Even 150 Years Later, Lush Forest Gardens Showcase The Value of Native Stewardship
25 APRIL 2021
The way humans manage the environment doesn t have to be destructive. In the western corner of Canada, ecologists have shown forests once tended by First Nations people are healthier and more resilient – even now, 150 years after these ancient custodians were forcibly displaced by colonial settlers.
The study is among the first to compare the Indigenous gardening practices of North America with modern-day land management, and the findings are stark.
In forests touched by recent human activity, researchers found a wood dominated by conifers and hemlocks. Whereas in the forest gardens of the Ts msyen and Coast Salish peoples, the team found a diversity of native fruit and nut trees, including crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherries.
A new study shows that abandoned patches of berry bushes and fruit trees in the hemlock of the region and cedar forests were intentionally planted by native peoples in and surrounding their settlements over 150 years ago
Forest gardens’ show how Native land stewardship can outdo nature
Patches of forest cleared and tended by Indigenous communities but lost to time still show more food bounty for humans and animals than surrounding forests.
ByGabriel Popkin
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For hundreds of years, Indigenous communities in what is now British Columbia cleared small patches amid dense conifer forest. They planted and tended food and medicine-bearing trees and plants sometimes including species from hundreds of miles away to yield a bounty of nuts, fruits, and berries. A wave of European disease devastated Indigenous communities in the late 1700s, and in the 1800s, colonizers displaced the Indigenous people and seized the land. The lush, diverse forest gardens were abandoned and forgotten.
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An ancestral Ts’msyen village site in northwestern British Columbia still harbors a distinct mix of species beneficial to humans at least 150 years after it was planted. Storm Carroll
Pacific Northwest’s ‘forest gardens’ were deliberately planted by Indigenous people
Apr. 22, 2021 , 12:10 PM
For decades, First Nations people in British Columbia knew their ancestral homes villages forcibly emptied in the late 1800s were great places to forage for traditional foods like hazelnuts, crabapples, cranberries, and hawthorn. A new study reveals that isolated patches of fruit trees and berry bushes in the region’s hemlock and cedar forests were deliberately planted by Indigenous peoples in and around their settlements more than 150 years ago. It’s one of the first times such “forest gardens” have been identified outside the tropics, and it shows that people were capable of changing forests in long-lasting, productive ways.
Credit: SFU
A new study by Simon Fraser University historical ecologists finds that Indigenous-managed forests cared for as forest gardens contain more biologically and functionally diverse species than surrounding conifer-dominated forests and create important habitat for animals and pollinators. The findings are published today in
Ecology and Society.
According to researchers, ancient forests were once tended by Ts msyen and Coast Salish peoples living along the north and south Pacific coast. These forest gardens continue to grow at remote archaeological villages on Canada s northwest coast and are composed of native fruit and nut trees and shrubs such as crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherries. Important medicinal plants and root foods like wild ginger and wild rice root grow in the understory layers.