Host of contrasts on the coast

The coast is a host of contrasts and a primary one is cultural. For example, First Nations are people of the Potlatch who express a lot of national heritage in artistic endeavours that are indelibly cultural. The First Nations identify a presence and their communities with iconic art found in dozens of locations up the coast. When you come to see major features in First Nation art you are likely in the midst of a First Nation community.

Tourism travel on the coast leads visitors into adventurous activities like tours of whale and bear-watching that take people to places like Bute Inlet, Toba Inlet, Desolation Sound. And when you go farther north, tours take visitors into the Broughton Archipelago, Knight’s Inlet or Kingcome Inlet, or around the top of Vancouver Island. As a cultural exploration, Vancouver Island is but one of a seemingly countless number of islands, many of which were inhabited, while others were cultivated, and others were used for communal harvest of vegetation or wildlife.

It is surprising how many people lived in places no longer considered for habitation. In some of these places there are communities holding extinction at bay with one or two Band members living in remote locations like Hopetown or Gilford Island. At Kingcome Inlet, very top of the world when you are there, 125 souls keep a solid First Nation footprint on the ground (even though the houses are on stilts).

Victoria is a picturesque city full of art shops and museums often honed in on the First Nation culture of the Pacific Coast, but Victoria is a city. On the opposite side of the prominent Malahat from Victoria and still southerly on Vancouver Island is the city of Duncan, halfway point between Victoria and Nanaimo. Duncan is a great place to see the cultural contrast in full bloom. They call Duncan the City of Totems and there are totem poles set around the city but the main attraction is the Quw'utsun' Cultural and Conference Centre. It’s a re-created Salishan village nestled beside the Cowichan River and a beautiful representation of past and present Cowichan Tribes community.

The north end of Vancouver contains more rugged beauty enhanced by temperate weather, and the rainforest is more readily available to visit. Hiking, touring, fishing, and outdoor life continues on a year-round basis, top to bottom, on both sides of the big island, but when you arrive at the community of Alert Bay on Cormorant Island you could ask about visiting Yukusem where you will learn about the study of Culturally Modified Trees (CMT). This is the study of human beings working to organize around rainforest resources. What David Garrick, anthropologist, uncovered on Hanson Island is the 'transgenerational' management of vegetation by First Nations at the north end of the Inside Passage, and it is amazing.

This careful study of transgenerational management provides evidence that First Nations used forest resources in coastal rainforests in complex arrangements. Special preserves of rainforest under carefully defined jurisdictions were ‘managed’ to create and provide essential resources. Social groups conducted large scale horticulture within particular groves of cedar trees on Yukusem’s 16 square kilometres, doing so on a truly grand scale. Together they made cedar trees do the most incredible things horticultural.

David Garrick uncovered cedar-shaping in CMTs during his long and fruitful tenure of archaeology on-site at Yukusem. This amazing process involves planning that spans centuries. This cultivation was done in a manner that shaped trees and modified them to produce a surplus of bark while maintaining the integrity of a living cedar tree. First Nations maximized cedar bark production by modifying the tree, doing this in a way that left the cedar tree to heal, thrive, and produce more surplus bark. It was a strategy of development that occurred because cedar bark was a staple product in the social and economic development of coastal life. This cultural product was used in an apparently endless array of purposes. The practice to cultivate giant cedars was millennial to make trees produce a surplus cedar bark into a raw material for production of manufactured goods.

Nothing was left to chance or waste. The term old-growth forest was meaningless within a culture that practised continuous and specialized cultivation in the growth of the forests over several centuries. Even a burnt forest was an opportunity to harvest a different list of highly-prized resources. Meanwhile, everything on Yukusem was planned around the need to produce cedar bark for future generations. A prime example of the transgenerational planning policy occurs on a site called Bear Grove on Yukusem. Garrick’s mapping points out the existence of at least 55 shaped cedars per hectare in the Bear Grove sector of the island. This is an intense concentration of evidence indicative of creating surplus bark. It becomes obvious from concentrations of CMTs of this magnitude that an organized effort was made to cultivate and exploit cedar bark in patterns showing sustainable, long-term, transgenerational planning processes.

The people of Yukusem living 1,350 years ago cultivated a specific tree to furnish Namgis carver Beau Dick with raw material for his canoe project in the modern age. Also in this transgenerational context, ancient people provided a modern chain of evidence to Harry Alfred and Don Svanvik, CMT researchers from Alert Bay who are able to exert First Nation jurisdiction over Yukusem cedar groves in the present. The vital (and heretofore missing) evidence was produced from messages in trees hundreds of years old. The fingerprints of this interaction with forests have been uncovered in many of the forests of B.C., even so, it was a long and arduous 20th century for the folks around Yukusem. Only in 2004 did the First Nations recover jurisdiction over Yukusem.

CMTs studied in this way by Garrick provided scientific resources and evidence to give First Nations proof of former jurisdiction. It is interesting to note, however, there was no apparent conflict in the management of Yukusem resources until about 1930, Garrick explains. His archaeological time-line shows that before the cataclysmic culture shock treatments took form (residential schools, banning of potlatchs, et al), the arrival of industrial foresters was a not-unwelcome event to a degree. The industrial foresters were cooperative by taking only a few trees from Yukusem’s treasured groves, and Garrick reports they apparently left cedar trees untouched, cedar was for the cedar shapers those who used it as a specially-managed and treasured resource. Thus Garrick has proven how two management paradigms co-existed!

It required an exercise of federal government policy to alienate First Nations from their management and jurisdiction over cedar shaping activities. From the time such government policies were introduced until Yukusem Heritage Society was formed in 2004 the cedar groves on Hanson Island faced dire circumstances. Garrick’s archaeological study was the one thing standing in their way, and in a pleasant turn since his study began a series of scientific facts have freed people to exert their sovereignty.

“I am the land and resource officer of the Namgis First Nation,” said Harry Alfred, one afternoon in a communal garden on Yukusem. Alfred described how people have rebounded because of Garrick’s work in these groves. Cultural energy burst from the CMT research and in a way people have regained a sense of cultural balance. New community energy has been born from the old secrets. Alfred and Don Svanvik sit on the Yukusem board of directors on behalf of the Namgis First Nation. Two other Bands share jurisdiction over Hanson Island (Tlowitsis and Muntagila). Alfred and Svanvik have become CMT experts within their communities. “The Namgis Nation,” said Alfred, “comprised about 4,000 km.” With a sweep of his arm he described a rectangular shaped territory with Yukusem sitting almost at the centre.

Furthermore, under the guidance of Namgis artist and lay-historian Beau Dick a group of volunteers has built a few community facilities on the south-west quadrant of Yukusem to teach people the meaning of the old ways. Dick described how one social organization took people into the silvan wilderness and constructed dugout canoes. It is known that canoes were constructed in the cultivated cedar groves in areas adjoining other food or health or community-based cultivated resources. The canoes were dugouts, designed in a technically superior manner to take people back and forth between communities and fishing grounds or ther harvest areas throughout the Broughton Archipelago.

The communities of old are buried today in the forest floor in the surroundings of etchings of harvest found in ancient cedar trees. A volunteer canoe project amounts to a defacto form of reclamation of Yukusem and was the idea of Dick who grew up in a Big House society that remained standing in the splendour of Kingcome Inlet, representing a miraculous survival where traditionalists dodged bullets (literal and figurative) through many previous decades.

Dick learned to carve from his grandfather and father and obtained teaching about hidden meanings in a unique form of artistic expression. Life goes on, yes, and Beau Dick, despite being a realist, believes he is restoring historical significance to the nation by uncovering the old secrets of cedar forest management. On the southwest quadrant of Yukusem he is staging a come-back by building a cultural camp to teach people the old ways -- sharing a forest in a transgenerational and environmentally sustainable way.

B.C. Justice system has specialized First Nation advocates

Patricia Jackson volunteers as treasurer on the board
of directors of the Northern BC Crisis Centre

 Patricia Jackson is a Youth & Family Advocate for the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia, and, as noted on the title (or index) page, Patricia was declared the Aboriginal Woman of Distinction by Today’s Woman for the 7th Annual presentation of the northern award. She received the honours during a banquet in Prince George, at the Coast North Inn, this fall. She won this recognition from tireless work at an urgent task.

 

“We are supporting clients who are facing an imbalance, and we advocate correcting injustice.” Patricia Jackson comes to the job with the correct set of personal experiences because, it is true she is young enough to have avoided residential school horrors (by falling outside an age demographic), but Patricia underwent her own disturbing experiences in concert with what Governor General Adrienne Clarkson (Ret.) calls systemic racism against First Nations in Canada.

 

Systemic racism causes people to land in precarious, severely prejudiced, government-legislated losses of human rights from which there is no escape by any means, because it is race-based.

 

Patricia was put into a system of foster care where she grew up in a system of policies under Bill Vanderzalm, renowned and renounced as a form of zealot as then-minister of families, and Patricia lived in one of those ‘foster’ homes filled with frightful encounters, in Valemount, BC.

 

She describes endless days filled with assault and battery, deprivation, and insane rants and dictates about the problems caused by Indian people. These actions were apparently foisted upon dozens of First Nation kids wrenched thousands of kilometres from home. She was, for example, born in Metlakatla, BC, and is a member of the Tsimshian Nation.

 

She said then-minister of government Vanderzalm issued specific orders for social workers to look the other way, which permitted wider and more longterm abuse. The former premier gained a reputation from a lot of bad decisions and poor judgement. This incident, according to Patricia, paints a very dark picture of his period, as a former BC government minister.

 

She survived to raise a family and turn to a profession that provides hope of retribution, in other words, a highly noble cause for the creation in society of behaviour that treats everybody with the same justice, where justice prevails more than here and there.

 

Systemic racism in Canada has been no less absurd, no less arbitrary, no less cruel, no less obvious, and equally as destructive as any system of racism the world has ever seen.

 

Canadians are fortunate to live in an evolving society that has been proving capable of bringing about change. Patricia Jackson is one of those people who is able to lead the way. She has co-workers at the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of British Columbia www.nccabc.ca who cover the territory by following the circuit court, meeting clients and pursuing the cause of justice.

 

Jackson has toiled in a Quebec Street office in downtown Prince George to bring about change in one life or hopefully one family at a time, working to salve wounds suffered either by hook or by crook. She is happy to report the NCCABC offices are moving to new quarters.

 

She has worked at 154 Quebec Street, Prince George, in a historic property. It may well be one of the first commercial properties in Northern British Columbia, indeed, may have been a trading post. It is quaint, cramped, creaky, a false front, and they are moving.

 

A woman of this stature is too busy to pay attention to false fronts and antiquated notions. Jackson is building a place in society for people, and sometimes she delivers unexpected landings for kids. For instance, starting last year she worked with the business manager for the WHL Cougars, Brandi Brodsky, to build a program with businesses to put hundreds of kids in arena seats, fed, clothed, housed, and often over the moon with joy to receive an invitation to the spectacle of world class junior hockey.

 

Disadvantaged, at risk, handicapped, or just lucky for once, some kids might to turn a corner through heartfelt endeavours. She knows for a fact it is worth the effort. She has been mentored by others and Jackson speaks about Gloria George, a Hereditary Chief , who inspired a program to create retribution and healing in the Prince George Provincial Corrections facility. This program is presently underway dealing with residential school trauma.

 

“This program is entering another phase," said Jackson, "and the trauma workshops are being funded by the Anglican Church for this next round.” Jackson noted, “This is the first corrections facility in Canada to offer recovery assistance to residential school survivors,” and the program owes its existence, she said, to Gloria George. The United Church contributed the funding for the first phase.

 

Jackson points out another essential ingredient in the association’s success, the NCCABC is entirely First Nation operated and staffed. “My Regional Manager is Arthur Paul, and he works out of the 50 Powell Street, Vancouver BC office. He lets me do my job to the best of my ability.

 

"He has been responsible for making me a better employee,” where she has been at NCCABC for 2 years, "and on Dec 8, 2007, will be entering my third year of employment.   The NCCABC,” including Darlene Shackelly, Executive Director, “has empowered us," she said "by believing and supporting us.”

Beau Dick canoe carving project

Hawk Hawkins and Beau Dick, circa 2008, Yukusem Culture Bivouac on Hanson Island, B.C..

Beau Dick is a machine when it comes to working with wood. He is a Kwakwala carver of renowned ability whose life includes meeting the British Royal Family, and includes possession of the highest ranking bloodline.

Beau Dick was raised in Kingcome Inlet, B.C. (an obscure postal code), and grew up within a Big House society still standing in the splendour of its generations.

Kingcome Inlet represented a miraculous survival where traditionalists had dodged a lot of bullets, both literal and figurative, through many previous decades.

Beau Dick learned to carve from his grandfather and father and the teaching contained the deeper meaning of this unique form of artistic expression. He learned these important lessons at the archetype level, from which level was born a life-force.

With this knowledge and energy Beau Dick has launched himself into the community to show people the deeper meaning of their old ways.

The timing is right for Beau Dick. He found it easier to create a significant cultural revival since the return of Hanson Island to First Nation custody. It is an opportunity to break out of systematic oppression.

Proof of Aboriginal stewardship of this island has been uncovered in rich Hanson Island Old Growth cedar groves, because the Cultural Modified Trees are filled with archaeological evidence of Aboriginal Rights and Title.

Hanson Island has been returned to the custody of the First Nations. CMTs have restored once-hidden knowledge about shore-based societies constructed around rainforest cedar groves.

David Garrick, anthropologist, coined the term “transgenerational” management of forest resources to explain a social arrangement in forests. Rainforests were ‘managed’ under carefully defined  jurisdiction.

Social groups practiced grand scale horticulture on stands of cedar on Yukusem’s (Hanson Island) 16 square kilometres. They made cedar trees do the most amazing things. Excess bark was produced for harvest,  which might take a couple hundred years to get to.

Harry Alfred (et al) has taken scientific evidence to carve a role in management. He is one of the board of directors of Yukusem Heritage Society, which has custody of most of Hanson Island.

He is also, “land and resource officer of the Namgis First Nation,” he explained, one afternoon in a Garrick-constructed garden in Yukusem heights.

“The Namgis traditional territory,” said Alfred, comprised, “about 4,000 sq km.” Extending an arm to four corners he described a rectangular shaped territory with Yukusem almost centre.

Harry Alfred said the community rebounded due to David Garrick’s work in cedar groves on Yukusem (over 20 years of hands-on research). The First Nations managers have devoted nation-building energy to CMT research.

A hundred people been trained by Garrick and these are people who have regained cultural balance from the experience.

Life goes on, yes, and Beau Dick, a realist, knows this. He is adding something to a historically significant nation using the old secrets of majestic Indian Nation jurisdiction.

On the southwest quadrant of Yukusem he is staging a canoe carving project and building a cultural camp to teach people the old ways about sharing a forest in a transgenerational and environmentally sustainable way.

Visit the Carving Studio of Alert Bay

Carving a Crooked Beak in Alert Bay, B.C.

Feeding the trout

Huge breakthrough coming for Prince George First Nation students

Marlene Erickson is vice-chair of the Aboriginal Education Task Force and chairperson for the Aboriginal Education Board in School District 57, which runs schools in Prince George, B.C., and surroundings, "We reported on the task force findings Feb 26 08."

The report was delivered to the school board and the Aboriginal Education School Board. Erickson has been working for over a decade to bring about the fundamental changes required to make education an acceptable opportunity to these youth from First Nations.

She began to work to bring about change in the previous decade when Erickson volunteered for Native Student Services Committee in the school district, which was a precursor to the Aboriginal Education Board. The Aboriginal Education Board was formed in the area in the mid-1990s and Erickson joined as a board member, then two years ago she was appointed to the chair.

The recommendations made by the Aboriginal Education Task Force, which Erickson vice-chaired, "will take several years and we certainly hope to get started right away." For Erickson the priority is simple, "The biggest issue is to increase the Academic Achievement levels to open the doors for First Nations kids to enter post-secondary institutions and get higher learning.”

The process of designing a program and building relevant curricula will take advantage of research done by other jurisdictions where Aboriginal education engages students with cultural acknowledgements and practices within a protected learning environment.

"We are discussing a 'choice' school and eventually it will deliver an Aboriginal-specific curriculum," said Erickson. "We think we can make rapid progress because the initiatives have SD57 trustee support and results of the task force indicate strong community-level and grassroots support for program changes and design."

Erickson said a city like Prince George needs to work as a community to help struggling kids, "We want a choice school so other kids from non-Native families can access the program. We want the program to emphasize cooperative learning techniques, which seem to benefit the First Nation student more than the learning model that demands high grades and forces ambition into a fiercely competitive mode."

All students in this particular choice for Aboriginal-oriented education will benefit from added levels of support, and, no, “this is not a return to Residential Schools," which Erickson said has been one of the criticisms.

As Aboriginals, "We are already at 25 percent of the school enrolment and it is increasing every year. We have some schools in the city of Prince George already at 75 percent Aboriginal students in the population," and, she said, this will make the development of a 'choice' school a reasonable alternative.

Why hasn't it happened before now? "There are a whole bunch of reasons why the proposal is new," because, she said, "it is essentially new again." They tried proposing a choice school five years ago but the city wasn't ready to listen to the suggestion.

If Prince George's polity thought it had bigger problems and perhaps bigger fish to fry, well, "We are trying to impress on the community that the education system in the city is failing the student population and it amounts to a crisis. We will face mounting social costs, strains to the justice system, and continued dependencies on social welfare programs."

In order for the recommendations to come to pass, including the one about an Aboriginal choice school, community consultations are impending and they could become noisy. The SD57 board has approved the idea, nevertheless, the community needs to be consulted, and consultations can become noisy, especially when the topic is what to do about Indians in the city.

The SD57 area of jurisdiction covers more than the city of Prince George and includes east to Valemount, north to Mackenzie and McLeod Lake, and west to Vanderhoof. Some of the district's schools contain a vast majority of Native kids in their population.

"Our plans for Prince George will possibly benefit places like McLeod Lake and they will be watching closely because they sit on the Aboriginal Education Board.”

Erickson knows the grassroots includes the teachers, "I think the teachers and support workers in the existing school system are seeing the problems up close. Many are performing duties above and beyond the call, and they are really looking forward to a lot of these recommendations."

She hopes adoption of the recommendations will ameliorate against the burnout being experienced by teachers under the present circumstances.

Marlene Erickson comes by her concern honestly, "I am at the college (of New Caledonia) as the First Nation Coordinator of Aboriginal Support Services, and one of my jobs is to recruit students to the college from the community. I found myself on the Native Student Services Committee trying to recruit from too shallow a pool of students."

It was impossible to meet quotas. "First Nation kids do not see grade 12 graduation as a goal." Asked why, she said, "Poverty issues are first, and they are urban as well as rural," and First Nations are transplanting reservation-like poverty and social flux into poor city neighbourhoods.

"Look at all the urban areas of Canada and you will find Aboriginals living in the poorest conditions. Another problem is the sense of identity and pride of culture. We need to find the ways to deal with it, break kids out of the cycle. When you ask the kids, for instance, if their parents went to residential school most of them do not know the answer."

Erickson said the Aboriginal Education Board will have an important role to play in the implementation of the AETF recommendations.

Lois Boone is the chair of the AETF and elected as a trustee of SD57 and she said, "A new school is a different scenario for us. An Aboriginal ‘choice’ school would be based on First Nations philosophies of learning and would be open to everyone in the community," said Boone.

"Our thinking is that we would get a mix of students in the school," and, furthermore, "it would be possible to turn one of the existing schools into the 'choice' school that we envisage."

The task force contained a cross-section of community members totaling 13, and including Boone and Marlene Erickson, then two principals, two teachers, two Aboriginal education workers, an assistant school superintendent, two First Nation parents, and an Elder.

"We had a tight time frame and wanted to have a report done in February so we could meet budget discretion for the next school year," because, ideally, they would like to open an Aboriginal 'choice' school in Sep 08.

In fact the SD57 board is already hiring a 'district' principal for the Aboriginal Education program, whatever form it takes.

"We have to change the way we do education,” said Boone. “We need more cultural stuff in the classrooms, more cultural education and background for teachers and assistants, more interaction with Elders, music, regalia, and other cultural identifiers. What is there now is not working. The higher rates of failure are too much."

Boone said the SD57 board will meet with the Minister of Education Shirley Bond to go over the report. It is a matter of good fortune perhaps that, "Ms. Bond was elected in 2001 to represent the riding of Prince George-Mount Robson and re-elected in 2005."

The government website said, "Before her election to the Legislative Assembly, she served three terms on the Prince George School Board, the last as chair. She also worked with the continuing education department of the Prince George School District."

Trustee Boone said, "There are going to be some costs associated with setting it up," and because of the constraints of population this proposal includes only Kindergarten to grade 7, for at present there are not enough Aboriginal high school students to fill seats in wider high school program.

"We are open to suggestions, however, and if we could somehow fit a choice program into an existing high school," this may become an option.

Fish farms are the economic drivers in Klemtu

 Klemtu, B.C., is found on Swindle Island, alongside the north-central Pacific coast of Canada, and this town is residence of a First Nation called the Kitasoo/XaiXais, and they have recently authorized a change of location for two of their fish farm sites situated nearby.

Their partner in fish farming Marine Harvest Canada moved circular net-pens into position at Kid Bay and Sheep Pass farm sites to receive a delivery of a boat-load of Atlantic salmon smolts in late January 2008.

These sites have started to grow groups of fish to be harvested in processing plant facilities of Kitasoo Seafood Ltd., the company belonging to the Kitasoo/XaiXais First Nation.

These locations will be supervised by MHC area manager Terry Smith who has a 20 year history of growing fish including a recent two year stint in Norway.

Terry worked for one of the first industrial-scale net-pen fish farms on the west coast of Canada in the 1980s. Royal Pacific Fish Farms charted new territory in the world of net-pen fish farming by pioneering new economies of scale for growing fish at a profit.

Royal Pacific may have failed on the management side, Terry surmises, but they brought the operational standards up by investing millions in net-pen and float and anchor technology and research.

It was obvious by this time (early 1990s) that aquaculture and fish growing industry had to work within the regulatory environment for marketing food in the modern Canadian and world economy.

The standard for food commodities is regulated by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (http://www.codexalimentarius.net/web/index_en.jsp), which was,  "created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme."

The food standards website continued, "The main purposes of this Programme are protecting health of the consumers and ensuring fair trade practices in the food trade, and promoting coordination of all food standards work undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations."

The Marine Harvest Canada operation comprises about 50 percent of the production of farmed fish on the Pacific coast of Canada (see video 'slide #X). This makes MHC a good company to observe.

In reality Marine Harvest Canada made a number of acquisitions to become this big in Canada, the last one occurring in 2007, when Panfish Canada was sold to Marine Harvest Canada. This means Marine Harvest Canada runs about 40 fish farm sites on Canada’s Pacific coast.

The net-pens for these farm sites are situated on the Inside Passage on the top half of Vancouver Island, by and large; in addition Marine Harvest Canada owns a group of sites operating within the Kitasoo/XaiXais First Nation traditional territory.

Those sites give jobs 350 kilometres north of Port Hardy to Kitasoo/Xaixais members, and crops of fish are processed in a plant owned and operated by the folks in Klemtu, B.C..

Critics of fish farming in Canada come from a variety of sources and state a variety of offenses by the industry and hardly any of the opposition arguments can be proven, nor can the industry state with a lot of authority that the practices of net-pen fish farming are not deleterious to the ecology surrounding the sites.

The Broughton Inlet at the northeast tip of Vancouver Island is a treasure of culture and history, also, a present-day showcase of the Namgis Nation's survival as a people. People in the area have been party to a  fight with fish farming since the beginning.

With each industrial advance the Namgis and people like the recently deceased Pat Alfred ramped up their opposition shown to the fish farmers. Today it is the Broughton Inlet where much focus has been placed especially regarding the issue of sea lice. (see video 'slide #X)

While everybody has concerns about the growing conditions for animals that fill the food baskets of the world, those who monitor the growth of salmon in net-pens on the west coast are called fish technicians.

These people receive direct training in the employment on farm sites, some generic and some specific training for the jobs on the sites. The tech-training includes small motor maintenance, farm math, insights into feeding rates, watching for plankton blooms, and monitoring fish health (biopsies).

It is a six-month course which includes CPR, first aid, WHMIS, forklift training, and EMS (internal); and employees are trained for spill response, risk assessment, and operation of marine-vessels like small boats and other watercraft.

Terry Smith, aforementioned area manager for the Klemtu North farm sites, hires people who show the requisite enthusiasm for the work. What is missing on the west coast, according to Terry, is a working post-secondary education research and training facility.

This kind of an investment is made in other countries like Norway that engage in the industrial production of a protein base in seafood. He suggests that the ministry of post-secondary education making an investment in research could discover new directions to take with these agriculture/aquaculture/mariculture developments.

The reality is developments are necessary in that they are constructed to fill a gap in the supply chain of seafood to the food basket (see video 'slide #X, Ian Roberts of MHC explains how aquaculture fits into the food supply).

If things are changing beneath farm sites, it behooves public authorities to seek an understanding of what is happening. Canadian fish farmers cope with harmful plankton (and algae called heterosigma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosigma_akashiwo and this way, whereas farm sites in Norway and Chile do not have the same problems with plankton.

The fact remains that fish farms make adaptations to the environment in order to make fish thrive, in other words, the farm sites are 'created' environments. "We are close to creating aquariums in the ocean by using aerated water, moving preferred water by lifting it to displace harmful plankton from the net-pens,” Ian Roberts explained.

Steve Cross of Aquametrix Research (http://www.aquametrix-research.com) is investigating the potential for a 'polyculture' to develop around fish farm sites.

If the sites are changing area ecology perhaps it could be put to commercial use. Cross intends to grow black cod in net-pens and seaweed, scallops, and sea cucumbers near the pens, and monitoring the growth (and biological condition) of prawns.

"We call it integrated multi-tropic aquaculture," and Cross is experimenting with black cod. kelp, scallops, and other species, "It hasn't quite kicked off yet," but he has spent the past year putting it together. Now the net-pens are in place and the fish will be moved within a few weeks.

"We have about one kilometre of kelp laid in this month, and we are moving in half a million scallops (in Feb, 2008). When the fish are moved into the pens we will move sea cucumber into the site under the pens.

“It is a natural habitat for them and they are eaters,” of all the biomass fallout. (Sea cucumber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_cucumber)

"We are getting set up and licensed," Cross explained, including fitting into base-line environmental regulations and other arrangements. By this summer the site will be thriving with activity, and possibly with polyculture.

"We are a pilot-scale test around the issue of fish farm waste management," Cross, added, and the task is to find out if there are uses for the organic nutrient loads that are obviously generated by fish pens.

Cross agreed the research is lacking at present, "We think this is an important avenue of research," investigating the commercial potential for farm sites to develop polyculture seafood developments.  We are designing a balanced system and will report the science," in the usual publications.

"We have a lot of interest in the research," from a cross section of organizations, said Cross, "including the World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace expressing interest in the outflow of reports. We are seeking a solution to some of the problems perceived to be associated with raising commercial quantities of fish in net-pens. We are trying to address the waste issue," because no one seems to be convinced that closed bags offer alternatives.

If the results prove positive fish farms will suddenly represent a new economic opportunity and research may provide further incentive to develop commercial polyculture sites in the west coast aquaculture/mariculture scheme of things.

"We may find a commercial solution," to mitigate against the purportedly deleterious ecological presence of stand-alone fish farms. Cross promised to get www.firstnationscanada.com onto the polyculture site sometime this coming summer.

Birch Bark Biting preserved by coincidental names

"I was born at Midnight Lake, Manitoba," explained Angelique Merasty Levac, about the far northern reaches of central Canada. "It is bush and nobody lives there. Once in a while a few of my siblings or family members traps there." Angie holds close memories of a distant place spent with her grandparents in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. It was a Cree people’s playground and belonged to no one else.

Angelique Merasty Levac

"I lived beside a nice lake," and enjoyed the company of loons going 'co-co-op' in the morning hours. Angie recollects, "My grandparents tried to teach me how to trap when I was six years old." It was a tiny squirrel trap set under a bundle of roots at the base of a tree near the lakeside, not far from the family dwelling, a large canvas tent.

Her grandmother, she recalls, provided explicit instructions about the patience of trapping, leaving the site alone to permit the process to take its course. Little Angie waited till grandparents went to sleep and approached her fledgling trap line to see if she was enriched.

She stuck her six year old hand into the squirrel-sized cubby hole and trapped herself, snap. Ouch. So she hollered with an affinity for the squirrel that wasn't there and recalls a painful few minutes by inspecting her long, feminine fingers on both hands. It was the end of Angelique Merasty Levac's life as a trapper and a few families of bushy tailed squirrels have reason to chatter in gratitude.

Those years in the lakes district straddling the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border were similar to a nomadic way because Angie’s grandpa found it necessary to break camp and find a different place every few weeks. He was a trapper, "My grandpa never lived in one place," and packed the large tent and barrel stove to set off looking to camp at the right spot. It was a lean existence.

"I used to help my grandmother gather branches she used to make a floor inside the tent," and, "there was nothing to play with when I was a child. Do you know what my toy was?" She told her grandmother she wanted a doll. “We had a flour sack and she tied up the bag into a rag doll, eyes made from the soot of the fire; that was my doll.”

At nine years of age Angie began to spend more time with her mother and less time with her grandparents, because she would be more help to her mother raising 12 children on the Lynn Lake railroad line in northern Manitoba. She went out with ladies on berry picking sojourns, blue berries found in burned out areas, cranberries found in forested places.

It was the cranberry picking trips where she saw the women take a rest and conduct little competitions. They would peel birch bark and make pieces of art with their teeth but Angie was too young to think much about it. It was a first impression of the way the ladies made social exchanges while causing artistic impressions by birch bark biting that she adopted as a fast disappearing cultural practice.

Angelique Merasty Levac has become a Cree cultural icon and reigning queen of a disappearing form of First Nation culture. Over the past three decades Angie has garnered a lot of attention for the artistic skill at birch bark biting. She has beautiful straight teeth with which to take on the task of an ancient artistic craft.

In an oddly important coincidence her teacher of the art was also named Angelique Merasty. The elder Angelique Merasty has passed away and almost miraculously passed the legacy to Angelique Merasty Levac under the most difficult conditions imaginable.

The reason the younger Angelique was found to return to the art form is partly owed to bingo, for the mentor Angelique Merasty was one day sitting waiting for a ride to bingo and was, miraculously, in the company of an anthropologist while she waited. To pass the time she reached over and peeled a piece of birch bark off a log and bit into it until the art was born. The taxi arrived and she cheerfully left it to the professor, who promptly sent it to an archivist and writer.

Soon an article appeared detailing the art and the artist, who had been interviewed and expressed a wish to pass the craft onto someone before it was forgotten. Angelique the student saw the magazine article when she was 24 years of age. It is important to realize where our Angie grew up. She did not speak English until she was about 12 to 15 years of age, and only spoke Cree. (This was prior to Bill C-31 and she had no access to school for her mother had been stripped of her status by her marriage to a Metis man.)

Our Angie did not read English until she taught herself by reading the Holy Bible. By the time she was 24 she was able to read and stood amazed to see her name described in  a magazine at a store. She stared at the magazine story about Angelique Merasty, not herself, but her name, who was a practitioner of an ancient art form, a Cree culture artform, and this same Angelique Merasty described in the article how she, "would like to pass this Native art form onto another."

Our Angie had those recollections of the ladies in the berry patches taking a respite to bite into the birch bark and she decided thereabouts that the passing ought to be to herself.

She credits her worship of God, "The Lord put that in my heart. Since I did it, it opened doors that I never dreamed of," including a visit to Bill Cosby in Philadelphia, USA, with a guest appearance on his remake of the TV classic 'You Bet Your Life.' She was interviewed by Keith Morrison on CTV, and appeared on BCTV, APTN, the Knowledge Network, and in numerous print articles, including this one in the nationwide Native Journal. (For more information about Angelique’s art email her at angeliquesnativearts@yahoo.ca)

Fraser River Salmon Table Society meetings devise long-term strategies for sustainable salmon returns

The Fraser River Salmon Table Society is working toward consensus, said Richard McGuigan, PhD, co-chair of the salmon table (along with Marcel Shepert, Pacific Salmon Treaty) during the meeting in Prince George, BC, Sep 18 07, at the Prince George Native Friendship Centre.

Dr. McGuigan said, “Cooperative Decision Management is the way to achieve consensus,” for the fledgling table society.

By this emerging method interest-based negotiations are conducted through (three) stages and everybody abides by a final consensus. Cooperative Decision Management allows no veto to any party, and is not co-management, which, “has a negative reputation and gives regulators a lot of power,” said co-chair McGuigan.

The salmon table process must respect the ability of First Nations to represent their constituencies, said Doug Kelly, Sto:lo Tribal Council, “especially regarding the inter-tribal treaty process.” The table is open as long as Aboriginal rights and title are respected.

David Moore worked on table planning, “One goal of the salmon table is to create transparency in marketing, ultimately to resolve problems like selling caviar for as low as 11 cents per pound and finding out it fetches $15 a pound in the US food market.”

This transparency is the goal of a Siska First Nation demonstration project, to, “catch, process, and sell their fish harvested from a fish wheel,” with approval of CFIA, BC Food Safety Act, and BC Centre for Disease Control.

Salmon is a commodity from the wild realm, and salmon is still largely misunderstood in terms of behaviour and even physiology

Moore explained, “We have learned colour of the flesh is not determined by how far up the river the fish has gone,” a previous assumption, “rather, maturity is the determinant in quality and colour of the flesh.”

This is interesting because the old view was the farther up the river salmon were caught the less red and more dark the flesh would be (and dark is inedible). Now upstream fishers can join the mainstream market.

“The key is flexibility in marketing,” said Moore to the table society meeting.

He said, “Micro-processing can be done profitably without over-capitalization.” A boondoggle may exist in the changing provincial management of food health via Regional Health Authorities in BC.

The BC government says on the internet, “This structure, introduced in December 2001, modernized a complicated, confusing and expensive health care system by merging the previous 52 health authorities into a streamlined governance and management model.”

Today, said Moore, “these regional health authorities are charged with supplying permits required for the catching processing and selling of fish.”

The commercialization of fresh caught salmon may be advanced through a new process, noted Moore, now including a specific container for storing a fish, a card-board, wax-coat that preserves ice and fish together for the few hours required to get a fish a proper larder.

The problem is, however, a lack of fish to market. Teresa Ryan works in Vancouver as a fish biologist on the Pacific Salmon Commission and a scientist representing coastal First Nations. They were all asking the same question: where have all the fish gone?

A report in the Prince George Free Press said low salmon returns found along the Fraser River this year show nets producing a tenth the expected catch. As a result people are not going fishing.

Obviously this is a major concern in Canada’s North West Pacific where often the First Nations are losing of a way of life. Traditional salmon harvests unite communities but this year nobody goes to the river.

These people are facing a disappearing cultural diet, a staple food for the poor, and a lack of control over problems associated with the loss.