Clam Gardens – Early Mariculture in British Columbia
Dr. John Harper (Ph.D.) is President of Coast and Ocean Resources Inc., Sidney, and adjunct professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria. His long-term coastal mapping and work with First Nations has led to the fascinating rediscovery of the clam gardens of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
In the early mid 1990s, coastal habitat surveys of the British Columbia coast, specifically the Broughton Archipelago, revealed hundreds of stone-wall features in the lower intertidal zone. The origin of these shore-parallel features could not be explained by natural processes, and archaeological literature was no help in identifying the features. John Harper’s talk chronicles the search for these features’ origin, the eventual identification or their origins – clam gardens – and collaboration with Kwakwaka’wakw elders, who worked on the clam gardens and who knew the Kwakwala names and songs about clam gardens. This talk provides a first-hand account of the storyline of the National Geographic movie: Ancient Sea Gardens, Mystery of the Pacific Northwest. Clam gardens have now been identified from Sitka, Alaska to Saanich Inlet in BC.