PENÁW̱EṈ: Moon of the Camas Harvest Event
Written by Tiffany Joseph and Max Mitchell.
Author’s note: the acknowledgement of W̱SÁNEĆ people’s activities is not meant to exclude any other nation or people. The seasonal/lunar-based activities are publicly shared from the W̱SÁNEĆ 13 Moons book, so we acknowledge what is welcomed to be shared by the W̱SÁNEĆ community. Due to nuances from nation to nation, most activities described will refer to the W̱SÁNEĆ, and there’s potential the neighboring nations partook in the same activities, but without proper reference we will refrain to making those statements.
June 9 2023
Spring is always an exciting time of year on the southern end of Vancouver Island! After winter’s shorter days and cold temperatures, you really start to get the sense that things are beginning to wake up from a kind of hibernation. As the days grow longer and the temperatures warm, we begin to see new life emerge from the landscape. All throughout the region we experience a gorgeous cascade of blooming native wildflowers, as Sea Blush, Western Buttercup, and White Fawn Lilies all begin flowering. One of the most spectacular natural events that we see in our region this time of year is undoubtedly the Camas blooms. Here, Camas blooms typically begin late April or early May and continue into the weeks that follow. However, this season’s early arrival of high temperatures brought drought-like conditions to the meadows, so by the time this year’s PENÁW̱EṈ Moon arrived there were fewer Camas blooms to see.
Camas (both Common Camas and Great Camas) is a striking Indigenous purple flower in the lily family that is a cultural keystone of the ḰȽO,ELENEȻ (Camas ecosystem, Prairie-Oak/Garry oak Ecosystems). In nations of the Coast Salish language and cultural group, camas bulbs are an important food source. The bulbs (when cooked) constitute an important source of starch.
From Swartz Bay to Beecher Bay, spring meadows were so full of camas blooms the meadows appeared at a distance to be purple and blue in colour, so much so that they could be mistaken for water. Newcomers to the land, sadly, ignored this rich food resource. Instead of building relationship with the local Indigenous people where everyone could thrive through trade from the camas harvest, settlers destroyed these nutritious foodscapes to plant annual produce which require excessive tilling and fertilization which continue to throw the ecosystem out of balance. People may wonder if friendship was possible, but it was for the Indigenous people. One of the oldest farms on the Peninsula today exists because of friendship between W̱SÁNEĆ people and a settler, though few remember that history. They agreed to allow the settler to settle among them because the other settlers excluded and rejected this settler. The terms required that the W̱SÁNEĆ people could continue to access their camas field and they would all live peacefully amongst each other.
These kinds of relationships based in friendship were unfortunately not the norm as settlers continued to arrive in these territories, and as a result the decades to follow were marked by dispossession, excess development, the expansion of unsustainable agriculture, takeover by non-native invasive species, and the encroachment of coniferous forests due to the removal of Indigenous controlled burns for land management. What we can see today is only a small fraction of the abundance that would have once been seen on these lands, with over 95% of the region’s Prairie-Oak habitat having been lost. In lək̓ʷəŋən language, these ecosystems are known as Kwetlal (the lək̓ʷəŋən word for Camas) food systems, with their defining feature not being the Garry oak trees (as centered in Western ecology), but rather the Camas. This cultural significance is one reason why continued stewardship of these ecosystems is so important, and why it is critical for people to come together in community on the land.
In recognition of this importance, on May 19th, 2023, Habitat Acquisition Trust hosted an afternoon of ecological restoration, community gathering, and cultural knowledge sharing at the Matson Conservation Area, a HAT protected property located on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən people (represented today by the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations).
Photos taken by Olivia Vanderwal
Our restoration event marked the arrival of the PENÁW̱EṈ moon, or the Moon of the Camas Harvest, in the W̱SÁNEĆ lunar calendar. The PENÁW̱EṈ moon marks the time of the year when W̱SÁNEĆ people travel the territories to harvest Camas from the family-tended Camas meadows. They would also harvest SQIȾI and XIW̱E, (green and purple sea urchin) which are delicacies to the W̱SÁNEĆ people, during these travels. Our restoration site for the day, the Matson Conservation Area, would have likely been one such area, as the Conservation Area’s central meadow features overflowing Camas beds. Today, it is the largest remaining example of a Prairie-Oak ecosystem found along the Victoria Harbour waterfront. However, over a century of colonization has had a detrimental impact on the health of these ecosystems, with invasive species like Orchard Grass and English Ivy quickly spreading and taking over, encroaching upon valuable native habitat space.
In the nearly two decades that the Matson Conservation Area has been protected, countless volunteer hours have been dedicated to helping heal these ecosystems. The Matson Mattocks stewardship group meets every week to remove invasives and perform other restoration tasks, but the degree to which invasive species have taken over some sections of the property means that community support on this project really does make a massive difference.
Our PENÁW̱EṈ New Moon Celebration saw over 30 volunteers come join us for an afternoon of ecological restoration and cultural knowledge sharing helping to support these ongoing stewardship efforts, and consequently making it one of the largest volunteer restoration events to ever take place at the Matson Conservation Area.
To begin the afternoon our group gathered at the viewing platform overlooking the central meadow of the Conservation Area. Tiffany Joseph shared with our group the importance of becoming more in tune with the ebb and flow of the seasons, and of forming a closer, more intentional, care-based relationship with the natural world around you. Being mindful of the arrival of the new moon helps bring into focus the changes happening all around us that can be taken for granted if we forget to pay close attention.
And of course, with renewed attention, what our group then saw at the Matson Conservation Area was an ecosystem in dire need of care, and so we set off to a corner of the property that has been almost entirely consumed by English Ivy and Himalayan Blackberry. In a matter of hours our group was able to clear a substantial section of the woodland that had been completely covered for years!
By the time that we began to wrap up our work and do our final sweep, the volunteers had amassed a pile of invasive plant biomass measuring approximately 3 cubic meters in size. Anyone who has removed Ivy before will attest that this is no small feat!
We then ended the day together down on the beach in a closing circle where members of our group were free to share their feelings and reflections on the day as the event drew to a close. As we went around the circle feelings of calm, grounded-ness, and a deeply felt sense connection were echoed amongst the group.
As they set off upon their separate ways, the volunteers passed a small rocky outcropping along perimeter of the Conservation Area that had been cleared of Ivy the year prior. What had previously been nothing but a dense knotted mat of Ivy, was now flushed with Camas everywhere with soil deep enough to hold a bulb. These bulbs had survived for years underneath the Ivy, so it is exciting to think what plants could emerge next Spring in the area that our group had just cleared that afternoon. We will just have to wait until next year’s PENÁW̱EṈ moon to find out what seeds and bulbs might just have been waiting beneath the surface to have enough space to bloom once again.
The HAT Team would like to express its sincere gratitude to everyone who made this day such a wonderful success. Thank you to all our incredible volunteers who came out to support this important work, and who made this the largest restoration event ever held at the Matson Conservation Area (so far). Special thanks as well to the Aboriginal Coalition to End Homelessness (ACEH), Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation (HCTF), and the Gorge Waterway Action Society (GWAS) for joining us and supporting this ongoing work.
HÍSW̱ḴE