Archaeological investigations and ecological modelling into pre-contact (1792 CE) Tsleil-Waututh stewardship of Burrard Inlet, BC, Canada
Date: Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: AERL 107, 2202 Main Mall.
For millennia, səl̓ilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), a Coast Salish Nation, have been stewards and cultivators of səl̓ilwət (Tsleil-Wat, Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, Canada), their home and traditional and unceded territory. Over the past 200 years, səl̓ilwət has experienced devastating changes from the colonization and settlement of what is now known as the City of Vancouver. səl̓ilwətaɬ stewardship has been increasingly impacted through colonial development, resource extraction, and policies and regulations from all levels of settler government. Industrial pollution and extensive shoreline habitat loss has reduced the overall health of the ecosystem. Settler fisheries have reduced Pacific salmon and forage fish populations and extirpated herring from səl̓ilwət. This work supports səl̓ilwətaɬ data sovereignty and environmental justice, led by səl̓ilwətaɬ experts through a collaborative approach to archaeology, historical ecology, and ecosystem modelling in their territory and at their request. We answer two research questions: 1) how many people could səl̓ilwət have sustained prior to European contact? In other words, what is the maximum carrying capacity of səl̓ilwət as it would have been prior to European contact and following the settlement of Vancouver? and 2) what are the cumulative ecological impacts of select settler-colonial environmental stressors impacting the səl̓ilwət ecosystem over 1750-1980 CE? We employ a historical ecological framework to develop a transdisciplinary approach to answering these questions. We conduct an analysis of zooarchaeological material on Pacific salmon remains from təmtəmíxʷtən (DhRr-6, Tum-tumay-whueton, Belcarra Park) to determine which salmon species is the most commonly harvested. We then reconstruct the pre-contact səl̓ilwətaɬ diet using a transdisciplinary approach combining archaeology, historical and archival records, ecology, and səl̓ilwətaɬ science. We use Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) to build a baseline ecosystem model of səl̓ilwət set in 1750 CE, several decades before First Contact is estimated in 1792 CE. We then test the maximum carrying capacity of the 1750 CE səl̓ilwət ecosystem using five pre-contact səl̓ilwətaɬ population estimates. Finally, we model the cumulative effects of two smallpox waves (1782 and 1862 CE), settler fisheries, the rising settler population, shoreline change and loss, and industrial and commercial pollution and development to establish the change in səl̓ilwət carrying capacity from 1750-1980 CE.
Committee:
External Examiner: Dr. Rick Schulting
University Examiners: Dr. Brian Hunt, Dr. Andrew Martindale
Committee member acting on exam committee: Dr. Camilla Speller
Supervisor: Dr. Villy Christensen
Committee Members: Dr. Camilla Speller, Dr. Jesse Morin, Spencer Taft, Dr. Andrea Reid