Swinomish Tribe builds U.S.’s first modern ‘clam garden,' reviving ancient practice

Fri, 7 Oct 2022 11:45:04 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.kuow.org/stories/tribe-builds-united-states-first-clam-garden-in-centuries>

"By the time you read this story, what it describes will probably have
disappeared beneath the waves.

That’s how it was meant to be — and how it used to be.

Since time immemorial, as the saying goes, people in what is now Washington and
British Columbia farmed the sea with a type of environmental engineering called
clam gardening.

Around the time Europeans showed up here, the practice was lost.

“It was stolen from us,” said Swinomish Tribal Senator Alana Quintasket. “All
of our teachings, all of our practices, our connections to this place, our
connections to each other, our connections to all living things was stolen from
us with settler colonialism.”

Quintasket stood in the mud where Skagit Bay becomes Kiket Island.

“We’re working hard to restore these practices, to bring back these teachings,
and to restore our relationships,” she said.

A few dozen people in work gloves and rubber boots gathered on that small
island about 50 miles north of Seattle, during one of the lowest tides of the
year.

“We are starting to build the rock wall for our clam garden,” Quintasket said.

It's believed that a clam garden — a traditional, Indigenous way of boosting
shellfish production — hasn’t been built in the United States for close to 200
years.

Rock by rock, this muddy gathering is changing that."

Via The Fixer September 14, 2022:
<https://reasonstobecheerful.world/free-fruit-vegetables-public-garden-andernach/>

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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