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| Beau Dick onsite at Hanson Island building warcanoes |
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| CMT cedar in Hanson Island cedar groves |
PHOTO CREDITS Mack McColl
First Nations built canoes to travel the extensive waterways of the Pacific coast in the days prior to the Industrial Revolution. Each dugout canoe was manufactured out of a single cedar tree and these dugout war canoes were designed for oceanic voyages of long duration.
Sometimes during these journeys canoeists ran afoul of the weather. The water on the Inside Passage is a reasonably constant 6 or 7 degrees Celsius but the weather varies and rainfall is a potential threat all year long, and especially from November to March. Dealing with these conditions called for planning, which included the invention of the 'firewood CMT,' a form of culturally modified tree found on remote islands and inlets of the Pacific Coast of Canada.
"Knowledge of the history of forest use is crucial for understanding the development of forests, which in turn helps to understand how societies react to forest development," said Rikard Andersson, Faculty of Forest Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. "Culturally modified trees (CMTs), recorded in the western U.S. (and Canada), northern Scandinavia, and south-eastern Australia, are features that can be dated precisely, and they bear witness to unique events of human activity."
David Garrick is a Canadian anthropologist with specific expertise in Culturally Modified Trees in west coast rainforests. "These artefacts define the First Nations communities in a practical way. They had camps all over the place, often at the mouth of a river. If they were taking a three-day voyage by canoe and it started raining they would pull out of the water, but how would you start a fire?"
An essential CMT would be found ashore, so they would land and find the firewood CMT at each site containing a dry source of wood. The travellers would find a small cavern dug above the roots inside a massive cedar tree trunk. "They would peel shreds of the dry cedar found inside the hollowed trunk and they would light a fire inside the tree."
These firewood CMTs were commonplace, "There's one found at every encampment." Garrick has studied them from Banks Island all the way to Kitkatla. He and others have found abundant evidence of a kindling source that provided instant fire to travellers. He has concentrated the study of humans interacting in forests for the past two decades on the Pacific Coast.
Garrick found a perfect place to do CMT research on Hanson Island, about 15 km south west of Alert Bay, B.C.. He set up the Earth Embassy in the heights of the 4 sq. km. island and he works under the auspices of the Yukusem Heritage Society (four First Nations).
"If you keep the ecosystem intact it becomes a living laboratory and a living museum, and a living classroom." For further study, "We have a post-secondary learning opportunities in the area. We have trails into all kinds of nooks and crannies on the island."
Garrick's laboratory on Hanson Island has been a welcome presence in the First Nations of coastal B.C. because his research provides a good history lesson about cedar usage in the culture and economy of the people. For instance a 'core-popped' cedar tree looks like a traumatic injury to those who pass by, but core-popping was no problem to First Nations, instead, it was a marker of time, "What happened to the cedar tree core was caused by a memorable event like a potlatch."
First Nation forest use went into a state of chaos for a period after contact with Europeans, and the anthropology is specific, "After epidemics reduced the population you see the sickness of the people reflected in the cedar peelings. Suddenly there are one-tenth the number of people available to peel cedar tree bark or cultivate and harvest other plants in the cedar groves."
Garrick's work continues on Hanson Island where he teaches everyone from small groups of First Nation students to the First Nation CMT researchers who identify the evidence of occupation and prior use in traditional territories. He gardens at the Earth Embassy and cuts and maintains trails to the instructive cedar groves that will stand in perpetuity on Hanson Island.
