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good morning
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good afternoon good evening
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my name is nancy turner and it's a
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pleasure for me to be with all of you
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today
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um
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talking about ethnobotany and its
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related field ethnoecology
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in the changing world today
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first of all i want to extend my deepest
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gratitude to dr mark nesbitt
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dr ali clark and
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to my fellow speakers for this people
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and plants project series
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funded by the arts and humanities
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research council and i also am grateful
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to my many colleagues and collaborators
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and ethnobotanical research
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and writing to my family and to funders
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who supported my work especially here in
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canada the social science and humanities
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research council of canada and the
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pierre elliott trudeau foundation
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i am very grateful to the many
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indigenous elders knowledge holders
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teachers friends
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who have shared their knowledge and
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wisdom with me and my family students
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and colleagues over many years
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i hate to say it but over 50 years now
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and these are just a few of them i'll
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name but there are many others as well
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florence davidson from masset haida
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ida jones from the digidot nation
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helen clifton from
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the hartley bay kitkat nation dr richard
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atleo umek from a hauseit
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sistalawatla
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clan chief adam dick from qua quack
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quack nation dr mary thomas from the
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schweitman nation
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settlement joan morris from
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cliches and the songs nation and these
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are just a few
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of the people who have taught me and
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with who whose knowledge i'm sharing
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with you today
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i'm very happy to uh tell you about
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our latest book called in collaboration
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with dr lou's team arvid charlie called
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list james plants
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about hulk maintenance
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and
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plant knowledge and that's published by
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harbor publishing
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so today i just i'm giving you some
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general reflections on ethnobotany and
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its applications to contemporary
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problems
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through work with indigenous communities
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and i'm going to try to keep my talk to
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about half an hour
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but hopefully with recording
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it won't be too fast for you
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so just to give you a background
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ethnobotany as most of you know is the
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study of the direct interrelationships
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between people and plants
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how people harvest
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process and use plants for food
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materials
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medicine for spiritual
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purposes and ceremonial purposes the
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names of plants and habitats and so
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forth how people look after the plants
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and tend them and care for them the
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reciprocal relationships between people
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and plants and animals
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and the history of plant knowledge as
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well
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and these are some of my friends here in
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hartley bay and
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colleen robinson and her daughter mavis
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arty dundas harvesting a very important
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medicinal plant for atrium variety
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so ethnobotany is
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as one
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web site called
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somewhat of a glamour field and when you
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google ethnobotany you'll find that
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there's millions of references to
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ethnobotany all over the world
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and
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from environmental monitoring to
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building relationships with plants and
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the land ecological restoration
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and supporting indigenous peoples
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throughout the world ethnobotany and and
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ethnobiology which is a broader
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relationship of people and
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other species in the world
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is really important for the future of
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humanity
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and this is diane smith from the niska
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nation holding
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fritillaria kamchatensis the rice root
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an edible root
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ethnobotany has undergone a number of
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changes and has evolved itself as a
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field as a discipline over the years dr
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richard ford a well-known ethnobotanist
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dr eugene hun and others have traced and
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sort of
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um
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i guess put the
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different
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phases of ethnobotany together to show
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how it's progressed from a very um
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primitive
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primitive identification of ethnobotany
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as the uses of plants by quote primitive
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peoples
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uh right through the uses of plants and
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then uh
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cognition the way people
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uh name and categorize plants to ecology
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and ethnoecology and finally to use this
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field to support the needs and
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knowledge
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and practices of indigenous and local
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peoples throughout the world
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as well as all people
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so the ethical aspects of ethnobotany
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and ethnobiology are very important
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um these
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the topic includes
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the whole spectrum of world views and
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values practical observations
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ways of
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acquiring and passing on knowledge
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ways of as i mentioned earlier looking
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after lands and waters traditional
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management systems
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values and relationships and so forth
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and it's not ethnobotany as a field in
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this of study is not limited to just
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certain parts of the world but
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everywhere all over the world all of us
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have history and our ancestry and the
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places where ancestors lived uh right up
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to the present day have a relationships
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with plants whether it's in our gardens
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or our vegetables the things that we
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like to eat or our medicines and here my
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friend ian edwards uh ethnobotanist at
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the edinburgh botanic garden spent some
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wonderful times with him up in scotland
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uh discovering plants together
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and he's talking about here foxglove
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which is a well-known medicine for heart
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ailments
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that was originally used by herbal
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healers in the uk and elsewhere
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and on our trip with ian we visited jane
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allen
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a basket specialist who make grows all
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kinds of varieties of willow and makes
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these wonderful baskets
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and ethnobotany by its very nature is
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very interdisciplinary because it draws
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on many different fields from
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anthropology to linguistics and
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pharmacology and so forth
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it
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its methods include both quantitative
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and qualitative aspects
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it combines intuition skills methods and
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we always have to think of our own
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biases as researchers
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and how those impact the work that we do
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and it ties into
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ethnobiology ethnozoology ethnomycology
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and so forth all these different fields
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here's squatsystala
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clan chief adam dick
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harvesting a hemlock pool
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that he's going to make into an
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implement a kill bayou used to twist
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eelgrass
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to harvest the rhizomes the edible
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rhizomes of eelgrass
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we can
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trace the trends in ethnobotany through
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the literature there are many many
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different publications going back into
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the
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1800s and the early 1900s like bernie
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gunther's ethnobotany of western
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washington one of the books that got me
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started in this field
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right up to
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the current books by cath cotton gary
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martin
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the society of ethnobiology and so forth
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um i just put in these these are some of
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the books that i've worked on in the
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past few years um
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an edited volume on plants and people
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and people in places the applications of
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ethnobotany and ethnoecology in
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indigenous peoples land rights in canada
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and beyond and ancient pathways
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ancestral knowledge how people have
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acquired knowledge in this region how
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they shared it across time and space
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and plants of high degrees now in its
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third edition
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and as i mentioned before ethnobotany
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extends
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into other fields including ethnoecology
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which is
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more a broad study of the
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interrelationships between people and
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places and habitats
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and
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ecosystems here's a paper that i uh
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co-authored with allen courier another
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ethnobotanist and lee joseph from the
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squamish nation an indigenous
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ethnobotanist
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we've enjoyed working together over the
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years
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intellectual property rights of
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knowledge holders
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science versus social science the
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erosion of knowledge over time
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and the advocacy role of ethnobotanists
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and ethnoecologists all of these are
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areas
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that we find important in our field
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and this is reinforced in the u.n
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declaration on the rights of indigenous
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peoples back in 2007
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uh it was it went through the united
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nations and it's been adopted variously
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by countries throughout the world and in
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this declaration
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we
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we understand
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ethnobiological research brings forth
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other views understandings and values
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from diverse indigenous peoples
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communities that can provide
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alternatives and lead the way to more
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fully embracing sustainable life ways
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so there's a lot of knowledge and wisdom
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in the way people have used the
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resources of their local areas
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sustainably in many cases for multiple
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generations sometimes thousands of years
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and if we think about it modern science
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is only about 10 generations old
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and uh ecology is is even
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younger than that
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traditional ecological knowledge the
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knowledge of local and indigenous
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peoples goes back
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many many generations and
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and so there's very deep time depth for
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knowledge of particular places and
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particular species
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that you learn from indigenous peoples
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right up to the present time
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people have been living on our coast for
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at least fifteen thousand years since
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time immemorial adam dick would say
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and these ancient relationships extend
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back everywhere in the world
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we have uh these burial cairns from
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argyll scotland where they discovered
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pollen in the bottom of the caring
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of the
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vessels that were buried with
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with the bodies and they didn't know why
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that pollen was there and discovered
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that it had been from mead
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that had been made from honey from
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meadow sweet and heather and other
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species and so um ian edwards and some
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of the others at the edinburgh botanic
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garden have taken a great interest
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in in this kind of ethnobotany and have
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actually been able to reconstruct
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the the contents of this ancient mede
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there have been the the so-called bod
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bodies uh the bodies of
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tolerant man in a danish bog for example
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that is
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studying have have allowed us to
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understand what foods these people were
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eating um
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in back back in that day
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and
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some in um
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agricultural species some domesticated
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species but a lot of seeds of wild
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species as well many different barnard
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millet and curly dock and not weed and
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things that we don't think of today as
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being edible but our ancestors
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at least if we're european
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would have eaten them another recent
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find that has a lot of ethno-botanical
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interests it's oatsi the icemen from the
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turolian alps
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studied by dr jim dixon and and his
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colleagues and
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many many in much important information
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has been revealed from the remains that
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were found with his body and there's um
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there is a museum dedicated to otzi
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the the oldest best preserved human body
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ever found and jim dixon discovered a
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species of neck or a moss that showed
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that he probably came
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into the alps from the south from the
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italian side of the mountains there's uh
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adzes and shoes clothing
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even medicinal fungus and
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various other botanical
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products that were found with them
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that give us a view into his life that
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he had he had a you would bow
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he um he probably had food with him like
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slow plums and hazelnuts and
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probably was eating wild raspberries we
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can guess a little bit about what he
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would have what his life would have been
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like
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in canada there was a finding not too
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long ago
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of
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the body of a young man found melting
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out of a glacier quite a dance and chi
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and
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they found pollen from
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from
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glasswart
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see asparagus and they found seeds from
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sweet sicily
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both of which indicate that this young
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man had probably traveled up from the
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coast and was heading up into the
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interior when he must have been caught
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by a late summer storm
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probably died of hypothermia
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so just to
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uh emphasize the importance of the
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ethnobotanical collections that we find
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in places like the kew herbarium
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um this is crab apple pacific crabapple
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and they're in the queue herbarium is a
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collection of
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an ads handle and adds with a handle
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made of pacific crab apple and here in
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the nas valley
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where the uliken camp is is a mallet
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made from the same wood a very hard wood
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that is almost as hard as you would and
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used for digging sticks and things like
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that and adds handles
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so this collection verifies
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something that not too many people
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realize
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and just a quick story about collections
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with isabella eden shots uh spruce root
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hats began a very interesting story for
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me these are from haida gwaii and
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isabella edenshaw was the mother of
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florence davidson was a dear elder that
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my husband bob and i lived with over one
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summer and florence remembers as a child
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going out with your mother and
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harvesting the spruce roots and having
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your mother weave these hats and then
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take them over to the trading post
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and sell them for their children's
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winter clothing and so forth
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so there are hats of isabel eden shots
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are all over in museums
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there's one in our national museum
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there's one in
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also in the
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museum of washington state university
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with my friend armando uh looking at a
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spruce root basket there but there's
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also a spruce root hat made by isabel
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edenshaw
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and
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this is really interesting because long
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ago captain juan perez uh visited haida
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guay in 1774 and he was visited by haida
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in canoes and they gifted him with a
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spruce root hat
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which could have been made by isabel
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incha's ancestors and there it is in the
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madrid museum photographed by bill holm
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and so we had the pleasure of going with
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nani florence
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to harv and her sisters to harvest
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spruce fruit and learn the process of
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cooking
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the roots a little bit
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taking the bark off splitting them and
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then making them into these beautiful
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hats and here isabel
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florence's daughter primrose adams is
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making a spruce suit hat and primrose's
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granddaughter
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um
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ariana
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medley is also a master at uh spruce
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weaving so that's like five or six
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generations that we know about of
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this amazing um
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art of weaving spruce root
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that that is um
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somehow recorded in the collections and
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museums similarly with uh
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herbarium specimens
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these are very very important for
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example here is a
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collection of nicotiana
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quadra valvus made by david douglas down
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in the mouth of the columbia river
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and a collection the only collection by
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alice eastwood
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um
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of the haida tobacco the original haida
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tobacco that many people wrote about but
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it it was grown by haida but uh for many
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years people didn't know where it came
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from but it seems to be related to
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nicotiana quadra valvus i was recently
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gifted some seeds of that
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quadra valvus and
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my friend
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jalen eden
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grew tobacco from those seeds and used
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it in a ceremonial way with his daughter
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hannah
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so that again museum collections help
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tell the tale help help us to understand
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history the same with um the origin of
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sunflower and the origin of many other
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species
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um herbarium collections and seed
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collections help us to understand
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how these species have spread around the
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world
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yearly herbals too like john gerard's
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herbal
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um from 1597.
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um i have an original page from that
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herbal
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and it's pretty amazing to read about
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turkey corn
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and many other things that people were
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just learning about from the new world
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maize and potatoes and so forth and that
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are recorded in this way in these early
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books
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so also
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indigenous knowledge provides us direct
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observations and insights
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embedded in the history and stories
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about how the weather patterns have
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changed
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any unusual occurrences like volcanic
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eruptions and floods and so forth
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over time
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and help us to understand what's
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happening with climate change and how
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species have shifted over time
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and there's a couple of references there
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um one with helen clifton who i showed
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you a photo of at the beginning
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about climate change and and her
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observations of it
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and that is the song of the swainson's
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thrush which is called the salmonberry
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bird and in many of the first nations
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languages up and down the coast it's
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associated with salmonberries in the
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saanich language when its song is
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talking to the salmon berries the
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different varieties the different color
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forms golden dark red
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dark almost black and the ones that
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aren't ripe yet and the bird is calling
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to them come on all you little
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dark-headed ones come on all you
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red-headed ones and so forth ripe and
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ripe and ripe and ripe and ripe and that
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is called a phenological indicator when
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you use the life cycle of one species to
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kind of
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gain an understanding of life cycles of
00:21:40
others and these
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go back for generations
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for example the blooming of the
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sagebrush buttercup
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ranunculus globeramus
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is an indicator for the slatlimoch
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people of the fraser river that the
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first run of the spring salmon is coming
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up the river and the
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salmon have yellow eyes the color of the
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buttercup
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so it's named after that flower and then
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later with the blooming of the wild rose
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coinciding with the soapberry and
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strawberries ripening
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the second run of the spring salmon come
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up and they have a pink line along them
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that's the color of the wild rose
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so these are indicators that
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help us to follow like
00:22:30
multiple life cycles
00:22:33
and we have
00:22:34
individuals who are tasked with caring
00:22:38
for and looking after you could call
00:22:40
them owners of patches of camas or berry
00:22:43
patches but it was far more than
00:22:46
ownership in the western sense of the
00:22:48
word it's more these people
00:22:50
um
00:22:52
where the proprietors they were tasked
00:22:55
with caring for these places for future
00:22:58
generations and looking after them and
00:23:00
ensuring that they
00:23:02
they continue to produce and and
00:23:04
multiply and so forth using fire
00:23:07
sometimes and selective harvesting
00:23:11
so today more than ever ethnobotany and
00:23:14
the study of ethnobotany and the
00:23:16
collaboration
00:23:18
of learning from indigenous and local
00:23:21
peoples worldwide is more important than
00:23:24
ever i think
00:23:26
and it can be applied in many ways
00:23:28
supporting land and marine guardianship
00:23:31
indigenous protected areas
00:23:33
ecological assessment and monitoring and
00:23:36
looking at biodiversity conservation
00:23:40
ecological restoration
00:23:43
ensuring indigenous people's health and
00:23:45
food security and
00:23:48
using that knowledge for adapting to
00:23:51
climate change and other types of
00:23:53
environmental change
00:23:55
so drawing on diverse ways of knowing
00:23:57
respectfully collaboratively ethically
00:24:00
and reciprocally
00:24:02
can help provide more detailed knowledge
00:24:05
of local ecosystems and guide all of us
00:24:08
humans towards greater sustainability
00:24:13
we know that global climate and
00:24:15
environmental change is real we see it
00:24:17
happening
00:24:18
we see the fires in the summertime
00:24:21
we see the floods
00:24:23
at different times of the year and we
00:24:25
know that it's happening it's been
00:24:27
measured
00:24:29
and another thing that's happening is a
00:24:32
decrease in biodiversity as we continue
00:24:34
to homogenize the world and we have
00:24:37
places in the world that you can hardly
00:24:39
tell apart even though they're far away
00:24:41
from each other because they all have
00:24:44
the same species the cattle the grasses
00:24:47
and so forth
00:24:48
and
00:24:50
and this isn't good because it reduces
00:24:52
overall
00:24:54
habitat biodiversity as well as species
00:24:57
biodiversity
00:25:00
related to climate change of course we
00:25:03
have the wildfires
00:25:05
and the way we're treating our forests
00:25:07
we're clear-cutting our forests and
00:25:10
logging them and then creating even aged
00:25:12
stands that are vulnerable to insect
00:25:14
attacks
00:25:15
all of these things
00:25:17
indigenous elders
00:25:19
could have talked about those if we just
00:25:22
listened back when they started to ban
00:25:25
any kind of controlled burns and what's
00:25:28
the result is these forests of tinder
00:25:32
dry even age stands that are
00:25:36
compromised by pine beetle and other
00:25:38
insects and
00:25:39
they burn
00:25:41
they they over burn and they cause all
00:25:43
kinds of disruption for wildlife
00:25:48
so
00:25:49
reckon helping to recognize and
00:25:51
highlight and forefront
00:25:53
the importance of indigenous and local
00:25:55
people's knowledge is part of the role
00:25:58
of ethnobotany
00:26:01
how
00:26:03
long resident peoples are often
00:26:04
overlooked and underrepresented in
00:26:06
governance planning decision making at
00:26:09
all these different uh levels
00:26:12
and ethnobiology is a field that places
00:26:15
indigenous local people's ecological
00:26:18
knowledge and ways of knowing at the
00:26:20
forefront of research interests
00:26:22
particularly in relation to the
00:26:24
importance of biocultural diversity
00:26:27
in sustaining the earth's ecosystems
00:26:33
so indigenous people's knowledge is
00:26:35
grounded in place
00:26:37
so we have from
00:26:39
my friends uh frank frank brown
00:26:43
the brown family
00:26:45
care and respect for nature our values
00:26:48
deeply rooted in our culture these
00:26:50
values have always guided us in our
00:26:52
stewardship practices
00:26:54
many of our traditional stories speak
00:26:56
about the importance of caring for
00:26:58
nature
00:27:01
so that's just one example and this
00:27:03
website is
00:27:05
based on a
00:27:06
um river valley in helsi territory on
00:27:09
north hunter island with a lot of
00:27:12
knowledge and multiple ways of caring
00:27:15
for the sea and the land and the forests
00:27:20
sorry
00:27:23
so what we need is diversified
00:27:26
participation in all aspects of
00:27:28
conservation
00:27:30
whether it's
00:27:31
relearning the knowledge about making
00:27:34
clam gardens
00:27:36
relearning the different varieties and
00:27:38
species that are known to look locally
00:27:41
for local people
00:27:42
detailed place based knowledge not just
00:27:45
kind of a
00:27:46
superficial overview but detailed
00:27:49
knowledge of the plants and animals of
00:27:51
particular places and the fungi
00:27:54
and ways of looking after them caring
00:27:56
for them tending them
00:27:58
managing them you could say
00:28:00
recognizing the spiritual
00:28:02
and the relational values of plants and
00:28:05
animals as well
00:28:08
we need seventh generation thinking
00:28:12
which is part of many indigenous
00:28:15
cultures and knowledge systems where we
00:28:18
think not just about the next four years
00:28:21
of a political campaign but we think
00:28:24
about not just one generation but all
00:28:26
the way back to seven generations and
00:28:29
forward to seven generations that's what
00:28:32
we need to think about and we need
00:28:34
what's been called concentric ecology
00:28:37
the understanding that we are all
00:28:39
related all the plants the animals even
00:28:42
the fungi we are related to all of them
00:28:45
through our biological dna
00:28:48
and we have to think of them as our
00:28:50
relatives that we care for
00:28:54
we need to learn with respect about how
00:28:56
to tend the land and care for it how you
00:29:00
can create better juicier berries
00:29:03
by the way you plant them and how you
00:29:05
tend them
00:29:08
quat sistela adam dick talked about
00:29:11
keeping it living ways of just making
00:29:15
sure that you can use the plants but
00:29:18
keep them living at the same time using
00:29:20
them partially and finding ways for them
00:29:22
to regenerate
00:29:25
so these are all lessons from
00:29:27
ethnobotany learning and caring about
00:29:29
the cultural richness and biological
00:29:32
diversity in our home places this is
00:29:34
something we can all do that can all
00:29:37
help and it can bring
00:29:39
great satisfaction endless fascination
00:29:42
in our own lives and can make a
00:29:44
difference into the future
00:29:47
so all of you i encourage you to spend
00:29:49
time out on your lands and waters
00:29:51
wherever you live
00:29:52
slow down
00:29:54
take a take a look around enjoy the
00:29:57
beauty of the places bring the children
00:30:00
along and involve them work with nature
00:30:03
and natural processes and give nature a
00:30:06
helping hand
00:30:09
thank you so much
00:30:11
i really enjoyed talking with you and i
00:30:14
um i'd be happy to
00:30:16
answer questions via email or in some
00:30:19
other way
00:30:21
take good care all of you
00:30:23
bye bye
