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Gavenus, Erika Ruth

University of British Columbia

Indigenous peoples living along the coast of what has become known as British Columbia hold longstanding relationships with the fish who share their waters, forged, and maintained through practices guided by enduring protocols. The following dissertation uses a theoretical lens of food justice to attend to the ways fisheries management, as enacted by Canada, may be interrupting relationships of Indigenous fisheries, and limiting real opportunities for resisting power structures. The diverse efforts of First Nations to reassert Indigenous governance of fisheries are recognised as central to realizing food justice. Scholars of fisheries and food studies are invited to examine how their research can support such efforts. Chapter 2 explores the Doctrine of Priority—the priority that Aboriginal and treaty rights to fish must be granted in decision making—as it has been interpreted by Canadian courts through an analysis of case law documents. Courts are found to privilege a dematerialized understanding of rights out of step with contemporary theories of rights, cultural continuity, and justice. Chapter 3 models restorative diets for coastal First Nations—diets accessible under the interdependent conditions of Indigenous governance reassertion and ecological restoration. I demonstrate a consistent and sizeable gap between harvest rates suggested by the types of evidence currently being used, which reflect already disrupted diets and practices, and harvest rates to support restorative diets. Chapter 4 analyses responses to the Nuxalk Food Resilience Survey to characterise household food resilience among Nuxalkmc across multiple criteria and to consider the extent to which criteria of household food resilience converge, or not. I find that there are “pockets” of household food resilience that might bolster the resilience of the broader Nuxalk food system given favourable governance conditions. Chapter 5 argues that evaluating the potential effects of fisheries management strategies on capabilities, or what people can do with what they have, contributes to the purpose of holding governance bodies accountable for the effects their decisions have on well-being and to promoting more just fisheries. I support my arguments by bringing together thinking from well-being scholars and empirical examples from fisheries studies.

Text

2025-04-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88049

Resources, Environment and Sustainability

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/