Sliammon First Nation Uses GIS to Map Traditional Values
Laura K. Roddan, Manager of Research & Development, and Arlene C. Harry,
GIS Technician, stsgis@powellriver.net
Sliammon Treaty Society, Powell River, Canada
(Arlene Harry)
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(Laura Roddan)
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The Sliammon First Nation has occupied
its territory since time immemorial. Traditionally, we lived in harmony with
the land and its abundance of resources from a time well before the introduction
of non-Sliammon governments. Sliammon has been blessed with rich marine and
forest ecosystems that have been provided by the creator. We maintain an inherent
domain over our territory that is based on natural law. We are determined to
take our rightful place in the management of lands and resources within all
Sliammon lands. This includes current reserve lands as well as future treaty
settlement lands and special management areas (comanagement lands).
The Indian Act has created a relationship
of dependency between First Nations and the Federal Department of Indian Affairs
and Northern Development. This dependency has permeated all areas of Sliammon
First Nation and has worked to repress the development of institutional structures
that reflect the unique needs for, and philosophies of, traditional First Nation's
laws and governance. For Sliammon, land and resource management is one of the
key areas impacted by the Indian Act and other federal and provincial policies
and legislation that have effectively weakened traditional knowledge and culture
in relation to lands and resources. Regaining management authority and the ability
to generate revenue and employment opportunities from lands and resources within
the territory represents the path to self-reliance for the Sliammon First Nation.
Our goal is to develop an institutional structure for land and resource management
that effectively integrates traditional knowledge with scientific and technical
knowledge. This will allow the Sliammon First Nation to implement sound principles
of land and resource management that reflect the unique traditional relationship
between Sliammon people and the land and marine resources of the territory.
The development of this institutional structure for land and resource management
will be challenged in phases and will reflect the increasing demands for land
and resource management with the increasing land and resource base, which will
be acquired through the British Columbia Treaty process. This institutional
structure for land and resource management will grow into the future and play
an integral role in planning sustainable development of our lands and resources.
Issues of cultural and environmental survival are driving the need to utilize
appropriate technologies to focus on sustainable development and integrated
resource planning. Integrated resource planning and environmental balancing
have always been at the heart of First Nation's culture. Geographic information
system technology provides an opportunity to apply a process of assembling information
to make well-informed decisions around land and resource use. It is a practical
tool to facilitate addressing complex and technical issues cost-effectively
while supporting the advancement and parity of First Nation's people. For Sliammon,
GIS technology will facilitate the attainment of our conservation mission.
Through the application of GIS technology,
the Sliammon Treaty Society has completed traditional occupancy and use maps,
which consolidate all research done on traditional use of lands and resources
in the territory. One of the most important sources of information for these
maps has been oral history interviews completed with Sliammon elders from 1970
through 1999. The Sliammon Treaty Society's traditional coordinator, Hew'kin
(Joe) Mitchell, played a key role in carefully reviewing and guiding the involvement
of the Sliammon elders in this important project.
The purpose of the Sliammon Traditional
Use Study (TUS) was to create a comprehensive inventory of traditional occupancy
and use of Sliammon lands and resources to support participation in the British
Columbia Treaty process and the Crown Land referral process. I think it is important
to point out that this was a very defined focus for the traditional occupancy
and use research, but it fit within the broader goal of the Sliammon community-to
document Sliammon history from the perspective of the Sliammon people. It is
hoped that one day the Sliammon First Nation will have a cultural center to
house all the information that was collected through this study. The information
is invaluable for use in education curriculum for the local school district
and in creating a sense of pride and cohesion in the Sliammon community.
The key objectives of the Traditional Use Study were to:
- Research and map traditional occupancy and use of Sliammon lands
and resources throughout the traditional territory.
- Establish the territorial boundary.
- Identify exclusive and shared areas of traditional occupancy and use within
the territory.
- Create an inventory and atlas of traditional occupancy and use of lands and
resources to support participation in the British Columbia Treaty process and
Crown Lands referrals process.
- Develop capacity within Sliammon First Nation for research analysis, information
management, GIS, and resource planning.
The guiding methodology for the
TUS was participatory action research. Participatory action research enables
a community to control the research process through participation in all phases
of the research. In the preparatory phase, the focus was on the community organizing
within Sliammon in order to increase the level of awareness of the TUS and increase
community participation in the research process.
The second phase involved the collection
of secondary information through libraries, museums, and provincial and federal
archives. By this point there were quite a few community members who, as they
became aware of the study and the information that we were interested in collecting,
started pulling out from under their beds or the back of their cupboards boxes
of photographs, old maps, and documentation. All the information collected was
then analyzed and drafted into a preliminary overview report with a corresponding
map. We used a 1:180,000-scale basemap of the whole territory. As anthropological
records and archival documents were reviewed, any references to locations of
village sites, campsites, legend sites, and hunting or fishing areas were marked
on the basemap.
The third phase was the interview
phase. Interviews were semistructured. Following a checklist of key questions
around occupancy and use of lands and resources, interviews were held individually
and in groups. Whenever possible, field visits were made to specific sites.
All the research assistants were from the Sliammon community, and they were
selected on the basis of their rapport with Sliammon elders and their knowledge
of the Sliammon language. They were trained in techniques of collecting and
compiling information. All interviews were recorded on audiocassette, and paper
working maps of the traditional territory were used to mark down specific sites
of traditional occupancy and use. Two rounds of interviews were completed. In
the first round of interviews, the research assistants used a 1:180,000-scale
basemap of the territory. However, many of the streams, bays, and islands that
the elders remembered were not showing up at that scale. Therefore, in the second
round of interviews, the research assistants used 1:20,000-scale TRIM sheets
to record sites.
There were a number of difficulties encountered in mapping traditional use information including:
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Lack of Trust. At the beginning
of the study there were a lot of elders who could not understand why we were
so interested in talking about things that happened in the past. There were
a lot of negative feelings around the past such as the residential school system,
disease, racism, and a lack of pride in the culture. This problem required time
and patience to share with the elders why this information was so important
today and in the future to restore culture and protect lands and resources within
the territory.
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Inability to Relate to Maps.
The researchers found that there were quite a few of the elders that were not
comfortable working with maps. They could remember mountains, islands, and inlets-they
knew exactly where they were if you went there in a boat or on foot-but on a
map it just did not mean anything. That was a bit of a hurdle and has remained
a limitation of the TUS information collected. Whenever possible, field visits
were made during interviews; however, opportunities for making field visits
were limited by our budget and also the physical health of many of the elders.
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Developing Site Classifications. At the beginning of the study we were using
a site-recording guide developed by the Ministry of Forests. These site classifications
were too complicated, and we ended up customizing them to our own set of site
classifications. It was really important for the site classifications to make
sense to the research assistants because as they went through the interviews
and marked sites on the maps, every type of activity had its own code. We could
have saved a lot of time by developing our own site classifications from the start.
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Site Specific Versus Polygon
Information. We were getting a constant push from the Ministry of Forests and
the traditional use program policy that information had to be specific points
on a map. We went through this continual debate over whether traditional use
information could be site specific. The elders maintained that traditional use
was over broad areas such as watersheds and could not be site specific. In the
end, we reached a compromise and mapped sites such as villages as points on
the map, but other traditional uses of the land were mapped as polygons to indicate
the holistic use of the land over broad areas.
The fourth phase of the Traditional
Use Study involved interview translation and transcription. Each tape and corresponding
transcription was labeled with the date of the interview and the name of the
interviewee(s) and assigned a unique transcript/tape number. As each interview
was transcribed it was passed on to the GIS technician to enter into the GIS.
During the fifth phase of the study, all the information from the interview
transcripts and the paper working maps was analyzed and organized using the GIS.
The GIS platform we work from is Macintosh and MapGrafix with FileMaker Pro
database software. As each interview transcript was loaded into the database,
it was assigned a corresponding database number with reference to the specific
paper map used during the interview. Each paper map from each interview was then
digitized, and each site was assigned a unique identification number
(SFN001, SFN002, etc.) that was relational to the database.
Each type of activity or site classification was created on a separate layer.
For example, village sites, legend sites, mountain goat hunting sites, deer
hunting sites, butter clam harvest sites, and oyster harvest sites are each
on a different layer. Therefore, we can search for locations of specific traditional
use activities or view them all together depending on the purpose for the map.
In general, the traditional occupancy
and use maps that have been created are useful on a daily basis. The maps have
been shared with the local school district, and the information is being incorporated
into the local school curriculum. The maps are supporting participation in the
British Columbia Treaty process and the Crown Land referrals process in the
following important ways:
- Established Sliammon occupancy and use of lands and resources throughout the
traditional territory
- Assisted in developing a ratification process through community involvement
in the research process
- Contributed to developing capacity within Sliammon through on-the-job training
for research, analysis, resource planning, and GIS
- Facilitated the development of cooperative working relationships and cross-cultural
understanding between Sliammon, the province, and local industry
- Provided a vehicle for the Sliammon First Nation, Sunshine Coast
- Forest District, and local forest industries to develop procedures for incorporating
traditional use information into forest planning
- Encouraged joint planning efforts between the Sliammon First Nation and British Columbia
- Negotiations are under way for comanagement agreements in several key watersheds.
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