This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

When I was small, my ǧáǧṃ́p (grandfather) would set about the serious business of food gathering with my cousins and me in the late spring. Everyone in the family had a role in our food harvests and backyard cannery, and the children’s role came early in the salmon season. As children, we believed the whole success of the harvest, not only of berries but also of the salmon that soon followed, depended on our performance. Our ǧáǧṃ́p would furnish us with buckets, hammer nails into the ends of long, split cedar sticks, and gravely send us off on a mission to find ǧúláli (salmonberries). We’d seek out the best bushes around the village where we live, searching for the raspberry-like berries that thrive, as we do, in the bright and salty transition spaces between Pacific Ocean spray and coastal temperate rainforest.

We’d come home when we ran out of daylight and pile our buckets on the kitchen table. Our ǧáǧṃ́ (grandmother) would pour the berries into a bowl — a mixing bowl in a poor berry year, or the huge ceramic bowl she used to knead the family’s bread in a good one — and we would dutifully recount where the best berries had been, how big they were, and how ripe and juicy. We would speculate on how it compared to the previous year and regale our ǧáǧṃ́p with stories about getting lost in the thickets and fending off rez dogs with the long, hooked sticks meant for pulling down high branches.

My favourite moment came in the years when my ǧáǧṃ́p would nod to himself and make the official pronouncement: “It’s going to be a good year for salmon.” In that moment, we felt like little harbingers of hope.

For most Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) children, the relationship between salmon and salmonberries is the first indicator — a sign from the natural world — we are taught. A good crop of salmonberries, we are told, corresponds to a good salmon run and luck in the harvest, and a poor crop is an early signal that we should turn to other species for our winter stores. We learn about this nourishing interrelationship early in our lives and it goes on to pattern our worldview.

Salmonberries glisten like small bursts of orange and red fish roe, nestled in the greenery beside magenta flowers and the hard, green clusters of berries still to ripen. On these shrubs, at the height of the season, you can see a whole life cycle painted across the riverbank in jewel tones. The salmonberry, from the same genus as raspberries and blackberries, has fruits that are composed of a chaotic heap of juicy drupelets that set a table to nourish a whole host of human and nonhuman kin: songbirds, small mammals, and black and grizzly bears. And the delicate fragrance and flavour are as satisfying as the dull thud of berries hitting the bottom of my bucket.

I treasure so many gifts from the salmonberries that help me through every season of the year, and my life: the fresh leaves that helped me through childbirth, the new shoots in the spring that I gently peel before eating them like licorice strings, the deep blush of blossoms that give me hope in the dark of early spring. And of course, the berries that talk to me, lovingly, of salmon as I fill buckets and bowls to make jelly for my precious ǧáǧṃ́. Salmonberries are my definition of comfort food.

Salmonberry ecology aligns beautifully with the spaces that my ancestors loved to be in. The plant thrives in cool, moist coastal forests and along the lush banks of streams and rivers that pulse like deep, green arteries through our homelands. If you find a place where salmonberries, salmon, and clear, fresh water overlap, you will also find culturally modified trees — usually western red cedar, carrying the marks from planks or cedar bark strips harvested without harming the living tree — and other love notes from our ancestors left on the land for us. As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, “all flourishing is mutual.” And here in Haíɫzaqv territory, all these elements — people, place, salmon, and salmonberries — can be found surviving or thriving only through our mutual care: we observe the bloom and abundance of flowers and berries as we await the coming salmon, then we Haíɫzaqv, and other mammals of the territory, fertilize those salmonberry bushes with salmon remains so that they will bloom and bear fruit again in a cycle much deeper than any one season.

In my mind, salmonberries have always embodied community: their flowers nurture pollinators and their berries feed creatures of every size, winged and limbed. Salmon, laid at their feet, attract teeming insects to nestle into the soil and among the fallen leaves in the undergrowth. The space the plants hold invites you, as poet and essayist Wendell Berry writes, to “put your ear / close, and hear the faint chattering / of the songs that are to come.” In their ecology, their poetry, and their lessons about reciprocity, wild salmonberry thickets, and the salmonberry gardens we actively tend, are home to diversity and abundance; we are fortunate to have so many pathways to understand their gentle might.

Increasingly, I meet Western scientists who recognize the power of Indigenous knowledge systems: they factor this knowledge into their study designs, include Indigenous knowledge keepers on their field teams and academic papers, and have the humbleness to recognize the biases they bring to their work. This is a welcome shift from how generations of Western scientists brought oppressive and extractive research practices to our territories, ignoring the wisdom of Indigenous stewards. Indigenous science, in contrast, is kincentric and relational: it is strengthened by the interdependence of human and nonhuman kin that together form wise systems. It is of deep importance in these geographies that Western science begins to reflect the patterns of interrelationships that give structure to both the culture and ecology of this place.

Western science is a curious little sister on this coast, mapping ideas and observations in spaces where Indigenous science has been foundational to kinship-building and ecological balance for millennia. As Indigenous stewards and scientists, we have much we can teach this little sister. Her curiosity, her fresh eyes sometimes show us things in a new light. And often, Western science affirms the stories and knowledge that Indigenous peoples, like the Haíɫzaqv people, have meticulously tended as living bodies of collective learning since time before memory. Taken together, we can sometimes map bigger patterns than either sibling could see alone.

A recent paper published in Ecosphere, on research conducted in Haíɫzaqv territory and citing Haíɫzaqv knowledge holders, investigates how salmon and the nutrient subsidies they bring into riparian systems impact the reproductive output of plants, focusing on salmonberries in particular. Through their work in 14 streams, the researchers measured the impact of salmon spawning density on the reproductive output of salmonberries. Their determination is comforting in its simplicity: strong salmon runs fertilize salmon systems, the liminal spaces Haíɫzaqv think of as “salmon forests.” Increased salmon density in one season leads to increased density of salmonberries per bush in the next season.

All flourishing is mutual. Thriving salmon can be read, in context, to predict thriving salmonberries, and thriving salmonberries can be read, in context, to predict thriving salmon. One key to reading the patterns lies in the kind of intimate knowledge that comes through careful observation and the tenderness of ancestral stewardship practices.

One variable missing from the paper is the role human beings have historically played in helping salmon and salmonberries to thrive. Prior to European contact, Haíɫzaqv people lived in more than 50 villages spread across more than 35,000 square kilometres of homelands on the outer central coast of British Columbia. Tribal groups and specific families were tied to salmon systems, thriving through the multilayered relationships between fish and people. Haíɫzaqv people loved systems into abundance: salmon were tended through ceremony and careful sustainable fisheries through weirs in the rivers and stone fish traps at the river mouths, while berry orchards, including salmonberry thickets, were fertilized with kelp and wood ash, crushed shells, and the blood and guts of the salmon that fed us.

As colonization decimated our populations and decades of racist laws and policies regulated us away from our homelands and ancestral practices, our ability to care for our territory was threatened. It is hardly romanticizing to say that rivers were part of our families, that those riparian systems held space for webs of kinship that were an intimate part of our existence across our territory. But the land remembers, and we are taking a deep breath in as we reassume with our full power the stewardship obligations that are written across our lands and waters.

Western science, as a practice, is not insular and unassailable. It is inherently human, a practice conducted by people who bring values and biases as a framework to everything they do. Indigenous science has its frameworks, too; though our peoples are often trivialized or romanticized as “the original environmentalists,” the truth is that proper stewardship requires constant reaffirmation through the choices we make about what knowledge becomes part of our systems, how it is passed down, and how it is actualized through kincentric community-building and deep care for the lands and waters. Indigenous science is effective because our ability to mutually thrive depends on our depth of understanding of the world around us, and we choose to be guided by this science over and over each day and each season as we apply it in our stewardship work.

There is a lot that science, any iteration of science, can learn from salmon and salmonberries: as affirmed in the Ecosphere paper, salmon are healers, restoring the balance in the face of downstream nutrient flux from the rivers and streams as they come home to spawn and enrich the places that first nurtured them. Salmonberries patiently amplify that richness into whole thriving systems. There are patterns and stories waiting to be read and interpreted to empower wise and just standards of care for the lands and waters. And beyond the science, salmon forests and salmonberry gardens — and our plant and animal kin within them — teach us critical lessons about mutual aid and community care. We have the tools we need to flourish together.

It’s March as I write this, and every day I’m out in the yard anxiously looking for new growth to give me a sense of hope. Before long, the first tight-fisted curls of vivid green leaves will appear on the skeletal salmonberry bushes outside. My children will be watching for the pink blossoms to unfurl; all through the summer and fall, they helped me bury ashes and fish guts to feed the roots of our little salmonberry orchard, and they know their demonstrations of care and reciprocity will manifest as future abundance. As the world warms and the blossoms transform into soft and brilliant orange and red fruits, my boys will take up their generational task: their ǧáǧṃ́ and ǧáǧṃ́p will sit across the kitchen table just like mine did, pour the boys’ spoils into a bowl, and invite them to help intuit the salmon season ahead.

They are building patterns in their little Haíɫzaqv minds, these children who were helped into the world by salmonberry leaf tonic that strengthened my womb for birth and who count salmonberries among their first foods. The stewardship pathways they are building with salmon, salmonberries, and our other nonhuman kin open them to lessons about reciprocity and interdependence that I know will inspire patience and careful observation. From that quiet place, respect and wisdom will grow. I know this because my own lessons in stewardship began with salmonberries, and because my h̓búkv (mother) and her q̓ísq̓ (parents), my ǧáǧṃ́ and ǧáǧṃ́p, have told me the same. And if there is one lesson I have carried forward, one lesson I hope to instill in my children, it’s the importance of thriving together.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine, and is republished here with permission.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Last week I signed the Let BC Vote pledge. You could say I’m late to the party. More than 200,000 British Columbians signed before me. I’ve been aware of the Dogwood Initiative-led campaign since it launched, and I’ve watched the numbers grow. But I wanted to reason it through before deciding with conviction that it is part of my path forward.

For the last few years I’ve worked in my community and beyond to help build the momentum we need to stop Enbridge Northern Gateway. I’m not trained as a leader or organizer. I came to this work before I felt ready, and I learned on my feet. I’ve made my share of gut decisions in the heat of battle, and learned to be grateful when I have the luxury of examining every angle of a campaign before I commit to it.

Now that the federal government has approved this project, we could be in for a long fight. I believe pipeline opponents have been laying the groundwork for sustained action since day one, but what carries us through will be smart strategies, high levels of organization, and commitment. I may have taken my time, but Let BC Vote has my commitment. Because this is more than a drive to build a list and collect signatures. It’s an opportunity to build capacity, demand accountability, and strengthen alliances – and all of those actions are critical at this stage of the fight.

Two systems of law and governance

Smart organizers invest in a diversity of tactics, and lead with the strongest in any situation. The tactics available to us in this fight are complex, because the communities who are organizing are interacting with two very different systems of law and governance.

Let me explain: I am Indigenous, and I am Heiltsuk. The Heiltsuk have a set of laws and customs that goes back to our First Generation, and that system is the one that primarily guides my actions. Heiltsuk people also maintain an original system of government that organizes how we function as a society. I’m not talking about the federally-imposed system of Indian Act governments; I’m talking about our hereditary chiefs who are groomed from birth to be rights-holders who uphold the ways of our people.

More broadly, Canada has a set of federal and provincial laws and governance that is primary to my Settler allies. I respond to it as well, but for me, it comes second.

Those two systems of law and governance make three sets of tactics available to us. Think of them as two circles. I want to talk about those circles, and the space where they overlap.

In one circle, you have the Indigenous system. This system is what empowers our hereditary chiefs to say no – no, on the basis that this project is inconsistent with our laws and customs. No, on the strength of their authority as chiefs. In the other circle, you have the Settler system. This system includes federal and provincial legislation that is meant to impartially vet and regulate projects like Northern Gateway.

Let’s be frank. My laws and customs as an Indigenous person are my highest truth, but I live in a country that sidesteps the power of that truth. And Canadians are living under a regime – at least federally – that systematically dismantles inconvenient legislation and regulations so projects like Northern Gateway can barrel ahead.

So what is possible where the Indigenous and Settler circles overlap? One clear example is in the courts. As the recent Tsilhqot’in decision reinforced, Indigenous rights and title hold real, tangible power within the Canadian legal system.

This is the battle plan that pipeline opponents have had in their back pocket since day one: Indigenous people fighting and stopping Northern Gateway in Canadian court, on the basis that this project would intrude onto territories to which we hold title, and infringe on our rights. As these cases proceed there is a supportive role for Settler allies to play in areas like fundraising and communications, but with this tactic the burden of leadership rests with Indigenous people.

Where is the burden of leadership for Settler people? A majority of Indigenous groups in British Columbia have rejected Enbridge Northern Gateway under their own systems of law, while a majority of British Columbians reject this plan for their home province too. Based on those two facts, what power can non-Indigenous people seize?

I believe the answer lies in the citizens’ initiative.

By organizing in ridings across the province, by stepping up as leaders within their own communities, and by drafting and proposing legislation that fits their values, citizens have a powerful opportunity – available only in British Columbia – to hold their provincial government to account. For as Ottawa acknowledged the day it approved the pipeline, B.C. still has the power to stop it. Without 60 permits from Premier Clark, Enbridge may not proceed.

I don’t want my Settler brothers and sisters to point to the Indigenous legal battle and say “We believe you’re going to win.” I want to hear them say they’re ready to work shoulder-to-shoulder, with each of us seizing the power that best enables us to win together. If diverse tactics are available, let’s be wise enough to consider all of them. Preparing for a citizens’ initiative does not undermine title or rights. Rather, it builds our collective political power.

Final thoughts

For me, the core of this issue is simple: leaders must be accountable to their people, regardless of the scale of leadership. If leaders forget who they represent, then the people need to organize. I know this truth from my own leadership in a community that is not afraid to correct my course if there is a better way for me to carry their interests forward.

Scale that spirit up to the provincial level. Elections are not our only opportunity to remind leaders whose interests they’re meant to represent in office. Trooping to the ballot box every four years is not enough to hold Christy Clark accountable. Let’s use every means available to hold her to the truth that her mandate comes from the people of B.C., and the people of B.C. expect her to join us in stopping Enbridge.

When it comes to being allies, let’s remember we are in this fight together. It is no longer enough to show solidarity. I am humbly asking my Settler allies to be solidary. It’s the difference between a finite action and a way of being. We need to work strategically in the space where our values and power overlap. I am committed to upholding the truth of my laws and stories, to helping my chiefs defend our rights and title in the courts. And I am committed to supporting my Settler brothers and sisters who choose to organize around an action that puts power back in their hands too.

By signing the Let BC Vote pledge, I am gesturing my willingness to be solidary with my Settler brothers and sisters. It’s time for all of us to rise up, build our organizing capacity, and exercise it in actions that advance us toward our goal of stopping this pipeline. I’m with you until we win.

I came into my role as a leader and community organizer because of Enbridge Northern Gateway. My elders taught me that you don’t get to choose the moment when you’re called to leadership; the only thing that’s up to you is courage and conviction. That teaching has guided me through many moments of uncertainty, and it’s the message I’ve most often shared with Indigenous and Settler people alike: respond to what this moment is asking of you. This fight is too big for us to do otherwise.

This article originally appeared on jesshousty.com.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

More and more often, we are reading in the news about the federal government and various intelligence and law enforcement agencies allegedly “spying” on aboriginals and pipeline opponents.

I am both of those things. I have no idea whether strangers are picking up shards of information from my emails and text messages. I have no idea what kind of beautiful stained-glass mosaics their imaginations might create. But in the spirit of wild and optimistic honesty, I would like to make a declaration to them, just in case:

I have nothing to hide from you.

Sometimes I can be arrogant. I’m very bad at playing guitar, but you know, I think I can sing pretty nicely. I like an embarrassing amount of honey in my tea. When I hike in the forest, I like to run. I write poems on napkins and receipts and scraps of paper and most of the time, I lose them; maybe you’ve found some. I don’t make my bed. Even though I think they’re silly, sometimes when it’s laundry day I resort to wearing animal print underpants.

I love my family so much it feels like my heart could burst out of my chest. Yeah, I know that emotions don’t really come from the little organ hidden behind my ribs, but I’ll admit it: I simplify the things that are too complex for me to comprehend, and I am content with those little truths I create. Besides, my family is pretty amazing. I really think my cousins build better forts than anyone else in the world, and they’re all my best friends.

It’s not just my family, though. I love my people. I really believe this: there are salmon swimming in my veins. Isn’t that incredible? My vertebrae are just stones from an old fishtrap arranged into a spine. My whole body belongs to the land I come from. I didn’t inherit the legacy of my ancestors; I’m part of a continuum. My whole sense of time is probably different from yours. I have 10,000 beautiful years of history on my shoulders and I live my life hoping that future generations will nod quietly to themselves someday and think of me as just another face in the vast village of ancestors that lives in their imagination. I’m Heiltsuk; it’s imprinted in every cell in my body.

Okay, that probably sounded a little smug. I told you I can be arrogant. Really, though, I wish everyone could experience how beautiful it is to know where you come from and to know where your bones will rest too. With a good heart, I wish you the peace that comes from having deep roots.

What else should I tell you? I was going to say “that you should never be afraid of me,” but I’m not sure that would be honest of me, and this is an exercise in honesty after all.

A journalist asked me a question once. Well, journalists ask me questions all the time – I’m not sure why – but there was one question I particularly liked. Not because it was original, but because of how he asked it.

This journalist, he was sitting on my deck last summer in Bella Bella, and a couple of barn swallows were swooping over us while he interviewed me. We were trying to have a very grave conversation, but it was a sunny day, and my heart was feeling light. After awhile, his formal interview tone just sort of dissipated, and then he asked me in a small voice: “Do you think this pipeline will get built?”

I couldn’t help it. It was instinct. I started giving my usual, predictable response. “I’ll be dead before this pipeline gets built,” I snapped. Then I paused and thought about his tone. And so he looked relieved when my voice got softer too, and then I said a thing I really do believe with all my heart: “But I hope it’s the case that I die an old, old woman, whose grandchildren never got tired of hearing how granny watched the people rise up to defeat the pipeline.”

I don’t want to die to stop this from happening. More importantly, I don’t want to ask other people to risk their own wellbeing to fight beside me if it comes to that. It’s why I work so hard to find peaceful resolutions. But people can be hard and soft at the same time, you know. I want justice for the land and its people without any violence. But that is secondary to a simpler statement: I want justice for the land and its people. I hope we find justice and peace; I know we will find justice.

I’m arrogant sometimes, but often it’s to cover up being nervous. When the journalist’s voice went quiet that afternoon, I should have known that for a moment, he was just a nervous person asking me a personal question. And you know what? I believe we should reciprocate the trust that comes with someone making themselves vulnerable in front of us.

That probably sounded like I expect you to trust me with your vulnerability too, stranger, if you do indeed exist. But don’t feel pressed. Making space for something isn’t the same as asking for it. Just know that if you want to tell me your secrets, I will respect them.

If you remember just one thing from what I’ve shared, I hope it’s not that I own animal print underpants or that sometimes I switch to autopilot when I’m being interviewed by journalists. I hope you remember that I have nothing to hide from you.

Maybe you’re worried that I’m organizing a riot when all I’m really doing is building community. Maybe you think I’m opposing development when really what I’m doing is protecting something sacred. Maybe you have questions about place-based indigenous identity. Or maybe you don’t ever ask yourself “Why?” Me, though, I sleep well at night because I do my work with a good heart; I’ll answer any questions you ask of me in the same spirit. If you’re out there, and if you’re “spying,” come out of the shadows. Be the audience to a story. Or be a participant in dialogue. Let’s understand one another instead of one side watching the other. Don’t be passive; be bold, and engage!

You don’t need to worry. My people have a long tradition of feasting with their enemies.

I’ve made peace with the possibility of watchers. I hope someday when this is all over, you will come out and publicly affirm all that to which you bore witness when reading my emails: that my boyfriend is, as I often rave to my friends, incredibly handsome; that the seventeenth round of edits to that draft of my thesis chapter is good enough already; and that as I write to my sister in Vancouver quite frequently, I’d give just about anything to share a cup of tea with her. I really do miss her. But you know that.

Does that sound like a deal? If so, give me a sign. I’m sure you are able to manipulate my devices and accounts to do so.

In the spirit of kindness, Jess

Read more from Jess on her blog Coast: Stories, Poems and Personal Journal.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.