PLANTS TRIBAL TRADITIONS and THE MOUNTAIN (2025)

2021 Update: Resource Sovereignty: The Indigenous Value of Mount Rainier within Activities of Traditional Resource Harvesting

2014

The Nisqually, Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Cowlitz, and Yakama Indian Tribes historically utilized the plant resources of Mount Rainier until the National Park Service established Mount Rainier National Park in 1899. Since 1992 there have been formal, written requests by these Tribes to revitalize the harvest of these culturally significant plant resources in their original collection location. Through archival analysis, participant observation, and interviews with Indigenous consultants, I investigated the impetus for these requests and furthermore the role of Mount Rainier in tribally relevant plant harvesting. Data indicates a lack of plant resource monitoring in the United States Forest Service has resulted in unsustainable practices that leave available resources within the boundaries of the National Park. Firstly, this research determined Tribes with historical resource connections to Mount Rainier increasingly value sovereignty over their traditionally utilized plant resources. Finally, contemporary Tribal harvesting events of plant resources in Mount Rainier National Park are indicative of a movement of resource sovereignty facilitated through collaboration rather than a revitalization movement.

Environment, Prehistory & Archaeology of Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, 1998

Environment, Prehistory and Archaeology of Mount Rainier National Park is the park’s most comprehensive archaeological overview and research design. Based on the results of field and archival research through 1997, it draws together the park’s known prehistoric archaeological record, and evaluates it in light of its place within broader regional subsistence and settlement patterns. The 2003 edition remains unchanged except for this foreword, use of color graphics where available, addition of Appendix C containing an otherwise hard-to-get citation in support of ecological arguments made in the body of the text, minor editorial corrections, and production in both paper and compact disk (CD) format.

Calculating the cultural significance of American Indian plants: Paiute and Shoshone ethnobotany at Yucca Mountain, Nevada

American …, 1990

Ethnobotany and Native Plant Production Ethnobotanically Significant Plants of the Pacific Northwest

Ancient Barkpeeled Trees in the Bitterroot Mountains, Montana: Legacies of Native Land use and Implications for their Protection

Natural Areas Journal, 2012

Applied Ethnobotany: Law, Health, and Sacred Sites Resources, Environmental Planning and the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation Gathering Plan

ABSTRACT The physical landscape of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation was transformed by the ethnobotanical manipulations made in cultivating native plants in various ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada Foothills. This cultural expression on the land has been studied and recreated for the purpose of writing fire management policy for the United States. The native science of observation and indigenous knowledge of plant preparations used by these people are practiced around the Mariposa County region not only impacting the landscape, but contributing to their physical and mental health. Based on the geographic regional family use tracts defined by the first USGS geographers and ethnographers, cultivation occurred at every elevation and in many microclimates as native people gathered, prepared, and used thousands of California Native Plants as nutritional and medicinal components of their diets. As public interest grew in the area of medicinal plants for use in alternative and complementary medicine, more attention was given to the policies that not only protected cultivated native plants and exotic species being sold commercially, but policy that could adversely affect their use and cultivation. As the Southern Sierra Miwuk used technology to map the historic use districts recorded in 1866-1911 for the lineal descendants of the eight original family clans, a pattern of ecosystem maintenance emerged. As the population and the human footprint increases, so will regulatory policy from all levels of government that may inadvertently affect native plant gathering, cultivation, and use. By using five Class I villages, five agencies in the county, five tracts set apart for a family’s use, and five medicinal, nutritional and traditional native plants, these affects may be better understood.

Plant Management Systems of British Columbia’s First Peoples

Bc Studies the British Columbian Quarterly, 2013

Chapter 28. Plant Production Practices of Ancient First Nations in the Lower Fraser River Region

2017

Introduction First Nations people have actively inhabited and engaged with the landscapes of the Lower Fraser River Region for many thousands of years, exploiting both its topographic and vegetative richness. Long before the remembered past, Northwest Coast First Nations relied on the seasonal bounty of plant foods, medicines, and technologies for their livelihoods (Table 1) (Deur and Turner 2005; Turner 2005, 2014; Turner and Peacock 2005). These resources were carefully cultivated and managed to enhance and sustain their productivity, size, taste, and other critical properties. Plants were managed at multiple scales from the individual to the community and landscape levels (Lepofsky and Lertzman 2008). This paper describes palaeoethnobotanical research in the Lower Fraser River Region that has characterized a spectrum of ancient plant use practices, from local small-scale harvesting to full-scale cultivation. The Lower Fraser River is one of the richest and most diverse natural re...

HOLOCENE SUBSISTENCE AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS: MOUNT RAINIER AND THE MONTANE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

Archaeology in Washington, 2007

The last two decades have witnessed increased interest regarding the role of mountain landscapes in regional subsistence and settlement systems, and the manner in which those systems changed through time. The 1998 report (revised 2003) Environment, Prehistory and Archaeology of Mount Rainier National Park, Washington deals with these issues as they apply to Mount Rainier, with implications for the Cascades generally. This paper extracts key arguments from that report, updated and refined through recent research, to address long-term land-use processes as they apply to Mount Rainier and Cascade landscapes; and to consider the capacity of the archaeological record to improve our understanding of these processes. This paper first introduces Mount Rainier's basic environmental characteristics, and addresses the capacity of this, and other mountain landscapes, to attract and sustain precontact hunters and gatherers. Sections that follow discuss the forager to collector continuum as it applies to the Pacific Northwest, and employs these principles to develop a Holocene subsistence and settlement model designed to fit Mount Rainier patterns into larger regional land-use systems.

Coupled archaeological and ecological analyses reveal ancient cultivation and land use in Nuchatlaht (Nuu-chah-nulth) territories, Pacific Northwest

Journal of Archaeological Science , 2022

Indigenous peoples' legacies of plant cultivation and management can have profound effects on contemporary forest structure and species composition long after cultivation has ceased. Despite rich ethnographic accounts of practices like orcharding and fruit tree management in the Pacific Northwest, archaeological and ecological research documenting these practises have been lacking. To investigate ancient and historical land-use and cultivation in Nuchatlaht (Nuu-chah-nulth) territory, we undertook a multidisciplinary study combining archaeological surveys on Nootka Island and ecological analyses of seven anomalous plant communities found adjacent to former village sites. Fifty-seven archaeological sites were inventoried, and 16 previously recorded sites were updated, including six notable village sites. Intensive botanical surveys were subject to indicator species analysis, NMDS, and ANOSIM analysis, which suggest that three putative orchard sites were highly enriched for culturally important and edible fruit and root plants, such as Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca), saskatoon berry (Amelanchier alnifolia), salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), and wild rice root (Fritillaria camschatcensis), and are highly distinctive compared to nearby sites and regional floristic patterns. Four shell midden sites were characterized by plant communities distinct from both orchard sites and control sites. Our archaeological and ecological analyses, alongside ethnohistorical data, strongly suggest a pattern of ancient and/or historical cultural landscape modification by Nuchatlaht peoples to produce food-bearing plant communities in their territories. This compliments findings in other literature, and what Indigenous peoples have long told researchers, that plant resources were routinely encouraged and harvested across their inhabited landscapes.