Unceded ways : traditional food practices of the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island

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Traditional Food Practices of the

Indigenous Peoples of Vancouver

Island

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Of

MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology At

The University of Amsterdam

By

Megan Muller

Student Number: 10426604 Megan.muller12@gmail.com

Graduate School of Social Sciences

Amsterdam, July 1, 2013

Supervisory Committee: Dr. Alex Strating Dr. Yolanda van Ede

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UNCEDED WAYS: Traditional Food Practices of the

Indigenous Peoples of Vancouver Island

Megan Muller

Supervisor: Dr. Alex Strating Cultural and Social Anthropology

July 1, 2013

Abstract

This thesis traces the contemporary role of Indigenous traditional food practices on Vancouver Island in a shifting socio-political context. In light of severe environmental and political restrictions on the ability of First Nations people to continue their traditional food practices, this thesis examines how these practices and associated ideas are brought to the fore of public attention and the processes of negotiation associated with such an endeavour. In exploring this theme, this thesis will discuss the meanings and values equated with traditional foods. This will be followed by an analysis of the complexities of inclusion and exclusion constructed around the teaching of traditional knowledges in new forums for knowledge transferral. Lastly, this thesis explores the shifting role of traditional foods, as the assertion and performance of these practices comes to constitute a form of agency aimed towards social change. This latter concern addresses how traditional practices take on new meanings and roles as they are continuously adapted to contemporary life, while at the same time maintaining a level of continuity in what traditional foods stand to symbolize.

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Idle No More Rally, Nanaimo ... 2

Figure 2: Regions of Vancouver Island ... 3

Figure 3: Idle No More Round Dance ... 8

Figure 4: Seasonal Foods of the Northwest Coast... 12

Figure 5: Salmon Smoking... 13

Figure 6: Edible Seaweed Varieties... 13

Figure 7: Idle No More Drum Circle ... 15

Figure 8: Preparing the Bentwood Box... 28

Figure 9: Bentwood Box by Tsimshian Artist David Boxley ... 29

Figure 10: Salmon Pi’kwan... 32

Figure 11: Liquorish Root ... 33

Figure 12: Aluxut Gathering ... 400

Figure 13: Displaying the Coppers at the Copper Breaking Ceremony ... 49

Figure 14: Chief Beau Dick Commencing the Copper Breaking... 50

Figure 15: Examples of Kwakwaka’wakw Coppers... 51

Figure 16: Commencing Ceremonies for an Honourary Feast... 54

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Acknowledgements

I would like to first of all thank my dear friend and ‘Auntie’, Debi Brummel. Without your guidance, support, and providing me with a home away from home, this research may not have been possible.

Importantly, I would like to thank all those who took time from their busy lives to participate in this research. You have taught me so much valuable wisdom, which this paper cannot begin to encapsulate. I am truly inspired and grateful for the wonderful friends I have met through this work.

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Preface

Keeping in mind the commonplace awareness of the history of anthropologists as colonial allies, I entered the field with inhibitions about my ability to connect with First Nations people on the basis of conducting research. In the beginnings of this work, this was my biggest source of concern. I imagined that after accomplishing this (perhaps through proving my good intentions or some other romantic idea), all analysis and all theorizing would naturally flow from my ethnographic experience. I was wrong. Writing about Indigenous people in light of the sharp criticism of anthropology by Indigenous scholars (e.g. Deloria Jr. 1969; Smith, 1999), is exceptionally difficult. Every sentence an aspiring anthropologist might place upon the page suddenly becomes subject to a myriad of tenuous debates.

As anthropologists, we are trained to avoid essentializing generalizations of people, which can so easily be misconstrued into stereotypes or blatant misrepresentations of people. Yet to write about the instability of culture (or ‘flow’, ‘flux’ or ‘invention’, if you prefer) can in many ways delegitimize expressions of cultural heritage so pertinent to Aboriginal claims to territory and group status (Niezen, 2003). On the other hand, it can be very difficult to write on the richness of traditional heritage without inadvertently presenting the image of a cultural group as archaic remnants of the past.

In writing, the necessary task is to interpret what one experiences, what one is told, and to elaborate. But how could I ensure that my voice would be representative? Or that my analysis was of value or at least acceptable among the people with whom I worked? I certainly hoped it could be, yet it was something I struggled with throughout this undertaking. My attempt at rectifying these issues was to focus on how cultural vitality exists in an increasingly urbanized and globally connected world. In many cases, this resulted in tracing the presence of salient ideas more so than discussing how they were actually practiced among distinct groups of people. This was because I struggled to strike a balance between giving justice to the coherence of cultural forms that were expressed to me, while maintaining a sense of the multiplicity and overlapping of categories of belonging. I argue through this work that the fact of social reality is that you will always find aspects of continuity, and you will find aspects of change. You will always find social boundaries, and you will find cultural mixing. My goal is that this work will shed light on these complexities as I encountered them during my research on Vancouver Island.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Early on a Saturday, my partner and I stepped onto the sunlit balcony of our small unfurnished apartment to enjoy our morning coffees. The balcony offered us a view of the Nanaimo harbour front and a glimpse of the serene Salish Sea bordered by the greenery of Protection Island. I could already hear the beating of tribal drums and singing in the distance, as a large crowd congested in the centre of the Maffeo Sutton Park at the periphery of my overview. Knowing it was time, we rushed to finish our coffees and prepared to step outside. While I busied myself to ensure my camera was charged and my pen had ink, Robert searched for his bear claw. In the midst of a political uprising which held so much meaning for the way Aboriginal people in Canada live out their daily lives, Robert felt he could not participate without this symbolic item which ties him to his clan, his ancestors, and his identity. Trying to evoke the strength and confidence this item is supposed to endow its carriers, I embarked on one of my first ethnographic experiences in this field.

The group of several hundred people emanated the vibrancy of the Idle No More movement. Many participants were dressed in full regalia, with sweeping red and black button blankets, light reflecting on the decorative crests of their clans. People donned cedar headbands and hats, and rawhide drums painted with totems. Others were dressed in layman’s clothes like myself, although many held creative home-made picket signs. The signs depicted the interesting range of aspirations; ‘stop Bill C-45’, ‘This is a Canadian thing, not a racial thing’, ‘stop the Harper oppression’, and ‘respect my existence or expect resistance’. The haunting voices singing the ancestral Island songs rose and dinned with the energy of the crowd. The drumming remained steady and formed the heartbeat of the unified figure the gathering seemed to form. We joined the crowd just as they began their march under a bridge decorated with street art depicting a salmon run. Car horns blared in support as we temporarily blockaded the Island Highway and continued the march to a nearby park. The leaders of the protest arranged themselves in a line at the high point of a grassy hill, dressed in full regalia. In turn, they each addressed the expansive crowd with stories, moving speeches, songs and collective dances. They thanked their ancestors for the powerful day, made recognition to the Snuneymuwx Nation whose traditional land we were on, and thanked the non-Indigenous allies. The sincere and impassioned discontent the speakers expressed about Aboriginal-state relations in Canada stirred uneasy excitement in my stomach. I felt at this moment that I was embarking on a path of unwritten history in the making.

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Figure 1: Idle No More Rally, Nanaimo, January 2013

The title of this paper, Unceded Ways, makes use of an important colloquial expression.

Unceded is most often used in protest rallies, such as the one described above, to assert Aboriginal claims to territories which have never been surrendered under treaty agreements, although in many cases have subsequently been privatized. By unceded ways, I am referring rather to a realm of ideas and ways of life which similarly have never been surrendered. These are the traditional food practices and knowledges1 of the First Nations people of Vancouver Island.

The milieu of the political uprising of Aboriginal Canadians through Idle No More not only sets the context of the following work, but also marks the significance of Aboriginal ways of knowing and living in a climate of social change. In this light, traditional First Nations food practices on Vancouver Island seem to envelop a transformational role, from the preservation of ancestral knowledge to a site of agency encompassing far broader societal concerns. Consequently, this paper seeks to address the following question: how are the traditional foods

1

I have opted to use the word ‘knowledges’ as a countable noun within this thesis for two reasons. The first is that within traditional food practices there are many distinct bundles of knowledge. For instance, there is specialized knowledge surrounding hunting skills, fishing, or healing. It seems uncommon that an individual would have expertise in all areas. The second reason is that there is a layering of levels of knowledge, spanning from outsiders, to novices and to elders or experts. Thus, using ‘knowledge’ in the singular did not seem to comprehend this layering and multiplicity of bundles of knowledge that not all individuals have developed to the same level or have the same access to.

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practices of the First Nations people of Vancouver Island negotiated in a changing socio-political context? In exploring efforts to revitalize traditional food practices as an expanding social movement, we will discuss three pertinent aspects of this dynamic. Firstly, I explore how traditional foods are currently understood among First Nations people in terms of the meanings and values associated with these practices. Secondly, I seek to illuminate the complexities of inclusion and exclusion constructed around the teaching of traditional knowledge, especially surrounding the negotiation between encouraging public awareness and maintaining a level of secrecy in efforts to protect this knowledge. Finally, I explore the shifting role of traditional foods, as the assertion and performance of these practices comes to constitute a form of agency aimed towards social change. This latter question seeks to understand how traditional practices take on new meanings and roles as they are continuously adapted to contemporary life, while at the same time maintaining a level of continuity in what traditional foods stand to symbolize.

1.1 Setting and Research Population

This research was primarily based in the towns of Duncan, Nanaimo and Courtenay on the mid-Eastern coast of Vancouver Island, in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. This region is located between the Comox and Cowichan Valleys, along the Salish Sea facing the coastal mainland. The majority of this research was conducted in urban settings, although the cities in central Vancouver Island have relatively small populations. For instance, Nanaimo, the largest city in this region of Vancouver Island had approximately 83,810 inhabitants in 2011. The population of Aboriginal people on Vancouver Island is fairly significant, considering that 146,574 people were registered Aboriginal inhabitants of the reservations in the Central Island Region the same year (Regional District of Nanaimo, 2013). This number furthermore excludes Aboriginal peoples not registered under a reservation community.

Figure 2: Regions of Vancouver Island (Tourism Vancouver Island, 2013)

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Within Canada, the original inhabitants of North America, before European ‘discovery’ of the continent, are referred to as Aboriginal peoples. This designation is further subdivided between the First Nations, the Inuit (of the Northern regions), and the Metis (descendants of mixed ancestry). Aboriginal people often also refer to themselves as Indigenous people, reflecting the globalized experience of colonized people worldwide. However, among the First Nations of Canada there is a significant degree of diversity. For instance, on Vancouver Island there are three distinct language groups; Coast Salish, Kwakwaka’wakw2, and Nuu-chah-nulth (see Appendices 1 & 2).

However, these languages groups can be further subdivided. For instance, Nanaimo is the traditional territory and present day reservation site of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, a political body representing several local communities. The Coast Salish dialect spoken by Snuneymuxw people is Hul’qumi’num, which they share in common with people of the Cowichan Tribes, another amalgamation of reservation communities in the Cowichan Valley. As one can see, the socio-political delineations can become complicated; the Cowichan Tribes is furthermore one of six First Nations3 comprising the Hul’qumi’num Treaty group, a political alliance pursuing a modern treaty process.

My impression of the ways in which people chose to identify themselves also reflects this layering of group identification, often dependant on the social context. During my fieldwork, some individuals were eager to discuss family or clan lineage, which they explained is symbolized through specific crests and names. During political demonstrations, people tended to identify themselves by the political configuration of their specific First Nation (i.e. Snuneymuwx First Nation, K’omoks First Nation, and so on), especially in making recognition to territories. Others may use broader language-based categorizations (such as Kwakwaka’wakw or Nuu-chah-nulth) to unfamiliar persons. Overarching categorizations such as First Nations (in the general sense), or Indigenous also hold particular political salience, as they represent the experience of colonization in a collective yet distinct group identity. These multiple layers of identification hold currency in the situation that many people do not spend their lives living in one particular location. Thus, these shifting and contextualized levels of group identification enable individuals to express their identity in a variety of situations.

During my fieldwork, the participants represented diverse tribal affiliations but primarily included Kwakwaka’wakw and Hul’qumi’num speaking Coast Salish individuals. Furthermore, I intentionally did not seek to focus only within on- or off- reserve populations. I would argue that the method of ethnographic research adopted in this work reflects the reality of

2

The Kwakwaka’wakw are often mistakenly referred to as the Kwakuitl. This stems from the work of Franz Boas, whom mistakenly used his interpretation of the name of one tribe, the Kwagu'ł, to refer to the entire language group. Kwakwaka’wakw can be translated to ‘speakers of Kwak’wala’.

3

The term ‘First Nations’ can refer to both a classification of Aboriginal people generally, as well as specific semi-autonomous political bodies, as for instance, the Snuneymuwx First Nation.

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the dynamic nature of cultural belonging in lieu of ongoing migration of peoples between urban centres. Research relationships were formed through diverse networks operating within the geographical region of the mid-Eastern portion of Vancouver Island. Such networks included Idle No More activities, traditional foods organizations, and through personal contacts. I soon discovered that this was an appropriate approach as connections between members of traditional foods organizations often crossed tribal boundaries. The basic criteria for selecting research participants were self-identified Aboriginal persons living in the area with knowledge and ongoing participation in traditional food practices. Furthermore, the intent was to move beyond the examination of a culture as a bounded object, and instead frame the discussion around particular discourses surrounding traditional foods that seemed to overlap between several First Nations groups.

This research was based on the lessons taught to me by eight primary informants, and several other secondary informants. This group consisted mainly of community elders. Exactly half of the group were male and half female, although the most extensive participant observation was conducted within group settings or with female informants. I have further discerned that those participating in this research could be categorized as belonging to one of two loosely defined groups; cultural teachers and political activists. The group of cultural teachers solely included female elders. In coastal First Nations communities, elders are carries of traditional knowledge and fulfil the role of community teaching and knowledge preservation.

The second grouping of political activists also primarily included elders, although age in this group was not necessarily exclusive. This group tended to be primarily male. It included politically oriented individuals, and could be subdivided between Idle No More activists and traditional food activists. Both groups allow for a bit of overlap, as one of the cultural teachers I worked with was also quite politically oriented, and one of the activists I worked with operates his own traditional foods teaching organization. However, the nature and direction of conversations conducted with persons belonging to one of these two groups was very much informed by their current occupation. For instance, persons working to promote traditional foods tended to focus on the issues and limitations to traditional food practice, and cultural teachers preferred to share narratives expressing the process of learning and teaching traditional knowledge.

1.2 Methods of Inquiry

This research was carried out during a time of hyper-awareness of colonial relations, as emphasized through the messages expressed within the Idle No More movement. As such, considerations of ethics and issues of authoritative representation remained at the forefront throughout my research activities. Reflecting on the fact that I had initially little personal

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familiarity with the First Nations people of Vancouver Island, I adopted the role of an attentive student. This inductive approach involved spending sufficient time with those involved in the research to understand what was important for them to discuss before imposing any questions based on my own assumptions. Importantly, elders are customarily trained to be the carriers of specific ‘bundles’ within a particular knowledge system. A way to show respect to an elder is to seek knowledge that compliments their area of expertise (Bell & Napoleon, 2008). Asking an unfamiliar person questions that may or may not be relevant to their own experiences can be seen as a disrespectful gesture. It is also important to note that many First Nations people are aware of the history of misrepresentation by anthropologists.

Following this approach, participant observation became the dominant research method utilized in this work. Through participant observation, I developed insight into the local situation and knowledge about what kinds of inquiry were relevant or appropriate. Furthermore, traditional or Indigenous knowledge transferral has often been described as a process of attentive performance (Brody, 1982; Watson & Huntington, 2008). Thus, participant observation presented a fitting methodology for inquiry into the role of traditional food practices today.

Interviews were also an important methodology in this fieldwork, as they allowed an opportunity to directly discuss informants’ subjective experiences and perspectives on traditional food practices. I conducted five semi-structured interviews; four with elders and one with a younger man. Following the above group classification, two were conducted with cultural teachers, one with a traditional foods activist and two with Idle No More activists, all of whom were familiar with traditional food practices. I utilized a semi-structured interview approach, and a unique interview guide was prepared for each informant, based on their particular forms of knowledge and experience.

1.3 Theoretical Influences

As this research primarily examines the realm of meaning and ideas embodied through traditional food practices, I have aimed to combine a methodology of interpretive anthropology and discourse analysis. Interpretively, I have sought to understand how First Nations people define themselves and the world around them by looking at symbolic forms and the associated ritual practices. Furthermore, I have sought to elaborate between specific examples of cultural phenomena and the social context which motives action.

By discourse analysis, I refer to the tradition in the social sciences which examines knowledge formations as “perspectives and horizons of interpretation that give structure to social action, practices and relationships” (Talja, 1999:469). Thus, I have sought to address patterns of thought regarding traditional food practices which produce ‘statements’ or systems

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of ideology that explain particular ways of making sense of the lived reality. In particular, discourse analysis allows for an understanding of how knowledge formations change as they refer to changing circumstances.

Much of the theory grounding this work reflects the types of analysis utilized. For instance, in understanding traditional food practices as a condensation of wider notions about spirituality, values and identity, I have drawn inspiration from writers on the symbolic elements of food, following works of scholars such as Mary Douglas (1984) and Sidney Mintz (1996). I found it a pertinent approach in this work to uncover the meanings which inform the significance people attribute to traditional food practices, rather than merely providing an objectified account of simply what these practices are.

While symbolic anthropology is a strong starting point for examining immediate cultural practices, I would also argue for the importance of moving beyond the level of interpretation to understand power dynamics and motivation which may shape the ways in which particular cultural values are emphasized. Thus, this paper incorporates a practice-oriented understanding of agency. This perspective seeks to reflect on the actions that are shaped by and seek to shape the unstable position held by traditional food practitioners between distinct political and cultural realms of discourse. This approach to agency incorporates a dialogic understanding of the “impact of the system on practice, and the impact of practice on the system” (Ortner, 1984:148). In other words, I have sought to understand not only changes in the ability to conduct traditional food practices due to material circumstances, but also how meaning is applied in an effort to change contextualized experiences.

Finally, this work will draw on theories concerning tradition, ritual and social change. I draw from the works of authors such as David E. Sutton (2004), Marie Mauzé, (1997) and Michael Harkin (1997) to address the complexities inherent in tradition regarding continuity with the past and adaptation to changing circumstances. I have also taken inspiration from the writings of Sir Edmund Leach on ritual and social change in developing an attentive understanding of the connection between food-related agency and social structures. Leach understands social structure as “a set of ideas about the distribution of power between persons” (Leach, 1964:4) through which ritual expression is required to maintain social order. I have drawn from this work to discuss how tradition can provide a framework for addressing contemporary issues, especially in the sense that tradition can contain information about how human relationships between one another and their environment have been organized in the past.

Thus, I have aimed to follow a multi-levelled approach to my discussion of First Nations traditional food practices in Vancouver Island to illuminate connections between immediate traditional food practices and the social whole which motivates or inhibits action. As such, our

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following chapter will provided a necessary contextualization of traditional foods practices by defining what these practices are and how they are constrained or promoted by setting forth the current social, environmental and political setting. Chapter Three focuses more on immediate experience, by exploring the meanings associated with traditional foods regarding spirituality, identity and values. Chapter Four draws on the discussion of the role of traditional foods in community social structure to discuss the process of traditional knowledge transferral and the maintenance of boundaries between insiders and outsiders with the ability to access this knowledge and food resources. Finally, Chapter Five links these thematic areas by examining the intersections of agency and social structure, tradition and social change.

By attending to the level of agency, this research seeks not only to bring light to the struggle of First Nations people to preserve traditional practices, but rather the complexities inherent in such as task; namely the negotiation between continuity and change and between public and private knowledge domains. A goal of this work is to challenge the distinctions between what is commonly thought of as ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ ways of life and to explore how elements of both imagined categories permeate all aspects of social life. Lastly, I hope that readers of this text will come to understand the traditional food practices of the First Nations people of Vancouver Island not solely as the perseverance of ancestral cultural forms, but rather as practices with a significant level of relevancy today; especially in terms of how we understand the connections between food, human relationships, and our interactions within the environment around us.

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Chapter 2

Traditional Foods Past and Present

Our following discussion serves as a contextualized account of how the concept of ‘tradition’ is perceived within the backdrop of this paper as well as how the term operates among First Nations people on Vancouver Island. We will further explore the social and political processes which impede on the ability to access traditional foods and contemporary efforts to revitalize such practices.

In its most common, everyday usage, tradition is used to refer to objects or practices preserved and passed down from an often distant and unchanged past. The fact that ‘traditional’ was the adjective of choice during my fieldwork likely reflects this use of the term. It is used to distinguish Aboriginal food systems (especially representative of the form in which they existed before colonial contact), from modern, industrial foods which are purchased as commodities (Food Secure Canada, 2009).

However, anthropologists have struggled over use of the term ‘tradition’, loathing it for its tendency to construct a dichotomy between ‘traditional’ (typically ‘tribal’) societies and those seen as dynamic (and often ‘Western’). Through such a dichotomy, societies demonstrating characteristics describable as traditional are imagined as antithetical to change, and existing in a timeless state disassociated from modern influences (Mauzé, 1997). French anthropologist, Marie Mauzé, has suggested that, taken by such ideas, “anthropologists are tempted to forget the current condition of the society under examination and to overlook contemporary issues. Instead they follow the tradition of salvage ethnology and attempt to reconstruct the past” (Mauzé, 1997:3). While this approach omits a sense of the complexity of contemporary life, it also creates an unfounded contrast between the ‘primitive’ and the ‘modern’ and disregards the contribution of ‘tribal’ peoples in contemporary life. Consequently, any alterations to traditional practices or the incorporation of modern elements are seen as a corruption or loss of tradition.

I would argue that while this understanding of tradition may be present among popular opinions on First Nations culture, this dichotomy did not seem to be the operative conception of tradition among my informants. It is important to note that “Native tradition has always managed to adapt to specific socio-political situations, especially colonization” (Mauzé, 1997:11). Thus, the emphasis on traditional food practices today, while it does draw on a connection to the past, does not imply that elements of change are not present.

A common way anthropologists have managed to reincorporate elements of change into the conversation on tradition is through the examination of ‘invented traditions’. This term is

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used to discuss a set of practices endowed with symbolic meanings which imply continuity with the past, but are recent constructions (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1992). Rather than being antithetical to change, ‘invented tradition’ allows us to “consider tradition as something that is continually being produced and nurtured by new ideas” (Mauzé, 1997:6). Yet, this strain of thought is also not without its problems, as it tends to call into question assertions of authenticity. As emphasis is placed on the recent inventiveness of elements of First Nations culture, this discourse “portrays the modern American Indian as inauthentic and the ‘real’ Indian, located in the past, as vanished” (Harkin, 1997:99).

Speaking specifically of the cultures of the Northwest Coast, American anthropologist Michael Harkin has suggested that “we must thus contest the use of the term ‘invention,’ implying as it does creation ex nihilo” (Harkin, 1997:98). Rather, in the case of Aboriginal cultures, symbols of tradition are most often drawn from a cultural repertoire of activities, rituals and objects that have a longstanding presence within the community or nation. Thus, I am in agreement with David E. Sutton in his proposal that we should address tradition as a dialogical relationship between the past and the present (Sutton, 2004). It is important to understand not only how the present is defined in terms of the past, but how evocations of the past are very much informed by contemporary circumstances. We can thus view knowledge and practices passed down through the generations as “complicated and multi-stranded relations between past and present” (Sutton, 2004:92). Those who practice and teach traditional food knowledges are very much aware and accepting of elements of change, as it is given that the world they live in is very much different that that of their ancestors. Rather than invented, we can see these traditions as “refined and carefully framed” (Harkin, 1997:97) from an existing cultural repertoire.

2.1 What are Traditional Foods?

This dialogical relationship between the past and present can be noted within the way the research participants defined traditional foods. The most common explanation I encountered, as cultural teacher Elder Jackie Finnie explained, was that traditional foods represent:

The old ways, like our seafood, you know, our wild plants that we would gather and things like that, that we knew were good for us. That kept us healthy, that kept us strong, through a millennium.

But often traditional foods were understood as a more flexible relationship between the past and the present. One informant discussed that, as one’s traditional foods are the foods of your ancestors, he feared that his great grandchildren’s ‘traditional foods’ might eventually become Kentucky Fried Chicken. He also joked about how during the 1990’s the ‘traditional foods’

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served at ceremonies were often chow mein and take out pizzas as convenience and quantity were valued over symbolism or health concerns. Thus the diet of First Nations people is certainly not exclusive to the range of cuisines made available through processes of globalization. At a ceremonial feast I attended, the food was provided in potluck style (each attendee brought their own dish) and demonstrated an array of influences. Some dishes were clearly of Euro-Canadian influence (such as baked macaroni casserole), others were more Indigenous (such as smoked salmon), and others were more hybrid combinations (such as salal berry preserves).

To be more precise, what is implied when discussing traditional foods in this context, is not only the diet of one’s ancestors, but especially wild harvested foods. Again, the contrast is made between agribusiness products or market foods and “the food species that are available to a particular culture from local natural resources and the accepted patterns for their use within that culture” (Elliot, et. al. 2012). Traditional food practices involve accessing food resources either directly from the environment or through trade and sharing, and are “contrasted to the highly mechanistic, linear food production, distribution and consumption model applied in the industrialized food system” (Food Secure Canada, 2009:3). Thus, our definition of traditional foods is of the subsistence practices remembered from the pre-colonial past of First Nations communities and as a method of food acquisition more directly tied to local natural resources.

The following discussion will present a generalized account of some of the predominant practices of the region4. Traditional economies were dynamic and reflected seasonal and tidal changes. In the past, land use was organized by ‘houses’; “corporate groups with proprietorship in specific lands and fishing sites, directed by the persons holding offices in the houses” (Trosper, 2003). Title was inherited through kinship and was marked during potlatch ceremonies, in which titleholders of other houses recognized the claim through the acceptance of gifts, and the demonstrated ability of the title holder to manage the territories accordingly (Trosper, 2003). The First Nations people also accessed sites seasonally, including berry patches, potato or camas bulb gardens, and areas containing medicinal plants. This intermittent land use is a strong source of tension regarding land claims, as colonial authorities did not recognize this as a form of ownership over these sites.

4

The following discussion is based upon generalizations of traditional food practices across Vancouver Island, as it approaches the promotion of these practices as an overarching social phenomenon with the region. However, I would like to note that there is also a degree of variety and localized

specialization among reserve communities and tribal configurations of traditional food practices, very much influenced by geographic specificities and cultural histories.

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Figure 4: Seasonal Foods of the Northwest Coast (Krohn & Segrest, 2010)

Traditional foods of the Northwest Coast are very much centered on marine ecology. Salmon, herring, ocean cod and oolichan (primarily used for its oil) presented important staples of the diet. For instance, the grease of the oolichan fish continues to be an important condiment, as a flavour enhancer for soups, and in some cases used as a spread on toast. As Cowichan medicine woman, Elder Della Rice Sylvester explained to me:

The oolichan grease is used on smoked fish. But then if somebody starts getting sick then you say ‘take some oolichan grease.’ … And it helps too; it provides a lot of minerals in the body, core minerals, because it’s probably like cod liver oil, only one hundred times more so because it’s a whole fish.

The harvesting and processing of oolichan was described to me as a community effort, as a group would prepare a large vat on the beach to contain the collected fish. These would be mashed and left to ferment for several weeks. The resulting product was a layer of translucent yellow oil followed by a layer of thick paste with a very distinct flavour.

Traditional diets also included the hunting of wild game (such as deer or elk) and waterfowl. The harvesting of the diverse variety of berries native to Vancouver Island, such as cranberries, blackberries, huckleberries and salmon berries, among others, also represented a key aspect of the seasonal diet. Bivalves (especially clams and oysters), seafood (such as crabs,

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scallops or shrimp) and seaweed were also important sources of nutrition. The Indigenous people of the Northwest Coast also made avid use of the abundant plant resources, harvesting a variety of crops including, for instance, wild onions, carrots, fruit bearing trees, and medicine herbs (Davis & Twidale, 2011).

Recent scholars have asserted that rather than ‘complex hunter-gatherers’, the traditional food systems of the Northwest Coast should be seen as a combination of harvesting, horticulture and ‘mariculture’ (Williams, 2006; Trosper, 2003). During my fieldwork, I encountered similar perspectives from my informants. For instance, traditional foods activist Elder Douglas Headworth explained to me the key role Indigenous people held in managing and sustaining local ecosystems.

In fact, our interference with it [camas bulb ecology] helped it spread more. We collected in a process that would encourage the plants to continue. We would terraform the land, and I think it’s only in recent years that they started giving credence to how frugal and industrious Indigenous people were when they made zero point tide markers, that captured the sand and the soil and encouraged the clams in the clam beds, and mussels and oysters to be very fruitful. Rather than that it was just a casual, it happened in nature and they took advantage of it; but rather they encouraged that to do that so that it was an abundant resource.

Douglas was referring to the careful engineering of rock terraces at specific tidal points to form clam gardens, which were carefully tended through transplanting to create productive ecosystems that could sustain villages; what has been referred to as ‘mariculture’ (Williams, 2006). Other horticultural practices included the tending of camas bulb, lupine root and silverweed pastures through burning, transplanting, weeding and pruning (Krohn & Segrest, 2010). Furthermore, as Douglas has explained, traditional foods were not gathered as need be, but rather these practices operated through a systematic understanding of the seasons and resource capacity, and many foods were processed and stored for the winter months.

Figure 6: Edible Seaweed Varieties

Figure 5: Salmon Smoking (VICCIFN, 2011)

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2.2 Impacts of Colonialism

As traditional food practices stand as a reflection on pre-colonial life, it is impossible to discuss these practices without acknowledging the drastic changes to traditional food access imposed through ongoing processes of colonization. Only two years after Canada had claimed sovereignty over British Columbia in 1871, the Indian Act was established, initiating the implementation of ‘Indian Reserves’ and the social category of ‘Indian’ (or Aboriginal) under Canadian law (Davis & Twidale, 2011). The implementation of this act was experienced as a loss of sovereignty, as Indigenous communities fell under the jurisdiction of paternalistic colonial law. The institution of reservations and the delineation of ‘Indian’ and non-Indian land was followed by the mass relocation of people from traditional territories onto designated sites. This greatly impacted the ability to continue traditional food practices. As Elder Della Rice Sylvester has explained, “Once they got relegated and instituted to reserves, you know, you’re in this square. ‘Now don’t leave this square’. And all those things [medicinal plants] aren’t growing in this square.” While some of these reservations were located at village sites, many were not and they very often excluded camp sites used for seasonal fishing, hunting, gathering or canoe building. This imposition combined with the transition towards the consumption of European foods marked the onset of new health related ailments, particularly obesity and diabetes, in which case the latter is five times more prevalent among First Nations than of the general public (United Nations, 2012). The lasting impact of this transition is that Canada holds the “highest documented food insecurity rate of any Aboriginal population in a developed country” (United Nations, 2012:16).

Beyond the economic and health consequences imposed through colonization, this process was also experienced as an assault on First Nations culture. As Aboriginal activists have stated, “the Indigenous traditions around food, as well as their languages and wider culture, were treated with contempt and viewed as detrimental to linear models of progress and development introduced by the settlers” (Food Secure Canada, 2009:4). The efforts of the colonial government to assimilate the Native population were exemplified through the potlatch ban which existed between 1884 and 1951. Ceremonial feasting and redistribution practices were treated as a punishable offense, as were the performance of traditional songs and much of the regalia and art work associated with these ceremonies were confiscated (Bell, et. al, 2008).

The effects of Canada’s colonial history are still very much present among First Nations communities. Furthermore, the terms upon which the relationship between First Nations and the government of Canada will proceed are still in a process of negotiation, as many First Nations communities in British Columbia are still drafting and rectifying modern treaties. An important concern is that First Nations people do not feel they are accordingly consulted regarding land

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use or resource development on their territories. In fact, Idle No More activist Iwa'nukw'Dzi5 of the Gwawaenuk Tribe explained that:

On one side you have First Nations people with traditional harvesting practices, harvesting from the land for food, sustenance, which was practiced freely before. Now we have governance structures come in to colonize the land, and to colonize First Nations exercise and practices of harvesting traditional food. And the reason and purpose of and for colonizing the land is so that our governments can have access to resources.

Iwa’nukw’Dzi and many First Nations people feel that the lack of recognition of treaty rights and traditional land is often a deliberate attempt to gain control over natural resources. Recently, these concerns have been brought to the attention of the public through the mobilization of Indigenous protest within the Idle No More Movement. This movement began in November 2012, initially to protest a compilation of several new budgetary bills (The Jobs and Growth Act 2012). These new amendments were seen as detrimental to the welfare of Aboriginal Canadians by revoking many of their historic rights (as outlined under the Indian Act) as well as environmental assessment acts (notably the Navigable Water Act). However, the movement quickly grew to represent much more than opposition to recent legislation; Idle No More expanded to embody efforts to give recognition to a legacy of broken treaty promises, as well as a celebration of Indigenous identity. While Idle No More represents a contemporary manifestation of the discontent rooted in the colonial history of Canada, many of these concerns also directly impact the ability to access traditional foods.

Figure 7: Idle No More Drum Circle, Nanaimo, January 2013

5

Issues of confidentiality and identity were addressed with all research participants. In some cases, interviewees preferred to be recognized by their common name and proper title. Others have chosen a pseudonym as per their preference. In the case of Iwa’nukw’Dzi, he preferred to be recognized by his traditional name. Traditional names are often received in potlatch ceremonies to mark important coming-of-age events and titles connecting individuals to their lineal heritage.

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2.3 Barriers to Traditional Foods Access

During my fieldwork, I spent a considerable amount of time on a Cowichan Reservation near the city of Duncan. One afternoon, I casually asked a man what kind of fish were in the river that flowed past his property. He replied that there was salmon and trout, and that “they get pretty big too”. But he proceeded to tell me of a stream upriver that runs past a nearby sewage plant and carries overflow waste water into the river. He said that according to the city, it was a ‘dead river’. He continued to explain “There’s still fish in it so it’s not. It’s probably just another way to dissuade us from using it. They [the police] used to take everything we get. The deer, the fish, the boat, the gear. They confiscate everything. And then they use it!” This suddenly reminded me of a sign I had seen posted down the road which stated “No hunting and no fishing under any circumstances”. I was astonished by the infiltration of restrictions on traditional food practices, even within a reservation community. This example illuminated for me the conflation of external structures which limit the ability to conduct traditional food practices, which was accordingly an important topic of discussion among my informants. For instance, Elder Della Rice Sylvester passionately described to me the shift in diet she has experienced within her lifetime.

They’d [her children] come for the weekend and I’d say, ‘Well, you and your dad went fishing this morning to the river with a rod and you got some trout. Right?’ And they were so nice. We cooked the trout up right away. Then at lunch time, maybe his dad or somebody came down with some smoked fish. So we cut up the smoked fish and [ate it with] oolichan grease for lunch. Because it was different, right? So supper time, what happened for supper? Oh, well maybe somebody came along with a big fish from the ocean. So we put it on the barbeque so we had barbeque salmon for supper … Every weekend we had fish all day. And so the people lived on the fish. So can you imagine now, today, I have to work really

hard to make sure that I have fish?

I was constantly moved during my fieldwork by the attachments people held to their memories of the role traditional foods played in daily life. I was surprised to find that many of my informants traced the most drastic changes in access to traditional foods as recently as the 1980’s and 90’s. For instance, Iwa’nukw’Dzi explained that:

From my own experience, not too long ago, like 1990, we had an abundance of food. It wasn’t really scattered. Again, it was a sense of security and dependence. And once again, because of development, our natural environment, our resources have been disturbed.

In interrogating how and why access to traditional foods had changed so drastically within mere decades, I discovered that a diverse array of processes was affecting these limitations. For the sake of our discussion, I have broadly categorized these constraints as environmental, commercial, regulatory and issues of accessibility.

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Firstly, environmental concerns were discussed as the direct decline in available traditional foods, although the impacts on the environment themselves can be understood as the effect of wider patterns of human behaviour. Important environmental concerns included climate change, diminishing plant, animal and fish species, and contamination. Almost everyone I spoke to discussed with me their concerns about heavy metal contamination in seafood and fish, as well as the pollutants and sewage leaking from boats and factories or mills located in the many harbours that span the east coast of Vancouver Island. For instance, traditional foods activist, Elder Douglas Headworth explained to me that in Snaw-naw-as6 “The waters have been so polluted by unregulated sewage and dumping; you can’t even use the resources, even if you could find them. There are huge toxicological problems with it.”

Other environmental influences affecting access to traditional foods are directly tied to commercial resource use. On Vancouver Island the primary sources of impact include conventional forestry, mining, commercial fisheries, and especially salmon farming. The impact of these developments on the landscape of Vancouver Island is vast. At a traditional foods teaching event, one man referred to the impact of logging and proclaimed that “We don’t even live in the world that we used to live in; all the trees are less than one hundred years old. Before logging, what would this look like? What have we lost between here and there? It doesn’t exist anymore.” What this man was referring to, was not only the loss of massive evergreen forests and the species dwelling in these areas, but the specific traditional foods knowledges associated with these locations.

Commercial fisheries are another strong source of concern among Aboriginal peoples. Iwa’nukw’Dzi described his experience of the presence of ‘dragger’ fishing boats in his home community.

Our halibut fishing days, we used to be able to, we literally count up to three, drop four lines and catch four halibut at the same time. So by eleven o’clock in the morning we’d have eight halibut. Then that was enough, right. We only took what we needed. Brought it home, and processed them. But there was one particular spot at the north end, the Northern end of Vancouver Island where there was halibut habitat. The draggers come in and they scrape the bottom and they fill their nets with every other type of species we can name. And from what I understand they destroyed that halibut habitat. So they did a, like a large area at the Northern tip of Vancouver Island where the halibut habitat was, cleaned it out, and when they cleaned it out – scraped the bottom clean – they moved to another area … And as a result, we end up not catching any halibut after that fact. And ever since then, I could remember that we haven’t been able to catch a halibut the way we did before. It takes about a week now, if we’re lucky to catch a halibut, these days … So there’s definitely one thing of course, that coastal First Nations people relied on, dependant on for survival, but I can tell you there’s hardly anything now.

6

Snaw-naw-as is a Hul’qumi’num speaking reservation located in Nanoose Bay, 20 kilometres north of Nanaimo.

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In more recent developments, there is increasing concern surrounding the impact of commercial salmon farming. Salmon farming was introduced as way of coping with declining wild salmon stocks to meet consumer demand, but is unfortunately exacerbating the issue. Cloned salmon are raised in containments located in actual salmon habitat. Due to the confinement of these fish, diseases and waste are released into the environment (Krkosek, et. al, 2007). Furthermore, it was explained to me that these farms often block wild salmon migration routes, devastating their ability to repopulate.

Despite the environmental and commercial influences that limit the abundance of traditional food resources7, First Nations people also face barriers due to government regulatory procedures. Due to hunting and fishing licensing, as well as seasonal and site restrictions, First Nations people are still prosecuted and jailed for “essentially preventing starvation”, as Elder Douglas Headworth has explained. In many cases this can be understood of a clash of ideology surrounding hunting and fishing methods. For instance, traditional fishing practices surrounding the spring and fall salmon runs often involve the use of weirs and ‘snagging’ salmon with nets and spears. It was explained to me that this allows fishermen the ability to selectively cultivate fish populations, but it also enables communities to efficiently secure enough fish for economic and subsistence endeavours. Unfortunately, Canadian hunting and gaming legislation views these practices as poaching as they involve the use of prohibited gear, and in some cases exceed seasonal, site or quantity restrictions (Province of British Columbia, 2013). It was explained to me that the operative focus within this legislation is on recreational hunting and fishing. As Elder Douglas Headworth explained:

The unfortunate thing is that the regulations are attempting to slow down or ameliorate the large overconsumption of the wilderness resources while trying to maximize their profits. So it’s to their benefit rather than to those who want to live off the traditional resources.

Finally, and exacerbated by the barriers of environmental contamination, commercial resource exploitation and regulatory restrictions described above, First Nations people also face difficulties continuing traditional food practices in terms of accessibility. Primarily, issues of accessibility to traditional foods are the result of privatization of land and urban encroachment. Due to the establishment of reservations and ongoing resource exploitation, many traditional harvesting sites have been privatized or turned in to parks (Davis & Twidale, 2011). For instance, guchmein (or lomatium nudicaule), an important medicinal herb, prefers to grow in

7

I have opted to use the term ‘resources’ because of the way it coincides with the concept of exploitation. This term is used in this text to reference animal populations as well as vegetation and ecosystems. I have chosen this term due to the ease in which it references a wide range of elements in the natural

environment. However, ‘resources’ does not properly encapsulate an emic ontology. Rather, this term seems to reference a world of objects to be used, devoid of any sense of agency in their own right. The perspectives I encountered during the field more closely resembled what Watson and Orville have discussed as posthumanism, wherein “nonhumans are beings of the same ontological kind” (Waston & Orville, 2008:269).

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open meadows or high drainage areas. Unfortunately, it was explained to me that these are also often the first sites to be developed in urban expansion projects. Thus, as urban encroachment increases, the proximity to traditional foods from reserves near cities greatly decreases. As Elder Douglas Headworth explained:

I used to be able to walk just a ways up here on Wakesiah8, to gather traditional plant medicines and herbs, but because of the encroachment, I would now need to be able to travel miles and miles away, so the cost of equipment, gas and fuel, for the return, becomes an expense.

Thus, declining proximity to traditional foods not only presents an inconvenience to harvesting, but also increases the monetary investment and time necessary to conduct these practices. It was further explained to me that the diversity in traditional foods diets is very much based upon the ability for communities or members of different households to trade some of the specific foods they have access to. As traditional food practices decline, so do the trade networks which makes sustaining such a diet increasingly difficult. However, aspects of these trade networks still operate under these difficult circumstances.

2.4 Projects of Revitalization

A common argument permeating scholarship on traditional Indigenous food practices assumes that “if people remain close to their traditional environment, decreasing use of their traditional food is a gradual process … However, people relocated from their homelands have little opportunity to maintain traditional knowledge of available resources and technologies for processing and use” (Kuhnlein & Receveur, 1996:434). However, as my informants expressed to me, while traditional foods practices may have in some cases declined, these practices are still very much present and continue to play an important social role for many First Nations people. Traditional foods are often asserted as intrinsically tied to cultural integrity, productive communities and wellbeing (Morrison, 2006; Krohn & Segrest 2010). Accordingly, some traditional food activists have argued that interest in traditional food practices is currently experiencing a revival on Vancouver Island (Twidale & Davis, 2011).

One of the primary reasons for the rising interest in traditional food practices stems from concern over the prevalence of diet-related disease among Aboriginal populations. For instance, several studies have indicated that the shift from traditional foods to processed foods containing refined carbohydrates is associated with a rise in both diabetes and obesity: “Although B.C. has the lowest rate of obesity in Canada at just eleven per cent, the overall obesity rate for First Nations people in the province is thirty-two percent” (Assembly of First

8

Wakesiah is a major road in the city of Nanaimo. It is also the former name of Mount Benson, bordering the western edge of Nanaimo.

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Nations, 2011 cited in Davis & Twidale, 2001:16). Another dynamic influencing a return to traditional food practices is the current preoccupation with food security or food sovereignty, in which traditional foods are viewed as a solution to issues of household hunger and a mechanism for self determination (Davis & Twidale, 2011; Morrison, 2006). However, for many individuals, traditional foods have continued to be an integral part of daily life. As such, traditional foods retain “a vital symbolic and spiritual value, essential to the cultural identity of many Indigenous people” (Food Secure Canada, 2009:5).

While it is undeniably difficult to maintain traditional food practices as a part of daily life in urban environments, the increasing number of recent grassroots organizations aimed at increasing participation of First Nations people in traditional food practices serves to prove contrary to the notion that traditional practices will disappear under the pressures of urbanization or modernization9. Many of these are rooted within First Nations communities themselves, such as the Indigenous Salmon Defenders or the Aluxut Project (to be discussed in later chapters). However, other organizations operate as a negation between First Nations communities and outside interests. One of such programs, the Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities Indigenous Food Network (VICCIFN), acted as an important gatekeeper during my research, as they invited me to volunteer and participate at several of the community outreach programs they hosted. The VICCIFN primarily seeks to revive traditional food practices as a sustainable, healthy and culturally appropriate solution to Aboriginal food insecurity and diet-related disease. Members of this organization act as facilitators for wider discussions on traditional foods and Aboriginal food security, and act as mediators between governmental bodies (especially the Vancouver Island Health Authority) and Aboriginal communities. It is primarily organized by healthcare workers, although they are seeking to increase the representation of Aboriginal people within their organization and place significant value on the knowledge and opinions of community elders. A key mandate of the organization is to promote the transferral of traditional knowledge throughout future generations. The events I was able to participate in were a series of ‘Sharing Our Voice Gatherings’, in which the organization sought to facilitate discussions about barriers to accessing traditional foods and knowledges, in an attempt to allocate project funding from the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

Thus, despite the major impositions on the ability to conduct traditional harvesting methods, we can see that within the last decade a major shift has been taking place, which re-emphasizes the importance of sustaining traditional food practices, notably also within urban areas.

9

Other examples include; Feasting For Change, the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Network, The Indigenous Circle branch of Food Secure Canada, or the Community Tool Shed (associated with the University of Victoria Public Interest Research Group) aimed at reintroducing native plant species.

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Chapter 3

Spirituality, Meaning and Ethical Authority

You put four jars of water, four big jars of water, and did something to each jar. Filled one jar with love, filled one jar with hate, filled one jar with chaos or something like that. And made the people drink it. And it came out like that. And that’s how the cooking is.

Elder Della Rice Sylvester and I were sitting on her porch to enjoy a warm spring afternoon. She had taken a break from tirelessly producing salves composed of various wild plant materials to teach me about the idea of ‘food is medicine’. Medicine is a colloquial expression commonly used to reference ideas about spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being or healing. While it can in some instances reflect Western usage of the term (referencing a particular supplement administered to improve physical health), the term medicine in this context assumes a very holistic implication. For instance, hugs and gifts received can be discussed as medicine. Similarly, food can be medicine; not solely in its ability to nurture the human physiology, but as something that has, as it passes through the hands of a skilled culinarian, acquired a social value which can improve or decline the receiver’s emotional and spiritual state of wellness.

While Della had shared several narratives, each expressing a particular aspect of the idea of ‘food is medicine’, the anecdote provided above explains the importance of “holding good thoughts” while preparing food. The belief follows that the emotionally-charged energy within the individual preparing a product of commensality can be infused into the meal and thereby passed on to all diners. I would suggest here that the belief that one receives medicine during the consumption of foods prepared under the right conditions alludes to the fact that traditional foods carry significance for First Nations peoples above and beyond considerations of physical health. When the people drank water that was endowed with hateful or loving energy, they themselves experienced feelings of hate or empathy. Thus, this belief references the role of traditional foods in social relationships; an exchange is always taking place, either amongst individuals or between humans and their environment, in an often implicit nature.

Building on this notion of traditional foods as holding social value beyond basic sustenance, the following discussion will address traditional foods as a site of social discourse holding particular ideas about human relationships. Elaborating on this understanding, throughout the following chapter we will discuss how spirituality and social values associated with traditional foods produce a social code informing what is understood as proper behaviour. We will then discuss how these ethical codes support particular discourses about human relationships to the environment

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3.1 The Spiritual Life of Traditional Foods

In the introduction to Food in the Social Order, Mary Douglas argues that our inability to fully comprehend the situation of disparity in food access is due to a separation between studies of food and the spiritual or social underpinnings of commensality. Douglas suggests that “in the sense that the whole of society has been secularized by the withdrawal of specialized activities from a religious framework, so food has been taken out of any common metaphysical scheme” (Douglas, 1984:5). Interestingly, this comment reflects my own perceptions about the relationship between academia and traditional foods on Vancouver Island. Within social and nutritional sciences, focus has been almost solely on the quantifiable prevalence of food insecurity and restrictions imposed on cultural practices. These accounts do succeed at garnering wider public acceptance of traditional food knowledges and practices as ecologically sustainable and providing a superior quality of health (see Turner et. al., 2000; Adelson, 2005; Davis & Twidale, 2010). However, this analysis cedes Elaine M. Power’s call, in the Canadian

Journal of Public Health, to better understand the ‘Aboriginal ontology’ through an examination of the contemporary role of traditional foods (Power, 2008).

In reference to the void described by Douglas in which food has been secularized, “the central assumption now seems to be that corrupt society always temps the individual to misuse material things either for greed or to serve envy and pride by rivalrous display” (Douglas, 1984:5). This statement has interesting implications when applied to my field of research. Ironically, it reflects the attitudes of Indian Agents towards ‘excessive’ redistribution practices during the era of the potlatch ban. Yet, to shift momentarily to a more emic perspective, the vacuum in which First Nations communities are less guided by spiritual and social protocol (due to colonial disruptions in knowledge transferral such as the residential school system and potlatch ban), has left room for individuals to be corrupted by the white man’s tendencies to exploit resources to the fullest due to a fixation with wealth accumulation.

Whether burning cedar masks during a feast in acknowledgement to the ancestors or removing ancient cedar trees (and thus all local wild food resources) during the process of logging for international trade, there seems to be a history of finger pointing regarding who is dealing with food in the in proper way. Thus, I will set forth some of the spiritual and social underpinnings of traditional food practices, as I have interpreted them to be, in order to illuminate these contradictions in the debate.

Unceded ways : traditional food practices of the indigenous peoples of Vancouver Island

Traditional Food Practices of the

Indigenous Peoples of Vancouver

Island

Megan Muller

UNCEDED WAYS: Traditional Food Practices of the

Indigenous Peoples of Vancouver Island

Abstract

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

1.1 Setting and Research Population

1.2 Methods of Inquiry

1.3 Theoretical Influences

Traditional Foods Past and Present

2.1 What are Traditional Foods?

2.2 Impacts of Colonialism

2.3 Barriers to Traditional Foods Access

2.4 Projects of Revitalization

Spirituality, Meaning and Ethical Authority

3.1 The Spiritual Life of Traditional Foods