This is a parallel track to ANTH 235, Cross Cultural Medicine that focuses on the health impacts of climate disasters, including trauma, grief and anxiety. Students then have the opportunity to visualize a future when the earth recovers its health. What does that look like? How does it happen?
Reimagining the history of Bellingham Bay and North Puget Sound and how it is taught, presented by Anna Booker, WCC history instructor, and the "Bellingham Working Waterfront Project" and David Jepsen, co-author of Contested Boundaries: A New Pacific Northwest History.
Like other coastal zones around the world, the inland sea ecosystem of Washington (USA) and British Columbia (Canada), an area known as the Salish Sea, is changing under pressure from a growing human population, conversion of native forest and shoreline habitat to urban development, toxic contamination of sediments and species, and overharvest of resources. While billions of dollars have been spent trying to restore other coastal ecosystems around the world, there still is no successful model for restoring estuarine or marine ecosystems like the Salish Sea. Despite the lack of a guiding model, major ecological principles do exist that should be applied as people work to design the Salish Sea and other large marine ecosystems for the future. We suggest that the following 10 ecological principles serve as a foundation for educating the public and for designing a healthy Salish Sea and other coastal ecosystems for future generations.
Short video of Nick Claxton (XEMŦOLTW̱), Tsawout community member and PhD. Candidate in UVic’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, talking about W̱SÁNEĆ Nation reef net fishing traditional practices and revitalization. It discusses recognition of nationhood and the Douglas Treaty signed by the Saanich people in 1852.
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.
Book mapping the most beloved places in the Salish Sea, created by a diverse group of collaborators across the Salish Sea. Maps range from fishing spots and ancient First Nations sites to bird migration and heritage orchids.
Students write a one-to-two-page letter to apply their knowledge and analysis to a contemporary issue and develop a position that reflects their research on the issue. Resources for locating a leader in a trans-border region with multiple jurisdictions on the Canadian and U.S. sides of the border is provided in the weeks leading up to this letter-writing assignment.
This activity is designed to provide students with differing perspectives on the future of salmon within the Salish Sea using interview data with different stakeholders in the region.
This (virtual) lab component for the Introduction to the Salish Sea course supports students' engagement in independent experiential learning using walks, reading, podcasts, recorded lectures, and tracing local ecology.
