#Haíłzaqv

[old-powwow-days]

Kinship Raven Earrings by Copper Canoe Woman for GINEW

[lmdhawk]

[Image ID: Image one: see description above.

Image two: A screenshot of grey text. " Western science is a curious little sister on this coast, mapping ideas and observations in spaces where Indigenous science has been foundational to kinship-building and ecological balance for millennia. As Indigenous stewards and scientists, we have much we can teach this little sister. Her curiosity, her fresh eyes sometimes show us things in a new light. And often, Western science affirms the stories and knowledgeable that Indigenous peoples, like the Haíłzaqv people, have meticulously tended as living bodies of collective learning since time beofre memory. Taken together, we can sometimes map bigger patterns than either sibling could see alone."

End Image ID]

slash and burn agriculture was practiced by indigenous people throughout the world in pre-industrial society - should we adopt that method just because the civilizations that use it have lasted until modern times? Or should we look to a different method used by another civilization whose primary method of population control was starvation?

Ecology is a scientific field that was developed in the 20th century, as you would know if you did any reading on the topic. Not sure who is fooling you into thinking otherwise, but traditional native practices that may not even be that many generations old and only are recorded in oral tradition should not be compared or given equal time with actual scientific investigation. If you're opposed to science and scientific investigation and instead prefer to listen to fairy tales just because the people who tell them have a different skin color than you, you should probably not be involved in communicating information about plants to others. Also i don't think you're necessarily racist, but I wonder who you've been listening to if you're using words like "colonizer" unironically.

*presses my emergency 'Everyone-Was-Stupid-In-The-Past Fallacy' button that they give you when you become a history major, causing an anvil to fall out of the sky and squish you flat like Wile E. Coyote*

[allthecanadianpolitics]

“I want to stress that we have no idea what we are doing.”

So says ’Cúagilákv Jessie Housty, a self-described “community agitator, mother, land-based educator, indigenist, [and] unapologetically Haíłzaqv” woman — who promptly displays all the hallmarks of someone who knows exactly what she is doing.

What Housty is doing, on the central coast of British Columbia, is agitating, mothering, educating, and staking the ground of her traditional territory. She is a young Indigenous woman, who, with the help of her friends and family, is feeding the growth of her culture and her community.

Which is another way of saying she’s gardening.

In her Haíłzaqv tongue — the name of her Indigenous nation, which, when anglicized, is called Heiltsuk — the garden she tends to is called q̓váx̌ʔás,or “place where something grows.”

Continue Reading.

[queerpyracy]

“I want to stress that we have no idea what we are doing.”

So says ‘Cúagilákv Jessie Housty, a self-described “community agitator, mother, land-based educator, indigenist, [and] unapologetically Haíłzaqv” woman—who promptly displays all the hallmarks of someone who knows exactly what she is doing.

What Housty is doing, in a remote corner of British Columbia, Canada, is agitating, mothering, educating, and staking the ground of her traditional territory. She is a young Indigenous woman, who, with the help of her friends and family, is feeding the growth of her culture and her community.

Which is another way to say she’s gardening.

In her Haíłzaqv tongue—the name of her Indigenous nation, which, when anglicized, is called Heiltsuk—the garden she tends to is called q̓váx̌ʔás,or “place where something grows.” It, in turn, is in a place called K̓vi’aí (“gwee-ay”), a keyhole bay fringed with sandy beaches and lush temperate rainforest—in the wild heart of what’s come to be known as the Great Bear Rainforest.

K̓vi’aí (Koeye, when anglicized) is home to a remarkable Indigenous youth-science and cultural camp, run by the Qqs Projects Society, whose mandate is “to open the eyes of our children to their responsibility as stewards of our land, culture, and resources.”

[Continue Reading]

[dart339]

Decolonizing Ecology

Reference: Decolonizing Ecology by Jade Delisle. https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/decolonizing-ecology 

The case study “Reviving Haíłzaqv fishing technologies” shows how Indigenous knowledge and stewardship towards the land offers solutions against the ecological damage that has been caused by industrialization and land exploitation. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that this knowledge has been passed down from generations in order to keep harmony between human and nature. It is not novel science, it is a knowledge that was acquired through genuine care in a mutual relationship. The over fishing of salmon for mass consumption breaks the beneficial relationship that was established thousands of years ago in this region.