Applications of Ethnobotanical Research in Defining Aboriginal Rights & Re-affirming Indigenous Laws скачать в хорошем качестве

Applications of Ethnobotanical Research in Defining Aboriginal Rights & Re-affirming Indigenous Laws

This is a presentation recorded at the 2023 joint conference of the Society for Economic Botany and Society of Ethnobiology, held at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia from June 4-9, 2023. #ethnobotany #ethnobiology #science #aboriginal #vancouver #vancouverisland #canada *** UNSETTLING LANDSCAPES: Applications of Ethnobotanical Research in Defining Aboriginal Rights and Re-affirming Indigenous Laws in T’sou-ke Territory, Vancouver Island and Beyond Pamela Spalding This paper explores how, in Canada, Indigenous people's relationships with culturally-significant plant species and their associated laws and governance, are an expression of Aboriginal rights, and I ask how these rights can be affirmed and exercised using a form of intersocietal law within and between First Nations and state governments. I examine how my own and others' ethnobotanical and ethnoecological research can help to decolonize the Canadian legal systems that limit Indigenous peoples in regenerating their relationships with native plant species and the ecosystems within which they are situated. My research is grounded in a case study, developed and carried out in collaboration with the T'Sou-ke Nation on southern Vancouver Island, that reveals how T'Sou-ke knowledge and use of plants is rooted in Indigenous laws throughout their territories, and are essential to establishing the basis of land and resource rights that have legal force to be claimed today. I indicate challenges faced by T'Sou-ke Nation in exercising plant-associated rights throughout their territory and outline how the current legal test for proving Aboriginal rights is problematic. The T'Sou-ke have an abundance of rich evidence of their use of 100 native plant species and of Indigenous laws associated with the same. My research finds that the obvious and long-standing Indigenous management of these plant species and various ecosystems on southern Vancouver Island supports a very significant claim of legal rights and I believe that my research is broadly applicable to other First Nations in BC and beyond.