Show Transcript Deconstructing Dinner Kootenay Co-op Radio Nelson, B.C. Canada July 22, 2010 Title: Exploring Ethnobiology II: (Nancy Turner on Ethnobiology) Producer/Host - Jon Steinman Transcript - Angela Moore Jon Steinman: Welcome to Deconstructing Dinner - a weekly radio show and Podcast produced in Nelson, British Columbia at Kootenay Co-op Radio CJLY. This show is heard on radio stations around the world including WMRW 95.1FM Warren, Vermont. I'm Jon Steinman. Today marks part II in our series, "Exploring Ethnobiology". In May of this year, 2010, Deconstructing Dinner travelled to Vancouver Island where two international conferences on ethnobiology were being hosted. Ethnobiology examines the relationships between humans and their surrounding plants, animals and ecosystems. Today, more and more people seem to be interested in developing closer relationships with the earth, and so there's much to be learned from the research of ethnobiologists and in particular, from the symbiotic human-earth relationships that so many peoples around the world have long maintained. On this part II of the series, we'll listen to segments from a one-on-one interview with Nancy Turner of the University of Victoria. Nancy is perhaps the most well known ethnobiologist in Canada. I sat down with her in the community of Tofino to learn more about what ethnobiology is, why it's an increasingly important field to pay attention to, and what we all might learn from the many indigenous peoples that ethnobiologists work with. Also on the show, a recording of a presentation by Cheryl Bryce and Pamela Tudge who are examining how the indigenous peoples living in what is now the City of Victoria might reinstate traditional harvesting practices of and important traditional food - camas. Music Fades Out On part one of this Exploring Ethnobiology series, we heard from indigenous youth from Vancouver Island who are seeking to reconnect with their traditional ways of accessing, producing and conserving food. It was learned that re-establishing or strengthening those connections is much more than just ensuring food security, but is instead a powerful tool to preserve culture and honour the sacredness of our natural surroundings. Nancy Turner is very familiar with the importance of these connections… she's been studying the field of ethnobiology for most of her life. Born in Berkeley, California, Nancy moved to Victoria at the age of 5 and she lives there today as a Distinguished Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. She earned a PhD in Ethnobotany in 1974 from the University of British Columbia when she studied three contemporary indigenous groups of the Pacific Northwest (the Haida, Bella Coola and Lillooet). Nancy's major research has demonstrated the role of plant resources in past and present aboriginal cultures and languages as being an integral component of traditional knowledge systems. Nancy has also played an important role in helping demonstrate how traditional management of plant resources has shaped the landscapes and habitats of western Canada. In 1999 Nancy received the Order of British Columbia and 10 years later in 2009 received the Order of Canada. She's authored numerous books including, among others, Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples, Food Plants of Interior First Peoples, Plants of Haida Gwaii and The Earth's Blanket - Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living. I sat down with Nancy in May 2010 while we were both attending the 12th International Congress of Ethnobiology held in Tofino, British Columbia. Nancy Turner: Ethnobiology is the study of people and the natural world, especially the study of people and their relationships with plants and animals, and especially people who have direct relationships with their surroundings - the plants and animals that grow in their own home places. I've grown up in a family where my dad was an entomologist, he studied insects, and my grandfather was an entomologist, both of whom really encouraged me to study natural history. I always loved birds and plants from the time before I was 5 years old and as I got into maybe 9-10-11, I started thinking more about plants that you could eat. I was fascinated that you could eat dandelion leaves for example and I would pick them and bring them in and make salads when I was just a kid. I didn't really realize that there was a field that you could actually study that was about all of this; how plants could be used and all of the different knowledge about plants, as food, or materials, or medicine - how to make fibre. That was actually something that you could study and I first was given two books when I was in high school, maybe first year university, but by that time all already knew about this field ethnobotany. There was a book by Erna Gunther called The Ethnobotany of Western Washington and there was a book edited by Elsie Steedman on Thompson Indian ethnobotany that pertains to the Nlaka'pamux nations' relationships with plants (mostly of notes recorded by James Tate, who was an ethnographer who lived in that area in the late 1800's and early 1900's). When I saw these books and then I started reading about work from Franz Boas, who worked specially with the Kwakwaka'wakw (then he called southernKwakiutl), I decided this was what I wanted to study. Although I went through biology and botany, I took a course in anthropology in third year and my term paper was the Ethnobotany of the Southern Kwakiutl of British Columbia. Then I did an honours' thesis and that's when I started learning from the Saanich people near Victoria and started to work with elders there, like Christopher Paul from Tsartlip. I would go out every Tuesday afternoon in my fourth year at the university and he would teach me as much as I could learn about plants, the Sencoten names and all of the importance of them to their people. So that's how I got started and its one of those fields that's endlessly fascinating. The more that you learn about them the more fascinating and interesting it becomes and the more you see the importance and relevance of the knowledge of local people and indigenous people in this modern world. JS: This is Deconstructing Dinner. Within the field of ethnobiology are a number of more specific fields of research (ethnobotany, ethnozoology and ethnoecology). For a while Nancy Turner was known more for her work as an ethnobotanist, but today refers to herself as an ethnoecologist. Her reason for the title change demonstrates one example of how ethnobiologists and indigenous peoples learn from each other. NT: I've been working in this field for over 40 years. I've been learning especially from indigenous elders and knowledge holders here in British Columbia over that time. And I've come more to recognize the people's knowledge is very holistic and you can't just separate out plants it's just not possible because the relate to fish, they relate to the birds, the animals , the fungi and so forth. More and more that knowledge becomes to be reflected in their relationships between people and their whole environments; their movements around the land and their seasonal rounds and their stories that involve plants, animals and environments in habitats. The ways that they have not just sustaining but actually enhancing environments and plants and animals where they live and the woods that they rely on and the belief systems that help them to manage these other living beings. JS: Nancy Turner's comments highlight why Deconstructing Dinner has come to recognize ethnobiology as such an important field to explore, especially today. We've finally arrived at a time of widespread acceptance that ‘yes', we as humans are having an incredible impact on the earth - an impact that no doubt has been fed very much by an inability to understand the relationships between all living things. While attending these two international conferences it became clear that ethnobiology is a field of research that not only studies relationships between people and their surrounding environments but is too a relationship builder itself by bringing together many academic disciplines and fields of research. NT: Of course every single academic discipline can have an aspect of it that relates to this relationship between people, plants, animals and other living things and environments. So, for example, the most obvious ones would be biology, the study of living things (plants, animals, fungi and so forth) and anthropology, which is the study of peoples of the world and cultures. But also you could imagine linguistics would be very important in this field because, in all the different languages of the world, there are names and terms that relate to those relationships with plants and animals to the plants and animals themselves and the places where they live, so linguistics is an important element. Then you can think, well political science even (because it involves relationships of trade and social organization) and economics, because throughout history people have valued certain resources from the plant and animal world and have used those to exchange with others. Similarly just about every field you can think of (from education to philosophy and psychology) all relate in some way to ethnobiology. JS: One of the best examples that I heard on more than one occasion of the importance of the relationships formed between food sources and people is language. While for people of western backgrounds, food has rapidly become of less significant importance, for many indigenous peoples and some non-indigenous peoples, food is front and centre, it's an identification of who they are, so much so that food, within many indigenous cultures maintains a pivotal relationship to their language.