Learn about Salish Harvest
SalishHarvest.org has grown out of a series of gatherings that brought together elders from the neighbouring Islands of Penelakut (formerly Kuper) and Galiano to share their knowledge of wild and traditional foods and medicines since 2012.
This site features excerpts from these inter-island gatherings documented by local youth.
We hope this evolving site helps to preserve some of the essential knowledge held by these elders, while also inspiring the next generation to see, appreciate and ultimately connect with the wild abundance in their midst.
This site is an Access to Media Education Society initiative that honours the contributions of the many organizations that have collaborated to make the gatherings possible including:
H’ulh-etun Health Society, Penelakut Island Elementary School, the Galiano Conservancy Association, the Galiano Food Program, The Galiano Community School
Learn more about our knowledge holders and contributers here :
Knowledge Holders
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Karen Charlie (Spune’luxutth) is a knowledge holder from Penelakut. She is deeply concerned with the changes that are happening to the waters that her and her family continue to live from.
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is a knowledge holder.
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Ever since childhood, the concept of plants as healers has captivated Dora Fitzgerald. Dora has been a Galiano resident for 24 years and has focused her energies on learning about our native plants, and healing plants used in other cultures and locales as well. A self-taught herbalist, she has facilitated the Food Program’s monthly herbal collective for the last three years. Her goal is to deepen the connection we feel towards the natural world and understanding the role of plants in helping us to maintain our own well being.
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Amanda Bird, founder of Native Earth Wild Craft, is a Mikisew Cree Herbalist and Healer whose medicine work is based on the ancestral and unceded traditional territory of the Hul’qumi’num and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada. Native Earth Wild Craft is a call for health sovereignty rooted in the empowerment of the people to heal through accessible, holistic, and decolonial medicine practices.
Contributors
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Deblekha Guin, raised in Six Nations territory (Southern Ontario), has been an uninvited settler on the unsurrendered territories of the Penelakut, Lamulchi, and other Hul’quim’in’um speaking Nations for the past 27 years. Shortly after arriving on what is colonially known as ‘Galiano Island’, Guin got swept up by a merry band of creative misfits determined to start a film school in the woods. After a few years with the Gulf Islands Film and Television School (GIFTS), and just before completing her MA in Communications from SFU, Deblekha founded the Access to Media Education Society (AMES). Since the birth of AMES, she’s been instrumental in designing, coordinating and overseeing a multitude of participatory media arts initiatives, and related school-based outreach programs. In May 2020 Guin was recognized for her extensive work with BIPOC-centred creative communities when she was granted an “Intercultural Trust Award” at BC’s Anti-Racism Awards Ceremony.
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Inspired by the intersection of nature and art, Safiya ~ a musician, multimedia designer, and passionate student of plant medicine, designed and built the Salish Harvest website alongside AMES. Born and raised on Salt Spring Island, Safiya is nourished by a web of deeply rooted community and finds joy in weaving tapestries of multigenerational learning and connection between people and land.
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Tilai Ellis-Stairs is a father, full time nurse, and a passionate wildlife photographer deeply committed to capturing the beauty of nature while advocating for its conservation. Inspired by a lineage of photographers, Tilai's focus lies in portraying the wonders of wildlife without disturbing or exploiting it. With a strong dedication to ethical practices, Tilai refrains from baiting, trapping, or disclosing photograph locations, prioritising the protection of wild spaces and their inhabitants. Tilai contributed many of the photos seen across the Salish Harvest website
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As a dedicated plant medicine, seaweed, and mushroom forager, Flora is always seeking and sharing knowledge with the desire to strengthen peoples’ relationship to the land and sea by the security that comes with foraging goods. With a deep-rooted love for both the ocean and forest nurtured by her upbringing on Galiano Island, her foraging practices are embedded with respect and reciprocity for the land.
Sponsers
“The land knows you, even when you are lost.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
Watch Wisdom Harvest
Elders from Penelakut and Galiano Islands share knowledge of wild food foraging and ways in which harvesting practices are being impacted by changes in both the climate and the social landscape
