Magical Sea-Gardens and Rethinking Conservation: A conversation with Anne Salomon and Dana Lepofsky
BY LAURA DE LUCA
Clam garden in Heiltsuk traditional territory. Photo by: Dana Lepofsky
At least 3500 years ago, along the Northwest Coast of North America, coastal First Nations developed a highly productive and sustainable mariculture technique known as clam gardens. We had a conversation with Anne Salomon and Dana Lepofsky, professors and researchers at the Simon Fraser University (Canada). They spoke to us about the world of clam gardens and coastal First Nations as well as their research collaboration, the importance of traditional knowledge, the role of humans as part of the ecosystems and the need to re-define the ‘conservation’ concept.
Who are Dana and Anne?
Dana digging in a clam garden. Photo by: Nicole Smith
Dana: I am an archeologist and I work with Indigenous Peoples in the British Columbia, especially on the coast. I also do some work in French Polynesia. My passion is understanding how people relate to their environment in the past, and how we can take that knowledge from the past and situate it in current and future socio-ecological contexts. For me, this means bringing together diverse kinds of knowledge from Indigenous Peoples, but also from various communities within the academic world. That's what brings me to working so closely with Anne, whose knowledge I value hugely.
Restoration of a clam garden wall. Anne is 9 month pregnant in this photo. Photo by: Anne Salomon
Anne: Like Dana, I'm really curious and driven by an interest in understanding the relationships between people and the ecosystems in which they are embedded. I was trained as a marine ecologist working on nearshore coastal ecosystems. I’ve been working with coastal Indigenous communities over 15 years now because these ocean places are their home, and they are a key component of these ecosystems.
What are clam gardens? Which species can we find there?
Dana digging in a clam garden. Photo by: Julia Jackley
Dana: On the Northwest Coast of North America, from Alaska to at least to Washington state, Indigenous People built rock-walled terraces at the lowest intertidal zone. They built a rock wall, either on a sandy beach that already supported clams, or on substrates of bedrock or cobbles where clams could not thrive. Over time, the areas behind the beach side of the wall filled with sediment. This created a coarse sediment beach that butter clams and littleneck clams love, and also changed the natural slope of the beach to one that is more leveled. The leveling of the slope sometimes expanded the intertidal zone in which species thrive and also made this ideal clam habitat more accessible for people during moderate low tides. In a more sloped beach, it is more difficult to have access to these clams since their habitat is underwater in all but the lowest tides.
Anne digging in a clam garden. Photo by: Anne Salomon
Anne: Along some shorelines, you also get kelp settling and growing on clam garden rock walls. In fact, on some soft sediment beaches, there couldn’t have been a kelp forest without clam garden walls! If you expand from clams to all of the creatures that not only enjoy rocky reefs but also kelp, you find invertebrates like cradlestone sea cucumbers, snails, sea urchins and red rock crabs. The crabs are major predators of clams, and are also an important food source for Indigenous communities, as are the sea cucumbers, snails and sea urchins. These rock walled terraces were not only good for clams, they supported a diversity of food sources that Indigenous communities benefit from and have thought carefully about how to cultivate. I conceptualize clam gardens as sea gardens because of the diversity of sea foods. These beaches thrive when they are taken care of by people. Even some coastal terrestrial vertebrates, such as minks and crows, benefit from these areas!
Why was traditional ecological knowledge important for clam gardens and their sustainability?
Andrea Walkus (Wuikinuxv First Nation) and Dana Lepofsky digging in a clam garden.Photo by: Mark Wunsch (Greencoast Media)
Dana: Traditional management practices must be situated in larger cultural systems and ways of knowing and being. The clam gardens flourished and were maintained due to cultural practices that involved when to harvest, who could harvest, the value of tilling, the value of size selection and the removal of predators and algae. These practices are not necessarily visible in the rock walls. As a result, their existence can be questioned by western scientists because there is no hard evidence for them. There is a failure to recognize traditional knowledge as data and as one of the places to learn from.
Anne: Indigenous People have clear ancestral laws that govern human’s behavior with the world around them. One likely reason why sustainable practices developed over time in the past is because people figured out, through experimentation, observation, learning and adapting, specific harvest practices and protocols that sustained the use of natural resources. Social norms developed around these practices and maintained the human behaviors associated with them.
What can you tell us about the importance of interdisciplinary research?
Anne: Dana is the woman that brought me into clam gardens and soft sediments ecosystems. I'm eternally grateful to Dana for inviting me to explore with her and others this magical world of sea gardens. For me, working with her and archaeologists is essential because in order to understand the present you need to understand the past. To envision the future, we need to have a good sense of where we came from. We share our different skills, training and backgrounds to study human environmental relationships through time. Both of us are very motivated to apply that understanding to improve our current and future relationships with the planet.
Dana: I just want to add that the breadth that Anne and I are talking about, as archaeologists and ecologists, reflects a really welcomed sea-change in western science where many researchers are no longer being constrained by their academic silos. I think that collaboration across communities, ideas, and methods is really finally being embraced, even though there were researchers that recognized this for decades. This broadening makes for better, more socially just, and more fun science. For me, it's the most wonderful time to be an archeologist; it's never been as rewarding, productive, and meaningful as it is now.
What does the word ‘conservation’ mean to you?
Anne: The term conservation and what it means for me has dramatically changed throughout my career. When I started working with Indigenous communities, I came to understand that the whole notion of conservation is a cultural construct. What may be conservation for me, might be different to what conservation means and is practiced by an Indigenous person. In the late 90’s, when I started graduate school, I was taught that conservation was about keeping people out of ecosystems to let them and their species recover and thrive in the absence of the negative impacts of humans. This is done by creating protected areas in the land and sea, free of human intervention. Now I realize, that’s not at all the case. There are many examples of how ecosystems thrive with humans as embedded components within them. The reality is that humans have been interacting with and have been a part of ecosystems for millennia. Conservation is about conserving and maintaining the interactions, that is the relationships between ecosystems, social systems and governance systems. If you think about it that way, then it’s helpful because it is not about precluding humans from a system. That, to me, is a better description of what conservation ought to sustain and it is more equitable and just.
Dana: Where I enter in the discussion is by asking how to fully bring in and recognise Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous People in the conservation discussion. For instance, Anne talked about the conservation ethic to remove people from ecosystems. This can directly affect Indigenous People and their way of life. However, there is an increasing recognition in some sectors of the role that Indigenous People play (or played) in ecosystems. Thus, we are beginning to see Indigenous knowledge recognised in conservation discussions and actions, and as part of this rethinking about what we mean when we talk about conservation. There is a lot that is very positive but a lot that remains to be shaken up and thrown out. Conservation tends to focus on the conservation concerns of the dominant society, for instance, what we consider rare, important or sexy. There needs to be a shift to give Indigenous People a real voice in conservation efforts. By doing this, we are promoting a more socially just science; we’re enabling people to take action in a way that they have forever and that they want to continue to do today.
Which have been your favourite aspects of working with clam gardens?
Dana: I note how much people love clam gardens and it has led to so many discussions with people in the general public and in the scientific community all around the world. It is interesting to me that clam gardens have enabled these discussions. They are magical but so too many other aspects of traditional management systems that I’ve been blessed to work on. In the case of clam gardens, when the tide is low and the clam gardens are uncovered, it’s like a mystery unfolds and then goes away again. But there really is no mystery because they have existed for a long time. Indigenous People knew this but we were not listening to what they were telling us. Now that we are listening a bit better to them, we are finding out there is so much knowledge and history embedded in these ecosystems and these traditional management practices.
Clam garden getting flooded by an incoming tide. Photo by: Anne Salomon
Anne: What is so surprising about clam gardens is how could we have not known they existed for so long? Why did we have to ‘rediscover’ them? When the tide goes out and you recognize one for the first time it is amazing. One of the excitements for me is finding them in places where we didn’t think they existed. I’ll never forget zipping along in a boat at low tide to a destination, glancing back, seeing a clam garden and saying, “Stop the motor!” “Oh my god, there they are!” Bang, in your face! No one has documented them in that area and there they are! They are monumental stone structures, like pyramids, hidden under water until they reveal themselves at low tide. Finding them now, in some ways, it's kind of like an Easter egg hunt. Archaeologists reveal new items as they dig through the sediments. But for ecologists, that, to me, is a real excitement. Being in the field with a group of people and sharing that sense of discovery makes it even better.
What have your experiences as women in research been like?
Anne: I think that there are more women in research and in positions of leadership now. We are seeing this across institutions and that’s going to mean a more inclusive and diverse workforce. It will also mean more innovation because innovation comes from diversity of thought and practice. For too long, our field (marine ecology) has not been very diverse. It has excluded not just women but other marginalized people from all walks of life. Therefore, I think our future is bright with more diversity of voices and thought in science.
Dana: I tend to lead with my heart. Over my career, I’ve made a lot of eyes roll when making some statements and doing actions that have been deemed less ‘’professional’’. It’s such a welcome change today to see that science with a heart is being increasingly embraced. Science of the heart is a feminist science and something that I fully embrace. I feel so glad and privileged to be part of this shift.
