🌿Wild cultivation: Traditional Plant Management Systems of NW N.America – Nancy Turner

🌿Wild cultivation: Traditional Plant Management Systems of NW N.America – Nancy Turner

When

13/Feb/2025    
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Where

Hewett Centre Hall, Unitarian Church
949 W 49th Avenue (49th & Oak), Vancouver, BC

Event Type

An in-person presentation by renowned BC ethnobotanist Nancy Turner.  The Botany section offers tea, snacks and socializing at 7pm – people on Zoom will have to provide their own.  Presentation begins at 7:30.

Indigenous agriculturalists of North America are known for their domesticated annual crops such as maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers. Most North American Indigenous Peoples, however, have been described as “Hunter-Gatherers,” with the implication that, in terms of plant foods, they simply randomly harvest the wild berries, greens and roots they encounter. This label scarcely acknowledges the sophisticated techniques and approaches these peoples have often applied to sustain and enhance their plant foods and habitats. These management practices and associated knowledge are as relevant today as in the past. They have excellent potential for application in ecological restoration, food production, permaculture, and biodiversity conservation.
Indigenous plant managers bring their personal knowledge and techniques and practices passed down through generations, to cultivate “wild” species. Their contribution to North America’s landscapes include influencing ecological succession, creating and extending particular habitats, pruning and coppicing trees and shrubs, enriching soils, distributing seeds, and transplanting species from one locale to another. But their influence doesn’t end there. Indigenous Peoples also embrace their own associated cultural institutions, means of monitoring and maintaining productivity, and ways of passing on knowledge to others, including future generations. Their lessons and approaches are often taught through experiential learning, storytelling, ceremony, and art. These practices are currently being documented by botanists and ecologists in conjunction with key elders and scholars from many communities.

Nancy Turner is an ethnobotanist, and a retired Professor, from the University of Victoria here in BC. She has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 50 years, helping to document, retain and promote their botanical/environmental expertise. Her 2-volume award-winning book, Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge (2014; MQUP), integrates her long-term research. She has authored/co-authored/co-edited 30 other books, including: The Earth’s Blanket (2005); “Keeping it Living” (2005); Plants, People and Places (2020); Plants of Haida Gwaii (2021); and Luschiim’s Plants (2021), and over 150 book chapters and papers. She has received a number of awards for her work, including Order of British Columbia (1999) and Order of Canada (2009), and honorary degrees from VIU, UNBC, SFU and UBC.

This presentation will be a hybrid of in-person and online.  On the Monday preceding the event, Nature Vancouver members will receive the Zoom link in the weekly e-News.  The talk will begin at 7:30 pm.  Non-members are welcome and should Email enews@NatureVancouver.ca a few days ahead to register for the link.

 

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