A Transboundary Gathering: Digital Ecocultural Mapping in the Salish Sea

August 22, 2024

Summary

The Transboundary Gathering: Digital Ecocultural Mapping in the Salish Sea was an Indigenous-led collaborative working meeting and coalition-building event that took place in August 2023 on the ancestral land of the Indigenous Lummi people in Washington State. This 5-day gathering took place under the leadership of Kusemaat (Shirley Williams) and Whiteswan Environmental, who are located in Lummi territory, Washington State, with the support of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), Western Washingon University’s Centre for Community Learning, the Institute for Multidisciplinary Ecological Research in the Salish Sea (IMERSS) and OCAD University’s Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC). The gathering brought together over 100 Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers, designers, students, and government officials from Canada and the U.S. to consider approaches to ecocultural mapping that are rooted in the land, respect cultural safety, address issues of data sovereignty, protect sacred knowledge, and ensure Indigenous leadership.

A group of approximately 25 people stand and sit in a grassy area by the water in front of 3 carved and
painted Strait Salish story poles. A man wearing a blanket over his shoulders stands in front of the group and
appears to be talking, while a woman in a woven Salish blanket and cedar hat stands near him listening.
A white clapboard building can be seen in the background. — Transboundary Gathering site visit and public presentation at Pe’pi’ow’elh (English Camp) on San Juan Island. *Photo credit: Dana Ayotte*

The gathering included structured conversation and discussion through facilitated social learning circles and community-led design sessions, singing, storytelling, tours of the land and site visits. Participants engaged in activities at multiple locations including two ancestral village sites and the Lummi reservation. Visiting locations central to the present-day lives and rich ecocultural heritage of the Lummi people helped to facilitate a deeper understanding of the impact, benefit and challenges of ecocultural mapping in this region and beyond.

Two people stand at and actively engage with what appears to be a clothesline. Colourful pieces of paper
with text written on them are pinned to the clothesline. On one piece of paper can be seen the hand-written
text "WE ARE STILL HERE" while on others can be seen the words "Know that..." and "You are your ancestors". — Transboundary Gathering participants take part in a social learning activity. *Photo credit: Andrew Simon*

Ecocultural Mapping

The impetus for this gathering was an interdisciplinary, participatory and inclusive digital mapping project that began in 2020. Digital ecocultural mapping can provide visualizations and storytelling about natural, cultural, and historical sites including ancestral village sites, camps, reef net locations, food sovereignty, biodiversity and Indigenous stewardship systems. The pilot project of the ecocultural story map aims to meaningfully braid together Indigenous ways of knowing and ecological science to create an interactive, educational, ecocultural map of a region in the Salish Sea called Xetthecum in the Hul’q’umi’num’ language (Retreat Cove, Galiano Island, BC).

A screenshot of a webpage shows the heading "Xetthecum Digital Ecocultural Mappping" and a navigational
menu showing "The Story of Xetthecum", "About", "Explore" and "Resources". On the upper half of the page there
is a zoomed-in map of a small area of Galiano Island showing several different regions represented by
different colours and symbolic tiles. The map legend lists Forests, Freshwater, Marine and Woodlands.
Text appears in a 2-column box in the bottom half of the page with the heading "Xetthecum". — A screenshot of the interactive Xetthecum storymap.

This digital ecocultural storymap and accompanying website will serve as an educational resource supporting Indigenous youth and others to learn the Hul’q’umi’num’ language, study the regional biodiversity and ecological communities in which different species live, and learn about the ecological and cultural values of those species and communities. The storymap also aims to promote ecocultural mapping as a professional conservation practice among the next generation of land stewards. The Transboundary Gathering provided an opportunity for the coalition, together with a broader audience, to co-create next steps for a broader mapping initiative that would include the mapping of Pe’pi’ow’elh (English Camp) in Lummi territory.

Three people sit in front of a large map printed on white paper, while two of them point at different areas
on the map. In the background a person wearing a Coast Salish woven shawl looks on while water and trees across
the water can be seen in the distance. — Transboundary Gathering participants look at a map of the Salish Sea that shows ancestral sites and place names. *Photo credit: Dana Ayotte*

Relationship Building and Knowledge Sharing

The starting point for this digital ecocultural mapping project was the preservation of biodiversity in the Salish Sea, a region that spans the colonially-imposed boundary between Canada and the US (Sobocinski 2021). Transboundary relationships are essential for the success of this work; the colonial fragmentation of Indigenous tribes caused by enforcement of the Canada-US border has created a barrier to the knowledge sharing and collaborative solution-building essential to restoring Indigenous language, culture and lands (Norman 2012; Wilson 2019).

The Transboundary Gathering acted as a catalyst for establishing an on-going collaborative partnership to support cross-cultural ecocultural mapping efforts in the Salish Sea region, and to share tools and resources that will support similar efforts elsewhere. Together with Indigenous and non-Indigenous designers, scholars and technologists, we explored the implications of co-design and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange among Indigenous communities, bioscientists, ecologists, and inclusive designers. Building on the development of community-led co-design methods, the gathering provided an opportunity for workshop participants to extend and apply these practices to address the challenges of cross-cultural collaboration and to consider how an inclusive design approach can help to reconceptualize the design of technologies and cultural systems in ways that centre Indigenous leadership and epistemology.

Three people wearing Coast Salish woven clothing and cedar hats stand in front of 3 story poles with their
hands raised in front of their bodies. One of them holds a rattle in each hand.
In the background water and trees can be seen. — Members of Whiteswan Environmental lead participants in an opening prayer and song. *Photo credit: Dana Ayotte*

Knowledge Mobilisation

Our knowledge mobilization efforts include:

Presentation of the storymap to Penelakut elders (February 2024, Galiano Island), including gathering feedback and further stories of place for inclusion in the storymap.
Documentation and sharing of a synthesis of the key practices, plans, and actionable approaches for ecocultural mapping research, including lessons learned.
Creation of a website that provides an engaging and accessible portal into the project and the storymap.
Dissemination of design prototypes of digital ecocultural mapping tools (Xetthecum, Pe’pi’ow’elh) that are being shared through partners’ established networks (IMERSS, CRD, IDRC, Watersheds BC).
Presentation of the project at the Indigenous Watersheds Initiative gathering (March 2024).
Presentation to the public and to National Parks Services at Pe’pi’ow’elh (English Camp), San Juan Island (August 2023).
Documentation and sharing of research practices for cross-cultural, Indigenous-led projects, including by-laws and community-led design strategies (WIP).
Presentation of the Xetthecum project at Biosonic (Galiano Island, March 2023 & 2024).
Sharing of Xetthecum Storymap work with the broader inclusive design community through the FLOE project and WeCount Recount newsletter.
Presentation of the digital ecocultural storymap with Data Communities for Inclusion August 2023 CIFAR solutions network meeting in context of data sovereignty and data governance.

Upcoming:

Presentation of the Xetthecum storymap to community members on Galiano Island in an exhibition format that will allow for discussion and input (Yellowhouse Art Centre, October 2024).
Inclusion of the ecocultural storymap and Transboundary Gathering footage in Parallax: Reimagining the Canada-U.S. Border Venue: The Reach Gallery Museum (April 4 – August 16, 2025); touring to additional exhibition venuesin British Columbia Washington State in 2026 pending confirmation.

References

Norman, E.S. 2012. “Cultural politics and transboundary resource governance in the Salish Sea.” Water Alternatives 5 (1): 138-160. [https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/allabs/162-a5-1-9/file].

Sobocinski, Kathryn L. 2021. “State of the Salish Sea”. Institute Publications, Salish Sea Institute, Western Washington University. [https://doi.org/10.25710/vfhb-3a69].

Wilson, Kyla. 2019. “Governing the Salish Sea.” Hastings Environmental Law Journal 26, no. 1 (Winter): 169-182. [https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_environmental_law_journal/vol26/iss1/9/].