Category Archives: Food security

6. Moving In!

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Our group has had another busy two weeks, largely centered around finalizing the scope of our project with our community liaison, Dr. Eduardo Jovel, as well as establishing a suitable platform for our database. We had been expecting to present our research in the format of a UBC wiki page; now, thanks to Duncan and Eduardo, our database will be hosted directly in the UBC sites, making it much more user-friendly to access and explore, without the risk of someone altering the content. So – drum roll – our web address is:

http://lfs-mpd.sites.olt.ubc.ca/plants/

(Please note that you need a CWL login to access this site!)

Screenshot of UBC Biocultural Diversity website

A home for our database!

However, the biggest change in the past two weeks has been that our database is going to be expanded to include native plants found in the UBC Botanical Garden as well as those we have already been documenting in the IAH Garden, and possibly other gardens on campus if time permits. These two changes were largely made because there are very few plants present in the IAH Garden that fit our original criteria. These criteria are the outcome of the conversations Hannah initiated by challenging us to question how we define “traditional” plants; because we felt that non-native plants are generally well-documented, and we wanted to focus on preserving practices and diets that may be fading in memory, we had decided to limit ourselves to native species, and specifically those that are edible (as medicine or food, a distinction we are finding difficult to make), not realizing just how few of these are currently planted in the IAH Garden. The expansion to include edible native plants in the Botanical Garden will help open our scope. We managed to visit the Botanical Garden during the Apple Festival and snap some pictures for our project, but at this time of year the majority of plants are going into dormant states and don’t look much like they will in the spring and summer. Nonetheless, we have contacted the garden and they have offered to provide us with some of their own digital photographs of plants found in their Native Garden.

Post #6 in the making.

Further discussions over what constitutes traditional food and diet have included the thought that some of the First Nations of the pacific northwest practiced what could be called horticulture, tending to plants already growing, though not necessarily planting them themselves. We expect that this is a challenge for the IAH Garden, which cannot grow many regional traditional foods or medicinal plants, many of which simply do not take to cultivation on an agricultural scale, such as huckleberries. However, many people do harvest from native species growing in more natural ecological setting, which can actually be more successful; plants do best if they grow where they “want” to grow! Similar approaches to food harvesting have even earned some First Nations in this region recognition for cultivating shellfish (Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast by Judy Williams; http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/1-000-year-old-first-nations-clam-gardens-unearthed-near-sidney-1.232161).

Finally, in our latest meeting with Eduardo we discussed the idea of Biocultural Diversity on campus (i.e. the diversity of culture and of biological life, specifically at UBC, and the interactions between the two). Our database will help to spread this concept as it includes both ecological and cultural information. Eduardo mentioned the possibility of starting a course on Biocultural Diversity; if he does indeed pursue this, he suggested that he will use our database – which we think is pretty neat! We are beginning to realize that our CBEL project does indeed have a lot of purpose for our community members!

Now that we have finally set a foundation for our database, our group discussed which traditional plants we wanted to include and we assigned two for each of us to research initially. A few examples are salmonberry, nodding onion, salal, and licorice fern. We hope that we will have time to complete more entries into the site, yet we do realize that we are creating the base for this project that future students can build on. Our group is also planning to visit the IAH garden for a second time, as well as attend the upcoming feast bowl on October 30th.

3. Getting to Know Our Project and Who is Involved

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This week has been a very productive one for our group! In addition to visiting the Institute for Aboriginal Health (IAH) garden last week, where we took many photographs and made observations, we were able to attend one of the monthly Feast Bowls that the IAH organizes. The IAH is an institute that was designed in order to improve the health of the Aboriginal people in British Columbia and increase their participation in health careers. One of their goals is to promote indigenous health knowledge and support their traditional health care system. The Feast Bowls are a perfect example of the collaboration between Western knowledge and traditional Aboriginal health, where traditional foods from many communities are put together in order to improve the health of the Aboriginal people while incorporating foods from their traditional diet.

Herbs collected from the IAH Garden

Herbs fresh from the IAH Garden.

Attending the Feast Bowl, we learned about the purpose of the IAH garden and got to know some of the people we will be working with. We helped prepare fish cakes, tzatziki, bannock, steamed vegetables, and an apple crisp. We were shown how to use sweet cicely instead of sugar to sweeten the crisp. Sweet cicely is a local herbaceous plant that is usually considered a weed but it makes an excellent sugar substitute, especially for those with or at risk of diabetes. Almost all of the ingredients used were gathered from the IAH garden, so they were organic, fresh and made for an exceptional meal. Fortunately, there were a lot of volunteers, so the food was prepared relatively quickly and served to the crowd of about 30 people. Before sitting down to eat, we all joined hands and a prayer was given in a First Nations language. This helped to remind us of how much goes into a meal and that not to take any of it for granted. We also took this opportunity to speak with Hannah Lewis regarding future options for our project, including the database and some of the plants from the IAH garden.

Swiss chard from the IAH Garden

A rainbow of swiss chard blanching away.

We have learned many things during our project so far. We realized a need to define the term “traditional”, as we will be using it over the course of our project. “Traditional” can have different meanings depending on the context, but overall, it can be defined as an inherited and established or customary pattern in the way of thinking or behaving, associated with a particular culture. It is also the handing down of information, beliefs and customs from one generation to the other. “Tradition” is most commonly defined as cultural continuity in social attitudes and customs, but traditions are not necessarily specific to one location or culture. To many people the word “traditional” can come across as “old-fashioned”, when in fact it is highly flexible, constantly adapting just as cultures do.

Jen presents the homemade fish-cakes

Jen presents some of the amazing handmade fish-cakes.

Aboriginal communities of the Pacific Northwest, including those that we will be working with, traditionally relied mostly on fishing, foraging, hunting and forms of horticulture for sustenance. However, the IAH garden largely grows a mixture of cultivated crops that were introduced to these Aboriginal communities mostly by Europeans and have since been incorporated into their traditional cuisine. There are also some native plant species in the garden, and more are harvested from the natural forest ecosystems. The cultivated crops and the native plant species are both incorporated in the Aboriginal community lunches.

We look forward to seeing how the IAH garden promotes health through the use of food, which we expect will show a link between food and medicine. The Aboriginal populations in Canada have been using many major groups of plants as medicine, and through the IAH garden, this knowledge can be shared within the community by harvesting native plants and using them in the lunch program as well as for other means. We hope that our database will be able to spread this knowledge even further!

Introduction to LFS 350

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The Land, Food, and Community series is a number of classes that the students of UBC Land and Food Systems take every year.  The students of Land Food and Community II (LFS 350; formerly known as AGSC 350) complete extensive projects on food security issues in British Columbia.  Students work in groups of 6 or 7 to explore issues within their assigned communities and themes, and team up with members of the community to tackle these issues.  In this way, students can engage in their education by learning from community partners and immersing themselves in “real world” situations outside the classroom.  Community Partners can learn about what students are doing and learning at UBC, and can work with students to make a positive impact on their organizations and communities in terms of food security.  The Land and Food Series classes are unique from most other university courses as they emphasize teaching as a “community of learners” and community based research instead of top-down instruction and research.  Students learn from the teaching team, their peers and the communities of British Columbia making for an education that bridges university academics with real world issues.