Herring: Looking Back, Moving Forwards: Traditional Knowledge and Archaeology, Native Rights and Marine Ecology
by Courtney Getz
Thousands of brants flock to the herring spawn (http://www.ecology.com/2014/01/14/vancouver-islands-herring-spawn/.
The Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast have a long history of marine resource use and management. A wide variety of fish were dietary staples. Traditional harvesting techniques and cultural beliefs revolving around marine resource procurement were an essential part of life for millennia. With the arrival of non-Natives, many traditional practices were usurped by the commercialization of marine resources. The decline in certain fish populations has had cascading effects on both the ecosystems and Native ways of life. Yet Native groups have begun to assert their rights to traditional fishing grounds using archaeological and historical evidence to support their claims (Dale and Natcher 2015). Western scientists have increasingly turned to traditional and local knowledge holders to manage and restore fisheries in a “two-eyed seeing” approach to modern aquatic ecosystem management (von der Porten et al. 2016). By looking to the past, First Nations have begun moving forward in their fight to reassert and revitalize traditional ways of life.
Herring is a keystone species in the North Pacific marine ecosystem, in addition to being a culturally significant resource for many Indigenous groups (Moss et al. 2016, 506; Thornton 2015). Yet herring was far more abundant in the past than it is today. Local and traditional knowledge holders, Native fishermen, and other records show that herring populations have declined sharply in the last century to the point where Native groups have been forced to stop harvesting and some spawning sites have been abandoned (Moss et al. 2016:504). Moss et al. state that at sites where recovery methods were adequate, herring is the most ubiquitous fish species found. Archaeological evidence supports the ethnographic evidence and Alaska Native knowledge of herring’s importance to Indigenous livelihoods and the long history of sustained use. Native people negotiated, cultivated, and maintained relationships with the fish, which they saw as sentient beings capable of withdrawing consent to be harvested, through shows of respect, maintenance of spawning grounds, and careful decisions about how much and when to harvest (Thornton 2015, 216-7). In this two-way, socio-economic relationship between humans and the natural world, the herring came to spawn and “give themselves” to Indigenous groups they in turn were respectful, “inviting” the herring in and never taking more than necessary (Thornton 2015:214-6).
The decline in herring and reduction in their distribution has had significant impacts on the marine ecosystem. Herring are prey for many other species from other fish to sea birds to sea mammals; as one traditional knowledge holder Thornton (2015:214) spoke with said, herring “are the feed for everything.” Much of the decline in herring populations is due to the commercialization of herring fishing by European settlers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as well as later international enterprises in the 1970s, mainly from Japan (Thornton 2015). Native groups along the coast of British Columbia have recently taken more aggressive steps to assert their rights to primary roles in policy and decision-making that affects their territory (von der Porten et al. 2016:68). In 2014 and 2015, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Ocean (DFO) over-ruled formal requests made by First Nations to keep a commercial herring fishery closed, authorizing its reopening (von der Porten et al. 2016:69). The Haida First Nation reacted to this ruling by going directly to the commercial fishermen and negotiating an agreement to stay out of Haida waters (von der Porten et al. 2016:69). In January, 2016, the DFO and Heiltsuk Nation managed to work together to develop a management plan for local fisheries (von der Porten et al. 2016:75).
Contemporary Cowichan fish weir, September 2010. (Dale and Natcher 2015)
Recent collaboration between Natives and non-Natives has stemmed from increasing concerns about environmental degradation. Scientists and conservationists have begun to recognize local and traditional knowledge as a legitimate resource for the development of ecosystem management and restoration plans. Native groups have taken this recognition and used it to assert rights to ancestral lands, practices, and resources. On Vancouver Island in Coast Salish territory, the Cowichan Mustimuhw worked to re-establish their traditional fisheries in the Cowichan River (Dale and Natcher 2015). Twenty-one fishing weirs have been identified archaeologically along the Cowichan, the last one having been removed in 1936 by the Canadian government (Dale and Natcher 2015:1311-14). In 1990 the Sparrow Decision granted legal aboriginal fishing rights in Canada and later the DFO created the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy (AFS) leading to the formation of the Cowichan Tribes Fishing Committee (Dale and Natcher 2015). In 2008 the Committee re-established a weir in the Cowichan River. It was a half victory because of the DFO condition that the weir be used exclusively for counting and identifying migrating fish (Dale and Natcher 2015).
Even these partial victories are a step in the right direction towards reasserting Native rights to traditional lands and subsistence practices. They show how Native local and traditional knowledge can help scientists address modern environmental concerns. The collaboration of Native and non-Native people can be beneficial for both. Traditional knowledge and archaeology can inform management strategies for modern ecological issues. There is still much work to be done in both re-asserting Native resource management rights and in understanding past resource abundance and distribution. Traditional knowledge, archaeology and modern science can work together and, if done successfully, have the potential to address contemporary socio-environmental concerns.
References
Dale, Christopher and David C. Natcher. 2015. What is old is new again: the reintroduction of indigenous fishing technologies in British Columbia. Local Environment, The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability 20:11,1309-1321.
Moss, Madonna L., Antonia Rodrigues, Camilla F. Speller, Dongya Y. Yang. 2016. The historical ecology of Pacific herring: Tracing Alaska Native use of a forage fish. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 8:504-512.
Thornton, Thomas F. 2015. The Ideology and Practice of Pacific Herring Cultivation among the Tlingit and Haida. Human Ecology 43:213-223.
von der Porten, Suzanne, Dana Lepofsky, Deborah McGregor, and Jennifer Silver. 2016. Recommendations for marine herring policy in Canada: Aligning with Indigenous legal and inherent rights. Marine Policy 74, 68-76.