Traditional Ecological knowledge - coastal salish

1. Cooking plants the PNW Way

2. • For thousands and thousands of years, Native
ancestors ate healthy, wholesome foods. Salish
cuisine is a prime example of that.
• The Pacific Northwest is known by indigenous
peoples for its natural bounty, spanning from the
rich mountain forests and salmon-filled rivers to the
vast abundance of seafoods provided by Mother
Ocean. Such a wide nutritional variety paves the way
for a cuisine that is distinctly Salish.

3. Harvesting your food
• Digging stick were used to pry
roots and clams from the earth,
digging sticks are an
indispensable tool for any
forager. These digging sticks are
hand carved from native Pacific
Yew (Taxus brevifolia), one of the
toughest woods in the Pacific
Northwest and the traditional
material of choice among
Aboriginal root diggers.

4. Digging Sticks
• Digging sticks are made from the hardest and
toughest material available. Historically
Indigenous People west of the Cascades
preferred yew or oceanspray wood, while
those living east of the Cascades preferred
serviceberry, hawthorn, mock orange, and
oak. The tips of all wooden digging sticks are
carefully sharpened, fire hardened, and
rubbed with tallow to form resilient,
waterproof points.
• Digging sticks are usually three to four feet
long, or roughly the length of the root
gardener’s leg. Top handles are made either
of the same wood, or occasionally of antler.

5. Baskets for Cooking & Everything else
Form & Function
Traditionally, the Coast Salish wove a wide variety of
baskets to serve many purposes, including gathering,
storing, and preparing food; holding household
goods; transporting objects; and protecting their
infants. Gathering baskets were commonly used to
gather roots, berries, shellfish and other foods. Some
gathering baskets had leather loops or carrying straps
enabling the user's hands to remain free. Berry
baskets were sometimes soft and flexible, so the
basket could be folded and stored when not in use Large storage basket with lid made of
coiled cedar over cedar slats and
imbricated in black, red, and yellow
designs.

6. • Coastal Salish Materials & Techniques to make
baskets
• Common basketry materials included beargrass,
cedar bark, cedar root, spruce root, cattail leaves and
tule. Elements used for decoration included
maidenhair fern stems, horsetail root, red cherry
bark and a variety of grasses which offered weavers a
variety of colors, textures, and sheens, which they
used for artistic effect. Additionally, some materials
were dyed before they were used. Shades of red,
yellow, blue, purple, green, brown, and black were
obtainable from local plants, animals, and minerals.
Coiling, plaiting and twining were the three main
techniques applied by Coast Salish basket-makers.
• Coiled baskets were created by coiling a foundation
material such as split roots, then piercing the coils
with an awl and stitching them together with another
material. Cooking baskets were often coiled, as it was
possible to create a watertight container with the
technique.

7. • After a quick dusting to remove the
largest clumps of sediment, the
gardener places the root or clam in an
open-work basket. This basket is never
far from the digger and more roots or
clams are harvested until the basket is
full. The open weave of the basket
allows dirt and sand to fall freely, and
in some instances, the basket is
submerged partially in water and
shaken, like a colander, to rinse off any
remaining dirt.
• Thus cleaned, the roots or clams are
ready to be cooked or dried.
Open-work baskets like this one were made of
pealed cedar roots twined with split cedar
strips. They were attached to woven
tumplines, used as head or shoulder straps,
and filled with clams or roots that could be
rinsed, allowing the sandy water to run out.

8. Burden Basket
Burden basket of cherry bark
and cedar root with a woven
carrying strap or tumpline.
Would have been used to
carry loads of food or other
materials on back using a
forehead trumpline to
distribute weight.

9. Food gathering and preparation is a central aspect
of traditional knowledge

10. • Food, including meats and vegetables,
were baked, steamed, or boiled
without the use of pots or pans.
Instead, they heated rocks in the fire
then put the hot rocks into a cedar
box or basket full of water, which
would boil the water and cook the
food.
• The women prepared fish in two
ways: some fish was eaten fresh, but
most of it was dried and saved for the
winter months.

11. Salmon Smokehouse

13. Canada’s Original Cooking Vessel
Bentwood box cooking, as was found
among the First Nations of coastal British
Columbia, is Canada’s only indigenous
cooking method. From pre-history the
boxes, skilfully made with planks of red
cedar, were used for family meals or the
most elaborate feasts.
Often ornately decorated and of many
various sizes, they also were used for
storage and even, at times, for burial.

14. Cooking
• Bentwood box cooking was the work of the
women and they took great pride in it.
Depending on the size of the meal at least two
of these handmade boxes were filled with
water to soak and tighten for 3 – 4 days
Bentwood Box Cooking before cooking.
• Four to five hours before cooking, a fire was lit
on the shore and potato-sized beach rocks
were placed into it. They absorbed the heat of
the constantly tended fire. The rocks had to be
dense and compact. If not, they could fracture
violently when placed into the box to heat cold
sea water, blowing apart the painstakingly
made cedar box.

15. • The rocks that did not split were
precious and were saved in a cedar
basket to be used over and over
again.
• A branch of alder, a soft, pliable
tree that is used often today for
smoking salmon, was cut. With a
stone knife, it was then split part
way up, making a pair of
rudimentary tongs

16. • The hot rocks were then picked up
with the split alder branch, washed in
the first of two boxes and placed in
the second with fresh water.
• Franz Boas, the anthropologist who
studied the coastal First Nations from
1880 – 1920, described how, in the
springtime, the tender shoots of the
salmon berry bush were added to the
water for flavouring. In mere
moments the water foamed and
boiled.
• Seafood was added — prawns,
scallops, clams, chunks of salmon,
cod or snowy white halibut– and a
woven mat was placed over to hold
the steam.

17. • Over the centuries other foods also have
been cooked in the bentwood box,
notably a wild berry “jam”. Salal, a
member of the Heather family was one
of the most relished. Crushed salal
berries were added to the box and small,
hot pebbles were arranged in a layer on
top. More berries are added and the hot
small stones were stirred into the liquid
bringing it to a boil and thickening it.
• More berries are added and the small
stones were stirred into the liquid
bringing it to a boil and thickening
it. While the contents of the box was
cooking, a wooden rack was made and
placed over a fire.

18. • Layers of skunk cabbage leaves
(Lysichitum americanum), also known
today as “Indian waxed paper” were
arranged on top. The salal berry
mixture, minus the stones, was then
transferred to small four-sided cedar
containers set on the leaves. There
the fruit would dry to a leathery
consistency before being stored in
another bentwood box.