Indigenous Reflection
“I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered today on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm)people.”
As a UBC student, this is the land acknowledgement I’ve been hearing since the beginning of university. I did not think much about the meaning behind it back then; as an international student, I was intrigued by the local Indigenous art, but I’ve always felt that I am only a visitor to their territories. As a biology student, my courses rarely touched on these subjects. The fact of how little I knew hit me at the very start of our discussion of the topic in BIOL 420: I did not know how to spell the names of most First Nations mentioned, and had to constantly look them up to take notes. This was the first time I felt the urgency and necessity to learn more about the culture of Indigenous Peoples. After listening to my first podcast on Indigenous issues, I wanted to tweet a takeaway message, but constantly was afraid that I would misrepresent their worldviews as I typed it up. I now realize that this type of awareness and self-reflection is vital to improve communication and understanding.
One recurrent theme during our discussions is the stewardship and worldview of Indigenous Peoples. Unlike the exploitative nature of Western practices, they coexist with the land and creatures and respect them. First Nations actively manage and harvest mollusk populations on some shores and have other areas left for sea otters to forage. Guardian watchmen actively survey the waters and enforce rule compliance; those that unsustainably fish may face expulsion or loss of fishing rights. Indigenous art (like the featured image above) shows how organisms like salmon are central to the ecosystem and culture. Conservation is deeply intertwined with all aspects with their daily living. I admire their beautiful intimate relationship with nature, and would like to adopt some of these views into my value system and actively utilize two-eyed seeing in my daily life. Throughout the course of this term, I’ve noticed that I consciously avoided using terms like “resources” and “stocks”, as they carry the connotation of objectifying the environment around us to what we can take and own.
Though Indigenous Peoples have rich and sophisticated culture prior to European colonization, their tradition has been hampered, their livelihoods taken away. Due to licensing restrictions, those who wanted to keep fishing in the 1800s had to sell them to canneries. Many left their homelands to work there, living in overpopulated bunkhouses with only towels separating families apart. In “Goodbye Snauq”, the Squamish peoples were sent off on barges towards the Burrard Inlet, leaving their homewaters to be turned into what is now called False Creek. As I read the story, I recalled earlier that day that there was an announcement that my childhood supermarket will close down after 18 years of service in the community. All of my friends were posting their sadness and farewells towards this shop, and I couldn’t help but wonder: if the replacement of a childhood landmark could evoke such strong emotions, what would have been the level of pain felt by the Squamish and many other Nations that have experienced similar fates?
Unfair treatments are still emerging today. Western exploitation has critically depleted abalone populations, forcing the fishery to close. However, First Nations are paying the price. The Haida and Gitxaała nations no longer have access to this traditional food, as they will be criminalized if they were caught gathering them. The conflict between commercial and Indigenous fishers in Nova Scotia have led the province to prohibit lobster sales outside the commercial fishing season, and the DFO to try giving Indigenous fishers commercial licenses and forbidding them from non-season fishing. These events are confusing, as both violate the constitutional rights of First Nations and the Marshall decision. Who gets to govern and survey traditional Indigenous fishing grounds? Which ruling should take precedence? Though I likely won’t do policy work in the future, these are important questions we should get answered.
It is most bewildering to me that academia has played an important role in hindering Indigenous access to and management in fisheries for food, social, and ceremonial purposes. To gain access to abalone, archaeological proof had to be presented that the Haida peoples historically harvested it. When the Kitasoo/Xai’xais people advocated for commercial Dungeness crab fisheries closures in traditional areas to conserve the population, the credibility of their traditional knowledge was denied, and they had to resort to modern peer-reviewed publication in collaboration with researchers to get the message across. Even then, the DFO did not acknowledge that the experimental trials in the study demonstrated immediate need of limiting traps in the area, as the two groups did not demonstrate a large difference. As I took a class with Dr. Daniel Pauly, I recognized that this is a case of the shifting baselines syndrome: the knowledge of past generations have been ignored, resulting in a faulty baseline of comparison in understanding the severity of population decline. Science does not see what the elders of the First Nations see, simply because we are not listening.
Additionally, I learned that the current education system fails to support members of the Indigenous community that want to pursue an academic career. This leads me to wonder what we can do to help accommodate Indigenous peoples in our society in general. As I would like to enter the veterinarian industry in the future, I had a conversation about this with Amanda. She mentioned that it could start from easy steps, such as creating a culturally inclusive space with notices on the walls saying “we welcome different cultural beliefs and are willing to explore alternative approaches to better care for your pet”. Given the close bond between Indigenous peoples and nature, I am curious about whether they have different relationships with their pets. I would like to explore these relationships in hopes of providing better service to a diverse clientele in the future.
Note: as a newcomer to Canada, I have not lived the life of an Indigenous Person, and I recognize that there may be gaps and inaccuracies in my writing above. If you have any comments, concerns, suggestions, or corrections, please reach out to me and I will gladly correct it.
Check out this article on Two-eyed Seeing for a deeper understanding of how it can be used in research and other collaborative initiatives.
Cover Art: Salmon’s Connection to Mother Earth by Christine Mackenzie (@sneakynativeart)