Relatives of the Deep: Situated Knowledge and Archaeological Remote Sensing to Assess Climate Change Vulnerability at Tl’ches

Summary

Sellemah/Joan Morris, a Coast Salish Nation elder, was raised at Tl’ches, an archipelago of low islands in the Salish Sea of southwestern British Columbia. Islands are familial places in the Coast Salish world, the word translating to "relatives or ancestors of the deep." Ongoing archaeological and ethnoecological research indicates this island ecosystem was shaped by millennia of resource management and subsistence practices. In 1957, a drinking water shortage forced residents to move to Vancouver Island—a move with disastrous implications for Sellemah and her family. Today, global climate change is threatening to impact the island chain at a time when Coast Salish peoples are returning to this ancestral cultural keystone place. To understand both the deep history of Coast Salish ecological management, and their future use of Tl’ches, we are using drone imaging to inventory intertidal archaeological and ecological features. LiDAR digital elevation models are also used to map near-future sea level tidal heights associated with global climate change. Results indicate village sites and intertidal habitats will be profoundly affected by projected sea level change, necessitating the development of novel management regimes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Historical Ecology for Applied Archaeology: Climate Change, Resource Management, and Governance

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16656