Keeping It Living Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America

Author/creator Deur, Douglas, 1969- Author
Other author Turner,Nancy J. 1947- Editor
Format Electronic
Publication InfoSeattle : University of Washington Press
Description384 p. ill 09.270 x 06.200 in.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete
Subjects

Summary Annotation The European explorers who first visited the Northwest Coast assumed that the entire region was virtually untouched wilderness whose occupants used the land only minimally, hunting and gathering shoots, roots, and berries that were peripheral to a diet and culture focused on salmon. Colonizers who followed the explorers used these claims to justify the displacement of Native groups from their land. Scholars now understand, however, that Northwest Coast peoples were actively cultivating plants well before they experienced contact with Europeans. Keeping It Living tells the story of traditional Northwest Coast cultivation practices, and of how they came to be overlooked by Europeans.Bringing together some of the world's most prominent specialists on Northwest Coast cultures, this book discusses plant management methods found from the Oregon coast to Southeast Alaska. It looks at tobacco gardens among the Haida and Tlingit, managed camas plots among the Coast Salish of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, estuarine root gardens along the central coast of British Columbia, wapato lot maintenance on the Columbia and Fraser Rivers, and tended berry plots up and down the entire coast.With contributions from ethnobotanists, archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, ecologists, and Native American scholars and elders, Keeping It Living documents practices, many quite different from those characteristic of European agriculture, that involve manipulating plants as well as their environments in a way that enhanced both the quantity and the quality of plant production.
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
LCCN 2004029448
ISBN9780295985657
ISBN0295985658 (Perfect) Active Record
Standard identifier# 9780295985657
Stock number00027464

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