Paper Short Abstract:

This collaborative paper shares key insights on Indigenous (Salish) lake fisheries-based submerged (hi)stories, fresh-saltwater bridges and subsurface sensibilities that denote relational environmental knowledge and co-management practices based on long-term ethnographic, community action research.

Paper Abstract:

We will dive and leap deeply into the water in this paper. Here, we reflect candidly on a particular methodology and insight from our collaborative, long-term ethnographic and community-based action research as part of our Papt ku Gwenis: Gwenis Forever Salish (Tsal’alh) grassroots project. Our project engages an innovative and multispecies(ist) effort to explore, understand and educate on the often-overlooked subsurface fisheries-based relationalities in Seton and Anderson lakes in the Interior of British Columbia. Both lakes have been severely impacted by colonial, industrial and natural resource development including mining, hydroelectric, rail, forestry, commercial and sports fishery. Both are home to rich, deep and remarkable underwater activities, stories, monsters, spirits and connections to the coast which bridge (jurisdictional) fresh and saltwater divides typically maintained by colonial, resource and governmental agents. “Our stories are written on the land,” is a key Salishan principle upholding an ability to a relational environmental literacy (Armstrong 2020; Smith 2009), however, here we will probe and expand this notion by suggesting that included in the complex and skilled ability to read and speak to/from the land are water spaces, submerged (hi)stories and subsurface sensibilities that denote holistic and relational environmental knowledge and (co-)management practices. We focus particularly on the notions of the (re)creation of ‘spawning’ as ‘home’, and ‘dwelling’ as ‘hiding’ places that protect, shelter and rejuvenate these vital entanglements and allow the ongoing active stewardship against or despite of ongoing resource conflicts.