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Paper short abstract:

This paper uses new research from animal studies and marine ecology to argue for a reconceptualization of the environmental history of the Pacific Ocean.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses new research from animal studies and marine ecology to argue for a reconceptualization of the environmental history of the Pacific Ocean. While scholars have critiqued geographical conceptions such as oceans as artifacts of human culture, in fact there may be good reasons for taking spaces such as the Pacific as coherent units of historical analysis. Evidence is increasingly coming from marine biologists suggesting that many animals’ lives are defined by the Pacific Ocean. From sooty shearwaters to blue whales, migratory animals in particular use the entirety of the ocean, while rarely traveling outside its boundaries. Because human histories have long been entwined with the histories of these oceanic creatures, following their lead alerts historians to overlooked communities and stories in the Pacific. These more-than-human histories are breathing new life into Pacific environmental history.

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This paper aims to examine the ecology of coconut plantations in the Solomon Islands, focusing on Lever’s Pacific Plantations Limited’s biological pest control during the first half of the twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

In the estates of Lever’s Pacific Plantations Limited (LPPL) in the Solomon Islands, there were foreign bees, beetles, goats, cows, parasites, flies, moths, birds, and iguanas. There were also exotic grass, bracken, fungus, bacteria, and, of course, alien humans. All of them were there for coconuts. But how were they related to each other?

This paper will discuss how plantations, while intended for monoculture, introduced diverse life forms that were not native or endemic to the land. LPPL was a subsidiary of a British soap giant, Lever Brothers Limited, which became today’s Unilever. To gain cheaper copra and coconut oil, LPPL ran the largest coconut plantations in the Solomon Islands during the first half of the twentieth century. Growing coconut palms in the Pacific, however, posed a great challenge: a continuous battle with pests. LPPL attempted to solve the problem with biological control measures. For example, to rid a type of beetle pest, LPPL introduced parasites that infected the beetles. In order to control moths, LPPL imported a specific bird that preyed on moths. The birds, consequently, attracted iguanas, which resulted in an iguana eradication campaign where human labour was needed. Since LPPL lacked labourers, cattle were introduced to assist humans. By analysing the series of biological controls adopted by LPPL, this paper will map an ecological system of coconut plantations run by LPPL using both historical and scientific sources.

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Ancestral clam beaches are crucial for Indigenous Peoples in the Salish Sea but were devastated by colonial fisheries from the late 19th century onwards. Historical research can highlight historical overexploitation, establish baselines for recovery and aid in efforts to restore ancestral beaches

Paper long abstract:

Clams have been a critical part of the diet and culture of Indigenous Peoples in the Salish Sea since time immemorial. Over this long history, Indigenous communities have carefully tended and cared for ancestral beaches to increase productivity and species diversity. In stark contrast, settler colonial fisheries that began in the late 19th century used destructive methods to rapidly exploit clams for export-driven markets without regard for this legacy of clam tending, resulting in declining clam populations, habitats, and health across the region. Restoring ancestral clam today brings many benefits, including reasserting Indigenous governance, cultural reconnections, increased fisheries productivity, and promoting food sovereignty and climate resilience. Guided by the needs of project partners at the Sea Garden Restoration Project, this research aims to provide new historical data and insights to support community-driven restoration of ancestral clam beaches in the Salish Sea. This paper explores the ecological and social history of clam harvesting in the Salish Sea from 1880 to 1940. It will outline the exploitative practices of the settler colonial industry and explore how Indigenous land, knowledge and labour were directed away from traditional harvesting and towards unsustainable catches for commercial gain. It will also examine the impact of colonial industry on calm abundance and species distribution across the region. Finally, it explores how historical insights can aid in the ongoing restoration of ancestral clam beaches in the Salish Sea.

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Indigenous youth-led participatory film project which investigates how efforts to revitalize the land and remove invasive plants are interconnected with the work of restoring traditional foodways and cultural relationships to the land.

Paper long abstract:

Access to the land is an essential part of the health and food sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. Colonization sought to disconnect Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories and food systems, by placing them on reserves, disrupting the transmission of knowledge between Elders and youth, and prohibiting traditional agroecological practices. Meanwhile, settlers from Europe were creating ‘Europeanized’ landscapes, by introducing plants from their homelands, which spread and colonized new ecosystems, making it increasingly difficult for native plants to survive. In the present day, there are numerous communities working to remove invasive plants and restore traditional foodways, effectively revitalizing the land and their cultural relationships to it. On Vancouver Island, invasive species have spread rapidly and are outcompeting native plants, with negative consequences for the health and food sovereignty of local Indigenous people. This research empowered youth from Sc’ianew Nation, an Indigenous community in Canada, by engaging them in the creation of a participatory short film, which investigated the impacts land revitalization projects are having for their community. Youth were trained in filmmaking techniques, and they interviewed Elders and Knowledge Keepers. The study found that land revitalization work is connecting people on-reserve, it is strengthening partnerships with likeminded organizations off-reserve, and it is creating space for native plants, including medicinal and food plants to flourish, which also benefits non-human kin. This study contributes to a growing body of scholarship which uses participatory and visual methods to make knowledge more accessible and useful to research communities.

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Paper short abstract:

The Pacific cod fishery has recently experienced collapse, which may have precedent in history. To evaluate long-term dynamics, we reconstruct the catch of Pacific cod from the 1860s and evaluated drivers of decline in a recent period of decline in the 1930s, providing insight into modern management

Paper long abstract:

In the Gulf of Alaska, a series of marine heat waves in the 2010s severely impacted Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus), the effect of which depleted biomass to the lowest abundance ever recorded and led to the fishery’s closure in 2020. While the Pacific cod fishery is currently the second largest fishery in Alaska and is widely considered as one of the best-managed fisheries globally, this collapse may have precedent in history. Traditional knowledge holders refer to Pacific cod as “the fish that go,” which may be a reference to past periods of decline. In recent history, the 1930s is a period of reported decline in the fishery, and understanding the change that happened in this time period may provide insight into long-term dynamics of Pacific cod. This paper (a) reports on a fisheries catch reconstruction of Pacific cod since the 1860s which documents the period of decline in the 1930s, (b) evaluates possible social and ecological drivers of that decline in the 1930s, (c) places these historical dynamics into a modern management context. This historical archival work is part of a larger collaborative project involving historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and managers, aiming to understand long-term dynamics of Pacific cod and the ways in which diverse types of historical information can be help to improve modern fisheries management.

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I examine the avian labour of Indian mynah (Acridotheres tristis) to cheaply ameliorate pests, as they did in other sugar-growing areas in the Pacific. This paper considers colonial Queensland’s sugar industry as a more-than-human enterprise in which Indian mynah played a foundational role.

Paper long abstract:

Just as tropical climes concerned whites in India, Australia’s tropical north was a source of grave anxiety that prompted sustained Anglo efforts to ensure its economic and demographic development. This paper contributes an environmental perspective to the growing interest in the legacies of British slavery beyond the Americas. In this case, schemers hoped to import Indian indentured labour for the growth of the plantation economy in the tropical north of Queensland. These attempts failed not on the grounds of their racialised environmental reasoning, but rather because private recruiters capitalised on their proximity to the nearby South Pacific islands, from where they ‘blackbirded’ labourers. Although subsequent calls for Indian labour were politically divisive and ultimately unsuccessful, planters nonetheless recruited non-humans from South Asia to the serve the sugar industry from the early 1880s. Drawing on the insights of more-than-human history, I examine the avian labour of Indian mynah (Acridotheres tristis) to cheaply ameliorate pests such as grasshoppers and cane beetles, as they did in other sugar-growing areas in the Pacific, such as Fiji and Hawai’i. Although these birds later became pests themselves, this paper considers Queensland’s sugar industry as a more-than-human enterprise in which the Indian mynah played a foundational role.

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This paper uses methods and evidence from archaeology, material culture and archives to present new understandings of the environmental history of the overseas Chinese through a case study of a major Cantonese settlement in southern New Zealand.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses methods and evidence from archaeology, material culture and archives to present new understandings of the environmental history of the overseas Chinese through a case study of a major Cantonese settlement in southern New Zealand. Lawrence Chinese Camp remained the most important Chinese settlement throughout nineteenth-century Otago from its establishment in the 1870s to the early 1900s. Evidence derived from four major archaeological excavations, from archival sources and from surviving material culture paints a vivid picture of the environmental history of the settlement. Archaeological findings reveal major environmental changes to landscape, from drainage to urban design, as well as local and global resource demand through material culture. More fascinatingly perhaps, material culture and archival evidence together provide examples of the manner in which—through the concepts drawn from geomancy—Cantonese migrants made sense of and changed the landscape around them.

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Paper short abstract:

With new species and ideologies, overseas Chinese returned to their hometown from the Pacific rim after 1949. To settle this people, the new government established farms for those people and turn them to new citizens. It incurred a new wave of eco-cultural exchange between China and the overseas.

Paper long abstract:

Overseas Chinese farming was significant to the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Chinese who returned to their hometown from all corners of Indo-Pacific rim in a short time in the decade following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Benefitting the local economy and strengthening the political identity of these special groups of New China’s citizens, overseas Chinese farmers also greatly promoted the development of eco-cultural networks connecting China to the Pacific. New technologies, species, tools, knowledge from Southeast Asia and Oceania were unexpectedly incorporated into the process of the dramatic transformation of ecology in mainland China in the 1950s, especially in coastal rural areas. This research will combine governmental archives, oral history and material culture studies to show how the Pearl River Delta was changed by the innovation of overseas Chinese farming.