Keeping It Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America

5 / “A Fine Line Between Two Nations”: Ownership Patterns for Plant Resources among Northwest Coast Indigenous Peoples

Chapter 5 “A Fine Line between Two Nations” Ownership Patterns for Plant Resources among Northwest Coast Indigenous Peoples nancy j. turner, robin smith, and james t. jones Hahuulhi . . . is a word equivalent to, if not a stronger word, than sovereignty. The word is used by hereditary chiefs of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth for aboriginal right, ownership, and territory. It’s a chieftainship’s role to hold that hahuulhi as a sacred right. Now today they call it aboriginal right. . . . They had specific areas. They couldn’t go beyond their own realm of boundary lines because there were other tribes on each side of the nation or territory because there were known places that marked oª territorial area. There is a fine line between two nations. . . . —Ahousaht Hereditary Chief Earl Maquinna George, personal communication to NT, May 10, 1996 Recently, we were discussing concepts of land ownership with Gabe Bartleman , a Saanich (Wsánech) Elder. In our conversation, we commented that the Saanich people once must have “owned” all the land on the Saanich Peninsula, which lies around and north of the present city of Victoria. He corrected us, saying: “No, we didn’t own the land; we just lived on it and used it and looked after it. There’s a diªerence!” Although Gabe Bartleman did not feel that the Euro-Canadian concept of “ownership” was appropriate for describing Saanich land tenure, there were clearly mechanisms for maintaining control and authority over traditional territories. Kevin Paul (Paul et al. 1994: 4), in The Caretakers: The Re-emergence of the Saanich Indian Map, elaborated on this point: “The range of my people’s movements during their summer activities determined the ‘boundary’ of our territory; you would not likely have found other peoples using this land.” These comments suggest that factors such as occupation, control of access, and rights to use are all parts of the ways in which cultural groups define and exercise rights to lands and resources. 151 As suggested by the statements made by Ahousaht Chief Earl Maquinna George and Saanich Elder Gabe Bartleman, quoted above, among the First Peoples of the Northwest Coast, there were and are multiple concepts of land and resource ownership. It is important to note that the sources we utilized in writing this paper are taken from a range of time periods—memories and teachings of contemporary indigenous peoples, and ethnographic descriptions from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Traditional patterns of land and resource ownership have been severely disrupted by European colonization and the associated imposition of new economic and political structures . Still, as the words of contemporary elders show, the traditional concepts have been passed down orally and indicate a very strong correlation with accounts of ownership protocols found in early ethnographic descriptions.1 The various traditional concepts of ownership (as well as their contemporary expressions) range from the general recognition of communal territory defined by seasonal movements, as in the Saanich example, to authority over specific resource sites and locations. In addition, these ownership rights might be held by individuals, by culturally defined kinship groups (such as households, lineages, or clans), or by larger village and ethnic groupings. Also, ownership rights and responsibilities may be limited to certain resources (e.g., fish, clams, berries, roots) at particular locations, without ownership or control by the same authority of other resources at the same location. Imbued in all types of ownership traditions developed by Northwest Coast peoples are concepts of stewardship, in which an individual’s rights to use the land and its resources are contingent upon their sustainable management, and the sharing of resources with other group members. In this chapter, we explore patterns of land and resource ownership on the NorthwestCoast,andreflectonhowthesepatternsinfluenceandareinfluenced by resource management and conservation strategies of Northwest Coast peoples. Following this discussion, we will consider the ways in which European concepts of ownership and property have diªered from and have disrupted traditional patterns of ownership on the Northwest Coast, and the subsequent implications for plant management and conservation. Patterns of Land Tenure and Ownership There is a notable lack of discussion in the ethnographic literature concerning land ownership and stewardship patterns among “hunter-gatherer” societies (Richard Daly, personal communication to NT, 1997; Daly and Vast 2001). This silence has had significant implications for Aboriginal peoples who have entered the era of modern treaty negotiations and land claims. The widespread, though highly erroneous, assumption that indigenous...