Pauquachin First Nation has always held a strong relationship with Coles Bay, the Nation’s main shellfish harvesting beach, where community life and marine life are deeply interwoven. To turn the tide on the beach’s nearly three-decade closure, a program was created to generate holistic restoration outcomes and reclaim this important connection.
We spoke with the Pauquachin First Nation about how their marine program is reconnecting the community to life on the beach through powerful environmental stewardship and shellfish restoration.
What was the “spark” that inspired your community to start your marine program?
Pauquachin First Nation has always taken a proactive and involved approach to environmental stewardship and management. Members from Pauquachin First Nation have always been strong advocates to our community leaders, indicating the importance of caretaking the active and cherished areas of importance within Pauquachins’ traditional territory. This territory spans from Saanich Inlet to Saturna Island and beyond, with trade networks and stopover sights all the way to the mainland of British Columbia.
Despite the immense capacity and financial challenges associated with starting a novel marine program, in 2019, Chief Rebecca David and elected councillors created the “spark” that initiated a long-term community vision of creating an environmental stewardship department. This department was always envisioned as centring a holistic and involved community role, allowing for community members to reaccess areas in the territory where they were excluded due to the continuing effects of colonial settlement. We wanted a department where youth, Elders, knowledge holders, language speakers, and community felt safe, comfortable, and engaged with their environment. The department additionally allows Pauquachin First Nation to take an active stewardship role, leveraging our examples of local environmental management based on our cultural values to enact regional change in collaboration with local governments, non-profits, neighbours, and interested parties.
What do you consider to be your biggest success? Can you share any stories of the impact your work has had that have surprised you?
The first and biggest success represented by the establishment and realization of this department was the community support and integration it offered. It was a big step to create a novel workplace and a series of job opportunities uniquely woven in to bring necessary skillsets, training, and economic opportunities to our community.
When access to traditional foods was limited due to various historical factors including urbanization, increased pollution, and watershed changes, we needed an option to generate membership employment opportunities on-reserve. Our department leverages the skills and ecological knowledge of our community, allowing them to interact with their territory while generating useful and needed data utilized by the Nation in the unyielding tidal wave of referrals, government interactions, policy commentary, and other inputs consistently requested to First Nations. These positions and roles give a major sense of pride in the community, as well as act as a social safety net for our members who can rely on each other and act as leaders to others while positively contributing to the long-term vision of the Nation.
Our main restoration successes involve rekindling a strong relationship with Pauquachins’ main shellfish harvesting beach in Coles Bay, which traditionally was a centre point for the community where knowledge was exchanged, youth were taught, ceremonies held, and food gathered. This beach has been closed since 1997, and through that closure by the Department of Fisheries, a strong sense of isolation, fear, and disconnect occurred due to the ever-present and previously not understood pollution sources in the bay. Our members were simply told the beach was not safe and to leave this rich cultural space entirely. Hope was quickly leaving, as multiple generations of Pauquachin youth were raised without the important connection the beach represented.
Our environmental stewardship staff and marine department have been working tirelessly for four years to change that narrative. Through both scientific and cultural management practices, Pauquachin First Nation has changed the tide, so to speak, surrounding the shellfish closure in Coles Bay.
Initial efforts involved a detailed review of the clam populations that used to support us, identifying which populations were still healthy and which had changed in the three-decade closure. We have additionally finalized identification of the cumulative effects driving the pollution, as well as the types of pollution we are facing along the path of cultural shellfishery revitalization. Both marine and freshwater inputs are sampled all year round by stewardship staff to ensure seasonal variations in pollution are also understood.
We additionally have been aiming to re-introduce, through both community restoration days and seasonal stewardship staff practices, traditional shellfish management methods that brought health and life to the beach before the closure. These involve long discussions on the wider environment, with Elders and knowledge holders, as well as youth events where we teach young people about the life they are connected to on the beach. Tilling, moving of stones, and re-seeding of shellfish, as well as protocol around harvesting sizes and stories are being shared much more readily now as part of this effort.
To initiate political action, Pauquachin reviewed the policies driving this closure and combined a summary of obligations in three reports to all governmental levels in Canada, with specific recommendations to surrounding municipal, provincial, and federal governments. These recommendations centre our treaty right guaranteed under the Douglas Treaties to “fish as formally,” and are a guidebook to local partners on how to meet our needs along their own laws, as well as Pauquachins’ own traditional laws and practices. Due to the recommendations in these reports, Coles Bay is now being identified as a prime example for a novel provincial shellfish management strategy, called the “BC Healthy Shellfish Initiative,” which is expected to be initialized in 2024.
How can restoration and remediation of the Pauquachin First Nation’s traditional marine resources help make the world better?
Our restoration efforts specifically aim to centre First Nations’ harvesting and Treaty Rights while weaving together necessary scientific practices alongside cultural practices to generate holistic restoration outcomes. This model, which we are aiming to document and present to other Nations and the Canadian government, has the potential to bridge political inequities present in shellfish management policy with reconciliatory action for the benefit of the environment. Other Nations, as well as crown governments looking to meet reconciliatory mandates and goals, can utilize this example from both a scientific and management perspective to revitalize shellfish management across Canada.
For Nations that have been disenfranchised through current shellfish management systems, losing culture, ecological integrity, and harvesting areas, our work represents a groundbreaking management model that could allow them to additionally regain beach access. We hope our work is able to be highlighted and reviewed at both the provincial and federal scales for all Nations currently impacted.
What are some of the challenges you typically face in carrying out your purpose?
There are many challenges related to shellfish management and beach restoration work that have accumulated over decades of ineffective policy, with specific gaps related to First Nations’ harvesting rights and lack of restoration mandates by the Crown at all levels. Multijurisdictional management of shellfish is one of the largest challenges, as it seems like each section of government only holds a handful of pieces. Ultimately, however, it lands with all crown governments to uphold their obligations to the Douglas Treaties of which they are signatories, and we feel hope in that they are now aiming to recognize and meet those obligations.
Are there any upcoming initiatives or projects you’d like to share?
We are aiming to continue restoration work within Coles Bay, with a multitude of infrastructure and shoreline improvements to alleviate pressure on the shellfish populations present there. We are additionally aiming to fund and host a gathering, currently unconfirmed, to bring together both First Nations and surrounding interested municipal parties to celebrate the beach, restore and create novel clam sites together, and discuss the many challenges that lay ahead in our collaborations.
What can people do to help support your mission?
Pauquachin First Nation is always open to discussing collaborations and opportunities to assist in moving the work forward and will be aiming to solicit volunteers to work alongside us on restoration days on the beach. We are additionally able to receive donations, for both in-kind and monetary contributions for this work, should that be available. All information requests and discussions related to PFN’s shellfish restoration work can be sent to [email protected].
Authors’ Note: Authorship is labelled as “Pauquachin First Nation” in alignment with our community’s values of collective representation and acknowledgement of the collaborative nature of our work.
This story was featured in the Make The World Better Magazine:
