2023 September 2023 acorns of ĆEṈAL̵Ć [SENĆOŦEN], P’hwulhp [HUL’Q’UMI’NUM’], Garry oak, Quercus garryana, harvested in the last ten days in Lək̓ʷəŋən, now bursting out and sprouting to send down roots in the early autumn sun for planting below KEXMIN field station on ĆUÁN [SENĆOŦEN] / Tl’elhum [HUL’Q’UMI’NUM’] (Salt Spring Island).

Many of the south-facing slopes and shores of the Gulf Island supported Garry oak savannah and woodland often maintained by light and irregular Salish burning. With fire suppression and excessive sheep grazing, Douglas fir seedlings more easily re-established than they would have and are now over-shadowing oaks the roots of which have persisted for thousands of years. Now with more violent storms associated with climate change, the thick stands of 50 to 100 year old Douglas fir are being blown down. Where enough sun is available some of the old roots of the oaks that have survived are sending out sprouts and small trunks — a survival strategy for the longer-term in an erratic environment. Compared to native conifers, oak wood is very heavy and oaks sequester a good deal of carbon.

A raft of pollinators on the Gulf and San Juan Islands, including relatively rare moths such as this Propertius Duskywing, Erynnis propertius, depend a small number of food sources. In this case, Propertius Duskywing is particularly adapted to feed on Common Wooly sunflower, Eriophyllum lanatum, which has been in steady decline as black-tailed deer populations have increased as predators have been suppressed (but not entirely gone away) and as hunting by humans has become impractical.

What are Indigenous perspectives on digital justice and injustice?
The emergence of digital technologies and networks has paralleled the resurgence of Indigenous communities and governments throughout the world. Two usages of digital justice (and its many varied and embodied aspirations) are apparent within Indigenous communities on Turtle Island (North America):

• Older and narrower meanings of digital justice sought equal treatment and access to digital services, especially within the police, courts, and other justice, repair, and carceral systems

• More recently, views of digital injustice have most often focused on the lack of access to affordable broadband and cell coverage, or the digital divide as it is commonly named.

The digital divide is particularly constraining and impoverishing for rural, remote, and some urban Indigenous communities. As a result, digital justice is increasingly conceived as central to local economic development.

An even more expansive concept of digital justice is emerging from the arts. To develop their careers and reach expanding audiences, Indigenous artists in Canada are under pressure to adopt an ever expanding collection of digital technologies, apps, social media, and networks. For Indigenous cultural workers in Canada, an additional set of movements also involve reappropriating and remaking digital technologies and networks to help address systemic harms and strengthen social, cultural, economic vitality and other benefits rooted in community.

These benefits include:
• Caring cultural and language recovery
• Innovative education
• Assertion of First Nations law and territory as a part of self-determination
• Protection and archiving of traditional knowledge and histories
• Telemedicine and health more generally
• Multimedia games
• Land-based activities.
In the northern half of North America, digital justice for Indigenous communities can be envisioned as increased and restructured flows of communications, data, representations, wealth distributions, and protections (particularly against) facilitated by current digital infrastructure and further developed through new apps and other digital technologies.

Sometimes, these types of social goals are articulated as pillars, such as:
• Equal access to technology and affordable cell and internet connectivity (equity)
• Control of (FNs) national, communal, familial, and personal data by respective individuals and FNs governments (data sovereignty)
• Unimpeded and resources for development of cultural, economic, and ecological tools for community development and autonomy
• Strategies and technologies to address and protect against vulnerabilities including renewed forms of data justice and care often centred on protections from unwelcome surveillance and subsequent harms
• Recovery and indefinite iterations of Indigenous language, traditional knowledge, and culture (that fosters adaptation and innovation)
• Strategies to correct past and current injustices (repair).
These days, most Indigenous communities are heavily involved in challenging digital injustice through the following kinds of projects:
• Better accessibility through expanded, and more dependable and affordable broadband and cell connectivity, especially for education and economic development
• Making, adapting, and operating creative and place-based apps for recovery and protection of language, knowledge, territory, food resources, and cultural objects
• Data sovereignty and directly control by First Nations governments over treasured and strategic, community knowledge
• Increasing reliance on telehealth especially for remote communities
• Supporting and presenting new forms of creation and storytelling that are more often told through multimedia and presented and archived digitally.

Indigenous digital justice work regularly veers into leadership for broader projects around environment, sustainability, and coping with global change; decolonizing and transforming accessibility supports (especially for poorly served Indian Reserves); and, challenging theft of data and subsequent unwanted surveillance and biases in artificial intelligence and biases in deep learning algorithms, especially involving social media, which in turn continue to limit opportunities for most aboriginal people throughout the world.

These island ecosystems are profoundly structured around the pulses of food from the irregular fruiting cycles of dominant hardwood trees such as arbutus, ЌEЌEILĆ [SENĆOŦEN], Qaanlhp [HUL’Q’UMI’NUM’], madrone, Arbutus menziesii — as well as Garry oak.

In recent decades at the northern end of its distribution, arbutus has tended to flower and fruit every three years but the last time there was such an exceptional level of arbutus berries was six years back.

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A post shared by ḴEXMIN field station (@kexminfieldstation) on Oct 28, 2020 at 9:13pm PDT

These years of plenty are particularly important for birds such as band-tailed pigeon, HEMU [SENĆOŦEN], Patagioenas fasciata. Peaks in cycles of Garry oak acorns, another dominant in a specific kind of ecosystem, are typically, but not necessarily, on other years. “The species [band-tailed pigeon] is listed as Special Concern under Schedule 1 of the Species at Risk Act.”

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A post shared by ḴEXMIN field station (@kexminfieldstation) on Oct 28, 2020 at 9:25pm PDT

Three trees native to the Gulf and San Juan Islands are far more common and often dominant on south-facing sites:

Garry oak / Oregon white oak, ĆEṈÁLĆ [SENĆOŦEN], P’hwulhp [HUL’Q’UMI’NUM’], Quercus garryana;

arbutus / madrone, ЌEЌEILĆ [SENĆOŦEN], Qaanlhp [HUL’Q’UMI’NUM’], Arbutus menziesii; and

Pacific crabapple, ḴÁ,EW̱ILĆ [SENĆOŦEN], Qwa’up-ulhp [HUL’Q’UMI’NUM’], Malus fusca.

The red seeds on the black plate are arbutus, the brown are acorns, and the smaller yellow fruit are Pacific crab-apples. The larger yellow fruit are from a volunteer crab-apple that may well have hybridized with local populations of Malus fusca or more probably another Eurasian apple cultivar.

Late September and October, after days of rains, is the best time to plant these seeds and respective seedlings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by ḴEXMIN field station (@kexminfieldstation) on Oct 16, 2020 at 12:45pm PDT