Getting the youth back to the land: Community-based collaborative Archaeology at Tl’ches
Presentation Abstract
Tl’ches is an island group in the Salish Sea near present-day Victoria. As Songhees Nation reserve land, it is an archetypal Cultural Keystone Place that has been inhabited by Lekwungen-speaking families for generations. Ongoing community-based archaeological and ethnoecology research regards this archipelago as an ecosystem shaped by millennia of indigenous resource management and subsistence practices. An ongoing collaborative research project is centered on the community value of “getting the youth back to the land,” and combining community knowledge and priorities with archaeological and historical ecology data and methods. Together we explore indigenous soils, blue camas and spring bank clover root gardens, and a complex of pre-contact and post-contact villages. Importantly, youth are increasingly involved in not just learning, but in contributing to research goals, methods, and practice. Tl’ches offers a complex and robust Lekwungen and environmental record—it is an eco-cultural legacy of sustainable Indigenous inhabitation and management. In effect, it is also simultaneously a place of co-discovery and shared knowledge production.
Session Title
Environmental Education
Conference Track
SSE6: Human-Nature Systems
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2022 : Online)
Document Type
Event
SSEC Identifier
SSE-traditionals-394
Start Date
27-4-2022 11:30 AM
End Date
27-4-2022 1:00 PM
Type of Presentation
Oral
Genre/Form
conference proceedings; presentations (communicative events)
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Songhees First Nation; Traditional ecological knowledge--British Columbia--Pacific Coast; Indians of North America--Ethnobotany--British Columbia--Pacific Coast
Geographic Coverage
Pacific Coast (B.C.)
Rights
Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author's written permission.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Getting the youth back to the land: Community-based collaborative Archaeology at Tl’ches
Tl’ches is an island group in the Salish Sea near present-day Victoria. As Songhees Nation reserve land, it is an archetypal Cultural Keystone Place that has been inhabited by Lekwungen-speaking families for generations. Ongoing community-based archaeological and ethnoecology research regards this archipelago as an ecosystem shaped by millennia of indigenous resource management and subsistence practices. An ongoing collaborative research project is centered on the community value of “getting the youth back to the land,” and combining community knowledge and priorities with archaeological and historical ecology data and methods. Together we explore indigenous soils, blue camas and spring bank clover root gardens, and a complex of pre-contact and post-contact villages. Importantly, youth are increasingly involved in not just learning, but in contributing to research goals, methods, and practice. Tl’ches offers a complex and robust Lekwungen and environmental record—it is an eco-cultural legacy of sustainable Indigenous inhabitation and management. In effect, it is also simultaneously a place of co-discovery and shared knowledge production.
