- About
- Apply
- Awards + Funding
- Graduate Students
- Life + Community
- Faculty + Staff
- Individualized Interdisciplinary Studies in Graduate Studies
Presidents Dream Colloquium
President's Dream Colloquium on Indigenous Peoples and Local Community Perspectives on Sustainability and Resilience
Kim Recalma-Clutesi + Douglas Deur
Join the Conversation with Kim and Douglas
Event Details
Date: Thursday, September 29
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 PM
Location: Room 1400-1430
Joseph & Rosalie Segal Centre
SFU Harbour Centre
Honouring Ancestral Teachings and Environmental Knowledge in a Time of Urgency: Lessons from the Ninogaad
This is a time of urgency in many domains, of catastrophic environmental change, and the loss of entire culturally-rooted ways of knowing the world. In the spirit of reconciliation, and guided by practical concerns, the non-Indigenous world now looks to traditional ecological knowledge with new interest—recognizing that such knowledge is relevant not only in understanding humanity’s past, but also to navigating our present and future relationships with the Earth. Can traditional ecological knowledge, rooted in the distant past, still truly teach us lessons needed for our collective strength and resiliency in these times? And if so, how? The teachings held by trained Kwakwaka’wakw knowledge-holder (nogaad), the late Clan Chief Kwaxsistalla Adam Dick, offer us some answers—though not always the same answers advanced in popular and academic discourses. Drawing from the many ancestral teachings regarding human-environment relationships held by Clan Chief Adam Dick— from traditional salmon and clam knowledge to the protocols surrounding the gathering of plants—we illuminate the broad contemporary relevance of core values inherent in these teachings. We also explore traditional protocols that clearly prescribe how such knowledge is to be held, used, and transmitted; if observed respectfully, such protocols shield Indigenous communities from many potential negative effects of sharing environmental information, and allow such information to be shared with fidelity to countless prior generations of ancestral observation, practice, and teaching.
About Kim
Kim Recalma-Clutesi, Ogwi’low’gwa, is a member of the Qualicum First Nation on eastern Vancouver Island. Kim is the daughter of late Clan Chief Ewanuxdzi of Qualicum B.C. and a former Qualicum Chief herself. Through her father, she received an extensive political background during the Southern Vancouver Island Tribal Federation’s formative years, the R.A.V.E.N, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the Native Brotherhood. Her decades of work as an award-winning activist, political organizer, cross-cultural interpreter, teacher and academic researcher of ethnobotany collectively illustrate her commitment to strengthening Indigenous stewardship traditions and knowledge.
About Douglas
Douglas Deur, Moxmowisa, works closely with Native American Tribes, Canadian First Nations, and Alaska Native communities to help document traditional values and practices relating to the natural world. He has carried out groundbreaking research on traditional resource management practices along the B.C. coast and beyond, working with friends and collaborators such as Kim Recalma-Clutesi, Nancy Turner, and others; books such as Keeping it Living have emerged from their efforts. He serves as a cultural anthropologist on behalf of many U.S. tribes, helping train Indigenous youth in how to carry out their own cultural documentation in a manner consistent with tribal values and protocols; he also serves as the primary person to work as a third-party academic researcher and intermediary between Indigenous communities and the U.S. National Park Service in the western United States. He serves as research faculty to the Portland State University Department of Anthropology, adjunct faculty to the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, as a governor-appointed Commissioner to the Oregon agency overseeing parks, archaeology, and heritage in that state. A student of the late Clan Chief Kwaxsistalla Adam Dick for decades, he is adopted Kwakwaka’wakw and holds a lifetime responsibility to observe and disseminate certain traditional teachings carried by the late chief.