Salish Sea Curriculum Repository

Items

• We Have Stories: Five generations of Indigenous women in water

  This paper traces the changing relationship between family, water, and fish through the lives of five generations of Indigenous women.
  

• Water We Call Home online exhibition

  Re-presencing Indigenous women’s connections to fish, water, and family around the Salish Sea
  

• A Wall Worth Building: Making Clam Habitat Great Again

  On a small island off Canada’s west coast, a group of people is rebuilding ancient clam gardens.
  

• Ocean Cultures: Northwest Coast Ecosystems and Indigenous Management Systems

  Increasingly, ethnoecologists, anthropologists, and conservation biologists are recognizing that Indigenous People of the Northwest Coast and neighboring regions have been astute stewards and managers—not just harvesters and consumers—of the resources and ecosystems on which they have relied. Over thousands of years, these people have developed diverse practices and protocols that have not only sustained, but enhanced the resource species both in quantity and in quality. These practices are based on long-term observation and experience, and are embedded in belief systems, ceremonies, dances, art, and narratives. Here we provide an overview of marine and coastal resource management systems that have been documented to date, and then cite three examples in more detail: clam gardens, salmon production, and estuarine root gardens. These different production systems do not function alone but are components of an entire complex of land and resource management extending across the marine and terrestrial landscapes, “from ocean bottom to mountaintop.” These traditional management systems have been seriously disrupted since the arrival of European newcomers and the resulting impacts on key habitats from colonial settlement, land encroachment, changes in land tenure, land-use conversion, and industrial scale exploitation. Today, collaborative efforts between Indigenous communities, ethnoecologists, and others are underway to recognize and restore some of these critically important Indigenous production systems and associated practices as a means of ethnoecological restoration, habitat enhancement, and food system revitalization.

• Archaeology Lesson Plan

  The lesson introduces students to archaeology as a way of knowing the “deep history” of the Salish Sea and presents a brief review of the archaeology of the region. We also discuss the importance of this history to modern peoples today, including the necessity for archaeologists to collaborate with Indigenous communities.
  

• Mapping the Archaeological Past of the Salish Sea (MAPSS)

  The exercise is aimed to help students explain the basic chronology of culture history in the Salish Sea and identify important local archaeological sites and/or traditional cultural places on both sides of the international border.
  

• Museum Visit

  A field trip to a local museum allows students to interact with and learn from material items from the Salish Sea and also encourages students to think about the ethics of museum representation and Indigenous collaboration.
  

• The Lushootseed Peoples of Puget Sound Country

• "Meet the People". Lummi Nation. American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges.

  A unit from the Lummi Nation minisite of the American Indian Responses to Environmental Challenges.

• Indigenous Epistemologies and Pedagogies

  

• "We monitor by living here": community-driven actualization of a social-ecological monitoring program based in the knowledge of Indigenous harvesters

  

• Traditional food systems, erosion and renewal in Northwestern North America

• The nature of borders: Salmon boundaries, and bandits on the Salish Sea

• Building a landscape history and occupational chronology at ČḯxWicǝn, a coastal village onto Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington State, U.S.A.

• The ČḯxWicǝn project of Northwest Washington State, U.S.A.: Opportunity lost, opportunity found

• The people of Cascadia: Pacific Northwest Native American history

• Down2Earth 1.3 - Cheryl Bryce (Lekwammen)

• Coast & Straits Salish Homelands & Waters

  Students find their place in the timescale of human experience in the Salish Sea, learn about map resources including native land.ca, and use maps to identify the Indigenous nations that are connected to the watershed where they live.
  

• The care-takers: The re-emergence of the Saanich Indian Map