Joint Request by Tsartlip First Nation and Pauquachin First Nation for Confidentiality

April 18, 2019

Cindy Parker Via email: ceaa.panelrbt2-commissionrbt2.acee@canada.ca Review Panel Manager Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project c/o Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency 160 Elgin Street, 22nd Floor Ottawa, ON K1A 0H3

Dear Ms. Parker:

Re: Request to submit confidential information to the Panel

On behalf of Tsartlip First Nation (“Tsartlip”) and Pauquachin First Nation (“Pauquachin”), we write to request confidentiality of some information that Tsartlip and Pauquachin wish to file with the Panel in relation to the Project. This request is being made in accordance with a letter of permission dated April 15, 2019 and executed by each of Tsawout First Nation, Tseycum First Nation, Tsartlip and Pauquachin (collectively, the “W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations”).

Description of the confidential information As part of their respective written submissions to the Panel for the public hearing, Tsartlip and Pauquachin filed a report on April 18, 2019 entitled W̱ SÁNEĆ Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project (the “W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS”). The W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS was prepared by Trailmark for the W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations. It is a Project-specific traditional use and occupancy study, and includes as “Appendix A” a series of maps of the traditional use and occupancy sites of the W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations. It is Appendix A that Tsartlip and Pauquachin seek to file confidentially with the Panel.

Why the confidential information is needed by the Review Panel The information contained in Appendix A of the W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS needs to be considered by the Panel as it relates to the use and occupancy of the W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations in the area in and around Roberts Bank and the Marine Shipping Area. The information contained in Appendix A was collected through interviews with Tsartlip and Pauquachin Elders, as well as archival and literature reviews. It provides site specific information, examples of which include archaeological sites, culture history sites, dwelling sites, fishing sites, harvesting sites, hunting sites and travel sites.

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In our view, the Panel's consideration of Appendix A is required for it to complete its responsibilities for the environmental assessment for the Project in accordance with its terms of reference, including:

• consideration of the environmental effects of marine shipping associated with the Project, including malfunctions or accidents and cumulative effects (2.3(a)); • consideration of the potential economic, social, heritage and health effects of the Project, including cumulative effects (2.3(b)); • consideration of information presented by Aboriginal groups regarding the location, extent and exercise of Aboriginal or Treaty rights that may be affected by the Project (3.9(a)); • consideration of information presented by Aboriginal groups relating to potential adverse impacts of the Project on Aboriginal or Treaty rights and related interests, including use of lands and resources, hunting, harvesting, fishing, gathering and other traditional uses of land, alterations to access into areas used by Aboriginal people for traditional uses, and the ability of future generations to pursue traditional activities or lifestyles (3.9(b)); and • consideration of information about the potential seriousness of potential impacts of the Project on the exercise of potential or established Aboriginal rights (3.9(c)).1

While general information about Tsartlip and Pauquachin’s use and occupation is set out in the W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS, Appendix A provides critical information about the specific locations of these activities. As such, Appendix A is critical for informing the Panel's assessment of potential impacts of the Project on Tsartlip and Pauquachin’s Aboriginal and Douglas Treaty rights and interests.

Why confidentiality is required The information in Appendix A is sensitive and confidential in nature. It includes detailed information regarding the location of Pacheedaht fishing and harvesting activities, as well as the locations of sacred sites. While this information should be accessible by the Panel to inform a complete environmental assessment for the Project, it should not be made publically available. Tsartlip and Pauquachin take the position that disclosure of Appendix A would cause specific, direct and substantial harm to the W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations.

This letter is respectfully therefore submitted as a request for the Panel to order that the information contained in Appendix A not be placed on the public registry for the Project under Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 (“CEAA 2012”) subsections 45(4) and (5).2 Specifically, we request the Panel order that, pursuant to ss. 45(4) and (5):

• Appendix A is privileged and must not, without authorization of the W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations, knowingly be or be permitted to be communicated, disclosed or made available by any person who has obtained the evidence, records or other things under CEAA 2012.

1 FINAL Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project – Review Panel Terms of Reference (April 2015): https://www.ceaa- acee.gc.ca/050/documents/p80054/101301E.pdf. 2 S.C. 2012, c. 19, s. 52 {00217799.1} Page 3

We understand that, should the Panel grant our request for such an order, the Panel will require that Tsartlip, Pauquachin, Panel members, the Panel’s Secretariat, and certain individuals designated by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority to sign a Confidentiality Agreement provided by the Panel.

We understand the Panel may use the information in Appendix A to inform its assessment of the potential environmental effects of the Project and in making its recommendations. We expect that should it become necessary for the Panel to refer to confidential information in its Panel report, the Panel will only refer to such information in a general fashion and will not disclose any specific details relating to the confidential information.

Signed

Woodward & Company LLP, Ratcliff & Company LLP, on behalf of Tsartlip First Nation on behalf of Pauquachin First Nation

Eamon Murphy Darren Haines

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April 18, 2019

Panel Manager, Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project 160 Elgin Street, 22nd Floor Via email: ceaa.panelrbt2- Ottawa, ON. K1A 0H3 [email protected]

Attention: Cindy Parker

Dear Ms. Parker:

Re: Tsartlip First Nation and Pauquachin First Nation - W̱ SÁNEĆ Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project

Please find enclosed W̱ SÁNEĆ Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project (the “W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS”), dated April 12, 2019, which is being jointly filed by the Tsartlip First Nation and Pauquachin First Nation. The W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS was referenced by the Tsartlip First Nation in its April 15 written submission (CEAA #1623) and the Pauquachin First Nation in its April 15 written submission (CEAA #1628). The W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS is prefaced by a cover letter dated April 15, 2019, which provides written permission by Tsawout First Nation, Tseycum First Nation, Tsartlip and Pauquachin (collectively, the W̱ SÁNEĆ Nations) to share the W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS.

Please note that we removed Appendix A from the W̱ SÁNEĆ TUS, as it is the subject of a confidentiality request being submitted today by Tsartlip and Pauquachin under separate cover.

Signed

Woodward & Company LLP, Ratcliff & Company LLP, on behalf of Tsartlip First Nation on behalf of Pauquachin First Nation

Eamon Murphy Darren Haines

{00217823.1} April 15, 2019 (

To whom it may concern:

Re : WSANEC Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) Project

Four First Nations of the W_SANEC, those being: 80 ECEN (Pauquachin), STA,UTW_(Tsawout), WJO E P (Tsartlip), and W_Sf EM (Tseycum), (collectively "W_SANEC Nations") commissioned the W_SANEC Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) Project dated April12 2019, a copy of which is attached to this letter (the "TUS"). The TUS has been prepared by Trail mark at the request of the W_5ANEC Nations.

Each First Nation retains the right to assert confidentiality over Appendix A to the TUS, which has been redacted from the attached.

The signatures below confirm that each Nation's representative is duly authorized to provide that Nation's permission for the TUS with Appendix A redacted to be shared with the RBT2 Review Panel and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (the "Port") for purposes of the environmental assessment of RBT2. In addition, the signatures below confirm each Nation's permission for Appendix A to be shared with the RBT2 Review Panel and the Port, subject to the Panel and the Port agreeing to treat Appendix A as confidential information.

On behalf of Pauquachin First Nation On behalf of Tsawout First Nation

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W̱ SÁNEĆ Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project 12 April 2019

Prepared by Trailmark (Peter Evans, PhD; Dave King, Elizabeth Keats, Kristen Killistoff) for Tsawout, Tseycum, Tsartlip, and Pauquachin (W̱ SÁNE Ć Nations)

Confidential: This report and its contents are the exclusive property of the Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, and Tseycum First Nations. No part of this document may be shared under any circumstances without the written permission of the four bands.

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Project Background The Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project would be a new container terminal at Roberts Bank in Delta, proposed by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, doing business as Port Metro Vancouver (PMV). The Project would add an additional three-berth terminal to the existing terminal. Other in-situ project features include an expansion causeway and an expanded tug basin to accommodate a new tug contractor. Port Metro Vancouver submitted an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency on 27 March 2015, followed by a Marine Shipping Addendum on 26 October 2016.

The Project would provide 2.4 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of container capacity. PMV estimates the Project will result in 526 vessel transits a year. PMV predicts that container traffic on the west coast is “forecasted (OSC 2014) to grow to 6.0 million TEUs by 2025 and double to 7.0 million TEUs by 2030.” In 2013, Port Metro Vancouver saw the equivalent of 2.8 million 20-foot container units move through the Marine Shipping Area (MSA). The Project is currently undergoing a federal review by panel under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (2012), and a review under the BC Provincial Environmental Assessment Act.

The Project EIS, as originally submitted, did not make predictions about or otherwise examine likely effects of Project-related shipping Salish Sea outside of the geographic areas within which PMV has care and control. However, as a result of review of the draft terms of reference for the assessment process and panel review, which took place from in the fall of 2014, CEAA later issued updated Terms of Reference for the Project requiring information from PMV on two additional matters:

Marine Shipping: The environmental effects of marine shipping associated with the Project which is beyond the care and control of the proponent and extending to the 12 nautical mile limit of Canada's territorial sea ("marine shipping associated with the Project"), including the environmental effects of malfunctions or accidents and any cumulative environmental effects, the significance of those effects, suggested mitigation measures and the possible requirements of any follow-up program that may be required; and

Provincial Socioeconomic Assessment: The potential economic, social, heritage and health effects of the Project, including cumulative effects, which may not be encompassed by the definition of environmental effects under the CEAA 2012, and practicable means to mitigate such potential adverse effects. (17 April 2015. CEAA to Port Metro Vancouver re: Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project. Review Panel Guidelines

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and Updated Terms of Reference. Note: additional detail on these items is found in sections 17 and 18 respectively of the Guidelines)

On 30 May 2016, the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change established a three- person review panel (the Panel) to lead the environmental assessment of the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project in accordance with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 and the Review Panel’s Terms of Reference.

Executive Summary Both the existing traditional knowledge and use information, and the ethnohistorical literature reviewed, demonstrate that the lands and waters surrounding the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Expansion Project (the Project) are an important setting for the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nations current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes, and the ongoing exercise of Douglas Treaty and other Aboriginal rights. None of the data represented here derives from interviews in which participants were directed to discuss the Project in particular, yet harvesters and knowledge holders identified a variety of traditional uses, practices, customs, and knowledge about the area. Uses include a range of traditional harvesting practices targeting both preferred and ceremonial staples of the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet. Use of traditional sites within and/or exposed to the Project study areas are increasing amongst some W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters due to existing barriers preventing access at other established use sites.

The area surrounding the Project features prominently in ethnohistorical literature about the W̱ SÁNE Ć , and is a core part of their territory, as evidenced by the many former village sites, reefnet locations, place names, and other important places within it, proximate and exposed to aspects of the project. In addition to W̱ SÁNE Ć people’s use and occupancy of the Point Roberts area, there were also W̱ SÁNE Ć villages located along the Fraser. Historical records of the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation’s use and occupation of the Fraser River overlap with those describing the Nation’s presence at Point Roberts. For example, observations in the Fort Langley Journals from the late 1820s record the Saanich people traveling between the salmon fisheries on the Fraser River near Fort Langley, and the W̱ SÁNE Ć reef-netting sites at Point Roberts.

W̱ SÁNE Ć TRADITIONAL MARINE USE & TERRITORY

Prior to the imposition of the Douglas Treaty and the reserve system in the 1850s, the individual W̱ SÁNE Ć Nations did not consider themselves to be separate from one another. The W̱ SÁNE Ć communities on what is now called the Saanich Peninsula were simply

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W̱ SÁNE Ć villages comprising and unified by interconnected families and households (Claxton 2003:7; Elliott 1983:17; Pelkey 2014; Suttles 1974:76). This is important for two reasons here: i) it establishes that W̱ SÁNE Ć ethnographic and ethnohistorical data is likely equally relevant to all of the contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć groups, and ii) it suggests that the marine uses and interests of all W̱ SÁNE Ć people are shared, or at least were not divided historically according to contemporary groupings.

Although they harvested many different species of bird, fish, animal, and plant, the broad outlines of W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round, and by extension its territory, was defined by their pursuit of the five salmon species and steelhead in the straits between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia (Suttles 1974:189; 1987:35-36). W̱ SÁNE Ć families maintained reefnet sites and other fishing and harvesting areas throughout the waters along the salmon’s migration route to the Fraser River (Suttles 1987:35-36). Point Roberts was the largest and most important reef net fishery in the W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, and “most of the reef-net sites at Point Roberts belonged to Straits Salish people from Vancouver Island” (Suttles in Vanden berg & Associates 1997:3). The historic Langley Journals refer repeatedly to a prominent Saanich village at Point Roberts, and often describe W̱ SÁNE Ć visitors to the Fort as being from the village.

The 1987 Saanich Declaration described the W̱ SÁNE Ć territory as follows:

Our Saanich Territorial homelands encompass all our Spiritual Places, medicine and fruit gathering places, fishing stations, hunting and trapping areas, winter and summer homesites, burial sites, meditation places and all our territories in between these places outlines on our territorial map. (Saanich Indian People 1987; in Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:3)

CONTEMPORARY W̱ SÁNE Ć MARINE USE

W̱ SÁ NEĆ Nations relationship with their marine environment continues to be a driving force in W̱ SÁNE Ć social and cultural life. Harvesting, sharing and/or receiving traditional marine resources all lie at the heart of what it means to be W̱ SÁNE Ć . Indeed, the W̱ SÁNEĆ system of sharing marine resources, "what anthropologists would call the system of reciprocity, is as much a part of W̱ SÁNE Ć subsistence economy as the practices of harvesting itself" (Tsawout MUS 2014:70). The following excerpt from the Tsawout 2014 Marine Use Study (MUS) applies equally to the communities of Tsartlip, Tseycum, Pauquachin as well.

On the most basic level, sharing increases food security to members. But it is also more than that: it is a part of Tsawout’s self-actualization, enactment of identity and kinship, and celebration of the good life. It enables access to cherished food from familiar

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places, given and received by equally cherished family members, who in turn enact traditional roles and values by sharing. In this way Tsawout’s fishery is both the expression and the backbone of members’ ȾEX̱ TÁLEṈ, or the sum of the traditions inherited from their ancestors…

Sharing of marine resources is a distinct part of traditional food harvesting, and it is central to how Tsawout asserts and maintain its cultural identity. As our co-researcher and Tsawout community member Floyd Pelkey explained, traditional foods deserve special treatment, and do not fall into the same category of meaning as food from the grocery store, which are not subject to the same system of sharing and reciprocity. Marine foods are considered by Tsawout members to be the antidote to prevalent health issues in the community such as anemia and diabetes; in other words, they are as much medicine as they are food. The specialist knowledge, time, and resources to access marine foods keep W̱ SÁNE Ć communities moving toward building a better, autonomous future. (Tsawout MUS 2014:70-71)

In addition to the active harvesters in W̱ SÁNE Ć communities, who report harvesting resources both for their own households and to share with other households, "the harvesting of large quantities suitable for sharing, community events, and satisfying community demand is concentrated in the hands of a number of superharvesters" (Tsawout MUS 2014:70).

These very active harvesters are often specialists in certain species and have often inherited the role and the traditional knowledge and expertise that accompanies it from parents and grandparents. Some of these harvesters have the designation of “Provider” within the longhouse tradition. For these individuals, harvesting makes up a full or part-time, non-market based commitment. (Tsawout MUS 2014:70)

The scope of a Provider's network and duties can extend well beyond the four W̱ SÁNE Ć communities on the Saanich Peninsula. One Tsawout marine Provider reports harvesting regularly for 10 communities in addition to Tsawout.

There is Tseycum, Cole Bay [Pauquachin], West Saanich [Tsartlip], Songhees, Esquimalt, Sooke, Jordan River, Mill Bay, Duncan and Nanaimo. I had three funerals in one day. And I provided for 2-300 people at each funeral. (Tsawout Participant, MUS 2014:70)

W̱ SÁNE Ć community members who report being unable to harvest their own traditional resources, and unable to acquire them through their networks, indicate that they rely on Providers and the presence of the resources they harvest for funerals and other important community events for access to the staples of the traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć diet.

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MARINE USE PROXIMATE TO THE PROJECT AREA

Analysis of the W̱ SÁNE Ć communities combined data reveals 126 W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesting locations, place names, habitation sites, and other culturally significant areas within the Traditional Marine Use Area (TMUA) for the Project.1 102 of these are salmon fishing locations, several of which span the distance from at least the mouth of the northernmost channel of the Fraser River to at least mouth of its southernmost channel.

The TMUA also includes 2 additional fishing areas for species other than salmon, and three 3 crab fishing areas, including 1 a harvester reports frequenting with his grandfather. Additionally, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report 1 boat anchorage “in the mouth of the Fraser River,” used for netting dogfish in the fall and salmon in the early summer, and 3 travel routes within the TMUA. The fact that there are 102 salmon harvesting sites alone within the Area suggests that there are many more travel routes unrecorded. A Traditional Knowledge site near the southwestern corner of the TMUA, directly between Active Pass and the Project, marks the spot where knowledge-holders report catching and riding the inbound tide all the way to the mouth of the Fraser River. The 8 remaining sites within the TMUA include 2 longhouses, 2 gathering places, and 3 habitation sites all proximate to Tsawwassen ferry terminal, as well as a habitation site at SMOKEĆ on Point Roberts.

More detailed information on contemporary marine use proximate to the Project can be found in section 5.0 Current Use of Marine Resources in the LSA.

MARINE USE PROXIMATE TO & WITHIN THE SHIPPING LANES

Information in Section 6.0 Current/Traditional Use of Marine Resources in the MSA is organized according to the subjects of particular interest to PMV related to W̱ SÁNE Ć use and interests within and proximate to the Marine Shipping Area (MSA), as defined by PMV, and the marine shipping lanes. PMV employs three spatial elements to arrange its marine shipping components effects assessment: a large Marine Shipping Area (MSA) meant to frame the analysis, the shipping lanes for inbound and outbound traffic, and an aboriginal group’s traditional territory, such as it is known by PMV. PMV must understand that the W̱ SÁNE Ć have

1 The Traditional Marine Use Area was developed by combining most of the Project LSAs or LAAs used by the proponent in the Environmental Impact Statement. Although the project team used the spatial boundaries of the EIS to determine the Traditional Marine Use Area, this in no way implies acceptance or approval of the assessment methodology, including its spatial/temporal boundaries, employed by Port Metro Vancouver to identify project Valued Components, indicators, scope, or to determine likely effects and their mitigations, or to characterize residual effects or determine their significance – all of which was determined without input from WSÁNEĆ.

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established Douglas Treaty rights, as well as Aboriginal title and rights, within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, which includes the MSA and shipping lanes.

It should also be noted that further research is required to assess the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past marine use within the MSA, and specifically the implications of increased shipping associated with the RBT2 Project as well as other projects that will increase marine shipping throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć territory.

Terrestrial Vegetation Camas is one of the only examples of terrestrial vegetation for which multiple sources provide specific locational information relating to W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesting practices. Mandarte, D’Arcy, Spiden and Seagull Islands all have camas gathering sites recorded by W̱ SÁNE Ć members (Tsawout MUS 2014:86; Welsh 2002:37). Elliot Sr. (1983:23-24), Claxton and Elliot (1993:11), Pelkey (Interview 2014), and Welsh (2002:37) are all clear that seagull eggs were collected from camas plots and at the same time as camas bulbs. Popular seagull egg gathering locations also included the islands above, as well as Saturna, Pender and Halibut Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:86).

In addition, Welsh (2002) speculates that berries “might have been picked on the mainland in conjunction with the reef locations at Point Roberts,” (Welsh 2002:38) as well as indicating that “several lakes in the San Juan Islands were noted in the ethnographies as being good rush gathering locations” (Welsh 2002:40).

Terrestrial Wildlife Today deer are the primary terrestrial wildlife hunted by W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters. W̱ SÁNE Ć members have discussed the possibility of using deer nets and other traditional forms of deer hunting instead of firearms in order to overcome current safety barriers to hunting in traditional locations where other uses by non-aboriginals have increased.

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters continue to hunt deer on Saturna, Tumbo Island, Pender, Sidney and Darcy Islands are near the shipping lanes, or in some cases exposed to the shipping lane, or exposed to ongoing vessel wake and other effects. To describe the extensiveness of his deer hunting on Mayne Island, one Tsartlip interviewee reported "I think I dropped one on every road." Several hunting areas are also beyond the shipping lanes at Johns and San Juan Islands.

Coastal Birds The surf scoter, or black duck, is a preferred species highly prized by the W̱ SÁNE Ć for sacred and ceremonial use.

The “black duck” is considered a sacred bird by the W̱ SÁNE Ć , and remains a preferred species for ceremonial use today. It is harvested to make the traditional duck soup

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used in the smokehouse, and its feathers are still used in longhouse dances to initiate new dancers. Before a new dancer can touch the floor, the black duck feathers must be laid down to protect them. (Tsawout MUS 2014:60)

The most active duck hunters interviewed for Tsawout's 2014 MUS reported that their sizeable harvests were made at the request of community members, and that their fulfillment of these requests was in keeping with their traditional role as Providers of these ceremonial birds.

W̱ SÁNE Ć Chief Louis Pelkey described a raised duck hunting net stretched 100 feet across the water at such a site between Pole Island in the San Juan Islands, and Henry Island, in a location known as Mosquito Pass. Suttles reports W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters using this site along with another at a location called Pole Pass between Orcas and Crane Islands (Suttles 1973:128).

W̱ S ÁNEĆ Elders report traditional duck harvesting locations at Boat Pass and Mitchell Bay in the San Juan Islands, Saanichton Bay, Saanich Inlet, and in the waters surrounding Sidney, James and D’Arcy Islands (Webster 2000; Tsawout MUS 2014). These duck hunting areas exposed to the shipping lane still in use, on the south side of Saturna Island, at sites south and west of South Pender Island, surrounding Sidney and James Islands, and clustered heavily in Saanichton Bay, and extending south down the east coast of Vancouver Island towards Cordova Bay (Tsawout MUS 2014:113).

Marine Vegetation W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders report that bull kelp is gathered on Sidney Island at the same sites where clams are found, and that marine vegetation is gathered at multiple locations on Pender, Saturna, Moresby, and Ray Islands, as well as on the east side of the MSA on Stuart Island and at 10 Mile Point (Webster 2000:18-19). Gathering sites also include locations “along the southern shores of Saturna, South Pender, Moresby, Rubly, Gooch, Sidney, and James Islands, surrounding Reay, Brethour, Sheep, Domville, Forrest, and the Little Group Islands, and along the east side of Coal Island,” as well as sites on Discovery Island and in the Saanich Inlet (Tsawout MUS 2014:85; Pauquachin MUS 2014:70). Many of these locations are exposed to vessel traffic and wake from the shipping lanes or vessel displacement from the shipping lanes.

Marine Invertebrates It is said in W̱ SÁNE Ć communities and other coastal communities that “when the tide is out, the table is set” (Tsawout MUS 2014:73). This is because throughout their traditional territory the W̱ SÁNE Ć have always been able to gather dietary staples in the form of “beach foods,” as Welsh (2002:38-39) described them, namely shellfish, crabs, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, chitons, and other marine invertebrates. In addition to the cultural and dietary importance of

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bivalves, two of the three main marine foods required for W̱ SÁNE Ć community and longhouse events are crab and sea urchins (Tsawout MUS 2014:74).

Locational data for marine invertebrate harvesting sites includes many areas that are adjacent to the shipping lanes and vessel wake, such as East Point on Saturna Island, Tumbo, South Pender, Moresby, Gooch (including the Cooper and North and South Cod Reefs), Mandarte, Halibut, East Sidney, D’Arcy, and Little D’Arcy Islands, as well as the Beaumont Shoal. Locations requiring transit across shipping lanes are currently used to access marine invertebrates that are not otherwise available, and include Stuart Island and the Bell Beacon at the first turning point in Boundary Pass.

Many W̱ SÁNE Ć marine invertebrate harvesting, and all of Tsawout's preferred marine invertebrate harvesting locations, are within the MSA; many are adjacent to or exposed to the shipping lane. Those that are closer to the Saanich Peninsula have suffered due to erosion, development, pollution and/or species loss, and over regulation.

» Crab

Preferred crab harvesting locations are reported in Saanichton Bay, and surrounding Sidney, James, Mandarte, and Saturna Islands.

» Urchin

In addition to sites inside the shipping lane between Sidney and Henry Islands, and along a reef on the east side of Gooch Island, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters indicate that the single most reliable harvesting location lies on the east of side of the shipping lanes, along the northwest shore of Stuart Island. This appears to be on the east side of the MSA. They also reported that this is the only area where the giant red urchin can be found (Tsawout MUS 2014:83). W̱ SÁNE Ć members indicate that harvesters now need to cross the international border to the San Juan Islands to find urchins, but that such harvesting would require addressing additional barriers including regulations, restrictions, and access to equipment and resources (Pauquchin MUS 2014:68). This is partly because harvesting sites at Swartz bay, Piers Island, Knapp Island, Pym Island, Groudge Island and the collection of small islands around Fernie Island have largely been "fished out" (Pauquchin MUS 2014:68).

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» Bivalves

W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 1366 collection sites for the amalgamated category of clams, mussels and oysters in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley 2002:20). These include clam harvesting locations:

On Tumbo Island, along the south-eastern shores of Saturna Island, on the south-western shore of South Pender Island, and on reefs and beaches surrounding both Little D’Arcy and D’Arcy Islands. Clamming sites were also recorded near the north-eastern tip of Sidney Island, along the north and west sides of James Island, and dotting Saanichton Bay, the Tsawout Spit, and the shoreline immediately south of the Spit. Oyster gathering sites reported were located on Tumbo Island, in the canal between North and South Pender Islands, on the north-western shore of Moresby Island, the south-western tip of James Island, and in Saanichton Bay. (Tsawout MUS 2014:81)

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report concentrated gathering of bivalves at a number of locations, inclduing the shores surrounding Sidney and James Island, the spit at Tsawout, Bare Island, and Island View Beach, Willis point, Saturna Island, Pender Island, D’Arcy and Little D’Arcy Island (Tsawout MUS 2014:81).

W̱ SÁNE Ć members also report that contemporary barriers to harvesting at traditional sites in the Saanich Inlet and around Cole Bay now compell them to use traditional sites on the southern Gulf Islands, including Pender and Saturna (Pauquachin MUS 2014:65).

» Chitons

W̱ SÁNE Ć report current chiton collection sites on the eastern-most tip of Saturna Island, and around Bedwell Harbour on Pender Island. There is general agreement that chitons are now largely unavailable at sites where they were once plentiful and traditionally harvested.

» Octopus

In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported octopus harvesting locations at Cordova and Sidney Channels, Swartz and Saanichton Bays, and Stuart, James, Pender, Salt Spring, Gooch, and the San Juan Islands, as well as at East Point and Monarch Point on Saturna Island (Webster 2000:17). The locations at Stuart and in the San Juan Islands are on the east side of the shipping lanes and on the east side of the MSA.

W̱ SÁNE Ć participants in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study reported 138 octopus harvesting locations at Saanichton Bay, East Point on Saturna Island, southeast of

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Moresby Island, the south sides of Salt Spring, Gooch, Halibut, and D’Arcy Islands, east of Sidney Island, and within the shipping lanes west of San Juan Island just outside Cordova Bay (Tsawout MUS 2014:104).

Current octopus harvesting locations are reported at Gooch Island, west of Sidney, Mandarte and Halibut Islands, in Cordova Channel, and south of Taylor Beach on Saturna Island (Tsawout MUS 2014:104).

Marine Fish

Nearly all W̱ SÁNEĆ marine fishing, and preferred marine fishing, locations are within the MSA for the RBT2 Project. W̱ SÁNE Ć fishing areas overlap with or are adjacent to the shipping lane, from the East Point of Saturna Island and all the way down to Race Rocks. Many concentrated fishing areas are exposed to vessel wake throughout the MSA, as shown at the surrounding waters of South of Sidney, D’Arcy, Little D’Arcy, Mandarte, Halibut, Moresby, South Pender and Saturna Islands, the North and South Cod Reefs and Cooper Reef at Gooch Island, and Arachne Reef. Locations requiring transit across shipping lanes include Stuart Island and the Bell Beacon at the first turning point in Boundary Pass, Henry, and South San Juan Islands.

» Salmon In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported the following salmon harvesting locations: Happy Island in the San Juan Islands; Bedwell Harbour on Pender Island; area from Salt Spring Island across the Strait to the Fraser; Satellite Channel; Dawson Channel; around Pender, James, Piers, and Coal Islands; at Stuart Island; from shore at Saanichton Spit; at Saturna near East Point, and from East Point to Fiddler’s Cove; and in the channel between Moresby and Pender (Tsawout MUS 2014:95).

For the SENĆOŦEN Alliance study in 2002, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters reported 2337 salmon kill sites (Aberley 2002:14-15), including locations on the far side of the Strait of Georgia running from Bowen Island to Point Roberts, at Roberts Banks and Sturgeon Banks, from south of Burrard Inlet at Point Grey to the international border, at Stuart Island, along the south-western side of San Juan Island, and running the length of the international border from southeast of Saturna Island to west of San Juan Island.

» Halibut

Bouchard and Kennedy (1996), stress the importance of halibut fishing throughout the Gulf Islands and at Mayne and Saltspring Islands in particular, and Claxton and Sam (2010) indicate that Mandarte was a halibut fishing location.

In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported lingcod and rockfish harvesting locations in Saanichton Bay, between San Juan and Sidney islands, from Moresby over to Pender,

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around Gooch and Sidney Islands, at East Bay, from East Point to Taylor’s Beach on Saturna Island, in the Straits, near Stuart Island, and on a reef that links Pender and Moresby Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:97).

» Cod and Rockfish

2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study participants reported 1934 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites for an amalgamated category including red snapper, rock cod, and ling cod kill sites (Aberley:17). These included locations off the south sides of Saturna, South Pender, Pender, Moresby, and Sidney Islands, surrounding Sheep, Domville, Forrest, Gooch, Coal, Mandarte, Halibut, and the D’Arcy Islands, the northeast side of Sidney Island, east of Cordova Bay, and west of the Chatham Islands, off the southeast tip of Saturna Island, and near the international border, east and south of the D’Arcy Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:97).

Tsartlip 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance Use and Occupancy Mapping Project participants report harvesting all three fish on all sides of Gooch and D'Arcy Islands. Tsawout MUS participants reports that one of the most important cod harvesting locations lies within shipping lanes, and runs from around D’Arcy Island south to Big Zero and Little Zero Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:97).

EXISTING BARRIERS TO TRADITIONAL MARINE USE

Marine resources remain a preferred and highly valued part of the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet, and an important part of community feasts and events. However, community members report that access to these resources has diminished at high-value harvesting locations throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć territory due in large part to cumulative effects and a number of compounding barriers. Interviewees express concern that the lack of marine staples in the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet is directly related to health problems in W̱ SÁNE Ć communities. Participants fear for the future health of W̱ SÁNE Ć members, which they feel is threatened by lack of access to marine foods (Pauquachin MUS 2014:52).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters indicate they are not satisfied with the amounts of marine resources they are able to obtain, and report relying on others for access to some or all of the traditional foods in their diet. In some cases, the strength of individuals' networks present additional barriers to accessing marine foods. Harvesters report trading within W̱ SÁNE Ć communities, and other First Nations, to obtain a wider variety of marine foods. Other W̱ SÁNE Ć community members rely on family, friends and neighbours to share their harvests, or are forced to purchase marine foods (Pauquachin MUS 2014:52).

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W̱ SÁNE Ć members view the current barriers on their ability to harvest as violations of their freedom to exercise Douglas Treaty and Aboriginal rights, and feel that what remains of traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć marine resources should be protected — especially those resources that may require farther journeys from the main W̱ SÁNE Ć reserves on the Saanich Peninsula. W̱ SÁNE Ć study participants express concern that cumulative effects have so adversely affected the quality of, and access to, their traditional marine foods that the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nations now struggle to sustain their individual physical and community social health.

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Table of Contents

W̱ SÁNEĆ Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project ...... i Project Background ...... ii Executive Summary ...... iii Table of Contents ...... xiv 1.0 Introduction ...... 1 2.0 Methodology ...... 2 3.0 W̱SÁNEĆ Nation Overview ...... 5 4.0 W̱SÁNEĆ Territory ...... 12 5.0 Current Use of Marine Resources in the LSA ...... 27 6.0 Current/Traditional Use of Marine Resources in the MSA ...... 30 7.0 Conclusion ...... 79 8.0 Works Cited ...... 81

APPENDIX A: MAPS (Redacted from Public Report)

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1.0 Introduction The W̱ SÁNE Ć Traditional Use Study of the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) Project provides an overview of existing data on W̱ SÁNE Ć current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes (CEAA 2012) in the Salish Sea coinciding spatially and temporally with the proposed RBT2 Project. It combines existing information (older than the Project description) from the databases of the four W̱ SÁNE Ć First Nations on the Saanich Peninsula -- Tsawout, Tseycum, Tsartlip, and Pauquachin. This data is derived from interviews conducted for previous traditional use studies, recorded oral history, and other primary and secondary sources.

In addition to a summary of current use data relevant to the Project area and marine shipping component, this document first presents an overview of the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation and its traditional marine uses, followed by discussion of the Nation’s use and occupation of Point Roberts and the Fraser River. The information presented throughout this report is consistent with CEAA 2012’s use of the concepts of “current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes,” and “aboriginal traditional knowledge” in the representation of W̱ SÁNE Ć practices, traditions, uses, and exercise of Aboriginal and Douglas Treaty rights, and W̱ SÁNE Ć reliance on marine foods to sustain and cultivate its culture and way of life.

CEAA directs assessors to consider practices, traditions, and customs as integral components to understanding a community’s “current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes” (Technical Guidance for Assessing the Current Use of Lands and Resources for Traditional Purposes under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. Draft for public comment. December 2015):

The current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes, as well as the exercise of treaty rights, associated with an Aboriginal group's practices, traditions or customs, which are part of an Aboriginal group's distinctive culture and fundamental to their social organization and the sustainment of present and future generations. (CEAA 2015)

Practices are defined by CEAA as “a way of doing something that is common, habitual or expected;” tradition as “a custom, opinion or belief handed down primarily orally or by practice;” and custom as “a particular, established way of behaving.”

For the purposes of assessment, CEAA notes that “current use” refers to “how the use of lands and resources may be affected throughout the proposed project's lifecycle (pre-construction,

1

construction, operation, decommissioning and abandonment),” and includes some of the following:

» uses by Aboriginal peoples that are actively being carried out at the time of the assessment;

» uses that are likely to occur in a reasonably foreseeable future provided that they have continuity with traditional practices, traditions or customs;

» uses that may be more difficult to identify at the time of the assessment because they occur at long time intervals or with low frequency;

» uses that may have ceased due to external factors should also be considered if they can reasonably be expected to resume once conditions change. (2015)

Together, uses, practices, customs, and traditions make up what CEAA considers “traditional purposes:” “Traditional purposes typically relates to activities that are integral to a community's way of life and culture, and have continuity with historic practices, customs and traditions of the community” (2015).

The RBT2 Project is entirely within the W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory, both as it is conceived of within an Indigenous understanding of territoriality and as it has been represented by the W̱ SÁNE Ć to external authorities through maps from time to time (Elliot and Poth 1987 Saanich Declaration; Claxton 1987; 2002 Sencoten Alliance; 10 December 2003, 2006 Sencoten Territorial Declaration)

2.0 Methodology This study was prepared by querying the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nations’ traditional knowledge databases to extract spatially relevant marine use data overlapping with the Project and its assessment areas. Initially, separate queries were run using the geometries for each study area, Local Assessment Area (LSA), or Local Study Area (LAA), as identified in the Project EIS, for each assessment subject. Although the project team used the spatial boundaries of the EIS, this in no way implies acceptance or approval of the assessment methodology, including its spatial/temporal boundaries, employed by Port Metro Vancouver to identify project Valued Components, indicators, scope, or to determine likely effects and their mitigations, or to characterize residual effects or determine their significance -- all of which was determined without input from W̱ SÁNE Ć .

Each of the W̱ SÁNE Ć First Nations’ Trailmark databases contains existing interview-based map data collected during previous studies and workshops. All relevant data extracted from these databases has been compiled and is analyzed collectively here to present a snapshot of the existing record of W̱ SÁNE Ć use in the Project area. All of this existing data was collected

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in the course of studying other projects -- none of which were located at Roberts Bank or Point Roberts. While this minimizes the potential for bias, it also increases the likelihood that there are other sources of relevant information in the communities that have yet to be identified.

The W̱ SÁNE Ć First Nations’ databases were queried by tracing the outline of the Roberts Bank Traditional Marine Use Area, and the shipping lanes on each database’s digital map interface. The geometries and use descriptions returned by these searches were saved as .kml files, downloaded and combined to create maps representing the collective traditional uses of the Projects areas by the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation. These results and a selection of qualitative information corresponding to them are also described in text below.

SPATIAL SCOPE

Roberts Bank Traditional Marine Use Area For the purposes of representing results in section 5.0 Current/Traditional Use of Marine Resources in the LSA, a Roberts Bank Traditional Marine Use Area (TMUA) was developed by combining most of the Project LSAs or LAAs used by the proponent in the EIS. A single study area enabled the W̱ SÁNE Ć Project team to summarize the totality of traditional marine use in the Project area and throughout its study and assessment areas.

Project Study Areas, LSA/LAAs Included in the Roberts Bank Traditional Marine Use Area:

» Project Footprint

» Air Quality

» Archeology & Heritage

» Coastal Birds

» Land Use and Water

» Marine Fish

» Marine Invertebrates

» Marine Vegetation & Biofilm

» Crab Fisheries

» Geomorphology

» Geology and Sediment

» Marine Water Quality

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» Upland Noise & Vibration

» Marine Noise & Vibration

» Core Visual Resources

Project Shipping Component and Marine Study Area A small number of the Project's considerably larger LSA/LAAs are not included in the TMUA; instead, results located within the LSA/LAAs for marine mammals, ec-dev and labour, human health, and visual resources are reported in section 6.0 Current/Traditional Use of Marine Resources in the MSA. PMV employs three spatial elements in arranging its marine shipping components effects assessment – a large Marine Shipping Area (MSA) meant to frame the analysis, the shipping lanes for inbound and outbound traffic, and an aboriginal group’s traditional territory – such as it is known by PMV. PMV must understand that the W̱ SÁNE Ć have established Douglas Treaty rights, within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, which includes the MSA, as well as Aboriginal title and rights to W̱ SÁNE Ć territory.

LITERATURE REVIEW

For the literature review component of this report, particular attention was given to writings by members of the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation, including the oral histories and traditional knowledge recorded and published by Elders Dave Elliott Sr. in Saltwater People (1983 with Janet Poth), and Earl Claxton Sr. and Ray Sam in Everything With a Prayer (2010). Both works offer extensive insight into traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, traditional land and marine uses throughout it, as well as oral history and SENĆOŦEN names relating to the sites and resources used by the W̱ SÁNE Ć . The scholarly work of contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć researchers Jack Horne (2012) and Nicholas Claxton (2003;2014) was also carefully considered and found invaluable in contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the practice and unparalleled significance of reef-net fishing to W̱ SÁNE Ć life and culture. In addition, a current graduate student at the University of Victoria, Justin Fritz, provided marine use and ethnohistorical information that her has been gathering with the W̱ SÁNE Ć communities as part of his M.A. dissertation research (Fritz 2016).

Ethnographic sources reviewed by the project team include Wayne Suttles’ doctoral dissertation “The Economic Life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits” (1974), his collected “Coast Salish Essays” (1987), and his contributions to the Smithsonian Institution’s “Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 7: Northwest Coast” (1990); Wilson Duff’s “The Fort Victoria Treaties” (1969), and “The Indian History of British Columbia: The Impact of the White Man” (1997); Michael Kew’s contributions to Suttles’ “Handbook of North American Indians Vol.

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7: Northwest Coast,” namely “Central and Southern Coast Salish Ceremonies Since 1900,” and “History of Coastal British Columbia Since 1846”; as well as Diamond Jenness’ “Faith of a Coast Salish Indian” (1955). The project team also consulted the summaries of existing ethnographic and ethnohistorical information contained in Randy Bouchard and Dorothy Kennedy’s “Traditional Territorial Boundaries of the Saanich Indians,” (1991) and “An Ethnographic Examination of the First Nations’ Land Use of the Area of Potential Selection: Pacific Marine Heritage Legacy” (1996); Don Welsh’s “Archival and Ethnographic Review” (2002) for the SENĆOŦEN Alliance; Alison Davis and Bjorn O. Simonsen’s “Saanich Inlet Study Report on First Nations Consultation,” (1995); Vanden berg & Associates’ “Report on the Saanich People’s Fishing Territory and Practices on the Fraser River” (1997); and the Aboriginal Research Division of the Legal Service Branch in the Ministry of Justice’s “Review of Ethnographic and Historical Sources” (2013).

3.0 W̱ SÁNEĆ Nation Overview The W̱ SÁNE Ć (Saanich) are part of a larger Coast Salish cultural group, who, according to W̱ SÁNE Ć oral history, ethnographic and historical research, and archaeological findings, have occupied the Gulf of Georgia continuously for thousands of years (Claxton 2003:6; Elliott & Poth 1983:5; Suttles 1987:266). Suttles (1990:456), Duff (1997:40-41), and Montler (1986), all classify the W̱ SÁNE Ć as Northern Straits-speakers because they belonged to a group of Coast Salish groups who collectively used and occupied the straits of Juan de Fuca, Haro, Rosario Straits, and Georgia, and who spoke slightly different dialects of a common language, referred to as Northern Straits Salish (Welsh 2002:17).

Dialects of Northern Straits were spoken from Saanich Inlet on Vancouver Island to Point Roberts and Boundary Bay on the mainland coast, and throughout the San Juan and southern Gulf Islands in between (Suttles 1990:456). The dialectical differences between different Northern Straits-speaking groups were sufficiently minor that Suttles (1974) considered them a unified group.

They shared a common language; and they shared a common pattern in their relation to their habitat, a greater adaptation to life on salt-water channels than that of their Salish neighbours, with an emphasis upon reef-netting for sockeye salmon in the channels. (Suttles 1974:61)

Prior to the signing of the North Saanich Treaty in 1852, and the subsequent creation of discrete reserves and “bands” under the Indian Act, the W̱ SÁNE Ć comprised a single group, or knot, of extended families who shared the SENĆOŦEN language and a cultural order that

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revolved around their relations with marine creatures, some terrestrial animals, spirit beings, and with one another.

W̱ SÁNE Ć settlements spanned the San Juan and southern Gulf Islands, from the Peninsula across the Salish Sea to Point Roberts and Boundary Bay, which was referred to as Saanich Bay in the Fort Langley Journals (Maclachlan 1998: entry for July 24, 1827). W̱ SÁNE Ć families — sharing language, cultural order, kinship ties, and participating in close networks of reciprocity — exploited different ecological niches within the W̱ SÁNE Ć world, tailoring their seasonal movements according to the timing of local events. This pattern meant that one family knot could acquire through trade with another family knot what could not be procured locally, an arrangement that recent W̱ SÁNE Ć Marine Use Studies indicate continues to this day.

Although contemporary boundaries have been imposed upon the Northern Straits groups, delineating apparent ownership and control of specific areas, Elliott (1983) suggests that historically the relationship these nations shared with each other, and their traditional harvesting sites on the islands and at Point Roberts and Boundary Bay, was far more fluid.

Their language is related to ours and their ways were very similar. We considered them brothers. We did not know strict boundaries between our brothers and our friends. (Elliot 1983:15)

Colonial administrators and other outsiders always understood the Saanich as constituting a single group, the Saanich Indians. In 1944, however, the names of each of the four bands represented here, as well as the Malahat, were hand-written into the Schedule of Indian Reserves, a change which was made permanent by the 1966 edition. Writing in 1951, Wayne Suttles (1974:76-82) provided a list of 12 different W̱ SÁNE Ć settlement sites throughout this traditional territory, indicating that two of these sites contained multiple named settlements. Neither Suttles nor the anthropologist Wilson Duff, writing later about the number of W̱ SÁNE Ć villages, suggest any meaningful distinctions between these communities, aside from their separate locations and some possible differences in their harvesting locations.

According to the late W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders Earl Claxton Sr. and Ray Sam (2010):

Before the Douglas Treaty and the creation of reserves, the W̱ SÁNE Ć First Nations were all one people who spoke SENĆOŦEN and lived by an ancient, time-proven, strict system of ownership/stewardship for sharing the land, beaches, and sea of the W̱ SÁNE Ć home place. Different families lived in different places throughout the islands, depending on seasonal needs and family alliances. (28)

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elder Dave Elliott Sr. (1983) describes the sense of unity amongst W̱ SÁNE Ć villages and families most succinctly: “we have always been one People. We are W̱ SÁNE Ć . Our separate community sites did not separate us as a People" (17).

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Describing the entire traditional territory as a social continuum “within which the village was only one of several equally important social groupings,” Suttles (1963:513) distinguishes at least six different and coexistent forms of community that organized W̱ SÁNE Ć social relations. He stresses that “the village was certainly not a self-contained social unit. Individual and family ties were as strong between villages as within the village” (Suttles 1963:513). Indeed, Suttles observed that it was a “nondiscrete, nonlocalized, property-holding kin group... or its head, rather than any of the residential groups, that owned the most important ceremonial rights and the most productive natural resources” (1963:213).

Each of the modern W̱ SÁNE Ć communities is descended from a permanent W̱ SÁNE Ć winter settlement that has been occupied continuously since at least the middle of the 19th century (Suttles 1974:76; Ministry of Attorney General 2009:3) and probably much longer. Since the W̱ SÁNE Ć spent no more than three to six months each year sheltered in their winter villages, and the remaining six to nine months on the waters of their traditional territory, families' ties to their former settlements and established harvesting sites would have remained strong (Suttles 1974:76; Tsawout First Nation 2014; Welsh 2002:44).

Present day communities self-identifying as W̱ SÁNE Ć , to one degree or another, include the four core communities of the Saanich Peninsula, Tsawout, Pauquachin, Tsartlip, and Tseycum, as well as Malahat on the western bank of Saanich Inlet, Semiahmoo on the Lower Mainland, and the Lummi in present-day Washington. Each band is a separate entity, but have come together on occasion in recent decades to address shared issues affecting their culture, rights and title, and other territorial interests. The current research is being coordinated by the four Saanich bands acting in concert.

The individual W̱ SÁNE Ć communities did not consider themselves to be separate from one another, but simply different W̱ SÁNE Ć villages comprising interconnected families and households (Claxton 2003:7; Elliott 1983:17; Pelkey 2014; Suttles 1974:76). This is important for two reasons here: i) it establishes that W̱ SÁNE Ć ethnographic and ethnohistorical data is likely equally relevant to all of the contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć groups, and ii) it suggests that the marine uses and interests of all W̱ SÁNE Ć people are shared, or at least were not divided historically according to contemporary groupings. As a literature review conducted by the Ministry of Justice in 2013 focusing on Pauquachin and traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć territory concludes, “the ethnographic information is best treated as applying to all Saanich groups meaning that there is one use and occupancy area rather than four areas associated with the four Saanich groups” (Ministry of Justice 2013:3).

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3.1 THE DOUGLAS TREATY

In February 1852, James Douglas, Chief Factor for the Hudson Bay Company, which had been granted title to Vancouver Island by the British government, brokered two agreements with the W̱ SÁNE Ć (Davis & Simonsen 1995:2; Duff 1969:6, 1997:84-85). Although the documents never use the word “treaty” to describe these agreements, they are conventionally referred to as the “Douglas Treaties,” and have been ruled by the courts to be treaties in effect (Claxton 2003:15; Duff 1969:6). The treaties arbitrarily divide the W̱ SÁNE Ć into North Saanich and South Saanich. This treaty states:

Our understanding of this sale is this that our village sites and enclosed fields are to be kept for our own use, for the use of our children, and for those who may follow after us, and the land shall be properly surveyed hereafter; it is understood however that the land itself with these small exceptions, becomes the entire property of the white people forever, it is also understood that we are at liberty to hunt over the unoccupied lands, and to carry on our fisheries as formerly. (CanLII 1989: Saanichton Marina Ltd. v. Claxton)

W̱ SÁNE Ć oral history places the signing of the Douglas Treaty at a point of escalating tension after the W̱ SÁNE Ć sent an armed party to stop a cedar logging operation in Cadboro Bay and the subsequent shooting of a young First Nation boy by a white farmer (Arnett 1999:36; Elliott 1983:45-47; Foster 1989:632-633; Horne 2012:12; Knighton 2004:12,18-20; Pelkey 2014). It appears that the W̱ SÁNE Ć may have been expecting and even preparing for war when they met with Douglas in 1852 (Arnett 1999:36; Knighton 2004:18-20; Pelkey 2014).

Elder Gabriel Bartleman summarizes W̱ SÁNE Ć oral history on the treaty, stating that “the understanding that [Douglas] gave the people at home was that their way of life was never ever going to be disturbed, that they would always be able to take their food and travel as they did before, that nothing would ever be taken away from them” (Knighton 2004:10). He goes on:

Douglas promised that he could never interfere with their C’ELA’NEN (way of life), that it would never ever be spoiled the way they were living; that they would continue to live the way they always lived. That was the promises made by Douglas. (Knighton 2004:16)

According to W̱ SÁNE Ć researcher Nicholas Claxton, W̱ SÁNE Ć people viewed the arrangement as a peaceful agreement between two nations (Pers. Corr 2016). Elsewhere, he has written that the W̱ SÁNE Ć understood that the treaty would ensure the continuation of their lifestyle and cultural systems, including their land tenure and governance.

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The Douglas treaties explicitly state that those indigenous groups signatory to the treaties have the “liberty to carry on their fisheries as formerly.” If taken literally, those indigenous peoples had a system in place, a system of governance over their fisheries, which indeed formed the core of their traditional societies. These traditional fisheries and their subsequent structures of governance and management should conceivably be still intact today, which is overwhelmingly not the case. To the contrary, indigenous fisheries were not protected as promised. (2003:35)

Courts have upheld the W̱ SÁNE Ć view of their treaty twice. In 1989, the Court of Appeal upheld a lower court decision siding with Tsawout, and ordering to stop a proposed marina for Saanichton Bay, ruling that “The effect of the treaty is to afford to the Indians an independent source of protection of their right to carry on their fisheries as formerly.” (CanLII 1989: Saanichton Marina Ltd. v. Claxton) The Court found that “[C]onstruction of the marina will derogate from the right of the Indians to carry on their fisheries as formerly in the area of Saanichton Bay which is protected by the treaty.” (CanLII 1989: Saanichton Marina Ltd. v. Claxton) In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Tsartlip’s Ivan Morris and Carl Olsen that the Douglas Treaty allows modern Tsartlip people to hunt using traditional methods.

These sentiments are echoed in the following comments made by Pauquachin members during that community's 2014 MUS.

Our treaty says you can hunt and fish as formerly. That’s a pretty big thing because formerly we were able to go any time anywhere. If we had a boat or not, didn’t matter. Now if you have a motor over 9.9 you have to have a license for it. A lot of our people don’t like that, go for their license or spend money to buy a license. And they shouldn’t have to ‘cause our treaty says we don’t. They’re putting a lot of stuff on us. They do bother a lot. Fisheries do patrol. They dump their stuff on them. They tow them in, say we have to tow you in, you’re not using your motor, you don’t have a license. Those little things bother me. I say gee I wish they’d do that to me… I hear about it. It stops them from going. So they’re not going out any more. Or they can’t afford to buy their license or take their license or whatever. (Pauquachin MUS 2014)

Finally, Claxton and Sam (2010) offer the following representative perspective on the provisions and implications of the Douglas Treaty.

We Tsawout people need the full extent of our homeland and home waters to continue our Tsawout fisheries as formerly. Where this is not possible, it means working out agreements and compensation for our irreplaceable losses that were never ceded in legal agreements. (Claxton & Sam 2010:21)

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3.2 THE W̱ SÁNE Ć COMMUNITIES OF THE SAANICH PENINSULA

TSAWOUT FIRST NATION SȾÁUTW ~ “Houses on the hill” (Fritz 2016).

Tsawout First Nation has a total of 906 registered members, with 530 living on Tsawout reserves (INAC 2014, “Tsawout”). The main Tsawout reserve and the First Nation’s largest village is East Saanich IR No. 2, with a population of 1700 people, including 455 Registered Indians. An additional 376 registered Tsawout members live on other reserves, or off reserve altogether (INAC 2014, “Tsawout”; Tsawout First Nation 2016). In addition to East Saanich, Tsawout has smaller reserves on Saturna, Pender and Bare Islands, at the entrance to Fulford Harbour on Saltspring Island, and at the mouth of the Goldstream River on Vancouver Island (INAC 2014, “Tsawout”).

Just as the XWSANETS or Saanich Peninsula derives its name from the image it presented to paddlers approaching from the water, the name SȾÁUTW or Tsawout, meaning “houses on the hill,” describes the settlement as it appeared to paddlers entering Saanichton Bay (Pelkey 2014). The ancestors of the Tsawout First Nation have lived for many centuries on the banks of Saanichton Bay (CanLII 1989: Saanichton Marina Ltd. V. Claxton, para 9). By the middle of the 19th century it was the largest of the settlement sites on the Saanich Peninsula, having become home to most of the families from the villages scattered throughout the islands within traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć territory (Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:18; Claxton & Sam 2010:20; Davis & Simonsen 1995:2; Suttles 1974:76-82).

TSEYCUM FIRST NATION W̱ SIKEM ~ "Place of clay" (Elliott 1990:21).

Tseycum First Nation has 201 members. Unlike the other W̱ SÁNE Ć groups, Tseycum’s largest reserve is not located on the Saanich Peninsula, but on Saturna Island. Also unlike the other W̱ SÁNE Ć groups, the majority of Tseycum’s members, 111, live on other reserves or off- reserve altogether. Tseycum’s second largest reserve is on the Peninsula at Patricia Bay, also known as Union Bay, and is the First Nation’s largest village with a population of 120, including 100 Registered Indians. Tseycum also has reserves at Goldstream, and on Pender and Bare Islands (INAC 2014, “Tseycum”).

According to Jenness (n.d.), some time during the 19th century, “the Saanich abandoned one of their villages near Sidney, on the east side of the peninsula, and moved to Patricia Bay, on the west side where they were less exposed to attack” (3). Additionally, Jenness (n.d.) notes that Patricia Bay was originally called KLANGAN meaning “salty place”, but when the W̱ SÁNE Ć

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families living near Sidney moved to the bay they brought the name of their former home with them, which Jenness records as SAI’KLAM meaning “clay” (3).

TSARTLIP FIRST NATION W̱ JO ȽEȽP ~ “Place of the maple leaves” (Fritz 2016).

Today Tsartlip is the largest of the W̱ SÁNE Ć groups with a registered population of 998; 528 of these members live on Tsartlip reserves, and another 470 live on other reserves or off- reserve altogether. Tsartlip’s biggest reserve is South Saanich, which has a population of 820, including 685 Registered Indian residents. Tsartlip’s second largest reserve is on Mayne Island, with smaller reserves at Goldstream and on Senanus Island (INAC 2014, “Tsartlip”).

Tsartlip was first identified as a W̱ SÁNE Ć village in the mid-1840s, though the precise details and timing of its founding differ according to sources (Bouchard & Kennedy, 1996:20-21). Tsartlip Elders interviewed in the 1970s indicated the settlement was founded “several generations ago,” while Elliott 1983 describes guns in the foundation story it provides, “dating it to the historic period,” as Bouchard and Kennedy (1996:20) suggest. All versions of the Tsartlip founding story are consistent in their description of a woman and her young son, KWELOXWNTHET, fleeing East Saanich following to escape violence perpetrated by northern raiding parties.

The woman wandered with her son throughout the Saanich peninsula until she came to a beautiful place which she named WXTS’HELH (anglicized as "Tsartlip" and translated by Mitchell as 'maple trees'). Here the woman decided to stay and raise her son. Because of this event, the Tsartlip people came to be known as TS’ESINGSET (retranscribed from Mitchell) which means “growing up.” This refers to people who raise themselves up, never to be defeated again. The same term was given by Dave Elliott as "JESESINSET." Elliott said this was the "real name" of the Tsartlip people, and that it means “the people that are growing themselves up.” (Bouchard & Kennedy, 1996:21)

PAUQUACHIN FIRST NATION BOḰOĆEN ~ "Earth bluff" (Elliott 1990:22).

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Pauquachin First Nation is located on Vancouver Island on Cole Bay IR No. 3. At last count 237 of the First Nation’s 398 registered members live on Cole Bay, Pauquachin’s main reserve with the majority of the remaining registered members living off-reserve altogether, and a little less than a quarter of all registered members living on other reserves. In addition to Cole Bay, Pauquachin has a small reserve at the end of Finlayson Arm and the mouth of the Goldstream River, and another at Hatch Point on the west shore of Saanich Inlet (INAC 2014, “Pauquachin”).

4.0 W̱ SÁNEĆ Territory Once, long ago, the ocean’s power was shown to an unsuspecting people. The tides began rising higher and higher than even the oldest people could remember. It became clear to these people that there was something very dangerous about this tide […]

The seawaters continued to rise for several days. Eventually the people needed their canoes. They tied all of their rope together and then to themselves. One end of the rope was tied to an arbutus tree on top of the mountain and when the water stopped rising, the people were left floating in their canoes above the mountain.

It was the raven who appeared to tell them that the flood would soon be over. When the flood waters were going down, a small child noticed the raven circling in, the child began to jump around and cry out in excitement, “NI QENNET TŦE WSÁNEĆ” “Look what is emerging!” Below where the raven had been circling, a piece of land had begun to emerge. The old man pointed down to that place and said, “That is our new home, W̱ SÁNE Ć , and from now on we will be known as the W̱ SÁNE Ć people.” (Horne 2012:8)

The name W̱ SÁNE Ć , or XWSANETS, and also anglicized as Saanich, relates to a visual description of the Saanich Peninsula where the W̱ SÁNE Ć have long maintained what elder Dave Elliott Sr. (1983:5,15) calls the Nation’s headquarters or home base. Bouchard and Kennedy connect the word XWSANETS to SHSANETS, which they assert “is used to describe the mirage above the Saanich Peninsula that is visible when viewed from the water on a summer day… (and) refers generally to the entire Saanich Peninsula” (1991:9). However, as they also note, Eliott has translated XWSANETS to mean both “raised up,” and later to mean “emerging people,” again, both in reference to the image of the Saanich Peninsula as viewed from the water (Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:9; Elliott & Poth 1983:64; Foster 1989:630). This practice of naming places and locations as they would appear to people approaching by canoe is a perfect illustration of how fundamental their traditional marine territory was to the W̱ SÁNE Ć worldview and traditional way of life (Claxton & Sam 2010:5; Pelkey 2014).

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We can call the W̱ SÁN EĆ Peninsula our headquarters because this is where we built permanent winter homes. This is where we stayed in large villages. Our land went east through the San Juan Islands and northeast across Georgia Strait to Boundary Bay... In the summer our families traveled through our territory to fish and gather food. When we traveled we made temporary homes near to places where we were fishing and gathering food... The lands and seas we called our territory were the lands and seas that we traditionally used. (Elliott 1983:5,15)

Prior to about 1850, W̱ SÁNE Ć settlements were distributed throughout their traditional territory, from the Saanich Peninsula, through the San Juan and southern Gulf Islands, to Point Roberts and Boundary Bay. By the middle of the 19th century, however, and due to a variety of factors -- including population declines brought on by diseases associated with European contact, as well as raids by other northern First Nations, and eventually land pre-emptions by white settlers -- most of the families from the island villages relocated to Saanichton Bay, the largest of the settlement sites on the Saanich Peninsula (Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:18; Claxton & Sam 2010:20; Davis & Simonsen 1995:2; Suttles 1974:76-82). They did not abandon their former home sites though, and continued to return to use and occupy them seasonally during their seasonal rounds (Vanden Berg 1997:1; Suttles 1974:76-82).

As Elliott (1983) explains:

Our people didn’t always tell the time by the day, or the moon or the sun. They knew the tide so well they would tell the time, exactly what time of year it was, by the tide that was coming. When the frogs come to life again, when they come out of hibernation you would hear them croaking. That is the reason the first moon of Spring was called WEXES or “frog”. My people had been home all winter. From December through January our people did not travel. Our people came home in the fall as the bad weather began to set in. They came in from their territory to the Saanich Peninsula. The Saanich Peninsula was their home. They went out to work in their territory, to hunt, gather, to fish and do whatever they had to do to get things ready again. (19)

In addition to their seasonal settlements and harvesting sites on the San Juan and southern Gulf Islands, W̱ SÁNE Ć families traveled across the contemporary shipping lanes in the Salish Sea to a settlement at Point Roberts where they owned salmon fishing sites alongside other Straits Salish-speaking first nations (Bouchard & Kennedy 1996:31-32; Vanden berg & Associates 1997:1).

References in the Fort Langley journals from the late 1820s indicate that this village was occupied between the beginning of May and the end of October. During this time, Saanich people were also observed going to the salmon fisheries on the Fraser River near Yale in July,

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and again in September. The Saanich Peninsula villages were abandoned during July and August, according to Jenness. (Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:44)

Although they harvested many different species of bird, fish, animal, and plant, the broad outlines of W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round, and by extension its territory, was defined by their pursuit of the five salmon species and steelhead in the straits between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia (Suttles 1974:189; 1987:35-36). Welsh (2002) summarized the relationship between the salmon runs and W̱ SÁNE Ć territory as follows:

Spring salmon run in: a. May through August, and b. Late September. Sockeye run from July through September. Chum run from October through November. Coho run from November through December. Pinks run from September through October. All of these runs come around S.E. Vancouver Island, work their way through the Islands into Boundary Bay and then into the Fraser River. The traditional territory of the SENĆOŦEN people is primarily composed of water. Courses of the salmon run, through Haro and Rosario Straits and Active Pass and the islands and adjacent mainland. (18)

W̱ SÁNE Ć families maintained reefnet sites and other fishing and harvesting areas throughout the waters along the salmon’s migration route to the Fraser River (Suttles 1987:35-36). In describing the seasonal round of people from Pauquachin and neighbouring communities for a Saanich Inlet Study Report prepared for the B.C. government, Davis and Simonsen write:

A late spring movement of families out of the sheltered waters of Saanich Inlet progressed through the Gulf Islands, where fishing would occur and to Point Roberts, where the Saanich and Malahat would net sockeye and humpback salmon. Returning through San Juan and Gulf Islands throughout August and September, the cycle ended with chum salmon as the least major resource harvested in the Goldstream area from October onward. (1995:2)

The reliance on salmon is so central to all Coast Salish nations, their seasonal rounds and cultures, that they are sometimes called the “salmon people” (Boxberger 2007:57). But the Northern Straits-speakers were unique in the locations and techniques they used to harvest this sacred fish (Vanden berg & Associates 1997:3). Elliott (1983) explains that unlike the rest of their Coast Salish neighbours, the Northern Straits tribes did not have any major rivers within their traditional territory, “and so we went to the sea to get our salmon; that is why we are the salt water people” (16). That is also why the Northern Straits developed their characteristic method of reef net fishing, a specialized open water fishing technique that not only enabled the W̱ SÁNE Ć and other Northern Straits groups to harvest large quantities of salmon, but formed a central part of W̱ SÁNE Ć social and cultural life.

The sockeye, which Elliott (1983:26) suggests is a non-native attempt at the Northern Straits name “ŦEKI,” is by far the most prized of all five salmon species to the Coast Salish people,

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including the W̱ SÁNE Ć . Referring to maps of the sockeye’s migration route, Suttles (1987) observed:

The reef-net locations of the Straits tribes, which I have mapped, fall very neatly along these routes. The reef-net was used by the Straits tribes only; it was their most important fishing device; and it seems to have been used wherever it was possible to take sockeye with it. The close correspondence of language, fishing method, and fish strongly suggests that we have here an ecological niche nicely filled by human beings culturally distinguishable from all others… [Thus] the Straits tribes are the people of the channels leading to the Fraser. (35-36)

Contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć researcher, educator, and fisherman, Dr. Nicholas Claxton (2003:9), asserts that W̱ SÁNE Ć identity and marine harvesting practices, which ordered and powered the W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round, are completely interwoven with the reefnet fishing technology and technique. According to Claxton (2003), reef-net fishing was not just a way of life in the fullest sense of the term, but “what it meant in large part to be a Saanich person” (9).

According to Saanich teachings, it was a fishing technique that was given as a gift from the Salmon People to the Saanich in exchange for a beautiful Saanich princess. It was intended that this fishing technique was given (to) allow the Saanich to prosper in their own lands and waters, and live in harmony with the salmon forever. This fishing technique was more than just a way to catch lots of fish; inherent in it was a model of governance for the Saanich people. (Claxton 2003:9)

One W̱ SÁNE Ć Elder interviewed in 2014 recalled working annually at a reef-net site on Stuart Island on the American side of the Canada-U.S. border during the 1970s. He described traveling with his family, and the other fishermen and their families, to the reef-net site where they would stay in little houses for a month during the summertime sockeye run. Fishing was done with the tides, and involved one man acting as a lookout, standing on a 50-foot ladder in a canoe about 800-feet from shore watching for the fish to enter the reef net: “Watch them go in and then lift it up” (Pauquachin MUS 2014). The participant reported that the reef net was only used to catch sockeye salmon, and that catches were in the range of 400 fish each time. Unlike the traditional reef-net fishery, the captain at this site employed the fishermen, paying them at the end of the fishing season and keeping the catch to sell himself. During their downtime the fishermen were free to catch and smoke or dry their own fish, and the participant noted that he would also harvest octopus for his mother-in-law during these breaks (Pauquachin MUS 2014).

4.1 MAPS AND DECLARATIONS

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The W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation has not produced, as a collective, a map intended to definitively communicate territoriality, including the extent or intensity of its Treaty and Aboriginal title and rights, to outsiders in the cadastral format preferred by governments, although a variety of maps have been produced over the decades (Elliott and Poth 1984 and 1990; 1987 Saanich Declaration (Tsawout, Tsartlip, Pauquachin, Tseycum), Claxton 1987; 2002 Sencoten Alliance (Tsartlip, Tsawout, Pauquachin, Semiahmoo), 10 December 2003, 2006 Sencoten Territorial Declaration (Tsartlip, Tsawout, Pauquachin, Semiahmoo), and the outlines of their territory have been described by expert Elders drawing on traditional knowledge and customary law (eg., Elliott & Poth 1990). As well, early ethnographers such as Boas (1887, 1928) and Suttles (1951, 1990), and a number of scholars and researchers (eg. Bouchard and Kennedy 1991) have weighed-in on the subject, usually as expert opinion solicited by either party to land claim disputes.

The SENĆOŦEN Alliance, a group formed by Semiahmoo, Tsawout, Tsartlip and Pauquachin to collectively respond to the Georgia Straight Crossing Project in 2001-2002 described its claim as together, they “assert claims to aboriginal title and rights over a territory including, but not limited to, the islands in the Strait of Georgia. They assert that they have exclusively used and occupied the Saanich Peninsula, all of the Southern Gulf Islands, Point Roberts, Boundary Bay, and the Lower Fraser River, in the Strait of Georgia, since time immemorial” (Cook v. The Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, 2007 BCSC 1722, Para 144).

The 1987 Saanich Declaration described the W̱ SÁNE Ć territory as follows:

Our Saanich Territorial homelands encompass all our Spiritual Places, medicine and fruit gathering places, fishing stations, hunting and trapping areas, winter and summer homesites, burial sites, meditation places and all our territories in between these places outlines on our territorial map. (Saanich Indian People 1987; in Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:3)

W̱ SÁNE Ć knowledge-holders have referred to the importance of traditional toponyms, or geographical placenames, as a more culturally meaningful method of communicating territoriality. Place names are a kind of traditional geographical knowledge capable of representing the intensity and multiplicity of use associated with long-term occupancy and management. Furthermore, place names as markers of territoriality are able to communicate the fluidity and hybridity of relations with neighbouring groups better than solid lines.

The introduction to Elliott and Poth 1990 states the following:

[S]ince the Saanich People named the places they knew and used, the placenames represent the extent of traditional territory. The placenames are evidence of occupation and use. (Elliott and Poth 1990:19; in Bouchard and Kennedy 1991:4)

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4.2 W̱ SÁNE Ć USE AND OCCUPANCY OF POINT ROBERTS

In their 1997 report on W̱ SÁNE Ć fishing territory, Vanden Berg and Associates refer to the work of multiple anthropologists and ethnographers, including Wilson Duff, Wayne Suttles, Diamond Jenness, and H. G. Barnett, as well as the Fort Langley Journals, to substantiate the W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal occupation of sites in Point Roberts and their use of the waters for salmon fishing.

The Saanich have had a very long association with Point Roberts. According to Jenness, "the Saanich had an immemorial claim to [reef-net] fishing off Point Roberts." The available evidence, both from the 1827-1830 Fort Langley journals and from affidavits submitted in the 1895 U.S. et al. v Alaska Packing Association et al. litigation (eg. Old Polen 1895), indicates that the Saanich predominated those Natives camping and fishing in the Point Roberts vicinity from the 1820s through until about 1894, after which time a newly-constructed cannery's operations prevented reef-net fishing here. (Bouchard & Kennedy 1996:31-32)

Point Roberts was the largest and most important reef net fishery in the W̱ SÁNE Ć territory. “Most of the reef-net sites at Point Roberts belonged to Straits Salish people from Vancouver Island” according to Suttles (Vanden berg & Associates 1997:3), and the Fort Langley journals put the W̱ SÁNE Ć “at Point Roberts in early summer, locating a Saanich village there” (Welsh 2002:51). Journal entries from the late 1820s indicate that the Point Roberts village was occupied between the beginning of May and the end of October. During this time, Saanich people were also observed going to the salmon fisheries on the Fraser River near Yale in July, and again in September (McMillan and MacDonald 1827-1830:17,25). Meanwhile, the W̱ SÁNE Ć villages on the Saanich Peninsula were abandoned during July and August, according to Jenness (Bouchard & Kennedy 1991:44).

In July 1841, a member of the US Exploring Expedition identified the area around Point Roberts and the Fraser mouth as being “inhabited by the Nanitch [Saanich] tribe” (Wilkes 1845:IV:483; in Bouchard and Kennedy 1991: 10). Saanich people accompanied the expedition from Birch Bay to Point Roberts, indicating that they possessed extensive traditional knowledge of the area. In fact, the first reference to the W̱ SÁNE Ć , or "Sanch" for "Saanich," in the Fort Langley journals – less than a month after George Barnston began keeping the record in July 1827 – suggests an earlier name for Birch Bay that indicates the depth and duration of the W̱ SÁNE Ć connection in the area.

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Tuesday [July] 24th. At Half past ten in the forenoon there arose a light Breeze from the South west, and we got under weigh. At noon we passed a small village on the south side where there are two trees marked HBC, which was done by the Party under Mr. McMillan in 1824-25. The neck of Land between Birch Bay (or rather Sanch {Saanich} Bay {Boundary Bay}) and this part of the River is not above a League across. At 1/ 2 past one we were abreast of the north Channel or Fork which runs into the Gulf not far from Point Grey, and at 2 passed a very small village on the south side. We were opposite the Quoitle (Kwantlen) or Pitt's River” about 5 RM. and at 1/2 past 7 P.M. anchored close to the north Bank Half a mile above Pine Island. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:26)

The introduction to the Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30 (1998), refers to the brig William and Ann having been "anchored near a Saanich village at Point Roberts," (10) two years earlier in the summer of 1825, and describes trader Alexander McKenzie's account of his encounter with "Saanich Indians" at the mouth of Fraser River shortly thereafter.

The William and Ann prepared to return to Fort Vancouver. Among a number of Saanich Indians alongside was Chief Whotleakenum, who, McKenzie was told, had been presented with a chief's clothing by the McMillan party though he did not have the outfit with him. McKenzie described him as "a good Natured old man." He gave Whoteleakenum a note that described him and was intended as a letter of introduction to any of the Hudson's Bay Company people. Whoteleakenum wished to be considered distinct from the Cowichan, who he said "had no business with the Quotlin [Fraser] River." (12)

Vandenberg (1998) also refers the botanist aboard the HBC vessel William and Ann, Dr. John Scouler, meeting with a group he called the “Saugtch Indians”2 in August 1825, near Birch Bay, south of Boundary Bay, who were in the midst of moving from their summer home to their winter village. Scouler recorded the location of the Saanich summer village at the base of a white cliff, near the water. Perhaps these are the same cliffs referred to in the W̱ SÁNE Ć name for the reef net site at Robert’s Bank, which is SMOKEĆ, meaning “Bluffs” (Elliott 1990:36).

The Journals refer repeatedly to the Saanich village at Point Roberts, and often describe W̱ SÁNE Ć visitors to the Fort as being from the village. All three journal keepers record some of the names of individual W̱ SÁNE Ć visitors, including: "an Old Sanch Indian of the name of Yokum (42); "Huskennum [Awskinnum] the Sanatch Chief" (71); "one of the Sandish (Saanich) Indians — Anskinnum (Chinuck)" (94); and "Scheenuck the Sandish Chief" (111). According to

2 Wilson Duff (and others) identified several spellings of W̱ SÁNE Ć in the Fort Langley Journals, including Sanch, Sauch, Sanatch, Sonese, Sandish (in Vandenberg 1998: 8).

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the entries, these visitors often came to trade furs or deer meat, and to share news from the village site at Point Roberts.

Wednesday [August] 13th. […] Huskennum [Awskinnum] the Sanatch Chief paid us a visit. He brought nothing — but says he gave his Skins to Joshia Some time ago. He says Salmon is plentiful about Point Roberts. (McMillan in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:71)

On August 25, 1827, Barnston provides a generous description of the W̱ SÁNE Ć traveling en masse up the Fraser River from Point Roberts to their fishing sites on the Salmon River, a tributary of the Fraser. The entry speaks to both the size and substantiality of the W̱ SÁNE Ć presence at both locations.

Saturday [August] 25th. […] Families from the Sanch Village at Point Roberts have been passing in continued succession during the day all bound for the Salmon fishery. Their Luggage as well as that of the other tribes is transported up and down the River on Rafts, which are formed by laying Boards across two or more Canoes Kept 8, 10 or 12 feet asunder. They have also among them large War canoes procured from Indians to the northward, which are used by them as Luggage Boats, and which contain a great Bulk of Furniture & Baggage. The Size of some of these craft is fully 50 feet in length and 6 to 7 ft. across the middle.

Point Roberts was a remarkable reef-net fishing ground for multiple reasons. It was the largest in the entire area, it was useable for longer periods of time each day – reef-netting was usually limited to three hours a day by the tides – and it “was a striking example of the cooperation possible between people from different households and different communities,” (Suttles 1974: 545) including the W̱ SÁNE Ć , Semiahmoo and Lummi (Suttles 1974: 258-259; Welsh 2002:25). Welsh (2002) describes how this cooperation Suttles refers to extended beyond reef-netting at Point Roberts:

Southeastern Vancouver Island is poor in salmon streams but rich in camas. Semiahmoo, conversely is rich in salmon and poor in camas. The Saanich have halibut banks while the Semiahmoo have sturgeon. The mainland, around Boundary and Birch Bays has seven salmon streams and the Fraser River, as well as elk and bears. The Islands have deer and camas. Various rich reef locations are located through the territory. Several good duck net locations were located strategically. All of these resources were seasonally exploited and provided the motivation for internal movements within the territory. (17)

Suttles says that the W̱ SÁNE Ć had their reefnet locations “on the eastern shores of Haro Strait and of Swanson Channel and at Point Roberts” (195). He makes reference to each W̱ SÁNE Ć village site-group having rights at Point Roberts, such that it is reasonable to conclude that all

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of the W̱ SÁNE Ć village site-groups are related to Point Roberts. The reef-nets at Point Roberts and their associated summer villages existed to exploit salmon runs that moved through the area en route to the Fraser River (See Suttles 1974, map 8, “Reefnet Locations and the Probable Course of the Sockeye,” 154).

Suttles (1974) points out that there were “several locations side by side” at Point Roberts (167). Point Roberts represented the northern boundary of the Saanich world, and the northern boundary of the reefnet technology used by Straits Salish, which was bounded on the southwestern side by Beecher Bay. The Point Roberts sites played prominently in the social and ritual system attached to reef-netting, according to Suttles (1974:156).

Kennedy and Bouchard (1991) report that an examination conducted by Easton in 1985 revealed that Suttles assertions concerning the ownership of reef-net sites were correct, and that “ownership can best be treated as if it were individual, recognizing that the owner may have felt obligations towards kinsmen who might be co-heirs but not co-owners” (42). Suttles (1974) also attempted to explain the diversity at Point Roberts as a function of ownership and inheritance: “It is likely that originally only Semiahmoo and Saanich owned locations at Point Roberts and that the ownership of locations has been passed on to members of other groups through marriages” (213). According to Suttles, non-aboriginal squatters drove the reef-netters out of the original site at Point Roberts, and they re-established on the next point north, at Goodfellows Point.

Some contemporary Coast Salish scholars reject the notion that individuals owned reef-net sites, stating that these sites belonged to families, or more accurately, that families belonged to their sites, and appointed captains to coordinate and manage the fishing operations (Claxton 2003:26; 2014; Naxaxalhts’i 2007:96). Regardless of whether the individual responsible for each reef-net operation was an owner or a manager, the relationship between this captain and his reef-net crew was cooperative and essential to providing salmon for the families of all of those involved.

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MAP I: HISTORICAL MAP TRANSPOSED ON MODERN MARINE CHART “TRAP NETS AND TRAP NET LOCATIONS AT POINT ROBERTS, WASHINGTON” SHOWING (IN BLUE)

Map ii: Close-up: “Trap Nets and Trap Net Locations at Point Roberts, Washington” showing (in blue) “Indian Reef Net Ledge” location, named SMOKEĆ in SENĆOŦEN.

Although, the W̱ SÁNE Ć claim to traditional use of the Point Roberts reef net fishery is immemorial (Suttles 1974: 258-259; Vanden Berg & Associates 1997:5; Welsh 2002:25) the

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technique is not currently practiced by the W̱ SÁNE Ć at Point Roberts, due to several primary reasons, principally the closure of the fishery by the Canadian and then US governments, aggression from non-Aboriginal fishers, and ongoing difficulty with DFO.

Fritz (2016) describes some of the impacts of the imposition of the international border between Canada and the United States on the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation. In the first place, Fritz states, “the Canada-US border alienated Coast Salish communities in both countries from their extensive kin networks and large portions of their territories,” (Fritz 2016) and over time it led to the development of barriers that undermined W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesting practices and social networks.

In 1872, the westernmost portion of the International Boundary between Canada and the United States was established in the Salish Sea, separating the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation from other Coast Salish nations now residing in Washington state... It was not until the mid-twentieth century, however, that the border significantly affected Indigenous peoples’ ability to fish.

In the early-twentieth century, Canadian settlers operating commercial fisheries outcompeted and actively excluded Coast Salish peoples from the Salish Sea, overfishing the local salmon population in the process. Similarly, settlers in the US placed fish traps immediately adjacent to the productive Lummi reef net fisheries, effectively blocking their access to the salmon.

In 1916, the reef net fishery was prohibited in Canada because they were deemed to be “traps” (Poth 1990 in Claxton 2003). The W̱ SÁNE Ć , having long established reef net stations on both sides of the border, moved to concentrate efforts in the waters off Roberts Bank and the areas around the San Juan Islands. As Nick Claxton writes, “In those waters, my father and my uncles fished the reef net up to about 1950 when the American authorities outlawed it.”

“With these restrictive measures,” Fritz writes, “reef net fishing was criminalized and curtailed, and fewer and fewer members of the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation were able to share its practice and associated knowledge with their descendants" (Fritz 2016).

The imposition of barriers and the resulting disuse of the reef net fishery at Point Roberts, in no way signify the resignation of the W̱ SÁNE Ć people’s well established claim to these fishing grounds contiguous with the Project. Indeed, W̱ SÁNE Ć have resisted the closure of the reefnet fishery for decades. In 1991 Kennedy and Bouchard (1991) reported:

Although reef net fishing was long ago prohibited by law in Canadian waters, the Saanich continues to protest this restriction of their traditional method of fishing. It was reported that as recently as 1960, Saanich Indians from Tsawout made “an application [to Ottawa] for the restoration of these [reef-netting] rights.” (Wright 1960 in Kennedy and Bouchard 1991:58)

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In recent years – led by Dr. Claxton, Gord Elliott, and other young W̱ SÁNE Ć who grew up in the traditions, if not the practice, of reef-netting – have begun to revive the fishery. Members of the W̱ SÁNE Ć communities collaborated with Parks Canada on a reef netting exercise at Pender Island in 2014, and just this summer (2016) the W̱ SÁNE Ć people celebrated a commemoration of the reef net technology with their Lummi relatives at San Juan Islands. W̱ SÁNE Ć are actively planning reef net setting, and have created gear and are fundraising to get better weights and access to boats and other equipment.

4.3 W̱ SÁNE Ć USE AND OCCUPANCY OF THE FRASER RIVER

In addition to W̱ SÁNE Ć people’s use and occupancy of the Point Roberts area, there were also villages located along the Fraser River, or ŚNEWIȽ as it is called in SEŃCOŦEN (Fritz 2016). As pointed out by Vandenberg’s (1998) review of the ethnographic and archival record on Vancouver Island peoples’ use of the Fraser: “the Saanich had one site at Point Roberts and another on the “Little Portage River” or Salmon River where they used to catch fish,” as well as three sites along the Fraser River itself (Vandenberg 1998:19). Historical records of the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation’s use and occupation of the Fraser River overlap with those describing the Nation’s presence at Point Roberts. For example, observations in the Fort Langley Journals from the late 1820s record the Saanich people traveling between the salmon fisheries on the Fraser River near Fort Langley, and the W̱ SÁNE Ć reef-netting sites at Point Roberts.

On August 25, 1827, George Barnston provides a generous description of the W̱ SÁNE Ć making this journey en masse, which offers indications of both the size and substantiality of the W̱ SÁNE Ć presence in the area.

Saturday 25th. […] Families from the Sanch Village at Point Roberts have been passing in continued succession during the day all bound for the Salmon fishery. Their Luggage as well as that of the other tribes is transported up and down the River on Rafts, which are formed by laying Boards across two or more Canoes Kept 8, 10 or 12 feet asunder. They have also among them large War canoes procured from Indians to the northward, which are used by them as Luggage Boats, and which contain a great Bulk of Furniture & Baggage. The Size of some of these craft is fully 50 feet in length and 6 to 7 ft. across the middle. On the Top of the Stern which is flattish there is in general carved out the resemblance of the face of a human Being, and the Stern [bow] rises to the height of at least 7 feet from the water. Whether this latter be intended merely for ornament or not it is impossible to say, but it gives the Canoe an imposing appearance, and must afford to the crew a tolerable defence against arrows when they are advancing straight against an enemy. The Sides of the Bow and Stern are very

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fancifully ornamented with circles and other regular figures which are laid on with various coloured Paints or Clay. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:34)

Later, in the fall of the same year, Barnston comments regularly on the W̱ SÁNE Ć people's gradual migration back down the river, and on to their winter village sites.

Monday 1st October. […] the Sanch Indians are also leaving our neighbourhood to make the best of their way to their winter quarters. […]

Tuesday [October] 2d. Indians of the Sanch Village are still passing down the River. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:39)

Saturday [October] 6th. A little Deer's meat was purchased today from Sanch Indians who have their Lodges not far distant up the little Portage River [Salmon River]. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:40)

Friday [October] 12th. We are occasionally visited by straggling Indians, who still bring us fresh fish and a little venison. There are a few of the Sanch Village Indians encamped not far from us upon the little Portage River, where they take a quantity of Salmon on wears [weirs] by barring up part of the River. They also kill a few Beaver in wooden Traps constructed in the same manner as those for Martens, and contrive to secure a Red Deer now and then in a Pitfall. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:41)

Sunday [October] 21st. An Old Sanch Indian of the name of Yokum visited us today, and purchased a Blanket for four Otters and 21 Beaver Skin. Our Sanch neighbour from the Portage River who is named Chaheinook was also at the wharf for a short time, but had nothing to trade. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:42)

Wednesday [November] 14th. […] Chaheinook the lndian who has been so long encamped in our neighbourhood paid us his last visit; he says he goes off tomorrow to join his countrymen. (Barnston in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:45)

The following year the journal is taken up by George McMillan, who also provides accounts of the "Sanatch" for "Saanich," presence on the river and throughout the area.

Tuesday [July] 29th [1828]. Fine day till about noon when it Came on rain and very loud Claps of Thunder. Indians about all day — Several families of Whooms and Musquaims as well as Sanatch passed up. (McMillan in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:70)

Wednesday [August] 13th. […] Huskennum [Awskinnum] the Sanatch Chief paid us a visit. He brought nothing — but says he gave his Skins to Joshia Some time ago. He says Salmon is plentiful about Point Roberts. (McMillan in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:71)

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Interestingly, Archibald McDonald, keeping the journal in 1829, records visits from "Sandish" traders in January of that year. These visits fall well outside of the traditional salmon fishing season, and suggest that some W̱ SÁNE Ć people may have either lived year round at Point Roberts or the Fraser River, or at least visited and used the area for purposes beyond and unrelated to the salmon fishery.

Saturday [January] 17th [1829]. One of the Sandish (Saanich) Indians — Anskinnum (Chinuck) — Came in with 18 Skins and is accompanied by an Indian from the Southern part of Puget's Sound who has got about half a dozen. (McDonald in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:93)

Monday [January] 26th. One of the Sandish Indians Came in with 20 Skins he procured at the Scadschads, from whence he is but just returned and Says there is Beaver in that quarter, but that they wish to keep them for larger Blankets than ours which the Ships promise to bring them Soon. (McDonald in The Fort Langley Journals, 1827-30:94)

In his detailed census of First Nations present at Fort Langley, James Douglas recorded “12 Saanich heads of families were among the Indians at the Fraser River” (Fritz 2016). Walter Colquoun Grant, writing in 1857, also recorded the W̱ SÁNE Ć presence in the area.

The Cowitchins and Sanetch both have fishing grounds at the mouth of the Frazer River, on the opposite side of the Gulf of Georgia. To these fishing stations they emigrate in the salmon season, with their wives and families and all their goods and chattels, leaving their villages tenanted by merely a few old dogs. (Fritz 2016)

Nine years later in 1866, Captain Charles Wilson of the British Boundary Commission, and Jenness again in 1935, both also make reference to the W̱ SÁNE Ć use of settlement sites at the mouth of the Fraser (Fritz 2016).

4.4 CONTEMPORARY W̱ SÁNE Ć TRADITIONAL MARINE USE

In its 2014 MUS, Tsawout described the cultural context for the continued reliance on traditional marine use by the W̱ SÁNE Ć .

[W̱ SÁNEĆ] social and cultural life is driven by the community’s relationship with the marine environment. The system of sharing resources—what anthropologists would call the system of reciprocity — is as much a part of W̱ SÁNE Ć subsistence economy as the practices of harvesting itself. On the most basic level, sharing increases food security to members. But it is also more than that: it is a part of Tsawout’s self- actualization, enactment of identity and kinship, and celebration of the good life. It enables access to cherished food from familiar places, given and received by equally

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cherished family members, who in turn enact traditional roles and values by sharing. In this way Tsawout’s fishery is both the expression and the backbone of members’ ȾEX̱ TÁLEṈ, or the sum of the traditions inherited from their ancestors.

Sharing, as Wayne Suttles (1987) observed, takes many different forms beyond the distribution of a catch, including the sharing of access to techniques and resource locations, which are also governed by varying degrees of access restrictions. Suttles (1987) observes that within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory “abundance has always consisted of certain things at certain times and always with some possibility of failure."

Historically, year to year fluctuations in species numbers, and differences in access to resources between communities put a premium on inter-community cooperation in order to establish security of access to traditional food. Today these factors are overlapped with additional restrictions to harvesting, and new, adapted forms of distribution. Factors such as the cost of basic equipment, including boats and traps, and ability to take time away from wage-labour jobs, highlight the importance of sharing on a more immediate, inter-community level.

Sharing of marine resources is a distinct part of traditional food harvesting, and it is central to how Tsawout asserts and maintain its cultural identity. As our co-researcher and Tsawout community member Floyd Pelkey explained, traditional foods deserve special treatment, and do not fall into the same category of meaning as food from the grocery store, which are not subject to the same system of sharing and reciprocity. Marine foods are considered by Tsawout members to be the antidote to prevalent health issues in the community such as anemia and diabetes; in other words, they are as much medicine as they are food. The specialist knowledge, time, and resources to access marine foods keep W̱ SÁNE Ć communities moving toward building a better, autonomous future. (Tsawout MUS 2014:70-71)

Marine resources remain a preferred and highly valued part of the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet, and an important part of community feasts and events. However, community members report that access to these resources has diminished at high-value harvesting locations throughout W̱ SÁ NEĆ territory due in large part to cumulative effects and a number of compounding barriers. In their 2014 MUS, Pauquachin residents expressed concern that the lack of marine staples in the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet is directly related to health problems in W̱ SÁNE Ć communities. Participants fear for the future health of W̱ SÁNE Ć members, which they feel is threatened by lack of access to marine foods (Pauquachin MUS 2014:52).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters indicate they are not satisfied with the amounts of marine resources they are able to obtain, and report relying on others for access to some or all of the traditional foods in their diet. In some cases then, the strength of individuals' networks present additional

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barriers to accessing marine foods. Harvesters report trading within W̱ SÁNE Ć communities, and other First Nations, to obtain a wider variety of marine foods. Other W̱ SÁNE Ć community members rely on family, friends and neighbours to share their harvests, or are forced to purchase marine foods (Pauquachin MUS 2014:52)

5.0 Current Use of Marine Resources in the LSA For the purposes of representing results, a Roberts Bank Traditional Marine Use Area (TMUA) was developed by combining most of the Project LSAs or LAAs used by the proponent in the Environmental Impact Statement. Although the project team used the spatial boundaries of the EIS to determine the Traditional Marine Use Area, this in no way implies acceptance or approval of the assessment methodology, including its spatial/temporal boundaries, employed by Port Metro Vancouver to identify project Valued Components, indicators, scope, or to determine likely effects and their mitigations, or to characterize residual effects or determine their significance – all of which was determined without input from WSÁNEĆ.

5.1 SUMMARY OF EXISTING DATA WITHIN THE TMU AREA

The existing data contained in the combined W̱ SÁNE Ć Trailmark databases reveals a total of 126 harvesting locations, place names, habitation sites, and other culturally significant areas within the Traditional Marine Use Area. 102 of these are salmon fishing locations, several of which span the distance from at least the mouth of the northernmost channel of the Fraser River to at least mouth of its southernmost channel. Analysis of comments from W̱ SÁNE Ć Traditional Use Study participants contained in the communities' Trailmark databases describe trawling, seining, trolling and jigging for salmon throughout the TMU area during their lifetimes: “back and forth, back and forth, from Sturgeon Bank down to Roberts Bank” (TUS2). They also report hearing stories about this area from older family members. One young harvester in particular reports, “I still go to all these places; my grandpa taught me how to utilize [them]” (TUS331). Some individuals who grew up fishing at Robert’s Bank describe charting a route with friends and family every salmon run from French Creek to Pender and Mayne and then across the Strait to Robert’s Bank and the mouth of the Fraser (TUS331).

The 102 salmon fishing sites and areas within the Traditional Marine Use Area also include at least three (3) named fishing sites reported by multiple participants, and a total of six (6) place name sites/areas altogether (Note: there are 41 SENĆOŦEN toponyms or place names recorded for the area including all of Boundary Bay which are not shown in the accompanying map). The three named fishing sites reported are ĆELȽTENEM or Boundary Bay, SMOKEĆ, which is a

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SWÁLET (reef net) at Point Roberts, and ŚNEWIȽ or the Fraser River (Fritz 2016). Fritz (2016) notes that ŚNEWIȽ refers to the entire Fraser River, not just the mouth, and that:

ĆEL,ȽTENEM means "place to turn around" and refers to a specific reef-net site. It also "refers to the movement of salmon in any reef-net location." Perhaps ĆELȽTENEM is a generalized name for a reef net fishing place and Boundary Bay is named as such due to its proximity to the reef net fishing place at Point Roberts. (Fritz 2016)

The Traditional Marine Use Area also includes two (2) additional fishing areas for species other than salmon, and three (3) crab fishing areas, including one a harvester reports frequenting with his grandfather (TUS331). In addition, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report one (1) boat anchorage “in the mouth of the Fraser River,” used for netting dogfish in the fall and salmon in the early summer (TUS328).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report three (3) travel routes within the TMUA, and the fact that there are 71 salmon harvesting sites alone within the Area suggests that there are many more travel routes unrecorded. One (1) Traditional Knowledge site near the southwestern corner of the LSA, directly between Active Pass and the Project, marks the spot where knowledge-holders report catching and riding the inbound tide all the way to the mouth of the Fraser River (TUS307).

The eight (8) remaining sites within the TMUA include two (2) longhouses, two (2) gathering places, and three (3) habitation sites all proximate to Tsawwassen ferry terminal, as well as a habitation site at SMOKEĆ on Point Roberts.

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Map: W SÁNEĆ Traditional Use and Occupancy in the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Expansion Area Number of respondents identifying current use in the TMU LSA for traditional purposes: 17

WSÁNE Ć communities with reported sites: Pauquachin, Tseycum, Tsartlip, Tsawout

Types of use identified in these sites: fishing for sockeye, chum, chinook, coho as well as crabbing.

Practices, Traditions, Customs identified by WSÁNE Ć existing in the TMU LSA: Annual fishing location during the salmon runs and practice of the reef net fishery.

Provenance of data: information supplied by WSÁNE Ć members non-project specific research conducted from 2002-2015.

Place names in the TMU LSA: ĆELȽTENEM or Boundary Bay, SMOKEĆ, a SWÁLET (reef net) and village site at Point Roberts, and ŚNEWIȽ on the Fraser River (Fritz 2016), and others.

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5.2 COMMERCIAL AND FOOD, SOCIAL, CEREMONIAL USE

Commercial fishing—whether by individual licence holders, or by bands under a communal fishing agreement, and subsistence fishing by individuals to provide food for social and ceremonial use—are described by W̱ SÁNE Ć members as “two sides of the same coin.” The W̱ SÁNE Ć reef net fishery could be considered the original large-scale fishing operation maintained in the Salish Sea, and today W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters, and several bands, continue to feed their communities and earn their livings seining and trawling in established areas throughout the Gulf Islands and the waters at the mouth of the Fraser proximate to the Project.

Harvesters from all of the Peninsula W̱ SÁNE Ć communities fish from small boats for subsistence purposes, while at the community level the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nation faces limited access to large vessels and suitable equipment to fish for salmon in sufficient quantities to support members’ basic marine food needs. Some years, for example, the First Nations of Tseycum and Tsawout have hired non-aboriginal fishermen to catch fish for them under the community’s FSC license. Other years, including 2016, the areas where these communities hold FSC or commercial licenses were closed.

At the time of writing this report, Tsawout manages a communal prawn licence for coastwide trap fishing and a communal red sea urchin license (diving) in the North area. Tseycum First Nation fishing licenses include crab fishing by trap in area B, coastwide prawn fishing by trap, a hook and line rockfish license in the “inside” area, and a gillnet salmon license in area D, and area E. The Project study area and shipping lane falls within Salmon Gillnet fishing Area E (DFO Management Areas 29, 18, 19 and 121). Although currently only some of the W̱ SÁNE Ć bands hold communal licences, that is because others regad DFO’s management of the fishery as an infringement of their Douglas Treaty right to “fish as formerly” and are working toward a recognition and implementation of that set of rights.

6.0 Current/Traditional Use of Marine Resources in the MSA This section is organized according to the subjects of particular interest to PMV related to W̱ SÁNE Ć current marine use interests in the area of the shipping lanes in relation to the following resources:

» Terrestrial vegetation (Section 6.1)

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» Terrestrial wildlife (Section 6.2)

» Freshwater fish (Section 6.3)

» Coastal birds (Section 6.4)

» Marine vegetation (Section 6.5)

» Marine invertebrates (Section 6.6)

» Marine fish (Section 6.7)

» Marine mammals (Section 6.8)

Where possible, we have attempted to illustrate information requested by PMV regarding the specific location and timing of harvests, how those locations are accessed, the specific species targeted, how the harvested species are utilized, and what cultural values are associated with the harvesting of particular resources at specific locations.

Discussion here is limited to the available data on W̱ SÁNE Ć use of terrestrial and marine resources in the MSA and the shipping lanes. This discussion cannot be interpreted as reflecting the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use or knowledge of terrestrial marine resources within the MSA and the shipping lanes. Further research focussing on participants with extensive knowledge of terrestrial, as well as marine, resources throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory would be required to assess the full range of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of these resources.

PMV employs three spatial elements to arrange its marine shipping components effects assessment: a large Marine Shipping Area (MSA) meant to frame the analysis, the shipping lanes for inbound and outbound traffic, and an aboriginal group’s traditional territory, such as it is known by PMV. PMV must understand that the W̱ SÁNE Ć have established Douglas Treaty rights, as well as Aboriginal title and rights, within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, which includes the MSA and shipping lanes.

6.1 TERRESTRIAL VEGETATION

The Saanich Year indicates a host of terrestrial vegetation gathered and used by W̱ SÁNE Ć people throughout the year and the course of their seasonal round, including nettles, cedar trees, cedar branches, cedar bark, camas bulbs, wild strawberries, salmon berries, cranberries, blueberries, and hog fennel (Claxton & Elliot 1993:1,5,7,11,13,17,19,21,25). A description of the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet drawn from the work of Diamond Jenness suggests terrestrial vegetation such as berries were as central a staple as salmon: “during the winter, dried salmon served as

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the main food staple supplemented with dried berries” (Tsawout MUS 2014:50). In addition, Welsh (2002:38-40) reports use of horsetail, thimbleberry, nettle and salmonberry sprouts, bracken roots, cattails and tule rushes.

The use of nettles, stripped and twisted, to make twine for nets, rope and cables, is a practice that clearly predates the arrival of European analogs for these goods, similarly so the harvesting of cedar bark for weaving into mats and clothing, and of cattails to make mats for padding, bedding and insulation (Claxton & Elliot 1993:1,7; Welsh 2002:40). Before the arrival of other sweeteners, camas bulbs steamed overnight to convert their insulin starches to sugar provided much of the little sweetness found in the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet (Welsh 2002:37) Claxton and Elliot (1993) describe a process for splitting logs into planks for building materials that was accomplished without tools, “by inserting round stones as wedges into the cracks in the drying logs; the winter winds hastened the drying and splitting process” (25). The gathering of firewood for winter ceremonies in the longhouse, and the tending of the fire there, also represent traditional uses of terrestrial vegetation stretching back to time immemorial.

W̱ SÁNE Ć members report the continued existence of special roles pertaining to the provision of firewood for longhouse ceremonies and performed by specific community members: “[c]ertain things are things that are passed down in the longhouse where there’s only certain people that make the fire, certain people that gather the wood” (Eric Pelkey Interview 2014; Tsawout MUS 2014:45).

In the SENĆOŦEN Alliance study, Aberley (2002:30-35) records a total of 729 W̱ SÁNE Ć collection sites for terrestrial vegetation. These represent a variety of vegetation categories, all of which are outlined in the table found in the Species section below.

Although W̱ SÁNE Ć members have participated in many ethnobotany studies over the decades, there is need for further locational data of W̱ SÁNE Ć holdings, detailing its current or past use of terrestrial vegetation, that could be used to manage RB2 or cumulative territorial effects. Further research focusing on W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional use of terrestrial vegetation should be undertaken. This work could be undertaken in association with mitigating the effects of vessel wake or pollution from the RB2 project on terrestrial vegetation. With the increase in shipping throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć marine territory, emergency response plans will require terrestrial plant use information in order to preserve valuable plant habitats, essential for sustaining W̱ SÁNE Ć culture.

The discussion below on the general use of terrestrial plants should not be interpreted to reflect the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of terrestrial vegetation within or accessed via the MSA. Further research is required in order to assess the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of terrestrial vegetation and its implications for proposals to increase marine shipping within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory.

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Locations Welsh (2002) provides very little in the way of specific locational information for W̱ SÁNE Ć use of terrestrial vegetation. He does, however, refer to the possibility that berries “might have been picked on the mainland in conjunction with the reef locations at Point Roberts,” (Welsh 2002:38) as well as indicating that “several lakes in the San Juan Islands were noted in the ethnographies as being good rush gathering locations” (Welsh 2002:40).

Camas is one of the only examples of terrestrial vegetation for which multiple sources provide specific locational information relating to W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesting practices. Mandarte, D’Arcy, Spiden and Seagull Islands all have camas gathering sites recorded by W̱ SÁNE Ć members (Tsawout MUS 2014:86; Welsh 2002:37). Elliot Sr. (1983:23-24), Claxton and Elliot (1993:11), Pelkey (Interview 2014), and Welsh (2002:37) are all clear that seagull eggs were collected from camas plots and at the same time as camas bulbs. In addition to the islands listed above, popular seagull egg gathering locations also included Saturna, Pender and Halibut Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:86).

Timing of Harvests The Saanich Year describes, or in some cases provides clues as to, the timing of a variety of terrestrial vegetation harvests. During SIS,ET, “the Elder moon,” which loosely aligns with December, “nettles that were gathered earlier in the year were stripped and twisted into twine to make nets, ropes and cables” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:1). Under WEXES, “moon of the frog,” roughly in February, “people placed cedar branches in the water along the shore to collect herring roe” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:5). PEXSISEṈ, “the moon of opening hands, the blossoming out moon,” which loosely aligns with March, is “the best time of the year to fall cedar logs for boat building and other uses” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:7). The warmer weather also caused the tree sap to run which made it easier to strip the cedar bark. The trees were then left to cure and the bark saved for weaving mats and clothing. (Claxton & Elliot 1993:7)

During SXÁNEȽ, the “bullhead moon,” named for the great delicacy gathered generally around April, sticks are used by harvesters who would “poke sticks under the rocks and the big bullheads would say ‘SKA,’ which is its name” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:9). PENÁW̱ EṈ is the “moon of camas harvest,” loosely aligning with May, when “people travelled to family locations to harvest camas bulbs, which was the source of starch in our diet” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:11). Claxton and Elliot (1993:11) and Welsh 2002 (37), both indicate camas was harvested historically, from plots in dry, rocky shore locations. The camas plots tended at this time have two purposes:

(1) to harvest the blue camas bulb, and (2) to gather the fresh gull eggs which had been laid in the fields where the camas grew. (Claxton & Elliot 1993:11)

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ĆENŦEḴI, “the sockeye moon,” occurring around June, is when “the WEWELES (Swanson’s Thrush – the ripener of the summer berries) arrives” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:13).

His song puts colour into the berries and the DILEK (wild strawberries) and ELI,LE, (salmon berries) begin to ripen. (Claxton & Elliot 1993:13)

In ĆENHENEN, or roughly June, when the “humpback salmon return to the earth,” the W̱ SÁNEĆ “carried out a reef net fishery at Tsawassen and Point Roberts and maintained shore camps there,” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:15) where berry gathering may have been conducted on the mainland (Welsh 2002:38). ĆENTÁWEN, or when “the coho salmon return to the earth,” around August, “is a good month to harvest the hog fennel (KEXMIN) which is used in a variety of Indian medicines” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:17).

“The Langford area was excellent for cranberries and blueberries,” in ĆENQOLEW̱ or roughly September, when “the dog salmon return to the earth” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:19). During PEKELÁNEW̱ , “the moon that turns the leaves white,” which loosely aligns with October, “W̱ SÁNEĆ people would begin splitting logs they felled in the spring for building materials and completing canoes would be winter work. They would rough out their canoes in the forest and move them to the villages when they were easier to carry” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:21). W̱ ESELÁNEW̱ , or the “moon of the shaker of the leaves” in November was an important time for firewood because “winter fires are lit and this is the beginning of our winter gatherings” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:23).

SJEȻÁSEṈ is the “moon of putting your paddle away in the bush,” and loosely aligns with December, when “people settled down for winter and enjoyed the stores of food they had gathered” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:25).

Materials that had been stored included:

» materials for making twine, rope, lines, cables, baskets and storage boxes

» cedar inner bark (SLEWI), cooking utensils and cooking baskets

» weaving materials for making baby cradles, etc.

» tools and fishing gear, either made new or repaired, etc.

Red cedar logs felled earlier were now split into plans which were used as portable roofing and building material (S,ILETEW).

Natural splitting of logs was accomplished by inserting round stones as wedges into the cracks in the dying logs. The winter winds hastened the drying and splitting process. (Claxton & Elliot 1993:25)

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Given the potential impacts of the RBT2 Project, further research is required in order to assess the timing of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past terrestrial vegetation harvesting and its implications for the MSA.

Accessibility Given the potential impacts of the RBT2 Project, further research is required in order to assess current and past accessibility to terrestrial vegetation use by W̱ SÁNE Ć , and its implications for the MSA.

Species The following table details several lists of species grouped by categories for which W̱ SÁNE Ć participants reported collection sites in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley 2002:30- 33).

Terrestrial Vegetation # of collection sites by community Total W̱ SÁNE Ć Tsartlip Tsawout Pauqauchin sites reported

Special Plant: Western red cedar, 85 37 60 182 Scouler willow, Indian celery, Indian paint fungus, Lodgepole pine, Western Hemlock, Western yew, Cattail, Vanilla-leaf, Arbutus, etc.

Medicine Plants: Yarrow, Pearly 48 62 15 125 everlasting, Chickeweed, Strawberry, St. John's wort, Peavine, etc.

Berries: 101 36 37 174

Blackcaps, Blueberry and Huckleberry, Gooseberry, Soopalallie/Soapberry, Saskatoon/Service berry,

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Thimbleberry, etc.

Other Kinds of Food Plant: 42 5 1 48

Nodding onion, American wild carrots, Blue camas, Wild potato, Oregon grape, Cascara, etc.

Plants for Dye or Tanning 9 4 1 14

Special Woods for Making 38 14 8 60 Implements

Firewood 76 34 16 126

TOTAL # OF W̱ SÁNEĆ TERRESTRIAL VEGETATION COLLECTION 729 SITES

Given the potential impacts of the RBT2 Project on terrestrial vegetation in W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, further locational research is required in order to assess the current and past terrestrial vegetation species used by W̱ SÁNE Ć , and their implications for the MSA.

Cultural Values Associated with Harvests Further research is required in order to assess the cultural values associated with W̱ SÁNE Ć current terrestrial vegetation harvests, given the potential impacts of the RBT2 Project on terrestrial vegetation.

6.2 TERRESTRIAL WILDLIFE

The Saanich Year states that “some of our people formed hunting parties and moved west and into the mountains to hunt elk. Elk were only hunted after the first snowfall as it was easier to track an elk if it was wounded. This way no meat would be wasted” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:23). Welsh (2002) also indicates elk, bear, and mountain goat hunting, in addition to deer.

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The 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study reports 1042 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites in the aggregated category of elk, bear and deer (Aberley:14). The same study reports 29 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites for rabbits, and another 62 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites for upland game birds including blue grouse, ring- necked pheasant, California quail, and mountain quail (Aberley 2002:25).

The Saanich Year also records grouse hunting beginning in the “bullhead moon,” SXÁNEȽ, which loosely corresponds with April, and is when “on land the grouse have hatched and the almost full grown grouse could be snared in the woods” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:9). Five moons later in ĆENQOLEW̱ or roughly September, when “the dog salmon return to the earth,” hunting” for grouse was still ongoing,” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:19) until towards the end “the moon that turns the leaves white,” PEKELÁNEW, when “grouse hunting ceases” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:21). However, no current data on W̱ SÁNE Ć use of terrestrial wildlife, including elk, bear, rabbit, etc., and birds, such as grouse, has been collected.

Deer are the primary wildlife hunted by W̱ SÁNE Ć members. Despite multiple barriers to hunting on or around the Peninsula, Pauquachin residents, for example, reported receiving deer regularly – "every three of four months" – from people within their network (Pauquachin MUS 2014:84).

Further research is required to assess the full range of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary hunting activities. Therefore, discussion in this section will be limited to deer harvesting, and cannot be interpreted as reflecting the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of terrestrial wildlife within the MSA.

A brief summary of the W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round, as described by Jenness and others, highlights the continued use and importance of terrestrial wildlife, and deer in particular, to the diet to the W̱ SÁNE Ć diet.

During the winter… game, such as deer, was also a major food resource. This was also a time when ceremonial activity (such as dancing and initiation rites) took place. With spring’s onset… land mammals, such as deer and elk, were more frequently exploited with the better weather. (Tsawout MUS 2014:50)

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported traditional methods for harvesting deer that also demonstrate continued use from time immemorial, including pit lamping from boats in calm fresh and salt water (Webster 2000). The 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance report describes these waterborne deer harvesting techniques.

Deer were often hunted at night with a fire built on clay on a board in a canoe. The shadows cast by the fire tricked the deer into entering the water to escape the motion of the shadows. They were killed from canoes. (Welsh 2002:32)

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According to Welsh (2002:32), in return for a share of the meat, dogs and even wolves were used to drive deer into the water where they could be killed by hunters. The waters of the MSA were also used to access specific, well known deer netting sites throughout the southern Gulf and San Juan Islands. As though deploying marine technologies on land, the deer net, like the reef net, involved many people in both its construction and use. Similar to the marine hunting techniques described above, deer netting involved driving the deer in large numbers towards large nets strung across the animals’ path. Pit traps operated according to a similar principle, capturing deer in large holes outfitted with sharp sticks at the bottom. Deer were also hunted with bows and using snares (Welsh 2002:32-33).

W̱ SÁNE Ć members have discussed the possibility of using deer nets and other traditional forms of deer hunting instead of firearms in order to overcome current safety barriers to hunting in traditional locations where other uses by non-aboriginals have increased (Tsawout MUS 2014:114).

Locations W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters continue to hunt deer on Saturna, Tumbo Island, Pender, Sidney and Darcy Islands are near the shipping lanes, or in some cases exposed to the shipping lane, or exposed to ongoing vessel wake and other effects. To describe the extensiveness of his deer hunting on Mayne Island, one Tsartlip interviewee reported "I think I dropped one on every road." Several hunting areas are also beyond the shipping lanes at Johns and San Juan Islands.

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders describe pit lamping from boats in both fresh and salt water. They report this technique being used at Pender Island in particular, along with land-based hunting activity including deer netting and drives. W̱ SÁNE Ć members also report deer drives and deer netting at specific, well-known locations on Mayne, Saturna and the San Juan Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014; Webster 2000). Suttles's (1974:89) W̱ SÁNE Ć informant described attending deer drives on Pender and the San Juan Islands, and Welsh (2002:33) cites Suttles's, listing Saanich deer netting sites on Mayne, Pender and Saturna Islands.

Tsawout's 2014 MUS recorded current deer harvesting locations reported by participants as follows:

Saturna Island is currently a preferred hunting location for Tsawout members because of its relatively healthy deer population and fewer visitors and residents. Here, hunting areas are restricted to the Gulf Island National Park and Saturna IR 7. Still, hunting at this island is thought risky by Tsawout members, given the possibility of hikers. One respondent referred to it as a reliable “meat locker,” where he camps with his dad and flushes out deer. “We always go over there and come home with at least two each. One for us and one for somebody else. I usually just butcher my own meat and give it away right away…“

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Tsawout members travel to preferred deer hunting areas, where they anchor small outboards for transporting their harvests back to the community. Contemporary deer hunting takes place on East Saturna Island, Tumbo Island, and South Pender Island… Several hunting areas lie beyond the shipping lanes, on Stuart Island, Spieden Island, Johns Island, and San Juan Islands. (Tsawout MUS 2014:114)

W̱ SÁNE Ć members also report current deer hunting areas on Haro and Sidney Islands, and share knowledge of deer populations on D’Arcy Island, describing use of the island for deer hunting within the recent past (Tsawout MUS 2014:114). Tsartlip SENĆOŦEN Alliance Use and Occupancy Mapping Project participants report deer hunting on Mayne, Galiano, Saturna and Pender Islands (#117 Feb 21, 2002). Pauquachin MUS (2014) participants reported hunting deer at sites on Mayne, Galiano, Saturna, Sidney, James and Big D'Arcy Islands (84).

Timing of Harvests Given the potential impacts of the RBT2 Project on harvesting wildlife, specific research into W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary terrestrial wildlife harvesting efforts needs to be conducted in order to describe these aspects of the current W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round, in comparison with its historical baseline. Historically, according to the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance report, “bucks were best in the late spring or early summer… In the fall the does were fat and the bucks were lean, so does were hunted” (Welsh 2002:32). During interviews for the Tsawout 2014 MUS, participants shared traditional knowledge relating to the timing of the fall deer hunting season, which was described as starting in late July.

A lot of the elders that I talk to, they’d always mention the fiddleheads, the ferns that come up. When those have grown that’s when you can start harvesting animals again. That’s when they’re at their fattest is at that time. (Interview Participant: Tsawout MUS 2014)

Similarly, Suttles (1974:82) reported that the blooming of the ironwood signals that the bucks are fat. The Saanich Year places the beginning of deer hunting season around August, in the moon of ĆENTÁWEN, when “the coho salmon return to the earth,” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:17) and continues throughout PEKELÁNEW̱ or “the moon that turns the leaves white,” which loosely aligns with October. At this time, “deer are in a rut and easily fooled -- not as cautious as normal” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:21). Then in ṈIṈENE, “moon of the child,” which loosely aligns with January, “deer and fawns are born, and the coming of this moon is the signal to stop hunting deer” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:3).

Species The preferred species in Tsawout is the black-tailed deer, native to W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory (Tsawout MUS 2014). Harvesters in Pauquachin report a preference for the fallow

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deer found on Sidney and James Island (Pauquachin MUS 2014:84). Many of the hunting locations closest to the Peninsula have been overrun by these fallow deer, first introduced to James Island by sports hunters at the turn of the last century, and then allowed to swim to Sidney and numerous other Gulf Islands in search of food and habitat. Some W̱ SÁNE Ć hunters feel that although these fallow deer are relatively accessible to hunt, their size and health are often poor (Tsawout MUS 2014:113); even the Pauquachin members who prefer them acknowledge "they're all wormy in summer" (Pauquachin MUS 2014:85). The opportunities to harvest these less desirable deer do nothing to compensate W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters, or accommodate their hunting rights, which they would prefer to exercise on native deer species or other game animals on tracts of land capable of supporting biodiversity to fit their population needs (Tsawout MUS 2014:113).

Accessibility W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report changes in the accessibility and availability of deer and deer harvesting locations that have affected all W̱ SÁNE Ć hunters in recent years. Hunting restrictions and W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters' concerns for public safety have reduced W̱ SÁNE Ć hunters ability to harvest in traditional locations, and make it increasingly difficult to find suitable sites within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory (Tsawout MUS 2014:114).

But now anything you shoot down here twenty cop cars be down there right away. Take whatever you have. If you don’t have license for your food getter. They do that when you go hunting too, and poor folks who don’t bother with that stuff, they get all their stuff taken away. Then you get it given back and by the time it gets given back the deer’s bad and their guns are all rusty ‘cause they’re just terrible (incomprehensible). But that’s why a lot of it’s getting stopped because of them folks like that. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:84)

Additionally, W̱ SÁNE Ć members express frustration that leaving their own territory to hunt up island or on the mainland can involve significant cost and effort to access a deer population that is less robust than on the Peninsula and islands within W̱ SÁNE Ć t e r r i t o r y , where they are effectively unable to hunt. As one W̱ SÁNE Ć harvester put it: “if was to go hunt up in Duncan and those areas there, I could spend hundreds of dollars and never see one deer, and get back to Victoria and see a hundred” (Tsawout MUS 2014:114).

Once an easy and reliable source of protein, deer hunting has become an expensive way to put food on the table. Due to government regulations and safety concerns related to hunting on the Gulf Islands, and because driving further north is an expensive and unreliable option, some W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters feel forced to leave their traditional territory to hunt deer on the mainland.

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Cultural Values Associated with Harvests W̱ SÁNE Ć community members report that deer antlers are used in the construction of traditional crab and urchin gathering rakes, still the preferred tool of W̱ SÁNE Ć superharvesters, who fulfill a traditional Provider role within the community by harvesting seafoods to share with many households. Traditional crab and urchin rakes were made with a long wooden shaft and deer antlers for the rake head, and may have been adorned with carvings (Tsawout MUS 2014:73).

6.3 FRESHWATER FISH

The absence of a freshwater river in W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory was a principal environmental influence on the development of W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round and culture (Tsawout MUS 2014:91). Nevertheless, Tsawout 2014 MUS (95,105) participants did report freshwater and brackish fishing at small creeks on the Saanich Peninsula, as well as current and past freshwater and brackish fishing for salmon and sturgeon on the east side of the MSA. In 2002, SENĆOŦEN Alliance study respondents reported 56 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites for an amalgamated category called “Other Kinds of Fish,” which included both white and green sturgeon.

Further research on W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of freshwater fish should be undertaken in order to assess the full range of W̱ SÁNE Ć use and knowledge of freshwater fish and their environments, and implications for the RB2 project. Discussion in this section cannot be interpreted as reflecting the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of freshwater fish.

Both the white and green sturgeon, both anadromous fish, are found within Tsawout’s traditional marine territory (Tsawout MUS 2014:105). W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters describe fishing for sturgeon from a boat in the recent past using baited handlines, and harvesters who reported recent sturgeon fishing describe gillnetting for them during the summer sockeye run on the east side of the MSA near the mouth of the Fraser River or in the estuary there (Tsawout MUS 2014:105,106).

Locations & Accessibility W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report freshwater and brackish fishing at small creeks on the Saanich Peninsula, as well as current and past freshwater and brackish fishing for sturgeon on the east side of the MSA (Tsawout MUS 2014:95,105). Further research is required in order to assess the locations used in W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary freshwater fishing.

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6.4 COASTAL BIRDS

“Ducks were and are important to the SENĆOŦEN people. In historical accounts, ducks were always mentioned at feasts,” and contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć indicate that duck continues to be a staple part of the marine foods served at funerals and other important community events, as well as serving a central ceremonial role in the longhouse (Welsh 2002:35; Pauqachin MUS 2014:84). Individual marine harvesters report as many as 700 duck kills over the course of the spring hunting season, and these were MUS participants selected for their extensive knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć marine uses, not for their knowledge of hunting practices per se (Tsawout MUS 2014:112).

The Saanich Year records grouse hunting beginning in the “bullhead moon,” SXÁNEȽ, which loosely corresponds with April, and is when “on land the grouse have hatched and the almost full grown grouse could be snared in the woods” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:9). Five moons later in ĆENQOLEW̱ or roughly September, when “the dog salmon return to the earth,” hunting” for grouse was still ongoing,” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:19) until towards the end “the moon that turns the leaves white,” PEKELÁNEW, when “grouse hunting ceases” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:21). Yet, no current data on W̱ SÁNE Ć use of upland game birds, such as grouse, has been collected. Further research is required to assess the full range of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary bird hunting activities in the MSA.

Harvesters indicate that W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory has long been the seasonal home to a great number and variety of duck and geese species. Before firearms and first contact, W̱ SÁNE Ć hunters took large numbers of ducks in particular, using a variety of hunting methods tailored to species and habitat (Tsawout MUS 2014:110).

These included nets suspended from poles, nets on poles held by hand, nets set under water, spears, arrows, and slings. Ducks were also hunted at night using a fire on the bow of a canoe and then speared. Raised nets were used at very specific locations where they could be strung across a spit or narrow channel or other location where ducks often flew. These locations were few in number, and this method required significant labour. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:83)

The Saanich Year describes the use of float nets to harvest Brant geese where these coastal birds feed along the tide line, as well as the use of nets and spears to harvest both ducks and geese in the sloughs and protected inlets (Claxton & Elliot 1993:7,1).

Locations

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As with deer and other hunting activities, duck harvesting locations were held in common by W̱ SÁNE Ć people (Eric Pelkey Interview 2014). The Saanich Year states that “ducks and geese were netted or speared on the sloughs and in protected inlets,” throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć territory (Claxton & Elliot 1993:1). Elliot Sr. (1983) describes the types of locations W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters targeted for duck netting: “Where the land is low or marshland the ducks would shortcut across to take off into the wind, our people would hide there and catch them from the air”(31).

Suttles (1974:128) notes, that some netting locations were used alongside other Straits groups, that access was only limited to those who had a net. W̱ SÁNE Ć Chief Louis Pelkey described a raised net stretched 100 feet across the water at such a site between Pole Island in the San Juan Islands, and Henry Island, in a location known as Mosquito Pass. Suttles reports W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters using this site along with another at a location called Pole Pass between Orcas and Crane Islands (Suttles 1973:128).

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders report traditional duck harvesting locations at Boat Pass and Mitchell Bay in the San Juan Islands, Saanichton Bay, Saanich Inlet, and in the waters surrounding Sidney, James and D’Arcy Islands. They also indicate that coastal bird habitat is to be found on all of the islands, and that in addition to specific locations duck harvesting was practiced generally in the open water (Webster 2000; Tsawout MUS 2014). Tsawout 2014 MUS participants report that sea ducks are often hunted near clam beds where they feed (110).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters reported 295 waterfowl kill sites during the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley:24). The study recorded several duck hunting areas exposed to the shipping lane on the south side of Saturna Island, at sites south and west of South Pender Island, surrounding Sidney and James Islands, and clustered heavily in Saanichton Bay, and extending south down the east coast of Vancouver Island towards Cordova Bay (Tsawout MUS 2014:113).

Tsawout’s 2014 MUS reports that “Tsawout members concentrate contemporary duck hunting activities on the eastern waters of Sidney Island, Sidney Spit, Sidney Channel, the water surrounding James Island, the spit at Tsawout, and Saanichton Bay” (Tsawout MUS 2014:113).

W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents to the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study also reported 39 collection sites for seagull eggs. The majority of these were reported by harvesters 60 years of age and older, but the remainder were reported by younger harvesters (Aberley 2002:24). Seagull eggs are well known to be harvested along with camas bulbs from camas plots reported at Mandarte, D’Arcy, Spiden, and Seagull Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:86; Welsh 2002:37). Popular seagull egg gathering locations on are also reported on Saturna, Pender and Halibut Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:86).

Timing of Harvests

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The Saanich Year describes the netting and spearing of geese and ducks from “the Elder moon,” SIS,ET, which loosely aligns with December (Claxton & Elliot 1993:1), through to the “bullhead moon” in SXÁNEȽ or roughly April, when the three stars known as the PIOTEȽ, “the Duck Hunters,” appear on the horizon (Claxton & Elliot 1993:9). WEXES in particular, or the “moon of the frog,” was “a good time to net ducks as they gathered on the ocean to dive for herring roe and the spawning herring” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:5). This period, known as the beginning of the sacred season, loosely aligns with February when “the appearance of the frog was a sign to end the activities of the winter ceremonial dances” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:5).

During Tsawout's 2014 MUS (111-112), 75 per cent of monthly survey respondents reported hunting for ducks or geese in the months of February and March. Significantly, participants reported that these coastal birds are hunted until the frogs begin their mating calls in March. Goose and duck hunting seasons begin officially September and October 8, respectively, and one young W̱ SÁNE Ć hunter described the latter as being “better than Christmas” (Tsawout MUS 2014:111). A smaller number of harvesters reported duck hunting during the fall months in Tsawout’s 2014 MUS (112), but these were also the most active duck hunters who reported the largest harvests overall, and providing those harvests for ceremonial.

The most active duck hunters report that they hunted to fulfill requests from the community. These respondents saw it as their individual role to provide ducks for ceremonial use, including for smokehouse and longhouse activities. (Tsawout MUS 2014:112)

The surf scoter species, which are preferred for ceremonial use, arrive in W̱ SÁNE Ć territory in September; traditionally, this has given harvesters just enough time to begin hunting and processing these sacred black ducks for the longhouse (Tsawout MUS 2014:86).

Seagull eggs, which are gathered alongside camas, are harvested during PENÁW̱ EṈ, or the “moon of camas harvest,” which loosely aligns with the month of May (Claxton & Elliot 1993:11).

Accessibility Ducks remain a popular and important resource for W̱ SÁNE Ć , with the majority harvested by specific community members fulfilling a traditional provider role connected to the longhouse tradition, and upon request from households throughout the community (Tsawout MUS 2014:110-12).

According to Tsawout’s 2014 MUS, 21 per cent of survey respondents reported hunting geese or ducks within the last year. 75 per cent of these respondents reported springtime hunting for ducks or geese with harvests ranging from 3 or 4 to estimates of more than 700 over the

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course of the season. Fewer respondents reported participating in the fall duck or geese hunts, but those that did reported a range of 3 to 24 kills (MUS 2014:112).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters indicate that the preferred surf scoter, or black duck, is no longer available in the same numbers they reached in the recent past. As a result, harvesting these targeted ducks is now more expensive because hunters are forced to travel further to find them. Some harvesters compensate by hunting other species, such as puddle ducks and a variety of geese, but these harvests are not felt to be adequate or acceptable replacements for the sacred black duck (Tsawout MUS 2014:112). In addition to seeing fewer of their preferred species, W̱ SÁNE Ć hunters report barriers in the form of hunting restrictions and regulations related to licensing and public safety in traditional hunting areas (Pauquachin MUS 2014:84).

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders also report contemporary barriers to accessing seagull eggs, indicating that "people stopped eating seagull eggs after they observed the birds consuming garbage" (Tsawout MUS 2014:87).

Claxton and Sam explain that the eggs “taste a bit fishy when the birds are eating a good diet. When they eat human food and garbage they don’t taste fishy any more. Our people don’t eat them now because they don’t taste right.” (MUS 2014:87)

Species Traditionally, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters have hunted a variety of coastal birds, including duck species such as surf scoters, pintails, mallards, sea pigeon, sawbill mergansers, murres, buffleheads and widgeons, as well as Brant and Canada geese (Tsawout MUS 2014:110). In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders listed preferred duck species as follows: surf scoters, pintails, mallards, sea pigeon, sawbill mergansers, murres, buffleheads and widgeons (Webster 2000:7). W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report hunting the following species: mallard, barrow’s goldeneye, common goldeneye, Canadian geese, brant geese, American black duck, widgeon, sawbill (mergansers), and surf scoter (Tsawout MUS 2014:110). In Pauquachin, one harvester simply reported: "every kind of duck you can think of I got in there" (Pauquachin MUS 2014:84).

The surf scoter, or black duck, is a preferred species for making duck soup and for a number of other ceremonial uses within the longhouse, and scoters caught furthest from shore are thought to be the best tasting (Tsawout MUS 2014:111).

Cultural Values Associated with Harvests The Saanich Year describes the netting and spearing of geese and ducks beginning in “the Elder moon,” SIS,ET, which loosely aligns with December, and is “the most important time of the year for spiritual and cultural activities… Our people gather in longhouses for winter

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ceremonial dances, new dancers are initiated and the ceremonies are witnessed” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:1).

The species preferred for this ceremonial use is the surf scoter, or black duck.

The “black duck” is considered a sacred bird by the W̱ SÁNE Ć , and remains a preferred species for ceremonial use today. It is harvested to make the traditional duck soup used in the smokehouse, and its feathers are still used in longhouse dances to initiate new dancers. Before a new dancer can touch the floor, the black duck feathers must be laid down to protect them. (Tsawout MUS 2014:60)

The feathers of seabirds such as surf scoters are very difficult to pluck, which led W̱ SÁNE Ć to develop special processing techniques, unique from those used for puddle ducks, such as mallards. This specialized technique is essential to preparing traditional duck soup in the community.

So they’d take them and they’d pluck as much as they could off of it, and the under- feathers of the bird, and then they’d make a fire and they'd take the duck and they would burn the duck. To get the rest of it off. Then you scrape the feathers off of it, cut it up and throw it into the pot. That’s where the flavour came from. If you took it and skinned it, well you ruined your soup. Because of the flavour, there's no burnt flavour to that duck. (Tsawout Participant: MUS 2014)

Perhaps alluding to black ducks in particular, and their role in longhouse ceremonies, Suttles (1974) writes that, “since they were obtainable in the winter [ducks] were often served at feasts and taken as gifts. When a hunter got a good lot of ducks he gave two or three to every member of the community” (136). The most active duck hunters interviewed for Tsawout's 2014 MUS reported that their sizeable harvests were made at the request of community members, and that their fulfillment of these requests was in keeping with their traditional role as providers of these ceremonial birds. One also noted freezing the duck breasts leftover after all of his sharing with other households, to make battered “duck nuggets” (Tsawout MUS 2014:112).

Ducks serve as the referents for traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć names as well. The traditional spring duck hunting season, for instance, lasts until the “bullhead moon” in SXÁNEȽ or roughly April, when the three stars known as the PIOTEȽ, “the Duck Hunters,” appear on the horizon (Claxton & Elliot 1993:9). “Arbutus Island, located west of Piers Island in the waters directly north of the Saanich Peninsula, is called SKEWMIN for the ‘name of little black duck you see there’” (Tsawout MUS 2014:60).

Today duck hunting serves as a venue for W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters to share ecological and traditional knowledge with younger generations.

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Even relatively young hunters speak directly of passing their knowledge and experiences on to their peers and those younger than themselves. “I’m also trying to influence the younger community to become hunters. I’m always trying to teach them,” said a respondent in his mid-twenties. “I’m always bringing people over, even if it’s just to pluck ducks or something like that, I’m always trying to show them something.” (Tsawout Participant: MUS 2014)

Seagull egg collecting is a harvesting activity steeped in traditional knowledge and long governed by complex rules of ownership that facilitated common use of limited collection sites:

They would go to the nests that had less than four eggs, because a seagull only lays four eggs. If there’s one egg they wouldn’t take it, because the mother would abandon her nest. If there were two, they would take one. If there were three, they would take two. They wouldn’t take the only egg and they wouldn’t take from the nest of four in it, the mother could already be sitting on it… They would take eggs from a nest of two or three. While they were harvesting camas and putting them together to bring home they would be living part of the time on seagull eggs. They boiled them.

Claxton and Sam describe, “invisible lines that divided the camas and egg gathering areas (on Mandarte Island). You didn’t go over those lines because each area was owned and looked after by different families.” W̱ SÁNE Ć member Eric Pelkey describes similar divisions for egg collecting on Seagull Island, where “there was something about the camas that grew as a result of the seagulls that were on that island that made that camas on that island a real delicacy amongst our family, and so the family had rights to that” (Tsawout MUS 2014:86).

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6.5 MARINE VEGETATION

As one Pauquachin Elder observed of marine vegetation, or seaweed, “some of our ancestors used to get a lot of that and dry it up” (Pauquachin MUS 2014:70). Claxton and Sam (2010) describe a variety of traditional uses for marine vegetation.

Our people harvested seaweeds to eat, for fishing uses, and for medicines. We tended eelgrass beds for a small part of our food and because they’re the nursery for so many of the sea animals we harvested. (85)

W̱ SÁNEĆ Elders report finding seaweed available at community functions, and recent studies suggest that a relatively few W̱ SÁNEĆ harvesters gather large quantities of seawee to distribute throughout the larger group (Pauquachin MUS 2014:70; Tsawout MUS 2014:86). Welsh 2002 (36) suggests that although men were often involved in gathering activities, traditionally this work was typically performed by women.

Further research focussing on participants with extensive knowledge of current and past marine vegetation harvesting is required in order to assess the full range of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of marine vegetation within the MSA. Discussion in this section cannot be interpreted to reflect the totality of W̱ SÁNEĆ contemporary use of marine vegetation within the MSA.

Locations Claxton and Sam’s (2010:85-86) description of gathering sites for marine vegetation suggests locations throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory. When asked where W̱ S ÁNEĆ harvesters gather marine plants, one Tsartlip interviewee initially responded "all Gulf Islands" (#109 Feb 8, 2002). DE,LOEDC or rockweed, for instance, is gathered on shorelines throughout the W̱ SÁNE Ć marine environment. CELEM or eelgrass is collected at the outflow of freshwater streams. LEKES or red laver/red sea lettuce is harvested during low spring tides (Claxton & Sam, 2010:86). “It grows on rock between high tide and low tide. When the tide is partly out it comes out of the water, and in some places it grows very thick, and of course our people harvested it” (Elliot 1983:24).

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders were more specific in Webster 2000 (18-19), reporting that bull kelp is gathered on Sidney Island at the same sites where clams are found, and that marine vegetation is gathered at multiple locations on Pender, Saturna, Moresby, and Ray Islands, as well as on the east side of the MSA on Stuart Island and at 10 Mile Point. In 2002, W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 221 collection sites for marine vegetation, nearly all of them reported by harvesters under the age of 40 (Aberley 2002:33), including locations “along the southern shores of Saturna, South Pender, Moresby, Rubly, Gooch, Sidney, and James Islands,

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surrounding Reay, Brethour, Sheep, Domville, Forrest, and the Little Group Islands, and along the east side of Coal Island” (Tsawout MUS 2014:85).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report contemporary collection sites around Gooch Island, and “all shores and the smaller islands surrounding both Portland and D’Arcy Islands, the south-west shore of Moresby Island, the western shores of both Sidney and James Island, along the shore in Saanichton Bay and at the northern tip of the Saanich Peninsula,” as well as on the Discovery Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:86; Pauquachin MUS 2014:70). Many of these locations are exposed to vessel traffic and wake from the shipping lanes or vessel displacement from the shipping lanes.

Further research focusing on participants with extensive knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of marine vegetation is required to assess the full range of locations involved in W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of marine vegetation within the MSA for the RBT2 Project.

Timing of Harvests Some marine vegetation is gathered all year round, such as O,EN or bull kelp (Claxton & Sam, 2010:85). LEKES or red laver/red sea lettuce is harvested during low tides in the spring (Claxton & Sam, 2010:86); Claxton and Elliot (1993:9) are specific that the time for collecting this seaweed is SXÁNEȽ or “bullhead moon,” which loosely aligns with April. Elliot Sr. (1983:24) explains that LEKES are often gathered at the same time and in the same locations as clams, and Tsawout’s 2014 MUS indicates clam harvesting from the early spring to July (MUS 2014:78-79).

Further research focusing on participants with extensive knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of marine vegetation is required to assess the timing of harvests involved in W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of marine vegetation within the MSA.

Accessibility W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 221 collection sites for marine vegetation in 2002 (Aberley:33). Marine vegetation harvesters and community Elders share concerns about the current accessibility of marine vegetation throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional marine territory:

I'm really concerned about kelp. Kelp is disappearing. People don't think about kelp, right? They found that migrating fry out of the Fraser River and the Cowichan River will hang out in the Southern Gulf Islands and stay within the foreshore for their first year of their life because within those kelp patches and seaweed and stuff there is so much food for those little guys to eat. It's disappearing and they don't know why. I remember as a kid, there used to be kelp all along the beach ­­ around James Island and down along the shore all over the place, and now there is not. It's like, there's the

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big kelp beds, the big bull kelp, but it's that different species, like a smaller bull kelp-- it's disappearing. (Tsawout MUS 2014)

Further research focusing on participants with extensive knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of marine vegetation is required to assess the contemporary accessibility of marine vegetation within the MSA.

Species Claxton and Sam (2010) provide a list of marine vegetation species traditionally used by W̱ SÁNE Ć , including DE,LOEDC or rockweed, O,EN or bull kelp, LEKES or red laver/red sea lettuce, and CELEM or eelgrass (Claxton & Sam, 2010:85-86). The 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study includes sea lettuce and bull kelp in the list of species it specifies for the seaweed category, for which W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 221 collection sites (Aberley 2002:33).

Further research focussing on participants with extensive knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of marine vegetation is required to assess the species involved in W̱ SÁNE Ć use of marine vegetation within the MSA.

Cultural Values Associated with Harvests The gel inside the brown coloured rockweed or DE,LOEDC found on the shorelines throughout territory was used as medicine to treat sores, warts, burns and open wounds. In addition, “Elsie Claxton recalled that people rubbed this seaweed on their arms and legs to strengthen them”.

Bull kelp, or O,EN, was gathered year-round for use as food, medicine, and in cooking. For eating purposes “it was steamed, boiled, and dried to preserve it.” For medicinal purposes, bull kelp roots, or “holdfast”, were collected from the water along the islands, grated, and mixed with hot water. “The resulting tea was considered effective for treating tuberculosis, hemorrhaging, or ‘any kind of sickness wrong with your insides.’” Tsawout Elders reported bull kelp being gathered in areas where clams were also found on Sidney Island, and then sold for use as medicine. The broad, flat bull kelp fronds were also used in cooking, “to place in teaming pits above and below camas bulbs, clams, deer, seal, or porpoise. As well as providing moisture for steam, the kelp gave flavour to the food.”

LEKES, or red laver/red sea lettuce was gathered to be dried and then used as flavouring in clam and fish soups. People were also known to harvest LEKES during low tides in the spring to boil or eat fresh with clams. According to Elliot:

They would be digging clams, roasting clams, drying clams. They took seaweed or LEKES at that time. It grows on rock between high tide and low tide. When

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the tide is partly out it comes out of the water, and in some places it grows very thick, and of course our people harvested it. They would pick LEKES and spread it out in the sun to dry. They had to be very careful it didn’t get rained on because fresh water would spoil it. It would turn bad. If it looked like it was going to rain they would have to run out and cover it or pick it up and get it out of the rain. That was another nourishing food. After it was dry, it was pressed into blocks; pressed and compacted and put away for the winter. In the winter time it would be take out and used in cooking or just eaten the way it was. There was no way you could starve in this country. We had too much of everything. (Tsawout MUS 2014:84-85)

Further research focussing on participants with extensive knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past use of marine vegetation is required to assess the full range of cultural values associated with W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of marine vegetation within the MSA.

6.6 MARINE INVERTEBRATES

It is said in W̱ SÁNE Ć communities and other coastal communities that “when the tide is out, the table is set” (Tsawout MUS 2014:73). This is because throughout their traditional territory the W̱ SÁNE Ć have always been able to gather dietary staples in the form of “beach foods,” as Welsh (2002:38-39) described them, namely shellfish, crabs, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, chitons, and other marine invertebrates.

Historically, the salmon harvest has been the dominant force in defining the W̱ SÁNE Ć relationship with the marine environment, but today marine invertebrate harvesting also plays a large role in feeding the community. In addition to the cultural and dietary importance of bivalves, two of the three main marine foods required for W̱ SÁNE Ć community and longhouse events are crab and sea urchins (Tsawout MUS 2014:74). These marine invertebrates have been used continually by W̱ SÁNE Ć people since time immemorial, as recorded harvesting techniques and practices demonstrate. During the Pauquachin 2014 MUS, every participant surveyed and/or interviewed reported harvesting bivalves throughout their lives, "beginning in childhood with their parents and grandparents, and in many cases continuing to the present" (64).

Most describe clamming, in particular, as an activity central to their family and community, to their education, and to their very sense of what it means to be Pauquachin. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:64)

Historically, before the use of boats and traps, crabs were harvested using carefully constructed rakes in clear, calm waters. These rakes were made using a long wooden handle

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and deer antlers for the rake head. The handle of the rake may have been adorned with traditional carvings. Despite government prohibitions against the use of rakes for crabbing today, many marine harvesters, and in particular the superharvesters fulfilling traditional provider roles, prefer to use them over traps (Tsawout MUS 2014:73).

Contemporary crab/urchin rakes are constructed by bending hay forks and adding webbing in between the tines: “[We] used to take them [hay forks] and bend them. Heat them up and bend them and put them on a pole. Put a bunch of webbing on there too. Helps in catching them.” (Tsawout MUS 2014:73)

According to Claxton and Sam (2010), sea urchins were once harvested “with light cedar-bark nets about the size and shape of a bucket fastened to long wooden handles” (80). Tsawout Elders describing traditional sea urchin harvesting report that these marine invertebrates “were taken from a boat at low tide in March and April with a curved rake and later distributed at the longhouse” (Webster 2000:16). During Tsawout’s 2014 MUS, participants described “hooking” sea urchins, or SQUITZI, off of reefs using a contemporary version of the traditional rake.

SQUITZI are not only eaten raw, but as one participant states, “still alive and we eat them.” One participant explained that this was not simply a preference but a requirement for sea urchins, and one that makes acquiring this delicacy even more challenging.

Participant: Sea urchins hard ‘cause it has to be fresh when you get it. And if it’s not that great, I wouldn’t buy it if it was already old already.

Interviewer: Has to be still alive, moving?

Participant: If it’s dead you won’t eat it, I wouldn’t eat it. (Participant 206, PMUS 2014)

Anthropologist Wayne Suttles (1974) recorded that historically urchins were picked off of exposed rocks and “smashed and then the orange portions (probably the gonads) were eaten raw, or they were thrown into the fire and roasted first." (Pauquachin MUS 2014:67)

Chitons, also known as rock stickers, stick shoes, or Chinese slippers, are another prized delicacy amongst W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders.

According to Suttles (1974:121-122), W̱ SÁNE Ć people probably ate chitons occasionally, picking them off of exposed rocks along with other shellfish, and usually steaming them. PMUS Participant 206 explained that in the more recent past Pauquachin

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gatherers use a knife to remove chitons from rocks at low tide, and then boil the mollusks before eating.

If you touch it then it will stick on it. You gotta use a butter knife… You got to take those toe nail off, and then they got little innards and you peel that off, and then the rest is edible after that. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:69)

Suttles description of traditional bivalve harvesting techniques states that “mussels, oysters and clams were all harvested at low tide, the first two being pried from exposed flat rocks, and the latter often being ‘dug with digging-sticks at the lower edge of gravel slopes and horse clams out on the mud flats’” (Tsawout MUS 2014:77).

Contemporary cockle harvesting relies on traditional ecological knowledge that holds these marine invertebrates tend to be found underneath crab grass and seaweed. “MUS respondents describe harvesting them by just feeling them with their feet and kicking them up or picking them up by hand” (Tsawout MUS 2014:78).

Octopus was harvested by canoe using a two-pronged spear on a long pole in shallow water at low tides. The fishermen paddled in 4-8 feet of water, scanning the bottom for signs of an octopus’ cave, which were frequently marked by clam and crab shells scattered around the entrance (Tsawout MUS 2014:104; Pauquachin MUS 2014:80).

[Harvesters] reported using a similar device to harvest octopus in the shallows near a reef-net site on Stuart Island: “Just sort of a fork. Long handle. Just shaped like a fork.” Another participant also described using a spear from inside a boat as the way to catch an octopus: “You have to have a pretty good eye. You just go out really slowly, see them against the reef or something; gaff them up.” Yet another participant reported catching an octopus simply by casting from a boat in the Inlet. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:80)

Locations The locational data includes many areas that are adjacent to the shipping lanes and vessel wake, such as East Point on Saturna Island, Tumbo, South Pender, Moresby, Gooch (including the Cooper and North and South Cod Reefs), Mandarte, Halibut, East Sidney, D’Arcy, and Little D’Arcy Islands, as well as the Beaumont Shoal. Locations requiring transit across shipping lanes are currently used to access marine invertebrates that are not otherwise available, and include Stuart Island and the Bell Beacon at the first turning point in Boundary Pass.

Many W̱ SÁNE Ć marine invertebrate harvesting, and all of Tsawout's preferred marine invertebrate harvesting locations, are within the MSA; many are adjacent to or exposed to the shipping lane. Those that are closer to the Saanich Peninsula have suffered due to erosion, development, pollution and/or species loss, and over regulation. Tsawout members consider

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locations around South Pender and Saturna Islands, and the east side of Sidney Island, to be free of contamination and less likely to be overharvested.

Further research is required in order to assess the totality of W̱ SÁNEĆ current and past use of marine invertebrates specifically its implications for increased shipping.

Crab W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 622 collection sites for an amalgamated category including crabs, shrimp and prawn in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley:21). These include crabbing sites on the southeast side of Sidney Island, and at D’Arcy Island. Tsawout’s 2014 MUS reports preferred crab harvesting locations in Saanichton Bay, and surrounding Sidney, James, Mandarte, and Saturna Islands.

W̱ SÁNE Ć members find that traps set in the Saanich Inlet are routinely raided, vandalized or stolen. As a result, "harvesters have been forced to alter their established practice of setting and leaving traps unattended for fear of what might happen to their equipment or catch" (Pauquachin MUS 2014:54).

Participants attributed this to increased waterfront development as well as negative attitudes towards aboriginal harvesting rights, and reported that they feel watched by property owners and users near harvesting sites in Saanich Inlet.

In Mill Bay, me and my son dropped our traps over there last during the summer. They didn’t cut them, but they just raided our crabs. There’s houses all over, they can see where you’re putting your traps, they can tell we’re First Nations Indians, right. Crabs are in close to the beach, so they can see very easy. They go out there at night time and take them, the baits gone, everything’s gone… You can’t leave them overnight. I don’t leave them out overnight any more. I put them out in the morning and go across and take them back. (Pauquachin MUS 2014: 54)

Sea Urchins Suttles (1974:121-122) reports that traditionally urchins were picked off of rocks exposed at low tide. In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported such harvesting sites “along the shorelines of Saturna, Salt Spring and Pender Islands, as well as the smaller islands such as Moresby, Portland, Piers, Coal, Gooch, and the Sidney Islands” (Tsawout MUS 2014:83).

W̱ SÁNE Ć participants in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study reported 347 collection sites in the amalgamated category for sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and chitons (Aberley 2002:22). These include:

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Numerous urchin harvesting sites… near the southern tips of both Saturna and South Pender Islands, and dotting the waters from the south-eastern shore of Moresby Island to Gooch Island, along the east sides of both Mandarte and Halibut Islands, as well as north and east of both D’arcy and Little D’Arcy Islands. Participants also reported numerous sites for urchin gathering throughout the Little Group Islands, and the islets west of Coal Island, east of Piers Island, and along the southern edge of Portland Island. (Tsawout MUS 2014:83-84)

The distribution of sea urchin harvesting sites remains largely unchanged. In addition to sites inside the shipping lane between Sidney and Henry Islands, and along a reef on the east side of Gooch Island, participants indicated that the single most reliable harvesting location lies on the east of side of the shipping lanes, along the northwest shore of Stuart Island. This appears to be on the east side of the MSA. They also reported that this is the only area where the giant red urchin can be found (Tsawout MUS 2014:83).

If I was stuck to get urchins and needed to get it fast, that's where I’d go, to Stuart… It makes the trip worthwhile, because if you go down in the area that I pointed at, the divers been there, so I don't bother and I'll go to Stuart. Somewhere where I know it’s going to be reliable. It’s not like a 15 minute job. (Tsawout MUS 2014)

Pauquachin members report harvesting urchins at Swartz bay, Piers Island, Knapp Island, Pym Island, Groudge Island and the collection of small islands around Fernie Island, although today they indicate that these sites have been "fished out" (Pauquchin MUS 2014:68). Community members indicate that "harvesters would now need to cross the international border to the San Juan Islands to find urchins, but that such harvesting would require addressing additional barriers including regulations, restrictions, and access to equipment and resources (Pauquchin MUS 2014:68).

Bivalves According to Claxton and Sam (2010) marine invertebrate harvesting, and clamming in particular, took place at locations throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory.

Nearly every bay and beach in our homeland was a clamming site. Many of these were extensive and had been used for thousands of years. We know this from our oral history, and we also know it from the kitchen middens that remain, full of clam shell fragments and other shell and bone remains or our activities. (73)

W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders report seasonal clam gathering locations at sheltered bays on Pender (particularly Browning Bay), Saturna (particularly East Point), Piers, Moresby, Portland, Prevost, Salt Spring, Mayne, Coal, and Forrest Islands. They also identified clamming sites closer to the W̱ SÁNE Ć winter village sites on the Saanich Peninsula, including locations at Moses Point,

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Saanich inlet, Saanichton Bay, Saanichton Spit, Bedwell Harbour Spit, Plumper Sound, Cole Bay and Deep Cove (Webster 2000).

Mussels were collected from Saanichton Bay and Saturna Island, and particularly D’Arcy Island and Salt Spring Island (Webster 2000:16). Oysters were taken from Gulf Islands including Salt Spring, James, Sidney, and Piers. They were harvested on the northern side of Tumbo Island, the Reserve on Cooper Island, Browning Harbour and Saanichton Bay.

W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 1366 collection sites for the amalgamated category of clams, mussels and oysters in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley 2002:20). These include clam harvesting locations:

On Tumbo Island, along the south-eastern shores of Saturna Island, on the south- western shore of South Pender Island, and on reefs and beaches surrounding both Little D’Arcy and D’Arcy Islands. Clamming sites were also recorded near the north- eastern tip of Sidney Island, along the north and west sides of James Island, and dotting Saanichton Bay, the Tsawout Spit, and the shoreline immediately south of the Spit. Oyster gathering sites reported were located on Tumbo Island, in the canal between North and South Pender Islands, on the north-western shore of Moresby Island, the south-western tip of James Island, and in Saanichton Bay. (Tsawout MUS 2014:81)

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters currently gather bivalves from a number of concentrated locations, including "the shores surrounding Sidney and James Island, the spit at Tsawout, Bare Island, and Island View Beach, Willis point, Saturna Island, Pender Island, D’Arcy and Little D’Arcy Island" (Tsawout MUS 2014:81). W̱ SÁNE Ć members also report that contemporary barriers to harvesting at traditional sites in the Saanich Inlet and around Cole Bay have compelled them to use traditional sites on the southern Gulf Islands, including Pender and Saturna (Pauquachin MUS 2014:65).

Shrimp and Prawns W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 622 collection sites for an amalgamated category including crabs, shrimp and prawn in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley:21). These include “harvesting sites on the north side of Portland Island, the east side of James Island, and at several places in Saanichton Bay” (Tsawout MUS 2014:77)

Chitons As with sea urchins, Suttles (1974:121-122) reports that these mollusks were picked off of rocks exposed during low tides. W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders report collection sites for chitons throughout the Gulf Islands, including including Pender, Saturna, Sidney, Gooch, the smaller islands off

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Sidney such as Coal and Piers Island, and closer to the W̱ SÁNE Ć winter village sites on the Saanich Peninsula at 10 Mile Point (Webster 2000:16).

The 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance recorded 347 collection sites for W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents in an amalgamated category for chitons, sea urchin and sea cucumbers (Aberley:22-23). These sites include locations on southern Saturna Island, the north side of D’Arcy Island, and multiple sites at the southern tip of James Island, as well as sites on the east and west sides of James Island, and in Saanichton Bay (Tsawout MUS 2014:87).

Current chiton collection sites are reported on the eastern-most tip of Saturna Island, and around Bedwell Harbour on Pender Island. W̱ SÁNE Ć members also suggest that chitons used to be plentiful all along the shore of Sidney Island, but are increasingly rare there, and have disappeared from some traditional sites they use (Tsawout MUS 2014:87).

That’s another thing that you never see any more, it’s a very rare thing. But used to get a lot of that. Cause a lot of our elders, TEṈSEWEĆ was a, one of their favourite things to get. They would ask us for a few, but… You don’t see too many of that around any more. I mean, all the places that my dad showed me, like I remember being able to go at low tide and say oh yeah there’s some here, and then go all these spots. But I went last summer at low tide and there was hardly anything anywhere. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:69)

Sea Cucumbers Suttles 1974 (122) describes picking sea cucumbers, or “sea sausages,” off of flats exposed during low tides. The 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance recorded 347 collection sites for W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents in an amalgamated category for sea cucumber, chitons and sea urchins (Aberley:22-23). These sites include locations on southern Saturna Island, the north side of D’Arcy Island, and multiple sites at the southern tip of James Island, as well as locations on the east and west sides of James Island, and in Saanichton Bay (Tsawout MUS 2014:88). W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders report catching sea cucumbers using hooks in the small islands around Sidney and Moresby Islands, on Pender Island, and at Mill Bay, “generally in the same places as sea urchins” (Tsawout MUS 2014:88). Some harvesters also report catching sea cucumbers, generally for Elders to eat.

“I used to get it for our elders when I was a kid. But I never ate it myself” (Participant 218, Pauquachin MUS 2014:70).

My grandparents they always had (incomprehensible), sea cucumber... I don’t know how to clean it, so I wouldn’t want to try it because I don’t know how… I know they boiled it and ate it. (Participant 206, Pauquachin MUS 2014:70)

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My dad used to eat the sea cucumber. He loved those too. (Participant 213, Pauquachin MUS 2014:70)

Octopus In 2000, W̱ SÁNEĆ Elders reported octopus harvesting locations at Cordova and Sidney Channels, Swartz and Saanichton Bays, and Stuart, James, Pender, Salt Spring, Gooch, and the San Juan Islands, as well as at East Point and Monarch Point on Saturna Island (Webster 2000, 17). The locations at Stuart and in the San Juan Islands are on the east side of the shipping lanes and on the east side of the MSA.

W̱ SÁNE Ć participants in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study reported 138 octopus harvesting locations at Saanichton Bay, East Point on Saturna Island, southeast of Moresby Island, the south sides of Salt Spring, Gooch, Halibut, and D’Arcy Islands, east of Sidney Island, and within the shipping lanes west of San Juan Island just outside Cordova Bay (Tsawout MUS 2014:104).

W̱ SÁNEĆ interviewees report current octopus harvesting locations at Gooch Island, west of Sidney, Mandarte and Halibut Islands, in Cordova Channel, and south of Taylor Beach on Saturna Island (Tsawout MUS 2014:104). Harvesters also report catching octopus on beaches in the Saanich Inlet, from "Cowichan Bay all the way down to Mill Bay" (Pauquachin MUS 2014:81).

Timing of Harvests Crab All of the superharvesters identified in Tsawout’s 2014 MUS reported harvesting crabs during every month of the survey period, from February to November, 2014.

In one four-month period, the height of the season, the three most active respondents individually reported between 7000-15000 crabs. These individuals catch between 100-300 crabs per day on the water, and in many months within the survey period individuals claimed to have spent every day, or very nearly every day on the water. Of the respondents of the community-wide one-off online survey, crab fishermen and women maintained a range of catch between 4 to 100 crabs in one month, and harvested between 1 and 10 days per month. (Tsawout MUS 2014:75)

Sea Urchins PENÁW̱ EṈ or the “moon of camas harvest,” roughly in May is when Claxton and Elliot (1993) states “both XIWE (purple sea urchins) and SQWITI (green sea urchins) were collected and eaten” (11). Contemporary harvesters report that the best time to harvest sea urchins is "in the winter… [because] in the summer they're no more good" (Pauqauchin MUS 2014:67). 36 per

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cent of the W̱ SÁNE Ć superharvesters surveyed for Tsawout's 2014 MUS report gathering sea urchins between February and June (Tsawout MUS 2014:83).

Bivalves The Saanich Year notes that SJEȻÁSEṈ, the “moon of putting your paddle away in the bush,” or roughly November is when the “winter night tides are low enough for clam digging” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:25). However, it is also clear that “clams, oysters and mussels are at their best” under “the moon of opening hands – the blossoming out moon,” in PEXSISEṈ or roughly March (Claxton & Elliot 1993:7).

Despite their year-round availability on “nearly every bay and beach,” bivalves were traditionally harvested once a year from the same sites that were considered to be the most productive. As a result, certain select beds were visited at the same time every year by a variety of different people, often from different groups. (Tsawout MUS 2014:78)

The vast majority – 80% -- of the superharvesters included in Tsawout’s 2014 harvest study reported clamming in the early spring that year. "Clam digging expeditions happened on a weekly or biweekly basis, and half of the respondents took home enough clams for many household meals" (Tsawout MUS 2014:79-80). Other W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report gathering clams with a range of frequency, including as often "every other low tide, or every tide," six to ten times per year for funerals and special occasions, and just in December as part of an annual Christmas tradition (Pauquachin 2014 MUS:66).

Cockles are a preferred "clam," harvested most frequently in July, and increasingly scarce at some traditional harvesting locations (Tsawout MUS 2014:80; Pauquachin MUS 2014:66). W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters also gather butter, steamer and manila clams, most frequently during the spring and early summer (Pauquachin MUS 2014:66; Tsawout MUS 2014:80). By the fall less than half as many participants reported harvesting clams as respondents were diverted to other harvesting activities (Tsawout MUS 2014:80). However, some W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report gathering clams with extended family as part of their annual Christmas tradition.

Accessibility Tsawout’s 2014 MUS provides a thorough description of the traditional arrangement that facilitates the accessibility of marine invertebrates throughout the W̱ SÁNE Ć communities:

The harvesting of large quantities suitable for sharing, community events, and satisfying community demand is concentrated in the hands of a number of

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superharvesters. These very active harvesters are often specialists in certain species and have often inherited the role and the traditional knowledge and expertise that accompanies it from parents and grandparents. Some of these harvesters have the designation of “Provider” within the longhouse tradition. For these individuals, harvesting makes up a full or part-time, non-market based commitment involving, in some cases, high fuel and equipment costs to the individual, and reliance on donations of equipment.

Part of their traditional knowledge requires the observance of customary laws governing harvesting and reciprocity. Survey data aligns with information gathered from Tsawout harvesters highlighting the extent to which the most active harvesters feel driven to provide their catch to households who may be less active, or who have specific requests often related to solemn or spiritual occasions, such as funerals, naming ceremonies, or potlatches. In so doing these harvesters formally or informally engage in fulfilling a Provider role that obligates the harvester to harvest and deliver resources for others in the community. In some cases, this is part of a formal Provider role that occurs within the Longhouse tradition.

For one participant, who serves as one of the Providers for the community of Tsawout and beyond, a key part of inheriting this as a child was learning the spatial dimensions of his responsibilities. He was taught that food gathering for specific families should be dedicated to certain gathering places in the marine territory. He explains:

Certain Islands are for certain people, certain families. There’s mostly the five families that I’m used to deal[ing] with. The Claxtons, Underwoods, Pelkeys, Sams, Josephs - that was five families I was to provide for.

This Provider describes the typical scope of his duties as follows:

I’m doing it for 10 reserves. There is Tseycum, Cole Bay, West Saanich, Songhees, Esquimalt, Sooke, Jordan River, Mill Bay, Duncan and Nanaimo. I had three funerals in one day. And I provided for 2-300 people at each funeral. (Tsawout Participant, MUS 2014:70)

Crab All of the superharvesters identified in Tsawout’s 2014 MUS reported harvesting crabs during every month of the survey period, from February to November, 2014.

The results of the superharvester survey demonstrate that the Dungeness crab fishery is highly productive for those with the time, resources, and knowledge to participate. In

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one four-month period, the height of the season, the three most active respondents individually reported between 7000-15000 crabs. These individuals catch between 100-300 crabs per day on the water, and in many months within the survey period individuals claimed to have spent every day, or very nearly every day on the water. Of the respondents of the community-wide one-off online survey, crab fishermen and women maintained a range of catch between 4 to 100 crabs in one month, and harvested between 1 and 10 days per month. (Tsawout MUS 2014:75)

In addition, crab harvesting is widely popular among Tsawout members.

Crab harvesting and consumption is widespread throughout the community. A majority (75 per cent) of the respondents to the online survey also actively harvest and/or receive crab through other harvesters or community events. Forty-one per cent of those respondents harvested crab for themselves, and 34 per cent received it from others. Most respondents who went crabbing typically got enough to supply their household with one meal, and a second but smaller group of respondents also harvested enough to share with other households in their social circle.

The widespread popularity of crab harvesting and consumption among community members, the high rate of sharing and reception of crab, and the amount of crab harvested and circulated within the community and beyond by the superharvesters, all demonstrate that crab is a critical material within the W̱ SÁNE Ć subsistence economy and culture. Crab clearly contributes a significant source of protein for Tsawout households. In addition, respondents indicate that crab can be traded for other, less common marine foods. (Tsawout MUS 2014:75)

Despite the robustness of the crab harvest, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report that competition from commercial fishing, and environmental changes to crab habitat caused by non-aboriginal activity, are having an impact on access to crabs at traditional harvesting locations. These barriers extend to having traps damaged and stolen by non-Indigenous harvesters and property owners, which has forced them to alter or curtail their longstanding crabbing practices in order to prevent the corresponding loss of time and money to repair or replace equipment (Pauquachin MUS 2014:54).

Sea Urchins To W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders in particular, sea urchins are a favourite food, a delicacy, and important medicine, also known as sea eggs.

I used to love sea eggs. I still do, but my dad and mom, they’re all gone now. They lived off that. They couldn’t wait for us to go out there. They’d just jump for joy when we came in… Now that they’re hard to get, we have our gathering in the longhouses

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going through the year, somebody goes out and brings them in, oh everybody goes over there. Because nobody gets them any more. They’re hard to find. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:67)

In 2002, W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 347 collection sites in an amalgamated category for sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and chitons (Aberley 2002:22). The majority of these sites were reported by harvesters under the age of 40, suggesting the continuance of the W̱ SÁNE Ć sea urchin harvest. As with the crab harvest, commercial fishing and environmental changes caused by non-aboriginal activity are taking a toll on W̱ SÁNE Ć access to sea urchin at traditional harvesting locations.

The commercial dive fishery started for red sea urchins in 1978, and green urchin in 1986. Tsawout’s main marine resource Provider reports that availability of urchins remains low because divers harvest them from traditional sites . Claxton and Sam indicate that “there aren’t many left now; we can only harvest them for special occasions now.” (Tsawout MUS 2014:82)

Anywhere you want to go, the sea eggs used to be there, but they’re not here. All along this Sidney, any island around Swartz Bay. Anywhere you can get sea eggs, you can’t get them any more. They’re all gone. They’re cleaned out by divers, cleaned right out. It’s really sad. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:68)

Other W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters explain that vessel wake is another cause of the apparent disappearance of sea urchins from traditional harvesting sites, as well as a significant barrier to harvesting them.

Participant: So, when it’s high tide or lower tide the waves rush up. Seems like to me it disturbs the shellfish and sea urchins and stuff like that, and they move out further so they’re not bothered.

Interviewer: Would that make them harder to harvest too?

Participant: Yeah, cause at low tide we used to be able to get red and green sea urchins. After a while we couldn’t get them any more ‘cause they were going down deeper.

Interviewer: And you blame that on the wake from vessels?

Participant: Yeah on the big waves. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:68)

Bivalves W̱ SÁNE Ć respondents reported 1366 collection sites for the amalgamated category of clams, mussels and oysters in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study (Aberley 2002:20). W̱ SÁNE Ć clam

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harvesters report gathering large quantities to share with other households, in particular family members and Elders, and both those who harvest clams, as well as those unable to, report receiving clams from others (Pauquachin MUS 2014:66; Tsawout MUS 2014:80).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters also face contemporary barriers to accessing bivalves at traditional harvesting locations.

A number of past bivalve harvesting areas are not currently active due to pollution or loss of habitat. Past dredging activity at Melanie Bay and James Island removed the eel grass habitat that geoducks, clams and crabs depended on to survive. In Saanichton Bay, habitat is only now starting to return at test holes sites drilled in the 1980s from the proposed Saanichton Marina Project.

Testing for Bivalve Shellfish Biotoxins (PSP/ Red Tide, ASP, DSP) and sanitary contamination is done at sample sites at specific locations, and not on every beach. According to one MUS respondent, some preferred harvesting areas by Tsawout members are not areas specifically tested for contaminants, and the actual safety of consuming shellfish from these beaches may not be clear to harvesters…

Finding clean beaches for clam harvesting means that individuals must travel outward toward areas closer to the shipping lanes such as Little D’Arcy Island and Sidney Island. MUS respondents indicate that pollution-free clam beds are becoming more difficult to find, and one respondent added that, indeed, he and his peers are concerned about the future of clam species.

The bivalves harvested at the mud flats of Saanichton Bay and the spit at Tsawout may not be safe to eat. Every two years, Health Canada tests the beaches at Cordova Bay and Sidney for fecal coliform (from cow manure) and PSP biotoxins. When the levels are too high, which currently they have been, Health Canada deems that bivalves between these two areas, including the beach at Tsawout, are also not safe for human consumption. (Tsawout MUS 2014:79-81)

Barriers to gathering bivalves in some traditional locations force some W̱ SÁNE Ć to rely on other communities' harvesters for clams, including Tsaout and Ladysmith. In the case of the latter they can "cost a lot of money though. For an ice cream bucket it’s $25 you have to buy now… From Ladysmith, it’s open. It’s not polluted up there” (Pauquachin MUS 2014:66).

Shrimps and Prawns W̱ SÁNE Ć members indicate both harvesting and receiving shrimp at community events or through family and other networks (Tsawout MUS 2014:77).

Cultural Values Associated with Harvests

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Crab Historically, rakes for crab and urchin were made with a long wooden shaft and deer antlers for the rake head. Contemporary crab/urchin rakes are constructed by bending hay forks and adding webbing in between the tines: “[We] used to take them [hay forks] and bend them. Heat them up and bend them and put them on a pole. Put a bunch of webbing on there too. Helps in catching them.”

Rakes that were traditionally constructed with a deer antler at the end and may have been adorned with carvings, like the rake one interview respondent remembers DFO officers confiscated from him when he was a young boy. DFO prohibits the use of rakes for crabbing.

In choosing the rake over the trap, several respondents pointed to the cost associated with traps, and the ease and frequency with which they are stolen. Tsawout fishers feel that DFO has specifically targeted their harvesting practices in this ban. In the practice of raking, a fisherman can exercise his or her Douglas Treaty rights just as the signatories might have performed them. There have been many small encounters between traditional Tsawout crab fisheries and DFO over the years. For some respondents, the encounters have shaped the way they harvest and left lasting impressions:

[W]hen I use a rake it has to have rubber tips on it. If it doesn't have rubber tips on it I could get charged--I'm doing it illegally. I was brought up this way, now you got me fishing the white man way and using crab traps that are $100 to $200 a trap. You know. I'd rather do it by a pole because that's the way I was brought up. Even using a pole I could get twelve dozen crab a day, two hours work and I'm done. But now it is starting to change. They are trying to take my pole away. They took my other pole, the first pole I ever had in my life. They took that away. And these ones here I lost a couple poles about two months ago. Somebody just stole them. Just like a pipe pole... with a rake at the end. But I had one before and it was all carved, everything from the ocean carved on it and a deer antler for the hook. And you go to the museum now and its been in there for 33 years... They took it away from me, eh... Fisheries... I was only nine when they did that... I think I was 11 when they took it away from me. Now its just supposed to be a wall hanger. Elders made it for me. (Tsawout MUS 2014)

Crab has become important to the function of the W̱ SÁNE Ć subsistence economy, and is one of the three main marine foods at community and longhouse events, along with salmon and sea urchins. Several of the superharvesters have described how important crab fishing is to the

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transmission of inter-generational knowledge about how to be a harvester as part of a wider community, and what it means to be W̱ SÁNE Ć .

And the boy I got now, he just turned 3 and he's out on the water with me. And he handles crabs, puts crabs in the bucket for me... Yeah. Teaching him how to count. That's the way we do it. (Tsawout MUS 2014:73-74)

Bivalves Bivalve harvesting is a venue for W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional knowledge related ownership and reciprocity. Claxton and Sam (2010) describe moving boulders at low tide in order to trap bivalves, creating “clam gardens in bays to increase clam production” (73).

Some of these many sites were used and stewarded by Tsawout families. We have oral records of these places and the seasonal activities that took place at them. As explained before, where non-Tsawout families and tribes used our sites, they had family ties and/or permission to do so. (73)

Historically, W̱ SÁNE Ć people also put bivalve shells to work as bowls, tools and arrowheads for weaponry (Claxton & Sam 2010:74,76).

Contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć members report clamming throughout their lives, most often with Elders and family members (Pauquachin MUS 2014:64). The following excerpt from an interview with a harevester who inherited a mental map of clamming beaches from his parents, describes clamming as nothing less than a venue for the teaching and transfer of traditional knowledge.

Participant: That’s why I’m thankful for my dad showing me those places. I think it just made me a better person. He also said don’t you ever complain, as you’re always asked or told… Learn by doing… We’d paddle from there, we’d go all the way out, we used to be, this is Pat Bay here. We’d be there for getting a few clams. But then we’d be down Moses Point. Then we’d be down over in Cowichan Bay; not very often, but. Lot of time these little islands over here, my dad always had me there. All in there. There’s a bunch of little islands in there.

Interviewer: You said that was seen as the cleanest?

Participant: Yeah because all of his grandparents always said it’s because the currents are running through. From there we would have, my dad would pull just up and then we’d just boil, or lot of times he would just break his clams and then slurp them up. Which I haven’t done that in a lot of years, since I was a kid...

… We’d be here and then we’d make our way back, and then we’d be heading across. But you’d always wait for the tide coming in there. It would be a lot easier paddling.

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My dad always taught me the way of the tides… Low tides, rip tides. First thing he showed me is when I was a young kid he brought me out to the islands here. And we were paddling a wooden canoe, and he says take my coat off. So I’m down to my gitch and I’m just a young kid and he threw me in, and said I’m showing you something. He said now you swim to those islands and go left. You always want to stay right but I went left like he told me to, and I was way out in the middle there just because of the tides, the rip tide there. He just did all that to show me. Then he’d take me over to Mill Bay and do the same thing. Show me how the water’s moving. (Pauquachin MUS 2014: 64-65)

Sea Urchins Sea urchin harvesting is done almost exclusively by specialized harvesters fulfilling a traditional provider role within the community. Elders consider these “sea eggs” to be both a delicacy and an important medicine (Tsawout Participant: MUS 2014; Claxton & Sam 2010:80; Suttles 1974:121).

That's pretty much the way our elders, they call that medicine, eh. The sea urchins are like their medicine. (Tsawout Participant: MUS 2014)

They're really good medicine 'cause they have really good iron in them. Like if you got low blood or anything, you just eat that one little sea urchin, and you eat that yellow stuff in it, you clean it up and you eat it, and you got really iron and you only eat that one, your iron is like way up. (Tsawout Participant: MUS 2014)

These traditional foods carry great importance for the grieving process. When discussing requests for traditional marine foods funerals in particular, one Elder described the requests as coming from the deceased, or ancestors of the deceased. Fulfilling such requests is seen as answering a deep, ancestral craving, and provides a bridge between the past and the future. (Tsawout MUS 2014:82-83)

6.7 MARINE FISH

The pursuit, harvesting and use of salmon is so central to W̱ SÁNE Ć history, culture and identity, that they have been called the “saltwater people” (Tsawout MUS 2014:38). Citing the absence of a major freshwater fish-bearing river within their traditional territory, Elliot Sr. (1993) explains that the W̱ SÁNE Ć “went to the sea to get our salmon; that is why we are the salt water people” (16). Indeed, the absence of a freshwater river in W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory was a principle environmental influence on the development of W̱ SÁNEĆ seasonal round and culture (MUS 2014:91).

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The fishing technique the W̱ SÁNE Ć adopted to catch salmon in open ocean waters is unique to the people of the area. But reef-netting, as it is called, was more than a simple harvesting technique; it was the dominant organizing and unifying force in W̱ SÁNE Ć society and culture. The development of the reef net fishery, and its central role in every aspect of W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional life, from its place in W̱ SÁNEĆ cosmology and defining the seasonal round, to its influence over W̱ SÁNE Ć social organization, values and beliefs, demonstrates the continual use of salmon by the W̱ SÁNE Ć from time immemorial.

Suttles (1974:181) described cod fishing techniques steeped in traditional and ecological knowledge that suggest continual use of these species. These include the use of a 15 to 20- foot spear to push an elaborate “shuttlecock” lure, made from both cedar and maple, down to depths where cod would see and follow it to the surface so that harvesters could spear them there. In 2002, Tsartlip interviewees describe spearing lingcod in shallow water at traditional locations "where they used to spear fish" during their lifetimes (#117 Feb 21, 2002).

Claxton and Elliot (1993) explain, “ling cod can be lured to the surface with bait alone and speared; they are so anxious to protect their nests they will take the bait, even without a hook” (17). This was done by harvesters in canoes, as was halibut fishing using handmade lines and hooks that were steamed and bent into the shape of a horseshoe and baited with octopus. According to Suttles (1974) “kelp was the only material used for the line by all but the Saanich and Semiahmoo; the Semiahmoo informant said the line was of nettle fibre; while the Saanich informant said the lazy man used kelp, but the good fisherman had a line of willow bark” (117). Kennedy and Bouchard (1996) also describe W̱ SÁNE Ć ceremonies surrounding halibut fishing with line and hook.

Saanich fishermen described a special rite that was used to encourage the halibut to bite the hook. This involved hanging a small halibut by its tail and having young children beat it with fir boughs as they laughed and sang. The fish was then cooked and served to all but an old man who then went fishing, and if the rite had been successful, came back with plenty. (38)

Flounder and sole harvested from canoes, often at night and using fire for pit lamping (Suttles 1974:129).

The traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć herring harvest involved the use of a special rake, as with crab and sea urchins.

They were taken with a rake (ta’taman?), which was made by setting sharpened teeth into a fir pole. The teeth were made of hemlock or white fir limbs or possibly of bone; in recent times nails have been used. The shaft was 8 to 12 feet long with one side cut flat for 3 to 5 feet. Into the flattened part the teeth were set about an inch apart. The fisherman used the rake from his canoe when he found himself over a school of

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herring. Holding the rake as one would a paddle, he drew it quickly through the water, impaling with each stroke several fish, which he then dropped into the bottom of the canoe. (Suttles 1974:126-127)

Herring roe was harvested by weighting and sinking cedar branches into the water above eelgrass beds so that roe would be deposited on them during the spawning run. The branches were then raised and dried so that the roe could be harvested by shaking them (Suttles 1974:127).

Locations Nearly all W̱ SÁNE Ć marine fishing, and preferred marine fishing locations are within the MSA for the RBT2 Project.

Starting at the East Point of Saturna Island and all the way down to Race Rocks, W̱ SÁNE Ć fishing areas overlap with or are adjacent to the shipping lane, while many concentrated fishing areas are exposed to vessel wake throughout the MSA, as shown at the surrounding waters of South of Sidney, D’Arcy, Little D’Arcy, Mandarte, Halibut, Moresby, South Pender and Saturna Islands, the North and South Cod Reefs and Cooper Reef at Gooch Island, and Arachne Reef. Locations requiring transit across shipping lanes include Stuart Island and the Bell Beacon at the first turning point in Boundary Pass, Henry, and South San Juan Islands.

Further research is required in order to assess the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past marine fishing, and specifically the implications of increased shipping associated with the RBT2 Project as well as other projects which will increase marine shipping throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć territory.

Salmon In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported the following salmon harvesting locations: Happy Island in the San Juan Islands; Bedwell Harbour on Pender Island; area from Salt Spring Island across the Strait to the Fraser; Satellite Channel; Dawson Channel; around Pender, James, Piers, and Coal Islands; at Stuart Island; from shore at Saanichton Spit; at Saturna near East Point, and from East Point to Fiddler’s Cove; and in the channel between Moresby and Pender (Tsawout MUS 2014:95).

For the SENĆOŦEN Alliance study in 2002, W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters reported 2337 salmon kill sites (Aberley 2002:14-15), including locations on the far side of the Strait of Georgia running from Bowen Island to Point Roberts, at Roberts Banks and Sturgeon Banks, from south of Burrard Inlet at Point Grey to the international border, at Stuart Island, along the south- western side of San Juan Island, and running the length of the international border from southeast of Saturna Island to west of San Juan Island. Respondents also reported salmon

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harvesting locations around Tumbo and Saturna Islands, along the southern shores of Saturna and Pender Islands, surrounding Moresby, Sidney, James, D’Arcy and Little D’Arcy Islands, and east and south of Coal, and from Saanichton Bay to Port Renfrew off of Vancouver Island (Tsawout MUS 2014:95).

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters target the open channel east of the Gulf Islands, from Saturna Island past South Pender and Sidney Islands, south to Cordova Bay on Vancouver Island. “Superharvesters and MUS interview participants indicate that they use traditional harvesting areas on the eastern side of Georgia Strait identified in previous studies” (Tsawout MUS 2014:95). Harvesters also report fishing locations at Mayne, and Coal Islands, and at Sidney Spit, in addition the reef-net site at Stuart Island, which one W̱ SÁNE Ć interviewee had also used during his lifetime (Pauquachin MUS 2014:75).

Halibut Suttles reports that halibut were “once numerous on banks off the southern shore of Vancouver Island and in Haro and Rosario Straits,” (1974:114) and refers to a W̱ SÁNE Ć informant who reported fishing at East Point on Saturna Island. Bouchard and Kennedy (1996), stress the importance of halibut fishing throughout the Gulf Islands and at Mayne and Saltspring Islands in particular, and Claxton and Sam (2010) indicate that Mandarte was a halibut fishing location.

W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report current halibut harvesting locations south of Pender and Moresby Islands, southwest of D’Arcy Island, and near Halibut Island, as well as in Reid Harbour at Stuart Island on the east side of the MSA and the shipping lanes.

Cod and Rockfish According to Bouchard and Kennedy (1996), “lingcod and rock cod fishing throughout the southern Gulf Islands was popular amongst the Saanich,” with Active Pass being a particularly well used spot for rock cod and herring fishing (37). Claxton and Sam (2010), describe Mandarte Island as "a place for gathering food: cod, halibut and rockfish" (35).

In 2000, W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported lingcod and rockfish harvesting locations in Saanichton Bay, between San Juan and Sidney islands, from Moresby over to Pender, around Gooch and Sidney Islands, at East Bay, from East Point to Taylor’s Beach on Saturna Island, in the Straits, near Stuart Island, and on a reef that links Pender and Moresby Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:97).

2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study participants reported 1934 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites for an amalgamated category including red snapper, rock cod, and ling cod kill sites (Aberley:17). These included locations off the south sides of Saturna, South Pender, Pender, Moresby, and

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Sidney Islands, surrounding Sheep, Domville, Forrest, Gooch, Coal, Mandarte, Halibut, and the D’Arcy Islands, the northeast side of Sidney Island, east of Cordova Bay, and west of the Chatham Islands, off the southeast tip of Saturna Island, and near the international border, east and south of the D’Arcy Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:97).

Tsartlip 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance Use and Occupancy Mapping Project participants report harvesting all three fish on all sides of Gooch and D'Arcy Islands. Tsawout 2014 MUS participants reports that one of the most important cod harvesting locations lies within shipping lanes, and runs from around D’Arcy Island south to Big Zero and Little Zero Islands (Tsawout MUS 2014:97).

Flounder and Sole In 2000, Tsawout Elders reported past sole harvesting locations in Dawson Channel, near Manley Creek, in Saanichton and Cowichan Bays, and near a reef in the channel between Moresby and Pender Islands. During the 2014 MUS, participants also reported past harvesting on sandbars east of James Island (MUS 2014:100).

W̱ SÁ NEĆ participants in the 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study reported 333 kill sites for the amalgamated category of flounder, sole, and halibut (Aberley:18). These include the area between the southeast tip of James Islands and the northwest side of D’Arcy Island, another starting in Saanichton Bay and extending south along the east side of Vancouver Island, as well as others surrounding James Island, northwest of Sidney Island, and along the south side of Salt Spring Island (Tsawout MUS 2014:100-101).

Herring and Herring Roe W̱ SÁNE Ć Elders reported herring harvesting locations in Active Pass, Fulford Harbour, Ganges, Saanich Inlet, Long Harbour, Pat Bay, Dawson Channel, Boundary Pass, and between James and Sidney Islands. They also recorded herring roe harvesting in Mill, Brentwood, and Nazareth Bays (Webster 2000:14). Pauquachin harvesters concur, reporting that herring used to pass through the Saanich Inlet in vast schools where they were caught directly in front of the community; herring roe was gathered at Coles Bay, “off the beach ‘cause it was just loaded down here before" (Pauquachin MUS 2014:78-79). Tsartlip harvesters report being unable to access herring "along Salt Spring and Galiano" today because there are "too many ferries" (#109 Feb 8, 2009).

2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study participants reported 104 W̱ SÁNE Ć herring kill sites, including locations at the east end of Active Pass, the south side of Salt Spring Island just outside of Fulford Harbour, and in Saanichton Bay, as well as along the east side of Vancouver

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Island running south from Saanichton Bay to a just west of D’Arcy Island (Tsawout MUS 2014:102).

Timing of Harvests: Salmon ĆENŦEḴI is “the sockeye moon,” which loosely aligns with May/June. Claxton and Elliot (1993) write that “at the beginning of the ĆENŦEḴI moon and with a special ceremony, reef net anchors were dropped and our ancestors fished hereditary family locations throughout the four salmon months” (13). The traditional salmon fishing season then, runs generally from ĆENŦEḴI through ĆENHENEN when the “humpback salmon return to the earth,” ĆENTÁWEN when “the coho salmon return to the earth,” and ĆENQOLEW̱ when ”the dog salmon return to the earth,” or roughly May/June to September.

Tsawout’s 2014 MUS survey results suggest a similar concentration of current W̱ SÁNE Ć salmon harvesting.

Seventy-five per cent of the superharvesters fished for salmon between February and May 2014, 50 per cent fished for salmon in June, and 83 per cent went in July, and then 63 per cent went in the late summer and fall months. Individuals who fished in the spring months did so, on average, often. Respondents fished for salmon with less frequency in the summer months of June and July, and in August and the fall months, the frequency with which respondents fished was the most wide-ranging — individuals either went rarely or almost every day. (Tsawout MUS 2014:93-94)

Halibut The Saanich Year indicates the traditional halibut season starting in ṈIṈENE, the “moon of the child,” or roughly January for those brave enough to risk the rough seas, and continuing until the “bullhead moon” in SXÁNEȽ when the halibut begin to spawn (Claxton & Elliot 1993:3,9). W̱ SÁNE Ć interviewees share traditional knowledge that holds the blooming of the dogwood tree signals the start of the productive halibut season (Tsawout MUS 2014).

Cod and Rockfish According to Suttles’s informants, cod was traditionally fished for all year round (Tsawout MUS 2014:97). The Saanich Year suggests that ĆENTÁWEN when “the coho salmon return to the earth,” or roughly August, “is a good moon for cod fishing… lingcod can be lured to the surface with bait alone and speared; they are so anxious to protect their nests they will take the bait, even without a hook” (Claxton & Elliot 1993:17).

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Contemoporary W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report cod harvesting in the early spring, late summer and fall (Tsawout MUS 2014:98).

Herring WEXES, the “moon of the frog,” in roughly February, marked the end of the winter ceremonial dancing season, and the arrival of the earliest herring runs in Tsawout’s traditional territory. Herring were raked at this time, and their roe gathered using cedar branches, both to be dried and stored for later (Claxton & Elliot 1993:5; Tsawout MUS 2014:101). The arrival of the herring in the late winter to early spring heralded the beginning of the spring-summer fishing season. Elliot (1983) explains:

WEXES was the month that the herring came, sometimes in the middle of that moon. The herring were the only fish that came to us automatically so our people took good advantage of it. Our people knew exactly when those herring were going to arrive. The old people would say, “They are not going to arrive on this tide.” Our people didn’t always tell the time by the day, or the moon or the sun. They knew the tide so well they would tell the time, exactly what time of year it was, by the tide that was coming and they would say those herring are going to arrive… Our people would take enough for their own use, not more, just enough that’s all. They would put out cedar and balsam branches so the herring would spawn on the branches, and hang them up in the sun and the wind to dry. That’s how they were preserved. When it was completely dry they would put it away for the next winter. (20)

Accessibility: Salmon W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report harvesting salmon for their own households, to divide between their own household and other households, and to provide for ceremonial gatherings and other events (Tsawout MUS 2014:94). Interviewees also report receiving salmon from other community members (Pauquachin MUS 2014).

Harvesters also identify a number of contemporary barriers to harvesting.

… [I]ncluding declining runs, climate change, pollution, and other environmental degradation, increasing competition from sports and non-Native commercial fisheries, restrictions on gear types, fishing spots and openings, and legal and administrative barriers… Other factors included competing time commitments, availability of boats and other equipment such as gas or bullets, differences in accessibility of resources, and harvesting knowledge. (Tsawout MUS 2014:10)

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W̱ SÁN EĆ harvesters report that stocks have been depleted at traditional fishing sites surrounding the Saanich Peninsula, even suggesting that efforts made at these sites now feel to them like "a waste of time" (Pauquachin MUS 2014:75).

Harvesters report salmon fishing locations at Stuart Island and southwest of San Juan Island, and indicate that the preferred travel route for accessing these locations is the most fuel efficient and economical: boating directly east from the Saanich Peninsula across the international border (Tsawout MUS 2014:95).

Halibut 25 per cent of survey respondents in Tsawout’s 2014 MUS reported harvesting halibut within the previous 12 months; another 25 per cent reported receiving halibut from another person or event in the same time frame. Those who harvested halibut reported sharing or trading their harvest more often than they used them for food within their own households. Half of those who fished for halibut reported catching one roughly 50 per cent of the time, while the other half of those who fished for them reported catching halibut every trip (Tsawout MUS 2014:99).

Cod and Rockfish Cod are harvested frequently and throughout the year, and often distributed for use in other households or community events. Cod is available in such abundance in some communities that it is sometimes used to trade for other goods” (Tsawout MUS 2014:96).

Herring and Herring Roe W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters report a steady decline in herring availability over recent decades. Tsartlip harvesters, for example, report that they "used to catch them by the buckets," but today they are unable to access them at all in some locations, including at Salt Spring and Galiano Islands, as a result of ferry traffic (#109 Feb 8, 2009). When accessible, these fish are currently used for bait and less frequently for food. Herring roe, a rare and coveted delicacy, was harvested by a small percentage survey respondents, who clearly distribute their harvest within the community because a larger percentage reported receiving roe from another person or at events (Tsawout MUS 2014:102).

According to DFO, the herring population in the Strait of Georgia declined due to overfishing in the 1960s, recovered during the mid-1970s, declined again during the 1980s, but by 2006 was near historical high abundances (as recorded in 1956) (DFO June 2006). Tsawout members indicate that there may be more herring in recent years in Saanichton Inlet, but the stocks that would normally be found in their territory at their accustomed locations, have not increased. It appears that people consider this to

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be a local phenomenon. Several interview respondents connected it with the wider ecology of salmon stocks and others, which they believe is in decline. (Tsawout MUS 2014:103)

Respondents in the Pauquachin 2014 MUS listed herring and/or herring eggs among the marine foods they accessed historically, and to which they would most like to have better access today (Pauquachin MUS 2014:79).

Only one participant reported fishing for herring within the previous year, although others indicated accessing it through their networks, trading smoked fish for it, purchasing it from other communities, and receiving it at community events. Herring eggs, despite being a preferred delicacy and one of the marine foods respondents most often indicated they would like to have more of, had not been received by any participants in more than a year. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:79-80)

Cultural Values Associated with Harvests: Salmon The following offers a description of the extensive and foundational W̱ SÁNE Ć cultural values associated the salmon harvest.

Contemporary W̱ SÁNE Ć researcher, educator, and fisherman, Nicholas Claxton, asserts that W̱ SÁNE Ć identity and marine harvesting practices, which ordered and powered the W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round, are so completely interwoven as to render it impossible to consider either in isolation. According to Claxton, reef-net fishing was not just a way of life in the fullest sense of the term, but “what it meant in large part to be a Saanich person.”

According to Saanich teachings, it was a fishing technique that was given as a gift from the Salmon People to the Saanich in exchange for a beautiful Saanich princess. It was intended that this fishing technique was given (to) allow the Saanich to prosper in their own lands and waters, and live in harmony with the salmon forever. This fishing technique was more than just a way to catch lots of fish; inherent in it was a model of governance for the Saanich people.

Like the salmon, which are imbued with supernatural powers and significance, the W̱ SÁNE Ć ’ s characteristic technique of harvesting them is seen as a gift from the supernatural as well. In this way reef netting both expresses and reinforces the W̱ SÁNE Ć view of themselves as being “of” their natural e nvironment, in no way separable from it, cooperative and fundamentally respectful actors amongst other equal actors. Simply put, reef netting “could not be successful without the Saanich

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Peoples deep respect for the salmon, the earth, and each other. The principle of respect was an integral part of the Saanich people’s worldview.”

This is a theme Claxton returns to repeatedly in his writings about the W̱ SÁNE Ć r e e f - net fishery. In describing the ring of willow that was woven into the end of the net in order to allow some of the salmon to escape, he observes that this simple and effective conservation measure was in fact borne of a profound respect for the salmon. Here again the W̱ SÁNE Ć belief that everything within their habitat was animated and imbued with supernatural powers was inextricably interwoven with their harvesting practices.

It was believed that the runs of salmon were lineages, and if some were allowed to return to their home rivers, then those lineages would always continue. W̱ SÁNE Ć people believed that all living things were once people, and they were respected as such. The salmon were their relatives. As has been mentioned, the first salmon ceremony, during which all W̱ SÁNE Ć honoured the king of the salmon by pulling up their reef-nets and ceasing to fish for a period of up to ten days after the first sockeye salmon was caught, is another example of a ritualized demonstration of respect arising from the belief that the sockeye were human relatives with supernatural powers that also functioned as an effective conservation measure ensuring the future health of the resource. That the W̱ SÁNE Ć took time to celebrate the arrival of the salmon also demonstrates the strong spiritual and community purposes reef net fishing served in addition to its central role in W̱ SÁNE Ć subsistence activities.

Claxton and Suttles both describe the respect shown by the women and children who received the salmon on-shore during the reef netting, and the ritualized way in which the captain of the reef-net crew counted out the fish for his crewmembers using the sacred number two, again to show respect for the salmon in order to encourage its ongoing return. Claxton explains that, “this respect built a relationship to the resource that allowed the Saanich peoples to thrive as a nation for a millennia. It is this respect for the land and its resources that was, and still is, integral to the Saanich people’s worldview.” (Tsawout MUS 2014:42-44)

Respect for the salmon was also shown through ceremonies held to honour the first salmon caught each year. One W̱ SÁNE Ć harvester described a first salmon ritual based upon these traditional ceremonies and still followed by his family today.

For the first one of our season, the first one we catch of our household we give away each year. So, that’s how my son got brought up. The first one you catch you give it away or present it to another friend of family. (Pauquachin MUS 2014:74).

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Halibut According to Suttles (1974:118), women were considered good luck when fishing for halibut, perhaps because harvesters referred to the fish as E’LIS, or “sister” while fishing. Claxton (2008) relates advice from his father on fishing for halibut, including his injunction to “‘take your wife along with you when you go out;’ the halibut is also a SKI,TU and they love to have the ladies out there.”

Suttles (1974) also describes a W̱ SÁNE Ć ritual intended to encourage halibut harvests.

Supernatural Aid: Saanich and Songish informants, but no others, described a rite performed to bring back the halibut if they have not been biting. It was performed at no special time nor necessarily every year. If the fishermen had not caught anything for a while and then caught a small halibut, the size of a big flounder, they hung it up by the tail, gave the children each a fir (?) bough, and had them beat it. While beating it they sang and laughed. Then an old man told the people to cut it up and boil it in a pot; everyone ate it except the old man. The next day the old man went out and came back with plenty. When the children were hitting the small halibut, the old halibut were said to be crying for their child. (118)

Herring and Herring Roe The herring and herring roe harvest were intricately interwoven with the traditional and ecological knowledge of W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters, as the following excerpt from Elliot (1983) illustrates.

WEXES was the month that the herring came, sometimes in the middle of that moon. The herring were the only fish that came to us automatically so our people took good advantage of it. Our people knew exactly when those herring were going to arrive. The old people would say, “They are not going to arrive on this tide.” Our people didn’t always tell the time by the day, or the moon or the sun. They knew the tide so well they would tell the time, exactly what time of year it was, by the tide that was coming and they would say those herring are going to arrive… Our people would take enough for their own use, not more, just enough that’s all. (20)

As with crab and sea urchins, W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional herring harvest involved the use of a special rake.

They were taken with a rake (ta’taman?), which was made by setting sharpened teeth into a fir pole. The teeth were made of hemlock or white fir limbs or possibly of bone; in recent times nails have been used. The shaft was 8 to 12 feet long with one side cut flat for 3 to 5 feet. Into the flattened part the teeth were set about an inch apart. The fisherman used the rake from his canoe when he found himself over a school of

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herring. Holding the rake as one would a paddle, he drew it quickly through the water, impaling with each stroke several fish, which he then dropped into the bottom of the canoe. (Suttles 1974:126-127)

Herring roe was harvested by weighting and sinking cedar branches into the water above eelgrass beds so that roe would be deposited on them during the spawning run. The branches were then raised and dried so that the roe could be harvested by shaking them (Suttles 1974:127).

6.8 MARINE MAMMALS

The traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć seasonal round included the harvesting of marine mammals for a variety of uses including food, and materials for making tools, rope, clothing, and artwork (Claxton & Sam 2010:103). Harbour seal, or ASW̱ , California sea lion, and the Northern sea lion are all found in W̱ SÁNE Ć marine territory, and were hunted at the same time as the humpback salmon (Pauquachin MUS 2014:85). Sea lions were also eaten opportunistically, often after they were killed or injured by orca whales, which Elliot (1983) described as being “like a free gift to our people” (29).

Elliot Sr. (1983) describes several different traditional W̱ SÁNE Ć techniques for hunting seals that demonstrate the traditional use of these marine mammals.

There’s one way they would call the seal, they would make the same noises the seal makes to attract them so they could harpoon them. Another way they caught seals was when they would be out on a reef at low tide. The men would come from one side of the reef upwind. They wouldn’t go downwind because the seal would smell them coming. They would come upwind and harpoon them, or club them. Seals climb out onto the reef and you can sneak up on a seal because they are slow on land. It takes them a little time to get into the water. (28)

The 2002 SENĆOŦEN Alliance study recorded 23 W̱ SÁNE Ć seal and sea lion kills sites. Claxton and Sam (2010) also indicate the use of both seals and porpoise for food in their description of pit steaming as a method used to cook “camas bulbs, clams, deer, seal, or porpoise” (85).

The KELȽOLEMEĆEN or orca whale, is a prominent figure in W̱ SÁNE Ć cosmology and oral history, and there are some references indicating that the W̱ SÁNE Ć hunted whales or relied on them for food, oil, or trade (Claxton & Sam 2010). Orcas feature in many W̱ SÁNE Ć stories, often as spiritual intermediaries between families and the sea. Adelynne Claxton (ed. 2007),

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explains that “the Thunderbird, the Whale, the Raven, and the Wolf are the spirit protectors of the W̱ SÁNE Ć people. The Whale gives us protection when we travel on the sea” (125).

Further research focussing on past and current use and significance of marine mammals is required in order to assess W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary imporance of marine mammals within the MSA for the RBT2 Project. This discussion cannot be interpreted as reflecting the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of marine mammals within the MSA for the RBT2 Project.

Locations Very little research has been conducted on W̱ SÁNE Ć past or present harvests of marine mammals, or their cultural significance, and further research is required in order to assess potential interactions within the MSA for the RBT2 Project.

Claxton and Sam 2010, indicates that “seal were traditionally hunted near Salt Spring, where a petroglyph showing a seal’s face marked this as a sacred seal hunting place” (Tsawout MUS 2014:115). Claxton and Elliot 1993 also states that “seals and sea lions were hunted in the San Juan Islands” (21).

Elliot Sr. (1983:29) suggests that sea lions were found and harvested for food along the shoreline when killed or injured and driven ashore by orcas.

Further research focussing on past and current marine mammal harvesting is required in order to assess W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary use of locations within the MSA for marine mammal harvesting.

Timing of Harvests Elliot Sr. (1983:29) indicates that W̱ SÁNE Ć harvesters hunted seals during the “humpback salmon return to earth” in the moon of ĆENHENEN, roughly aligning with July. Claxton and Elliot (1993:21), however, places seal and sea lion hunting efforts in PEKELÁNEW under “the moon that turns the leaves white.” Claxton and Elliot (1993:21) locate these efforts specifically in the San Juan Islands, so perhaps he is describing a discrete harvest separate and apart from the hunt Elliot Sr. (1983:29) associates with the humpback salmon run.

Further research focussing on past and current marine mammal harvesting is required in order to assess timing of W̱ SÁNE Ć contemporary marine mammal harvesting within the MSA.

Accessibility In 2002, the SENĆOŦEN Alliance Study recorded 23 W̱ SÁNE Ć kill sites in an amalgamated category for seals and sea lions (Aberley 2002:15). W̱ SÁNE Ć interviewees report eating seal during their lifetimes; one also reported that he “wasn’t allowed to eat seal when I was a child.

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I don’t know why.” Harvesters recall a seal hunter from the W̱ SÁNE Ć community of Tsartlip who drowned during a seal hunting trip to Stuart Island (Pauquachin MUS 2014:85).

Further research focussing on past and current marine mammal harvesting is required in order to assess accessibility of marine mammals within W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional territory and the MSA.

Cultural Values Associated with Harvests Claxton and Sam (2010) provide a list of traditional uses for nearly every part of sea mammals: “we ate the meat and oil of the animals, used the old for paint base, dried sinew and gut for string and rope, shaped the bone into tools, made robes and bedding of the pelts, and traded these products” (103).

Seal oil plays an important role in the longhouse where it is used to grease the entrance and floor during sacred ceremonies. ASW̱ is the W̱ SÁNE Ć word for harbour seal. This act of naming suggests a value attached to this resource.

7.0 Conclusion This report summarizes existing W̱ SÁNE Ć traditional marine use data and ethnohistorical information about the area surrounding the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Expansion Project (the Project). The report and the data upon which it is based are the exclusive property of the Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, and Tseycum First Nations. No part of this document may be shared under any circumstances without the written permission of the four bands.

This study was prepared by querying the W̱ SÁNE Ć Nations’ traditional knowledge databases to extract spatially relevant marine use data overlapping with the Project, its assessment areas, and the marine shipping lanes. Although the project team used the spatial boundaries of the EIS, this in no way implies acceptance or approval of the assessment methodology, including its spatial/temporal boundaries, employed by Port Metro Vancouver to identify project Valued Components, indicators, scope, or to determine likely effects and their mitigations, or to characterize residual effects or determine their significance -- all of which was determined without input from W̱ SÁNE Ć . PMV must understand that the W̱ SÁNE Ć have established Douglas Treaty rights, as well as Aboriginal title and rights, within W̱ SÁNE Ć territory, which includes the the Project, its assessment areas, and the shipping lanes.

Further research is required to assess the totality of W̱ SÁNE Ć current and past marine use within the project assessment areas, and specifically the implications of increased shipping associated with the RBT2 Project, as well as other projects that will increase marine shipping throughout W̱ SÁNE Ć territory.

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