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Regulating tradition: Stó:lō wind drying, and aboriginal rights

University of British Columbia

This thesis explores the changing meaning of wind dried salmon in contemporary constructions of the culture of the Stó:lō First Nation. Wind drying has been a method of preserving salmon for the Aboriginal peoples of the lower mainland of British Columbia since time immemorial, providing significant winter provisions. However, over the course of the last one hundred years, participation in this fishing activity has been drastically decreased and currently only a handful of Stó:lō families maintain dry racks in the Fraser canyon. As a result, wind dried salmon has gone from being a staple to a delicacy, and is now valued as a cultural tradition, rather than merely as a food product. This change in culturally inscribed meaning is a product of the relationship between Stó:lō fishing activities and fishery regulations imposed by the settler state. Increasing restrictions of Aboriginal fishing rights have resulted in decreased participation and success in the Stó:lō fisheries. Furthermore, regulation has artificially categorized and segregated Stó:lō fishing activities, dislocating the commercialized fresh catch from the "subsistence" dried fish harvest. The response to this regulatory pressure has been the traditionalization of the wind dry fishery, situating the activity as a cultural symbol and a point of resistance to external control. Wind dryers currently refuse to commercialize the wind dry fishery, thus resisting outsidecontrol of the management of the fishery and the distribution of the harvest. This situation is discussed in light of anthropological understandings of the construction of traditions, and the issues of Aboriginal rights surrounding contemporary Stó:lō fishing activities.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-05-20

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/8016

Anthropology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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