Native Ingenuity

The rapid colonization of the world by European peoples overwhelmed indigenous cultures with disease, warfare and a new economic order. As a result, many aspects of Native cultures such as locally developed, sophisticated food-producing systems were all but eliminated, particularly where they interfered with the market-driven capitalism of western industrial culture. Only in recent decades have scholars in the western sciences begun to recognize the achievements of indigenous knowledge. In British Columbia, which Europeans have only called home for a little over a century and a half, people are slowly beginning to realize that so-called wilderness areas have in fact been managed sustainably for thousands of years.

In Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast, retired University of British Columbia fine arts professor Judy Williams makes a contribution to our knowledge of ancient food production with an entertaining chronicle of her...