Flooded with generous amounts of news reports and current updates from both local and international levels, I was, in all honesty, having great difficulty deciding which topic to embark upon as a starting point for the route of my project in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies (FNIS). Weeks of pondering and exploring through resources available online had only yielded further interests: anything but a definite decision on the topic. This depleting uncertainty would have certainly continued if it had not been for the guest lecture from Elder Larry Grant. Thanks to him, I was inspired to explore the close relationship of Coastal Indigenous communities in British Columbia to Salmon, and, hence, abled to specify my project interest.

Salmon are to these communities beyond merely a source of nutrition, but essentially a way of life that constructs and commemorates their identity. And as identity represents sense of self, salmon to the coastal people is as important as the traditional territory to them in regard to their ongoing livelihood and the continuity of their culture. The relationship, however, has been subjected to major involuntary changes due to, for example, the incoming of exotic diseases and the European law enforcement upon arrival of the settler-colonialism on the Vancouver Island (Harris, 2001). It is important to recognize that, apart from these unhealed wounds from the colonial legacy, the Indigenous communities and their cultural heritage are also in daily struggles with the politicized context of contemporary colonialism, as noted by Alfred and Corntassel (2005). It is defined as an ongoing exercise of colonial power by the contemporary settlers, but in a considerably subtle form, comparing to the original colonial practice- such as a physical, militaristic occupation of lands. Among others, the currently heated topic of pipeline project in British Columbia is the ideal illustration for the exploitative consequence of the contemporary colonialism on the Indigenous peoples. It is because the pipeline project is largely negotiated between big corporations and the government, while the potential devastated environmental risk (Shaw, Hoekstra, & Ip, 2017) from an oil spill will be paid at a high cost to the coastal water, the wildlife and the community. Hence, this research project will position the pipeline project as the focal avenue in which further exploration into its influence specifically on the salmon to explicate the contemporary colonialism’s exploitation upon the Indigenous peoples.

After further inquires, certain themes and concur patterns have emerged persistently. Yet, interestingly, most of them seem to be individually probed and understood like that of jigsaw pieces, instead of being regarded collectively as a whole picture of the situation. This dissection of understanding accelerates my research direction toward a question of how the ongoing conversation, in both public and academic setting, about the pipeline projects in British Columbia has accumulated and revealed major aspects of the critical situation regarding salmon to the Coastal Indigenous communities.

Hitherto, at the preliminary stage of research, the possible response to the mentioned question is that there are three main threads contributing to the big picture of the salmon issue in British Columbia, which are environmental, legal, and commercial. Probing into the pipeline project has revealed a glimpse into such issue in (i) environmental context as the construction of the pipeline and the presence of the pipeline itself will be of disturbance to the salmon and their habitat, (ii) legal context as the project requires state’s approval before launching into the construction which has largely excluded Indigenous voices and opinions in the process, and (iii) commercial context as of the pipeline is the channel for financial profit primarily to the proponent company, and the state. Each of these contexts clearly needs further in-depth inquiry to emphasize the underlying connection between them to salmon. Nonetheless, they are the fabrics that weave into the current situation regarding the salmon for the Indigenous communities, and therefore are necessary, not only to be addressed individually, but also attended together. This is because the mixture of these aspects- environmental, legal, and commercial- results in the reality of the situation, but could be easily overlooked and, as a result, understated in a conversation about the salmon either within the communities, or in the wider public sphere.

This project aims to initiate common ground for conversations regarding salmon issue for the Coastal Indigenous people in British Columbia, as to recognize that the issue is affected by more than one influence at the same time. Nonetheless, it should not be implied that there has not been researched into these areas- namely, environmental, legal and commercial- as there are numbers of papers and resources on each of them. There, however, has no known attempt to gather these dialogues together, and to establish a recognition upon the collective consciousness that they are talking about the same central concern, salmon. This recognition is essential to apprehend the big picture, the thorough understanding of the situation in order to identify and formulate further initiatives on the issue.

Bibliography

Alfred, T. & Corntassel, J. (2005). Being Indigenous: Resurgences against contemporary colonialism. Government and Opposition: Politics of Identity IX, 597-614.

Harris, D. C. (2001). Fish, law, and colonialism: The legal capture of salmon in British Columbia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Shaw, R., Hoekstra, G., & Ip, S. (2017, January 12). All five conditions met for B.C.’s approval of Kinder Morgan pipeline: Christy Clark. Vancouver Sun. Retrieved from http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/b-c-government-grants-environmental-approval-for-kinder-morgan-pipeline