Conjunctions: Historical Ecology, Climate Change and Hatred

Gitwangak, 1899 PN 12106, RBC Museum

I've just returned from a lovely and visionary gathering of young scholars and others interested in understanding how past human ecological relationships and practices may inform the present and help evaluate future options.  The group is called "Niche" (a play on words obviously for adaptive or ecological niches) an acronym for "New International Community for Historical Ecology" and the meeting at Simon Fraser University was its second.  My talk centred on three themes in my on-going research on Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en ethnoecology: possible anthropogenic distributions of two food plants, Pacific crabapple and riceroot lily;

Pacific crabapple in Miinskinisht; tree about 150 years old

the historic role of fire in black huckleberry patch maintenance, and potential contemporary management through mechanical brushing or small scale controlled burning, and finally, the challenges and dilemmas of maintaining populations of pacific salmon species, given global and localized environmental changes.

pair of sockeye salmon on spawning ground, Hanna Creek, Nass drainage

While we were there learning about the diverse and interesting research on human/environmental pasts, presents and possible futures from established and younger scholars, we got news of the terrible events of November 13 in Paris, where sectarian inspired real terrorism burst on French society, killing more than a hundred and twenty innocent citizens engaged in listening to music, eating Cambodian food with friends or family, or attending a high level soccer match between France and Germany.  As I returned home a third piece of the chance assemblage of times, places and topics hit me: Paris, site of this horrific hate event, is also the site of the next global climate talks in a mere two weeks. The juxtaposition of these events provoked deep thought: how can humans attains some level of accommodation with the planet to avoid the most catastrophic effects of our choices and actions when inter-group conflict (aka war) keeps shifting priorities and causing societies to engage in terrible acts of social and environmental violence, devastating human and ecological communities alike?  Talking at the conference earlier with my colleague Eugene Anderson (Gene, or "krazykioti" to those who know him), he commented that we have to solve hatred, or we cannot meaningfully and effectively address problems of humans and the environment, perhaps better phrased as mending the relationships between people and the rest of the ecological family to which we belong.  This topic is taken up in Gene's 2014 book Caning for Place, Ecology, Ideology and Emotion in Traditional Landscape Management (Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek California).  In a sense, the interrelationships between social and environmental sustainability, and human actions posed by armed conflict and its effects is a special case of "if we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately".  If societies and social actors cannot moderate their actions to avoid catastrophic conflict, with all the short and long term consequences this entails, it bodes poorly for the planet-wide collective action needed to avert serious consequences of anthropogenic climate change on all life.  Anthropogenic climate change is a reality; what is at question is can we moderate its severity through our focussed attention across the globe, in the face of many forces pushing in the opposite direction.  As long as war and armed conflict are the elephant in the room, accords reached in peace time may have little power to direct the actual course of events.  I hope world leaders will have the courage to meet in Paris despite the risks posed by extremists, and I hope they will find the resolve to move forward in strong and meaningful ways to mitigate climate change through concerted international action.
Meanwhile, as private citizens, we must do what we can to mitigate our consumption of energy and material, to live more simply and equitably, and to be tolerant of difference, rather than provoke and nourish conflict and resentment through demonizing people of good will who have made different choices than those our society or own ethnic or religions groups have made. We need to recognize the commonalities of our human lives.  We must seek to understand and to come together in a good way to nurture our planet and humankind both.
The following website was shared on  Facebook today in the wake of the events in Paris.  I think it is extremely important to remember that the vast majority of people do not wish harm to others, and simply wish to live their lives as we strive to heal violence and work toward peace:
http://mashable.com/2014/09/22/notinmyname-muslims-anti-isis-social-media-campaign/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it#mLifH32fGiqX

Environmental Change and Variation in the Yukon

Photo:
Willows yellow from drying or disease along Frances River
I just got back from the southern Yukon where I went to do research on observations of environmental change by Kaska Elders. The weather was alternating between being very hot (up to 30C) and rainy, though there had been little rain early in the season, and a light snow pack the winter before. During a trip up the Liard and Frances River by boat with one elder my collaborator Linda and a Japanese anthropologist and I helped the elder put out a small forest fire that was burning in the moss at a camping site along the river. Berries seemed to be a couple of weeks ahead of normal in terms of ripening, but crops seemed poor, perhaps because of poor weather when the flowers were pollinated. People speculated that perhaps the bears were bolder because the berries were poor. I found a correlation like that in nuisance bear reports down on the Skeena River in the Terrace area in the 1980's. Just as I was getting ready for a trip down the Alaska Highway to the Toad River area to speak with some Elders there, a young Kaska friend told me there were two fire balls down the Cassiar highway. The next days the smoke was quite perceptable far to the east of the area the fire had ignited. I began to hear that the highway was closed south out of Watson Lake....not encouraging, as I needed to go that was to go down to the Skeena River to do some follow-up on last year's research on tumplines. Rumours began to circulate that the community of Lower Post would be evacuated...I returned with some anxiety to Watson Lake through the smoke plume, and when I arrived, massive smoke clouds filled the sky to the south, rising like a thunderhead at the west end, right down where the Stewart-Cassiar runs. At the barricade I was told they would likely convoy traffic through first thing the following day....there was some rain in the night, and indeed I was able to get through. At that point about 10 km of the highway passed through the smoking fire. Its estimated size then was about 3000hectares. Last I heard it was up to 15,000. The fire sparked my thinking about disturbance frequency, and whether the fire frequency may be changing....given that the boreal forest renews itself through episodic conflagration, it was hard to tell if this fire was unusual, or within the normal range of fire occurrence. Last year there was a large fire north of the Yukon border along the Cantung or Nahanni Range road....and when I was there in 2004 there were large fires at Contact Creek and at Swan Lake on the Alaska highway...this was one of the questions we asked the Elders about. When I got down to the Skeena River, the weather was so dry there were virtually no mosquitos....unheard of...and river levels were at a near record low. Sockeye salmon escapement is at about 1/3 normal for the second year running, and this reduction is not attributable to salmon farm sea lice as no fish farming is permitted off the north coast of BC. So--likely collapse of food chains in the mid Pacific due to global warming is the cause. Allen Gottesfeld, who works for the Gitxsan Watershed Authority pointed out this disturbing fact to me....commercial salmon fishing is now virtually extinct in Prince Rupert, formerly a city of canneries, and food fish for Tsimshian and Gitxsan are running low, prompting shifts to less preferred species (coho and spring/king salmon instead of the diminishing sockeye).