----- Original Message -----
From: Lynn Hunter
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 10:13 PM
Subject: Clam gardens offer fresh aboriginal insights


Clam gardens offer fresh aboriginal insights

Sandra McCulloch
Times Colonist


August 28, 2005


They're almost invisible, even at the lowest tides, in the remote bays and
inlets on the coast.

Only a handful of people know the origins of the mysterious, underwater rock
walls, so far spotted along B.C.'s shoreline. The boulders piled at the low-tide
water line trap sand and shell sediment, and the resulting terraces are the
perfect medium for growing butter clams.

Some say the rediscovery of the clam gardens -- the subject of a documentary
that aired recently on National Geographic Canada -- is changing the perception
that West Coast aboriginals were purely hunter-gatherers.

Judith Williams, who writes books about the coast, says the structures should
prompt a second look at how native culture here operated. "Native culture here
has been called a hunter-gatherer culture. I always felt it insulting,
trivializing their economic activities," said Williams who saw her first clam
garden in 1993.

While researching a book, Williams was urged by a First Nations woman to visit
Waiatt Bay on the east side of Quadra Island. "She said, 'Look at the stone
walls built by my people. They're for growing butter clams.' "

Williams soon realized the rock walls were only visible at a zero tide. "The
visibility is very seldom available when you can see the complete wall. I looked
at them and I was pretty amazed.

"I got in the water and swam along the wall. Its construction was very specific,
not at all casual."

She subsequently found a clam garden 1.6 kilometres in length, and estimates
there are 42 in Waiatt Bay alone.

These are the first man-made features of their kind on the West Coast and much
can be learned from them, said Terry Glavin of Mayne Island, who has also
written on the subject.

The gardens seem to show intensive mariculture -- cultivation of marine
organisms -- on the Island that isn't consistent with typical hunter-gatherer
societies, Glavin said. "This is huge."

The clam gardens have been identified along the coast from as far north as
Prince Rupert and south to Valdes Island in the southern Gulf Islands. Finding
them isn't easy, said Glavin.

"You really do have to poke around a little bit. You only see the walls at the
low, low tides of the year -- they hold up the beach. They create the best
possible conditions for bivalve mollusks to effectively flourish."

In the summer of 1995, marine scientist John Harper was doing routine mapping of
the features of B.C.'s coast when an unnatural symmetry on the seabed caught his
eye. The president of Coastal and Ocean Resources of Sidney had already made
note of thousands of kilometres of the coastline and features like kelp beds and
clam beds for oil-spill contingency planning.

But in the Broughton archipelago near Echo Bay, Harper saw boulder walls at the
low-tide line with more than 100 boulders in "nice narrow rows."

Harper remembers arguing with his peers that the formations couldn't possibly be
natural. "I said I thought they were man-made. Everybody else said, 'No, there
are too many of them.' "

Some formations looked carefully engineered, others like piles of discarded
boulders.

After an archeologist viewed the formations, Harper was told the walls "might"
be man-made. But Harper

wasn't satisfied.

"It was under my skin and I was sure they were man-made features," he said. "I
couldn't explain it. I've gone to school forever and all my training wasn't any
use."

After making inquiries, Harper was directed to Billy Proctor, a logger,
fisherman, author and environmentalist living at Echo Bay. "He said, 'These are
clam gardens.' He was told about them by elders when he was a small boy.

"Not only did he tell me what they were, he said, 'I made my own.' It was pretty
cool to find that out."

Proctor's clam garden had yielded tonnes of clams since it was built in the
1950s, said Harper. "He's got an incredible food factory there. [Clam gardens]
do work -- they are creating clam habitat on an otherwise rocky coastline."

Harper then met Kwakwaka'wakw elder Adam Dick of Kingcome Inlet, who called the
features loh keh weh and estimated there are 350 clam gardens in the Broughton
archipelago.

It's not clear to Harper why knowledge of the clam gardens faded with history.
"I think they fell through the cracks. It's one of those cultural things that
got lost."

When word reached the aboriginal communities that their ancestral clam beds had
been identified, "they were totally buzzed because it's something they lost
touch with," Harper said.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2005

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lynn Hunter,
BC Coordinator,
Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR)
Phone: 250-479-0937

Please visit our website: http://www.farmedanddangerous.org



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