr Dana Lepofsky, one of the SFU project directors, said that the work so far “gives us a huge amount of respect and awe for the technologies and people of the past. Sliammon rightfully has a huge amount of pride for the complexity of the systems we are learning about.
“There was clearly a large population living off the land and sea in a sustained way,” Lepofsky said. “Sometimes resources were hit, but it was clearly a sustainable economy.
“People were harvesting with local observations and had a vested interest. They knew that if you over-harvest, then there is not going to be food for next year.
“We see things like people choosing among different resources. If they got a lot of a resource early in the season, they might take less of another one. They would do this ‘dance to the season’.
She said that there was no such word in the Tla’amin language as ‘by-catch’, adding that when such words exist in any language “it shows how disconnected to the resource we actually are”.
But the Tla’amin ancestors not only managed the quantity of their resources. They also created sophisticated harvesting technologies.
“These management features (such as fish traps) modified the landscape to both capture efficiently, but also to manage in other ways. Capturing is one kind of management: what you’re going to capture; how much you’re going to capture; and to enhance them when needed.”
The technologies themselves varied as to use and place. Clam gardens, for instance, were suited to circumstance, but, said Lepofsky, they were “clearly meant to enhance productivity so that people could harvest abundantly and sustainably.
“The fish traps were beautifully designed to capture fish. They could have easily wiped out local stocks if they wanted to, but they didn’t, so that showed that they were managing the resource.
But the stone alignments that exist in the inter-tidal zones along the coast were not necessarily use for just one resource or just one purpose. Lepofsky said that phrases like ‘fish traps’ and ‘clam gardens’ are something of a misnomer. They could have been holding ponds for fish stock, traps for harvesting or places to cultivate and manage shellfish. They often were used for many purposes and not necessarily just one resource.
“It’s a pretty powerful story about long-term use that by definition was sustainable.”
Learning from the past
Lepofsky said the historical treasures being discovered in Tla’amin territory have much relevance today as Coastal people, of all cultures, deal with disappearing fish stocks, contaminated shellfish and the disappearance of habitat on both land and sea.
“What can we learn from that?” she asked. “That it’s not just about harvesting less. It’s about harvesting differently.
“Elders tell me about transplanting eggs and about transplanting oolichan by the boatload and restocking them. There are all kinds of neat stories about local management that we need to pay attention to.”
Lepofsky said that the Tla’amin-SFU team is learning to appreciate the sophisticated and complicated technologies that were used.
“They were so complicated that I don’t have a hope of understanding everything. It would take a lifetime.
The inter-tidal zones were ‘whole systems’ with everything working together.
She said in modern society, “We all have a sense of entitlement, that we should have access to everything. But we have to say that there are some things we cannot export.”
Seafood resources such as sockeye or herring roe should be considered delicacies and if they are exported, premium prices should be paid for them.
More info at: www.sliammonfirstnation.com/archaeology/index.html
www.youtube.com/user/SFUmuseum
Clam gardens celebrated by book
Clam gardening was celebrated in the 2006 book by Judith Williams entitled Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast.
The book centres on the traditional territories of the Klahoose, Homalco and Sliammon. Williams was prompted to write by information supplied by Elders such as Elizabeth Harry, Keekus, and places visited such as Old and New Church House and Wyatt Bay.
Clam gardens, Williams discovered, are all around the Coast if only one knows what to look for.
The places where clams were tended and harvested have a firm place in oral history. But officialdom likes things in writing, so works such as Clam Gardens will help change the thinking of provincial archeologists who have historically dismissed the fact that they even exist.
“Now that the existence of clam garden cultivation is being accepted,” Williams writes, “we cannot ignore the importance of ancient clam beds and other traditional food resources to the contemporary economy of Native communities.
“The clam gardens were and are a coastal treasure. Unique living artifacts, they are still usable sources of food and exchange items for the local population.”
Clam Gardens is published by New Star Books.
More info at: www.newstarbooks.comNew gardens in Snuneymuxw territory
Clam gardens were discovered this spring at Gabriola Passage.
Now, Snuneymuxw First Nation wants to get aerial surveys of the entire region as it adds to its knowledge of traditional methods of harvesting and food production.
The clam gardens are near Gabriola Island. Similar formations have been found in inter-tidal areas in the area around Dodd Narrows.
Two years ago, Snuneymuxw fisheries workers discovered ancient fishing weirs in the Chase River estuary just south of the main reserve near downtown Nanaimo.
