Cultivating the Wild—Slideshow about traditional Coast Salish landscape management

Before European incursion, Coast Salish tribes were gardeners of a grand scale. Far from hunter-gatherers, they cultivated a wide variety of native plants and managed fish and animal populations to create an abundance of nutritionally superior food. Learn about their sophisticated horticultural practices including intentional burning, family-owned perennial food plots, and wild animal husbandry.

The first non-Indian explorers and missionaries did not see fields of grain, rows of vegetables, fenced in barnyards, or domesticated animals when they expanded into the Pacific Northwest. They described the Coast Salish tribes as semi-nomadic people who wandered the wilderness plucking berries and harvesting fish and game. The Indians did migrate from oak savannahs created and maintained by controlled burns to subalpine gardens of blueberries and huckleberries that they created. 15,000 years of inhabitation allowed the Coast Salish to develop systems that produced an abundance of food from a wide variety of habitats and microclimates.

Modern science is proving that the horticultural and social systems employed by Coast Salish tribes were more productive and efficient than the best of today’s modern farms; while being truly sustainable unlike the “green movement” which is accelerating resource extraction to maintain privilege; and much more egalitarian than our society. Indians have been saying this since the Invasion began to largely deaf ears. Surprisingly to some, there are lessons that can be applied today to create a sustainable and socially just future. Come with open ears and minds.


For directions/info contact:
The Outback—as.outback @wwu.edu, (360)-650-2433
Perennial Harvest—www.perennialharvest.org, 360-333-5051
Sponsored by: The Outback, Perennial Harvest