A study by Simon Fraser University in British Columbia found that Indigenous-managed forests -- cared for as "forest gardens" -- contain more biologically and functionally diverse species than surrounding conifer-dominated forests and create important habitat for wildlife and pollinators. According to researchers, ancient forests were once tended by Indigenous peoples living along the coast of British Columbia. These forest gardens continue to grow at remote archaeological villages on Canada's northwest coast and are composed of native fruit and nut trees and shrubs such as crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherries. Important medicinal plants and root foods like wild ginger and wild rice root grow in the understory layers. These plants never grow together in the wild, so people obviously put them there to grow all in one spot -- like a garden.
Forest gardens were a method of agriculture in which practitioners cleared the land around or near villages, planted crops, and managed with agricultural methods like controlled burns and fertilization to increase the productivity of the plants. The gardens frequently showed a carefully overlapped structure, with a canopy of fruit and nut trees, a mid-layer of berries, and roots and herbs in the undergrowth. Rather than engaging in annual planting cycles, the Indigenous people collected, transplanted, and carefully tended these plants over many years. Traces of species like Pacific crabapple, beaked hazelnut, wild cherry, and others have been found in recent years -- in some cases, still growing even more than a century after they were tended. Even now these abandoned forest gardens are still productive and biodiversity hotspots that seem to be able to naturally hold back the encroaching surrounding conifer forests.
For anthropologists, ethnologists, and other scientists, the existence of these gardens contradicts the long-held hunter-gatherer theory that maintained that the region's Indigenous peoples didn't improve and nurture their lands. Instead, experts now believe this method of agriculture and land manipulation helped First Nations communities (the collective name given to most of Canada's Indigenous peoples) thrive. While there is not a definitive catalog of the forest gardens, there are remains of them up and down the coast of British Columbia -- some known, some still used by communities, some being rediscovered.
Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, a historical ecologist, researcher, and assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, has been working with First Nations communities to rediscover, confirm, and document the gardens, complementing traditional knowledge cultivated over time, sometimes for thousands of years. Armstrong's work supports the idea that some forest environments in British Columbia that were once considered wild are, in fact, often the result of careful shepherding and agricultural practices. There is similar evidence of forest gardens in Indigenous communities around the world, especially in tropical regions.
Nonetheless, Armstrong added, "Despite decades of research on the topic, this idea of Indigenous peoples' homelands as being culturally mediated and highly influenced spaces is still so utterly contested in courts, in public policy, in environmental regulations."
The legal justification for taking First Nation lands is directly linked to the colonial view that Indigenous peoples weren't using all of their lands and so they were essentially in the colonial eyes ripe for the taking. It's a concept that continues to be used against Indigenous peoples and the work that Armstrong does with the communities is just picking away at that argument.
So far, efforts to cite the remnants of cultivated gardens to support First Nations' land reclamation claims have failed to gain much legal traction. The current test for land title in British Columbia is evidence of regular and exclusive use of land before 1846. Proving regular use has been a challenge for the First Nations, in part because of the rugged coastal terrain.
But the priority of First Nations communities is to restore their forest gardens in some form. "At the end of the day, this is the goal: Bring these places back to life," said Armstrong. These communities are using Armstrong's work to refurbish their forest gardens. Clearing competing plants has already helped, with particular attention being given to the crabapples, which are flourishing.
Kelsey Charlie Sr. of the Sts'ailes (also known as Chehalis) Nation says ecosystems that have thrived for thousands of years with balance and harmony have been knocked off-kilter. At the same time, he added, more and more people are returning to these places to gather the plants that their elders used.
"It's a very, very simple thing," said Charlie Sr. "The way our elders said it was that we had agreements and arrangements with all living things."
Charlie said that part of the community's snoweyelh, or law of everything, is their responsibility to take care of the land. "Our elders always told us that we never owned the land, but we were a part of the land. And if we look after it, then it will look after us."
