Frank Brown on his boat during the herring roe on kelp harvest.<\/p>\n
This post originally appeared on the Land Needs Guardians <\/em>website<\/em><\/a>, and is republished here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By Frank Brown<\/a><\/p>\n Usually during the spring, many of us in the Heiltsuk Nation go out to sea in large numbers to meet the return of the herring. We harvest herring roe on kelp for commercial, food and ceremonial purposes. But this year, the COVID-19 pandemic changed how our people relate to the herring. To prevent the spread of disease, we only harvested in small family units. We cancelled<\/a> the commercial herring fishery for the season, striking a major economic and employment blow to our community. Our Coastal Guardian Watchmen<\/a> are helping with emergency response and patrolling our territorial waters.<\/p>\n These are difficult times, yet I am hopeful we can learn from this crisis.<\/p>\n Coronavirus is like a timeout that Mother Nature has forced upon us\u2014prodding us to stop and reflect. I believe western society can use this pause to consider living more sustainably. I am optimistic we can move forward in a way that supports both humans and the natural world.<\/p>\n As Indigenous place-based people, we have many lessons to share. We have a cultural responsibility to care for each other and the land, and we recognize the two are interconnected. The COVID-19 pandemic is unleashing uncertainty and change, and unsustainable development must not continue to be normalized. Indigenous-led conservation and Indigenous Guardians can help guide us to a brighter future.<\/p>\n Indigenous Peoples have dealt with pandemics and epidemics before. On the Pacific Coast, three separate waves of pestilence\u2014smallpox, Spanish flu and tuberculosis\u2014diminished our people from thousands to mere hundreds. We have a collective memory<\/a> of intergenerational trauma \u00a0that fuels our fears about the current crisis. We worry about our elders, the keepers of our knowledge and language. If we lose their teachings, we put our future generations at risk through loss of knowledge transfer.<\/p>\n Knowledge keepers teach us, for instance, how to prepare and set kelp gardens for harvesting herring roe with tree boughs from the forest and kelp from the ocean. If the roe deposited is not thick enough, we leave it in the water so the herring stocks continue to grow. They teach us to ensure our harvest never undermines the herring\u2019s ability to regenerate.<\/p>\n Thanks to teachings like these, our traditional territory is one of the last places around with a relative abundance of herring. These fish are an important biological indicator of the health of the marine ecosystem. And while we are grappling with climate change and ocean acidification, the herring here are still vibrant enough to sustain countless other creatures. The wolves, bears and eagles come down to the shore to scoop up herring, and the whales, sea lions, seals and other sea creatures do too. Springtime in our territory is like the coastal equivalent of the Serengeti.<\/p>\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nLearning from the Past, Sustaining into the Future<\/strong><\/h1>\n