Science combined with a First Nations perspective is the focus of the inaugural Shuswap Salmon Symposium that will be held in conjunction with this year’s dominant Adams River sockeye run.
The two-day conference will begin Sept. 30 with activities at the run, which will be followed by workshops and discussion at Quaaout Lodge.
In a spirit of collaboration, a number of speakers will address issues pertaining to salmon, their habitat and the effects of human activity and climate change on them.
Related: Cultivating collaboration
Dawn Morrison, founder/chair of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (WGIFS) and a member of the Secwepemc Nation, will begin by highlighting Indigenous food and eco-social and spiritual values associated with wild salmon. She will share insights gained in her studies of eco-cultural restoration, as well as over 11 years of mobilizing Indigenous food sovereignty knowledge and networks, will propose a conceptual framework designed to honour wild salmon and the complex system of Indigenous bio-diversity and cultural heritage in the watershed.
In the spirit of deep and meaningful truth and reconciliation, the presentation will provide an overview of the deep systems’ change needed to address the ecological and social crises impacting wild salmon and water.
Related: Salmon Arm farmer makes impassioned plea to protect B.C.’s food supply.
Brian Riddell of the Pacific Salmon Foundation will present “Salmon, Science and Society,” in which he will discuss how western science has progressed in leaps recently, while many salmon issues require more local and holistic knowledge.
“I expect local and traditional knowledge to become more informative than western-based predictions since that knowledge base will be more informative at the scales, over space and time, important to local salmon populations and their habitats,” he says. “It will be this convergence of knowledge that may finally create an effective salmon society necessary to protect and restore Pacific salmon for future generations.”
Related: Honouring, healing wild salmon
Courtney Mason, associate professor and Canada Research Chair, Rural Livelihoods and Sustainable Communities at TRU, will focus on a brief history of park development in Canada, which will overview the impacts on ecosystems and local peoples. For Indigenous communities, the histories of parks and protected areas have often facilitated displacement, cultural loss and food insecurity. In the 21st century, many Indigenous peoples are using new park designations and related legal frameworks to protect their traditional lands, their key ecosystems, and the food sources that they support. Conflict over who makes land use decisions is common between multiple stakeholders, such as natural resource extraction and tourism industries, Indigenous communities, as well as numerous levels of government.
To demonstrate the complexity of these issues and possible ways forward to protect fish and critical watersheds, examples will be drawn from Western Canada and Māori land-use management in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Nettie Wild of Canada Wild Productions will screen Uninterrupted, her film that features Adams River sockeye interwoven with voices and sounds from the Shuswap.
“Interrupted would not have been made without the support of the Little Shuswap Indian Band on whose land we filmed a great deal of our production, and the continued advice and boots-on-the-ground expertise from the Adams River Salmon Society,” says Wild. “During the four years of filming, myself and my crew learned a lot about this magnificent river, its fish and its people.”
Several speakers will share their perspectives and Hannah Wittman, academic director at UBC’s Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, will moderate a panel discussion on salmon management and conservation and necessary changes for a better future.
For a complete agenda and to register for the symposium, go to www.salmonymposium.com.
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