Reconstructing the Pre-European Contact Shoreline of Burrard Inlet (Vancouver, BC, Canada) (2021)
Taft, S., Oldford, G. , M.I., Lilley, P.L., Oetterich, S.B., Morin, J., George, M., George, M., and Christensen, V. . "Reconstructing the Pre-European Contact Shoreline of Burrard Inlet (Vancouver, BC, Canada) using participatory mapping and a two-eyed seeing approach " Institute for Oceans & Fisheries (Fisheries Centre) Research Reports. Vol XX, November 2021 https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0407075
Throughout Canada’s history, colonial settlement and development has greatly altered landscapes and impacted ecosystems through resource extraction, infrastructure development, urbanization, and industrial activity. In many locations, these impacts have occurred and accumulated over decades and centuries, with severe, long-term effects on Indigenous communities, and the ecosystems and physical environments that are intimately tied to traditional cultural practices and lifestyles. Yet despite the significant impacts on Indigenous peoples and ecosystems, there are often limited Western or Euro-Canadian records or documentation focused on these cumulative effects. Together, different types of information from early Euro-Canadian settlers and Indigenous Knowledge can establish a strong understanding of historical environmental conditions, and the pace and magnitude of total regional change since European contact. This method of using both Western and Indigenous ways of knowing is referred to as Two-Eyed Seeing (Bartlett et al. 2012) and has wide applications, including for fisheries management and historical research across Canada (Giles et al. 2016, Mantyka-Pringle et al. 2017, Abu et al. 2019). Importantly, Two-Eyed Seeing can focus on specific places and impacts to more accurately assess long-term change in a region. In this paper, we use this approach to quantify shoreline change within Burrard Inlet, the centre of Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s territory, and the main harbour of metropolitan Vancouver and Canada’s largest port.
Published in UBC Institute for Oceans and Fisheries (Fisheries Centre) Research Reports, 2021