First Nations-led, Nanwakolas Council-supported revitalization of ancient loxiwe (clam gardens) is leading to cultural connection and establishment of sustainable and predictable food sources.
“I’m very traditional with my clams. I like them boiled with lots of garlic butter,” jokes Wei Wai Kum archaeologist Christine Roberts. “Yes, garlic butter for sure,” agrees We Wai Kai Guardian Manager Shane Pollard. “Clam chowder!” exclaims Wei Wai Kum Councillor Tony Roberts. “That’s my favourite.” “Steamed right on the beach, with maybe a little lemon juice,” argues Nanwakolas Cultural Capacity Coordinator Charlene Everson (K’ómoks First Nation). Her K’ómoks Guardian colleagues are divided: it’s clam chowder all the way for Caelan McLean and Matthew Everson, but steamed with garlic butter for Krissy Brown. “The way my folks used to make them,” says We Wai Kai Councillor Art Wilson. “Smoked, then jarred!” Mamalilikulla Guardian Manager Andy Puglas gets the last word: “Clam fritters,” he states firmly. “I make a good clam fritter!”
Clams, clams, and more clams
One of the reasons everyone is talking about clams – especially their favourite ways to eat them – is because they are gathered on a sheltered, rocky beach in the heart of Liǧwiłdax̌w (Laich-Kwil-Tach) territory, on the site of a four-thousand-year-old loxiwe (clam garden). Along with a team of expert advisers and knowledge holders, Guardians from We Wai Kai, Wei Wai Kum, and K’ómoks Nations, kids and assorted other community members, and with support from Nanwakolas staff, for the last three days everyone has been rolling their sleeves up and working hard to reinvigorate the loxiwe. This work is a follow up to a visit to the site four months earlier, when more than sixty people worked for two days to begin restoration of the ancient loxiwe.
Loxiwe are part of a highly sophisticated marine and coastal environmental management strategy undertaken by Indigenous Peoples since time immemorial. Loxiwe not only contributed to food security and resilience in the face of challenges like climate change, they were fundamental to cultural vibrancy, intergenerational knowledge-sharing, and community connection. Village sites were usually built next to loxiwe, where communities lived and conducted other activities such as horticulture. Shells from the clams were useful as foundation materials. Trees in these areas, fed by compost from the loxiwe and villages, were usually taller than in other areas and used for defensive infrastructure, possibly canoe building, and other related activities.
Careful planning and hard work
It sounds simple, but in fact, making a loxiwe would have taken a lot of careful thought, planning, and hard work. Loxiwe require three main elements: rocks, both large and small, to make walls that will enlarge the area of clam habitat; clear, loose sandy space for the clams to grow in; and seaweed for the clams to eat (but not so much it suffocates the clam beds). “There’s a sweet spot in the clam gardens, about 1.5 metres from the high-water mark, that the clams really like,” explains Christine. “The First Nations would build a wall to capture the tide coming in and expand that sweet spot. There would be more space for clams to grow, and they would keep that space clear of too much seaweed and till the sand so it stayed nice and loose.”
In a loxiwe that has been well-built and regularly maintained, the walls may just need some chinking with small rocks from time to time, especially after the storm season; the sand is easy to keep loose and clean; and excess seaweed is easy to rake away (and take home to dry and eat, but that’s another story). But thanks to the disruptive disconnection from their loxiwe caused by colonization, loxiwe like this one, and the hundreds, if not thousands more loxiwe scattered along the west coast, fell into disuse. That is a disaster, says Christine – with no-one harvesting from them, she explains, while you might think there would be lots more clams in the loxiwe, in fact the opposite is true. “When you don’t turn the clam garden over regularly, the seabed gets hard, like cement. The clams can’t move around and be healthy, so they don’t grow as much.”
The more you dig, the more you get
These days, metal forks and hoes are used to pull up rocks to build the walls, rakes to pull clumps of seaweed off the bed, and hoes to turn the sand over and loosen it. Before those kinds of tools were available, sturdy sticks were used. “Once you start turning the bed over again, the clams love it,” says Christine. “They’re able to move around and breathe. It makes them healthier and grows more clams to dig. Then, the more you dig, the more you get, for the same reason.”
In just the short space of time since the work began at this loxiwe, the difference is already showing: people are finding not just healthy clams, but other shellfish like cockles. And after all the hard work of digging, raking, and moving rocks, everyone is hungry, and thinking about clam recipes. “These days,” notes Tony, “we don’t generally cook the clams out here where we are harvesting them. We usually shuck them and clean them, and bring them home to freeze them or cook them on a stove. But a lot of our foods were cooked in pits at one time, with clams wrapped in kelp, steamed under the ground. People were really innovative when they didn’t have the modern pots and pans that we have now. We also cooked clams around a fire and just let them steam in their shells. When the shells opened, then they were cooked.”
Contemporary pathways
While this ancient practice was interrupted by colonization, loxiwe are not historical sites; they are living cultural locations with which Indigenous Peoples continue to have an unbreakable relationship. That’s why the Nations are working hard today to restore the loxiwe to active use and to revitalize the important role of the loxiwe in supporting their communities in all of the ways they have done in the past.
“That is why this is such an important project,” agrees Shane. “Clams were an important food resource that we relied on. For so many years, we haven’t had anywhere near the same access to them for food for community. When we look back at the historical ways we accessed clams, clam gardens were one of those ways. So it would be big to bring that back, to revitalize the loxiwe and make them productive again.”
This loxiwe already has two walls, and the team are building out a lower third wall, explains Christine. “That’s what we’ve been doing on this visit. Everybody’s come out to volunteer to help build the wall and fill it in.” It gets easier, adds Tony: “We’ve been digging rocks out of the garden itself. When you dig these gardens a lot, it gets easier to turn them over. After a while, it’s just going to be sand left for the clams.”
Learning together
“It’s been a learning process for us,” says Christine. “These walls have been here for four thousand years, they’re still here, so they obviously knew what they were doing. But we have to learn how they did it. We’ve noticed, when we were putting the big rocks down, that a lot of water was coming in underneath the wall. That’s not supposed to happen, so we’re learning as we go. Today, we’re taking the lower wall that we’ve added or built, and we’re putting in little rocks to see if it’s going to stop the water from permeating our wall. It’s also a little high right now, so we’re trying to fix that and figure out how high it has to be all around the whole thing. It’s just doing and learning at the same time.”
Adults and kids are learning together: as Christine watches, half a dozen youngsters are listening attentively to Andy, who is showing them how to shuck a clam properly. “All our community people, a lot of them have never been out to our traditional territory or have come to a clam garden,” she observes. “This is their first time. These kids, they are going to be our future knowledge keepers. They could say that they were here digging this garden.”
“I would love for our ga̱nga̱nana̱m, our kids, to be involved in everything like this that we do,” adds Tony, “to learn about how our people lived at one time.” He is watching Eva, We Wai Kai Guardian Antho Seville’s small daughter, who is digging in the sand, so enthralled by the collection of tiny crabs she is finding she is oblivious to the rain shower passing overhead. Smiling, Tony continues: “Clams were one of our main staples in our diet, they kept us alive. This is all culture that we’re talking about. When I was growing up, nobody taught us. We learned it by doing it all the time. This was normal practice for us. It’s something, that culture, we want to instill in all our young people so they’re proud of where they’re from and who they are and know who they are.”
Watch this space!
Following the restoration work, a workshop is being planned for the fall of 2024 with community members to discuss the process and knowledge shared and gained, to harvest, process and cook clams in various ways and learn about food security and storage, and to develop ideas to inform future management regulation, policy and practices. Best of all – to eat clams! Whether steamed, fried, in fritter or chowder, or baked in a traditional pit, they are going to taste all the better for the work that has been put into ensuring that these loxiwe will thrive into the future.
Mamalilikulla First Nation are also about to embark on a loxiwe restoration project, with help from the Telus Indigenous Communities Fund. “There’s one particular spot in the territory we want to check out, it’s a long beach with a garden the whole way along. I want to try and bring it back to what it used to be, doing the same thing that we’re doing here,” says Andy.
It’s exciting to contemplate healthy, thriving loxiwe in the places he used to go clamming with his mother and older brothers when he was a little boy. “My mother, she’d take the little ones out with her in baskets. She’d just move them around in the baskets as she moved along the beach. There were so many clams, the story goes that one time she was so busy digging she forgot one of the baskets with my sister in it and she started drifting away!” One day soon, says Andy with a happy grin, there will be that many clams again for everyone to harvest.
“Hopefully, we’ll get more and more people to take up different clam gardens and restore them or start using them, turning them over,” says Christine. “It shows what we did before. As an archaeologist, I think it’s really cool that we’re actually standing on the ground that our ancestors were digging clams and maintaining these clam gardens four thousand years ago. It’s pretty cool to be here.”
Sharing the knowledge
This loxiwe journey is also just one of many. The Indigenous-led work of loxiwe restoration and reintegration of Indigenous-led science and maricultural practices into coastal management policy and practice is a growing movement on the west coast, from Alaska to Vancouver Island and the mainland coast, and south into the United States. This is just the beginning for the Nanwakolas member First Nations: the future for loxiwe restoration and management is bright.
TO LEARN MORE: check out these websites, including this one by sponsor Lenfest Ocean Program: Living Loxiwe: Revitalizing Clam Gardening Practices in Northern Quadra Island, and also the Clam Garden Network.