Snow

Snow- pillowy, enveloping, muffling, softening the world and making it new, making it another place, inviting exploration, transfiguring the ordinary and enticing the eye with plays of light and shadow, curves and edgings, hiding shadows and erasing the surface beneath. Or perhaps amplifying it with echoes in ways to make it mysterious and challenging to read. Negotiating snowy landscapes- new ways of locomotion, the potential of skis, snowshoes, and sleds. Some paths become easier, some much harder. And snow has myriad textures depending on wind, air and surface temperatures, intensity of sunlight, and history of the snowpack. Today the first heavy snowdump here at -11°C or so inspired me to dig out skis for the first time, rush to the ravine and ski down the [paved, multiuse] trail [the bike highway which denies winter to enable wheeled communte transport to downtown Edmonton] and set tracks in the openings in the valley of Mill Creek below. If they didn’t normally plow and sand this long grade I would ski it daily all winter long.
Skis are very practical ways to move over country under winter conditions. They enable the human user to take advantage of reduced friction and surface roughness to multiply the propulsive impulse of his or her muscles; the pointed poles provide traction where needed. Saami invented skis as a way to move through the taiga with their herds of reindeer.
In North America, a different solution to cross-country movement in a snow covered winter landscape was invented: the snowshoe. Traditional snowshoes are bent wooden frames netted with babiche (stretched rawhide) or other hide cordage, or sometimes apparently with plant material. These are affixed to the wearer’s feet to enable floatation, permitting the walker to avoid sinking down deeply in deep soft snows. I recall once a gruelling traverse across a snowy slope in the West Kootenays across deep soft snow coming back from a long cross country hike begun on the frozen weight-supporting spring crust of morning…..the return journey, though downhill, was exhausting, and very slow. We were down off the mountain close to midnight, having descended most of the way by starlight and feel. There are First Nations tales of the discovery of snowshoes. These enable winter hunting, moving from camp to camp, and greatly extend the range of human travellers in the Canadian forests. Not only do the shoes enable the human walkers to move over the snow, but they create trails over which dogs can pull toboggans, enabling the transportation of camping gear or other cargo, such as the meat harvested by hunters. In the winter in the North the swamps, lakes and rivers are converted into open trails and highways once they freeze sufficiently. Impassable alder thickets become open meadows, easy to traverse over top of the tangled stems.
Snowshoes come in many designs and webbing patterns, enabling travel over different types of snow conditions, in different terrain, and utilizing different locally available materials. My first encounter with Native made snowshoes was in the mid 1970s just after the birth of my daughter. One of the women who worked at the college where my then husband and I taught was the daughter of a skilled snowshoe maker. Percy made shoes for me and my husband out of local Rocky Mountain maple (Acer glabrum var. douglasii) and webbed them with caribou (Allen’s shoes) or deer (my shoes) babiche for the fine filling in the front and rear sections of the shoes, with heavier cow hide strips in the centre under the foot. The shoes had almost parallel sides, like the form of “Sherpa” snowshoes, and were decorated with red and black coloured woolen pom-poms. Do I have to have these, I asked Percy. Yes, he answered. He later commented that these coloured balls help to prevent snowblindness. He showed us a binding which allowed one to slip into the shoes without buckles. Some years later after I began ethnobotany research I was able to visit Percy in his home village of Kispiox and interviewed him about snowshoe making. I was permitted to photograph him doing fine filling.

Percy commented that the rounded toe of the distinctive Gitxsan design allows the toe of the shoe to ride high to avoid toeing in (and falling) while avoiding bruising the shin and knee, which pointed toe designs may do. The balance of Percy’s snowshoes is amazing; the shoes pivot to bring toe up, and short tail down at each step.

This photo (left) is one of my snowshoes showing the binding and my canvas boot. If snowshoe crampons are needed, as often in the mountainous terrain of the Gitxsan homeland, a short length of spruce stem with spike branches pointing down into the snow is lashed under the pivot point. Below is a shot of me and my daughter snowshoeing on our land in the late 1980s.

The neighbouring Witsuwit’en also make these round toed snowshoes, but more often make a traditional Dene style of pointed snowshoe. (see a pair photographed in Ron Sebastian's Hazelton Gallery in 2005 below)

I learned words for these types of snowshoes, and for the fine and coarse filling. I also learned about how to make emergency snowshoes of a hoop of red willow.The excellence of the local small maples for snowshoe making is reflected in the fact that the Witsuwit’en word for snowshoe, ‘ayh is also the name given to the maple. Maple shoes are strong and won’t break, but they are heavy. A tough small pine will make lighter snowshoes and the “fuzzing” of the softer wood will make them less prone to slipping, though they must be replaced more often.
Travelling to the Yukon in the early 1980s Allen and I encountered snowshoes with birch frames and quite a different webbing pattern. These were of the pointed toe overall shape, but the webbing under the foot was an open rectangular pattern, and the webbing was a distinctive cured caribou hide. We stopped in Teslin where the best snowshoes were said to come from and interviewed two snowshoe makers about how the snowshoes were made and the hide for webbing prepared. We ordered a pair of Teslin snowshoes to enable us to repay those we spoke with, and also to possess a pair of these remarkable shoes.
Some years later, in winter of 2000 I had the opportunity to see and to try Gwich'in snowshoes, intended for the fine powdery snows of the low Arctic taiga and alpine tundra. Wonderful snowshoes of large area, high upturn with rounded toes, and very fine filling. I found them remarkable to walk in, enabling good steady gate across or along the frozen river.

The photo of Gwich'in snowshoes was taken in the band office at Fort McPherson in December 1999.
In Edmonton, skis are usually more sensible than my snowshoes. I’ve only really used them two or three winters out of about 23. Now I see people wearing snowshoes that are high tech creations of completely different design and intent, like my cross-country skis, something for urban recreationists to use for outdoor exercise and fun.

On Cranberries

Lowbush cranberry or lingonberry, Vaccinium vitis-idaea growing in moss under pine. Southern Yukon 2004.
A year ago I wrote more generally on the ethnobiology of Thanksgiving. Today I want to write about cranberries. Botanists have been somewhat indecisive about whether cranberries are, as it were, a red wetland-dwelling blueberry with a very tart flavour, or whether they should be segregated in a genus of their own, Oxycoccus (‘sour ball’) because of their trailing stems and vine life form, and their azalea like pink flowers which differ from the little heather urn-shaped flowers of blueberries, blaeberries, huckleberries, whortleberries, bilberries and their ilk. And of course their eponymous sour fruits, while blueberries are generally sweet when ripe. The cranberry of commerce is the large New England species designated Vaccinium macrocarpon if we take the position that “true” cranberries belong in the genus Vaccinium. This is the large tart berry associated with Thanksgiving sauces and jellies, and now ubiquitous in the form of jugs of sweetened cranberry juice and also common as dried sweetened cranberries. These cranberries find their native habitat in acidic wetlands, that is, in peat bogs. In the course of researching this blog I have learned that, although natural wetlands were formerly the sites of cranberry cultivation, now industrial cultivation involves stripping the fertile soil and leveling the future cranberry field, and surrounding it with dikes made of the topsoil, while placing acidic sand on the carefully leveled field. These diked fields are then managed in a manner reminiscent of rice paddies, being carefully flooded at specific times in the growth and harvest cycle of the fruit. I read that industrially produced cranberries are harvested by flooding the fields and sucking up the floating berries with huge mechanical harvesters. These fruits, often bruised, then are immediately processed into canned cranberry jelly or sauce or perhaps for juice. Apparently to get a quality that can be sold as unfrozen berries, you have to harvest the fruit dry, and humans run the machines that pick these higher quality berries, a mere 2 or 3% of the cranberry harvest. At some point in the past, there was a scare about pesticide contamination, so industrial growers are now very careful with the chemicals they apply.
Although a lot of commercial cranberries are no longer cultivated in wetlands, cultivation on the periphery of wetlands in soils naturally moist and acidic still occurs. This cultivation has the predictable effect of altering the hydrology of wetland areas, and can introduce chemical contamination from agricultural chemicals (e.g. nitrogen or pesticides) applied to the crop. As bogs are naturally highly oligotrophic (low in nutrients) this can cause decline in native bog species on the periphery of the cultivated area and invasion of weedy species, threatening unique bog ecosystems. Not to mention the decline of biodiversity in the cultivated plots themselves. Cranberry cultivation has been one of the threats to Burns Bog, a large peatland wetland area on the Fraser River Delta in British Columbia which exists in the midst of extensive urban and cultivated agricultural landscapes. This site is highly revered for its wildland bog habitat and recreation potential within the Lower Mainland, but has also been threatened with a number of schemes for its transformation or elimination, from housing developments to landfills, and its sensitive hydrology is threatened by various proposed dikes and drainage ditches. I recall learning about the environmental risks of the commercial cultivation when I still lived in BC, and there was concern about contamination with agricultural chemicals. This led me to try to buy organic cranberry products whenever possible.
What makes a cranberry? The classic cranberries of bogs (Vaccinium macrocarpon, V. palustris, V. oxycoccus) are viney evergreen members of the heath family living in peatlands, and which have persistent tart red fruits that develop from lovely spreading pink flowers. In northwestern North America we would call these “bog cranberries” and our local species has much smaller leaves and fruits than the classic cranberry of commerce, and is much lower in productivity. The taste is the same. And we also have what we would call “low bush cranberry”, which I have also seen rendered as “mountain cranberry”. This is Vaccinium vitis-idaea, the “blueberry” ‘grapevine of Mt. Ida’, also a low growing, but not viney, member of the genus Vaccinium with glossy evergreen leaves, usually growing in moss…but here the feather moss of spruce or pine stands, not usually of sphagnum bogs….which has small tart red fruits that taste like cranberries. These develop from classic heather family urn shaped flowers of white or very pale pink. In Scandinavia, where they are revered, they are lingonberries, and a national food of Sweden. When I have the opportunity, these are what I pick during late summer fieldwork to freeze for my Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. Alas, not only was it a poor berry year this past summer, I left the Yukon too early, before the cranberries were even minimally ripe. So it will be purchased V. macrocarpon for me this year.
Cranberries (aka lingonberries) are one of the most important fruits for northern Athapaskans. For Gwich’in in the Mackenzie Delta region of the Northwest Territories there are “yellowberries” nakal (Rubus chamaemorus, the cloudberry) a golden bog dwelling raspberry, blueberries (Vaccinium uliginosum, the bog blueberry) and cranberries. Cranberries last the longest, keep the best, and can be harvested in larger amounts. In the boreal forests of the southern Yukon, Kaska love cranberries too. They are called itl’et in Kaska, and people pick and freeze relatively large amounts. Cranberries can be eaten in the spring after they thaw. Anore Jones quotes a poignant tale of death and survival of a Yupiq woman in her “Plants that we eat” (1986 Maniilaq Association). A woman who was widowed and travelling alone with two small children managed to survive on sparse spring cranberries. One of her two children also made it. This was the grandmother of one of the elders Jones worked with in the 1980’s.
Cranberries are good for more than survival. A Kaska elder friend said she treated her husband’s urinary tract infection by feeding him cranberries. Contemporary herbal medicine also suggests cranberry juice, or cranberry capsules, for prevention of urinary tract infections or chronic cystitis. Cranberries, along with blueberries, apparently contain lots of anti-oxidants, considered to be cancer preventative through combination with free radicals. I buy cranberry capsules at my local organic food store which I take faithfully to prevent cystitis.
The Wikipedia article on “cranberry” mentions that some species of Viburnum are also called “cranberry”, which they consider erroneous. No, merely ethnobotanical…fruits of various species of Viburnum, locally V. edule and V. trilobata have red fruit that ripens in the fall and it is the gustatory quality of astringence, sour and a bit bitter, which makes them “cranberry”, not their botanical affiliation (they are in the Caprifoliaceae or honeysuckle family, and grow on tall woody bushes). Though they have large flat white seeds which make the fruit dissimilar to “real” cranberries to eat, they make a fine sauce or jelly. They lack the large amount of pectin of true cranberries, so the sauce is runny…but delicious. I wrote last fall on highbush cranberries (aka the Viburnums). I’ve been snacking on them as I walk in the ravine by my house. I’ll close now and wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, and hope they are enjoying cranberries in one way or another to mark the holiday.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry
http://peterwood.ca/res/research/burnsbog/Burns%20Bog%20Protection%20Values%20and%20Management%20Options.htm
Jones, Anore. 1983. Nauriat Nigiñaqtuat, Plants That We Eat. Kotzebue, Alaska: Maniilaq Association.

other sources which discuss cranberries:
Parlee, Brenda, Fikret Berkes and Teet'it Gwich'in Renewable Resource Council. 2006. Indigenous Knowledge of Ecological Variability and Commons Management: A Case Study on Berry Harvesting from Northern Canada. Human Ecology 34(4):515-528.
Andre, Alestine and Alan Fehr. 2001. Gwich’in Ethnobotany, Plants used by the Gwich’in for Food, Medicine, Shelter and Tools. Inuvik: Gwich’in Social and Cultural Institute and Aurora Research Institute

Thinking about Birds, Thinking With Birds

Photos: the late William Teya with three black ducks on the Peel River
and male surf scoter or "black duck" deetree aa in Gwich'in

Birds are salient actors in human environments around the world, and are carriers of meaning, their actions invested with a range of significance.The observations I share were made by spending time on the land with people and in conversation —that is in everyday circumstances and through commonly repeated traditional stories. Accordingly what I present is a series of examples of certain salient birds and their meanings across the range of localities where I’ve worked. As such they are common birds, frequently observed. Relationships with these birds include: commensalism and sharing; power; birds as food; symbolic and metaphoric associations; and ecological relationships. Birds often appear as art motifs, and have strong roles in traditional narratives. Birds also enrich human experience.
What follows was learned by spending time on the land with people, and just in conversation while doing ethnobotany, ethnomedicine and ethnoecology research, that is, in everyday circumstances for the most part, and through some commonly repeated narratives, not through specific ethnornithology research.
I’ll present perspectives learned in working with four communities in northwestern Canada: Gitksan of the Skeena River drainage in northwestern British Columbia; Witsuwit’en, Athapaskan speakers whose traditional teritories border those of the Gitksan in the Bulkley/Morice River drainage and those of the Dakelhne in the Nechako River drainage in northwest/north central British Columbia; the Kaska Dena of northern BC and the southern Yukon, and the Gwich’in in the Mackenzie Delta region of the northwest Territories. Natural environments range from the inner edge of the Coast Mountains and forests of coastal affiliations (Coastal Western Hemlock and Interior Cedar Hemlock biogeoclimatic zones) through Sub-boreal and Boreal forests dominated by white spruce with pine and extensive subalpine willow and dwarf birch, to the taiga tundra ecotone in the low Arctic of the Gwich’in homeland. Large rivers, lakes and wetlands of variable extent characterize all of these northern forested environments.
Fisheries focussing on salmon species, lake charr, grayling, and whitefish species help to support local communities, and the diverse fish populations also support numerous birds (loons, ospreys, bald eagles, diving ducks, gulls). The ubiquitous northern corvids- ravens, crows and jays, scavenge fish and scraps from carcasses of animals hunted by people or wolves, year round residents and long companions of the human residents of the North. Owl species—great horned, great grey, and barred, – swoop silently through the night forests. Hawk owl and snowy owl are active by day. The wetlands and river banks host various sandpipers and wading birds such as yellowlegs, cranes, and spotted sandpipers. And in the sub-boreal forests and coastal forests, the tiny chickadee is a year round gregarious resident.
The Gitksan and neighbouring Witsuwit’en share the symbolic crest system of the Norhwest coast, in which Raven and Eagle and Owl figure , among other bird figures that belong in the histories (adaawk) of specific Clans or Houses. Grouse is also a crest of certain Fireweed (Gisgaast) houses. The late Mary Johnson (Antkulilbisxw) explained to me that in a time of starvation in ancient Temlax’aamit, two sisters and a brother were seeking to escape an unnatural winter and in their journey the brother starved. When they were finally able to kill a grouse, the women wept because this food, had they gotten it in time, would have saved the brother.
Raven is also allied with a set of trickster creator tales shared beyond the Northwest Coast region, appearing as Txemsim on the Nass, Wii Gyet [‘the big man’] for the Gitksan, or Estes for the Witsuwit’en. Sometimes other birds are involved in these stories besides the raven figure and his adventures. For the Gitksan, the figure Wii Gyet is at once an insatiable bumbling giant [the name means “Big Man] and raven, and the tales refer to his ‘Gwiis Gaak’ or raven blanket. A story shared by Gitksan and Witsuwit’en involves greed and Wii Gyet/Estes’ miscalculation when trying to hunt swans with the aid of a borrowed swan decoy hat. Because he tries to take too many, he is carried up into the sky by the swans whose legs had tied...with highly unpleasant results for him when he plunges earthward from a great height.
For both Gitksan and Witsuwit’en, bird names can form part of plant names and place names, indicating metaphorical connections, and ecological associations [as indeed bird related plant names may in English as well]. So in Gitksanimx, the plant called in English black twinberry (Lonicera involucrata) is sgan ‘maaya gaak ‘raven’s berry plant’, alluding to the shiny black (and inedible) fruit. It is a medicinal plant, not a food plant, and the bird name probably signals its inedibility to humans. Similarly, among the Witsuwit’en, the related white snowberry (Symphoricarpus albus) is called citsit ‘mi cin or grouse’s berry stick, and has medicinal uses. The bird/place name connection in Gitksan also involves berries: a traditional high elevation black huckleberry patch is called Anxsi ‘maa’y litisxw ‘blue grouse’s berry on it’. Here I assume the information is ecological in terms of the habitat and food of the blue grouse, the the fruit itself is not named for blue grouse (being the “real berry” sim ‘maa’y everywhere it grows).
Birds, as their migration is seasonally predictable, can also carry what Trevor Lantz and Nancy Turner have called traditional phenological knowledge. A Gitksan language primer explains that the song of the robin, when it appears in spring, says Gii gyooks milit, milit “the steelhead are coming, the steelhead, are coming”, indicating that steelhead can be fished in the rivers and creeks once the robins have arriverd.
And the tiny chickadee whose piping and flitting presence around camps in the winter woods is named. I was told that when you hear a chickadee, someone is coming to visit. Besides being a crest ayuks owl apparently also indicated impending death, and hearing an owl hooting was cause for disquiet..
Eagle Down is a sacred substance used to enforce peace for both Gitksan and Witsuwit'en. The late High Chief Johnny David said "Eagle Down is our Law", which anthropologist Dr. Antonia Mills used as the title of her book on Witsuwit'en traditions, history and law.
The Kaska Dena live in what is now northern British Columbia and the adjoining Yukon Territory, in the Cassiar Mountains north of the Stiking River in the drainage of the Liard and Pelly Rivers, and in the adjoining Logan mountains on the border with the Northwest Territories. Kaska lack the complex Clan/House structure of the Gitksan and Witsuwit’en, butm they do have the moiety structure widespread throughout most of the Yukon, of Wolf Tsíyone and Crow. Elder Mida Donnessey explained the fundamental division of society this way: Crow and Wolf are brothers in law, she said, but they couldn’t travel together, because Crow (Nusga) travels in the daytime and the wolf travels at night.
Travelling with Auntie Mida in the spring 10 years ago, she commented about grouse, and how the pleating of its muscular stomach taught people how to gather the toes of their round toed moccasins Grouse aka ‘chicken’ di’ is also a reliable food source, one available to women and children, and a back-up in the absence of large game like moose. Hence, one of the two sentences I can manage in Kaska is “I saw one chicken”...Hligah dí’ ne gánesta– which can describe what was seen in a journey across the land, a subject of frequent discussion when people meet. The habitats of different birds are well known; grouse like young pine stands. Ptarmigan prefer willows in winter.
Birds as agents and actors on the land can also hold and bestow power. My collaborator Linda McDonald told me that swan was a power bird for her late mother Edna McDonald. Swans are also a source of food (prohibited now with migratory bird treaties).
Along with detailed knowledge of the habitats and habits of birds and animals, people are oberservant of timing of significant seasonal events, such as the migration time of ducks, and geese. These are now changing, and are taken by elders as an indicator of environmental change. This is a topic Linda McDonald, my Kaska colleague and I will take up in more detail through our research this summer.
Ravens and whisky jacks (grey jays) are intelligent and observant birds, and their sometime destructive behaviour is tolerated. People have lived a long time in the North with ravens and whiskey jacks, which are adaptable year round residents. Another English name for the whiskey jack is “camp robber”, aptly descriptive of their deft pilfering of unattended food in camp. However, people may in fact leave food out for the whiskey jacks, perhaps with the logic that if food is freely given, they will leave the rest alone. Raven figures in stories among the Kaska as well as Gitksan and Witsuwit’en. Both raven and whisky jack lend their names to plants. The valued medicinal plant Juniperus communis is called in Kaska Nusga dzidze “crow’s brush or crow’s berries . The berry like cones are not edible by people, though they add to the strength of medicinal decoctions made from the plant. Arctous rubra, called “red bearberry” in English, is ts’oska dzidze, ‘whisky hack’s berry” in Kaska.
As I travelled with and listened to my elder teachers, birds were woven into conversation and commentary. I am a somewhat “scattered” person who easily misplaces or looses things. Auntie Mida explained to me after one such incident that it was because I has looked at an osprey on the nest; if you look at osprey on the nest it causes you to loose things easily.
Wading birds and cranes have very long legs. In a narrative recorded in Dene Guideji, Kaska Narratives, Elder Clara Donnessey recounts how the sisters who married stars escape their pursuer by crossing the Liard River canyon on the legs of yellowlegs as a bridge, which then refused to allow the pursuing wolverine to cross over. When I was told the story, my source described the bird, in English, as “crane”.
I gained a different sense of ravens when I went North. Instead of the ravens sitting solitary on the top of spruce or cedar, and tolling their bell-like calls, or hungrily feeding one or two at a time on the carcasses of dead and dying salmon beside the river, ravens in Inuvik were raucous, forward, in-your-face, interacting and squabbling in groups in the morning hours, hanging around dumpsters. It was in the Mackenzie Delta region I first really understood the ancient commensal relationship of ravens to northern peoples. Ravens scour the land widely for sources of food, which in winter prominently feature the kills of wolves, and the kills and camps of people. In February of 2000, I went up the Peel with my teachers William and Mary Teya to their winter trapping camp at Road River. It took 4 days for raven to find us after we arrived. When William got a cow and calf moose during our stay, the skulls were placed on the roof of a shed for raven to finish cleaning the bits of meat we had not been able to cut off for our own use.
The story of raven and his wooden jaw known in Tsii geh tchic as well as way south on Skeena. The location this occurred, it is said, is right where they later built the Catholic Church in Tsii geh tchic. Stories are localized on the land. In summer fish camp on the Peel River, we returned to camp one day to find raven mess on the fish cutting table. As she cleaned the white splotches off the wood, Mary told the story of raven’s bride, and how she was similarly despoiled by her handsome new husband, the ever active raven. I was told that you can’t harm raven, even if he breaks into your smoke house and steals some of your drying fish. It would bring bad weather, a serious threat in the low Arctic country where the Gwich’in dwell.
Gulls have an important place in the Gwich’in world. Gulls are not year round residents in Gwich’in country, coming with break-up and leaving when the country starts to freeze up. I was told that for Gwich’in, gulls are more important than eagle. Gulls are associated with the milder weather and easier times of summer fishing. In fish camp, the fish offal is to be spilled on the sandbars or gravel bars near, but not in, the river, for the gulls to clean up. Visitors to the country such as myself and a company of French paddlers who stayed a day or two at Alestine Andre’s 2000 Tree River camp on the Mackenzie, are carefully instructed in this matter. The cleaning role of the gulls is much appreciated, and may help to avoid confrontations with bears at the fishing sites. Two different places are named “gull lake” Tidigeh van, one a large lake up a tributary creek emptying into the Delta near Inuvik, and the other on a flat beside the Peel, not far from the Road River camp. After the gulls leave, I was told, raven takes over clean-up duties, and takes care of the spilled fish offal. Gulls can be a nuisance in the summer season, feeding on and spoiling fish left to air dry before being put in the smokehouse. In one camp I was at, fish netting was draped over the air drying fish, and a light fire lit where the smoke would blow toward the fish as gull deterrents. But even if the gulls spoil fish, they can’t be harmed, or bad weather will come.
As with Kaska, the sometimes pestiferous whiskey jacks are not harmed by Gwich’in. I watched while Mary carefully freed a bird who had entangled herself in the netting intended to deter gulls, a rather delicate process. The same (or another) whisky jack later slipped into the smokehouse from time to time, snacking on the drying whitefish and coney. It was not molested.
A last bird that stood out to me in Gwich’in country were the “black ducks”, surf scoters and common scoters who frequent the Peel and Mackenzie in summer. Black ducks are good to eat, and greatly appreciated when you can get them.

In closing, birds are salient actors in our worlds, readily available for symbolic interpretation, good for food, feathers and down used in material culture, associated with seasonal cycles of change and with specific habitats. The ever present raven has been a commensal of humans in northern regions of North America since people began to inhabit these lands. People carefully observe ravens, and ravens carefully observe people. Ravens many lead human hunters to game, and human hunters provide a reliable source of food for ravens throughout the cold dark winters. Raven’s intelligence and human like antics provide rich food for comedic analogy and moral thought. Raven is also powerful, seeing and knowing things humans do not, capable of transformation and of generosity.
Birds provide seasonal information, may be crests or personal sources of power, and are valued sources of food (especially grouse, ptarmigan, and various ducks, geese and swans, though many other birds were also eaten, such as cranes, and even loons in some places, though others consider them inappropriate to eat). As sources of food, certain birds can be proscribed for the young, or for pregnant women, such as loons who are “awkward” birds because they cannot walk on land. Or instead can be eaten with intent to invoke their qualities by those at these critical junctures in their growth and development, as the Witsuwit’en practice of feeding young boys ptarmigan to make them swift and agile on snowshoes.

Reflections on seeing a coyote cross the path

Coyote looks back

Tsoska Dzidze Whisky Jack's Berries

Yesterday afternoon as I walked in the ravine, a sleek grey and white coyote ran across the meadow in front of me and disappeared into the trees. Coyotes are beautiful animals, but are caricatured in Western cartoons (Wile E. Coyote versus the Roadrunner), made ridiculous, stupid and ugly. In Indigenous narratives, coyote is a trickster, who is smart but often outsmarts him [or even her-] self. I think of the wonderful coyote stories of Native American author Thomas King, and the allusions to coyote found in Hunn’s Nichi Wana, the Big River. Coyote’s opportunism is seen as both intelligent and competent, and self serving at the same time. Coyotes are nothing if not adaptable. living easily on the peripheries of human settlement, elusive and quick witted. Coyotes are predators, feeding on rabbits and other smaller animals, and also take advantage of berries. I saw a lot of saskatoon berry filled scat in the ravine this summer.

In Western thought the concepts of “predator” and “vermin” [aka “varmint”] carry negative connotations....the big bad wolf and the sweet innocent defenseless deer. Carnivores (other than us) are bad, and herbivores [unless rodents] are good. The rodent thing is an interesting one; we are generally fine with squirrels and chipmunks in Western culture [which typically live in the woods and not in our homes or outbuildings, and don’t spoil our food stores or crops]. Beavers are fine too (unless they are blocking culverts or damming fishing streams or cutting down fruit trees along the creek). Rats and mice, however are not fine. Rats carry the plague, and are depicted as evil “underworld” creatures in cartoons. Rats are the target of extermination programs in poor urban neighbourhoods in places like New York. [In the mid 1990’s in Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori biologist Mere Roberts roused a remarkable amount of negative attention trying to defend the kiori, a small rat which was a traditional Maori food. The label “rat” carried the day, and programs to eliminate this endangered cultural animal from protected areas continued.] And in less urban settings, gophers are definitely not fine. Reading the draft of a book on environmental history by my Athabasca University colleague Donald Wetherall a few weeks ago, I was startled to find that in Alberta there had been a bounty on gophers as a “predator” in the early 20th century. In my biology classes I learned that a predator preys on other animals, usually herbivores. Apparently in Alberta a predator can prey on roots, if people take exception to its foraging habits.

I was also distressed to find that there was a bounty on magpies, intelligent and beautiful cousins of jays and of crows, birds with lovely black and white markings, and iridescent blues and greens, with long graceful tails. They too were “predators” because they include the eggs and young of other species of birds in their diet, and are scavengers of carrion and well as eating a wide range of other foods. The bounty was paid per pair of magpie legs, and thousands of pairs were collected. Enough to sicken me....but it helped me understand why the people of Alberta today continue to denigrate magpies, often calling them “aerial rats”. (The contrast with the beautiful song celebrating magpies written by Donovan Leach in the mid ’60’s is noteworthy; it goes---
The magpie is a most illustrious bird
black and blue and white-
I would that I had feathers three
black and blue and white

The magpie is a most royal bird
dwells in a diamond tree
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
sorrow and joy for me

I saw the gentle magpie birds
in a dusky yestereve
one brought sorrow and one brought joy
and sooner than soon did leave

I have known this song, and sung it, since I was a teenager. I was thrilled to come to Alberta where these beautiful and intelligent birds are common place). Crows too were bountied and persecuted. Their depredations on grain were balanced by their consumption of rodents that also preyed on grain, as some farmers tried to point out, but the anti-crow and magpie faction prevailed.

The history of discomfort with crows and ravens is an ancient one in Europe. The birds are black, like night, intelligent, unfathomable, quintessentially adaptable, and associated with carrion, thus with death and with the despoilation of corpses. The Norse God Odin had two ravens, wisdom and thought...and they were also associated with death in battle. Edgar Allen Poe’s uncanny poem the raven evokes a creepy aura of death and fate. The fantasy author JRR Tolkien similarly casts crows and wolves with an aura of evil in the Lord of the Rings.

Yet in the Northwest Coast, Raven is a powerful being, laughable but also recognized as a creative force, the trickster creator who liberated daylight along with many other adventures. Raven is one of the two moieties of the Haida and the Tlingit, and one of four Clans of the Nisga’a on the Nass River. Txeemsim, the raven, lived along the Nass River which is also Txeemsim, and many of his stories are localized there. Raven is frequently depicted on Crest items and blankets and on totem poles in that region.

The ways that people relate to and conceive of animals, are shaped by culture and means of livelihood. Hunters, herders, and farmers all see things differently. Those who separate humans, and culture, from animals, and nature, are less tolerant of fellow travellers. In European folk-lore and contemporary popular culture such as cartoons, predators and raptors get bad press for the most part. Reynard the Fox is a sly and cunning animal who grabs the grey goose, and the wolf is a leering evil creature who poses a risk to benighted travellers, or to Sonya the duck in “Peter and the Wolf”. “Chicken hawks” were formerly reviled, and shot on sight. (Our attitude toward “chicken hawks” has shifted somewhat now that many of us in North America are no longer farmers; we made substantial efforts as a society to help the peregrine falcon recover from the brink of extinction due to pesticide use).

While staying with my Gwich’in teachers on the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers, I witnessed very different attitudes and senses of the same species. Although the town ravens in Inuvik ravage unprotected garbage bags and wake one with their croaking and scuffling, on the land people leave food for the ravens, and recognize their role in cleaning the land. The intelligence and inherently comical character of the raven are both recognized in traditional narratives throughout the North. Raven is another trickster, like coyote, shaping the world almost by mistake, and often being brought up short by his own scheming.

In the Northwest Coast region as I noted above, raven is widely credited with bringing daylight to human kind. Versions of this story are found in Raven Steals the Sun by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst (Haida) and Wii Gyet Wanders On (Bookbuilders of Ksan; Gitksan). Other stories of raven highlight his foolish greed, as in the Witsuwit’en story of Estes (their name for this trickster figure) and the swans; he tries to trap too many at once by tying their legs together, and they lift him into the air....ultimately he falls, embedding himself in a rock near Francois Lake, and he has to rely on lynx’s rough tongue to wear away the rock to free him. Lynx’s lovely ear tufts are hair pulled out by Estes in payment. (Stories of the Carrier Indians 1977). At times Raven (‘Wii Gyet with his tattered old Gwiis Gaak or raven blanket) is outsmarted by his hubris, as when he taunts a stump while his bear meat is roasting, and wakes to find the anticipated feast under the spreading rootwad of the stump, which has slipped down to cover Wii Gyet’s bounty.

The wolf is seen as a good hunter in northern Dene cultures, human-like in its skill and as provider for its family. Their emnity to dogs is not appreciated, but my teacher Mary’s Auntie Mary was scolded for shooting a wolf for no reason when she was a young woman. That inappropriate behaviour is likely to have consequences.

Gwich’in and Kaska leave food out for ravens and whisky-jacks (also known as Canada or Grey Jays; whisky-jack is derived from the Cree name for the bird). They have a proscription on harming these birds or gulls; I was told if you harmed a raven or a gull, it would make bad weather come. I watched while Mary Teya painstakingly freed a whisky-jack from fish netting she had placed over her drying fish to keep the gulls from spoiling it. I also watched her leave out the skull of a moose on top of a shed, after the meat had been cut off it, so the whisky-jacks and ravens could clean off the last of the meat. Auntie Alice, one of my Kaska teachers speaks fondly of “uskacha”, the whisky jack, and the fruits of Arctous rubra, the red bear berry, are whisky jack’s berries.

Gulls, I was told, help to clean the land....they are emblematic of summer for Gwich’in, and I was told were more significant locally than eagles. I was told to spill the fish offal on the sandbar for the gulls to eat, not put it in the water. The gulls cleanse the land, and also remove the guts and wastes that might tempt a bear to frequent the camp. Various lakes are named for the gull Tidigeh Van. (Once the gulls return southward, raven takes over clean-up duty for fall fisheries.)

When I was growing up, gulls were associated with garbage dumps, and though beautiful, were not especially valued. To the Mormons, however, gulls saved them from a plague of Mormon crickets which locust like threatened their first grain crops, and there is a statue to the seagull in Salt Lake City.

Our own culture has some ambivalence about wolves and raptors in the present, as magnificent emblems of wildness, beauty and freedom. This plays out in the complexities of endangered species restoration of wolves in Wyoming and Montana, and the immediate re-institution of a hunting season on wolves once their population has recovered....and the immediate response of the Natural Resource Defense Committee to rally wilderness and nature lovers to the defense of the wolves through political means. Whether we can respect other beings on their own terms and leave them space to live is yet an unanswered question.

Changing contexts for Ethnobiology

Permafrost slumps such at this one in the Richardson Mountains will be come more frequent with climate change.
Contexts for traditional and local knowledges are changing rapidly at the present time. Ethnobiology looks at “traditional” “cultural,” “knowledge”’ of the living world and of the human environment. What any of those terms might mean seems to be a moving target. Global changes in environment, society, economy and the political map are all moving at a dizzying rate. Global appetites for commodities create dramatic shifts in the relationships of Indigenous peoples to their homelands, as their territories suddenly are converted into “empty land” which their enclosing states give away for a variety of resource concessions to multinationals (see the opening chapters of Anna Tsing’s 2005 book Friction, an Ethnography of Global Connection for a graphic description of the impact of timber concessions and oil palm plantations in Kalimantan).
Climate change is an obvious change in the world external to ourselves that calls into question the usefulness of the rich detailed knowledge of rhythms of life in locale. In rapidly and drastically changing conditions, the insights gathered from observations of past patterns of timing and relationship may no longer provide guidance for the future. As a case in point, Joe Linklater, Chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin Nation of Old Crow in the northern Yukon commented on the impacts of climate change for his people and their environment at the Northern Truths Symposium held in Edmonton in January of 2008. ‘The Vuntut Gwitchin are ‘people of the lakes’, he said. ‘There are 2000 lakes in Old Crow Flats and lakes are now draining. Land is being degraded increasingly rapidly. There is uncertainty around the traditional way of life,’ he went on. ‘So what good is traditional knowledge if people are uncertain about future? Technology is changing, and adaptation creates stress in the community. How do we adapt and use our traditional knowledge?’ he queried. Theorists such as Fikret Berkes, Lance Gunderson and CS Holling explore “resilience”, the capacity to productively and effectively respond to change, in their consideration of sustainable life ways and increasingly highlight “adaptation.” (see Navigating Social-Ecological Systems, Building Resilience for Complexity and Change F. Berkes, J Colding and C Folke, eds, 2003, and Panarchy, Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, L. H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling, eds., 2002). The wave of the future....
A new and quite different change in the context for ethnobiological knowledge entered my awareness this past week: synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is a marriage of genetics and engineering to create life forms from basic DNA building blocks that will be little factories to churn out compounds that interest us. Generally this is accomplished by taking a generic bacterium, say an “E. coli”, and then putting the genes one wants into the bacterial genome, and culturing the resultant tailored strain. Some experiments, according to the New Yorker article in the September 28 issue that introduced me to the term (New Yorker, Annals of Science “A Life of its Own- Where will synthetic biology lead us?" http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/28/090928fa_fact_specter), hope to create wholly synthetic organisms—the stuff of brave new worlds, and of nightmarish sci-fi scenarios. As we read on, my attention was suddenly caught by the word “artemisinin”. Artemisinin is the latest best hope in the arsenal of antimalarial drugs, acting by a wholly different mechanism than quinine and its synthetic derivatives, so still effective against those virulent strains that have become resistant to quinine type compounds. Artemisinin is a component of the common weedy wormwood Artemesia annua and was the basis of activity of Chinese traditional herbal medicines made from A. annua. It has recently been gaining prominence in efforts to combat malaria worldwide, and cultivation of Artemesia annua on a large scale has been initiated in Asia to provide a supply of raw material for drug production. By chance, it seems, one of the early proponents of synthetic biology, Jay Keasling of the University of California at Berkeley, decided to focus on a potentially useful class of organic compounds called isoprenoids for his initial efforts in demonstrating biosynthesis in enngineered organisms. These compounds apparently are present in many economic plants and produce both flavour essences in ginger and cinnamon, and the pigments in sunflowers and tomatos. One day a graduate student called Keasling’s attention to a compound in this class called amorphadiene –which happens to be the precursor to artemisinin. Keasling initially was completely unfamiliar with artemisinin, but quickly saw the potential to create industrial level synthesis of the precursor for drug production through his bacterial process. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a world leader in the fight against malaria, provided backing. A consortium is now anticipating having their synthetically produced artemisinin drug on the marked by 2012. Other medicinal compounds are likely to follow.
The ethical and philosophical implications of this development are enormous. The New Yorker article byline says “If the science truly succeeds, it will make it possible to supplant the world created by Darwinian evolution with one created by us.” This is a far cry from the holistic community of beings of many indigenous cosmologies, where social relations and reciprocity characterize relations between hunter and prey, where other beings have agency and rights inherent in their being. Hubris, too, to imagine that humans can get the balancing act right. Unsurprisingly, bioethicists are also concerned by the implications of such perspectives. The August 2009 issue of The American Scholar (page 14), contains a short piece entitled “Synthetic Biology’s New Bugs” by Professor Arthur Kaplan of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics. Among the questions he poses are several that bear on relations of humans with the living world. He queries: “What is the risk that new life forms created by synthetic biologists will escape into the general environment and cause havoc with natural microbes or other living beings?” and “Is it ethical to patent a new life form? The law seems to permit it, but is this in the best interest of science in the long term? Should all forms of life be outside the realm of patents?” . He also questions “Is life reducible to genetic messages? If a scientists creates a new life form, even a microbe, does that challenge religious views that say only God can create life?” Indigenous peoples, as well as devout members of many of the world’s religions may have perspectives on the inherently sacred nature of life and the rightness of the natural order, and that it is inappropriate, even an act of hubris, to attempt to create living beings. Another question that Kaplan raises deals with global equity: “If synthetic biology brings significant benefits to humankind, how can it be assured that the rich and poor benefit equally?”
We might query, what are the implications of such a fundamental shift in relations of humans to other living beings and the living world brought about by creating novel organisms, however good [or ill] the intent? Do we truly know enough to be sure that no harm can come from these organisms entering the environment, or perhaps causing human illness? Will we respect the miracle of life and the inherent rights of other organisms if we can make life the way we make a chair or an mp3 player? Can we be sure that, if we have the means, we will not choose to make terrible novel biological weapons, or modify multicellular animals nearer to ourselves, or even humans? How shall we value the possibility of an affordable and plentiful antimalarial therapy, or perhaps a fuel source not dependent on fossil fuels against these other possibilities?