Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Vancouver Campus, Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada
“T Today’s visit to the Beaty Diversity Museum reminds me of the term holistic community, an ecosystem in which different species are related and interdependent. When Jackie explained the sturgeon harpoon knowledge web, the key message that resonated with me was, “When a link in this web is broken, it’s a loss to the whole web of knowledge and our relationships.” (Jason Woolman, Musqueam First Nation).
In order to enhance our community with the land, we should focus on protecting other species because we are all related, and all species play a role in the well-being of our community.
“K At the Beaty Biodiversity Museum today, we asked ourselves how the specimens, stories and teachings found there related to our group’s inquiry question. Our question was “How can we enhance community in connection with the land?”.
The Beaty Biodiversity Museum has been working in recent years to incorporate more Indigenous knowledge, stories, and language into its exhibits and signage – a goal that resonated with us and our inquiry.
Enhancing a sense of community requires building trust, believing in others, and listening to their stories and wisdom. This museum is showing their commitment to supporting reconciliation and community building, very much in connection to the land; through studying the land and its diverse inhabitants, and including the important voices of the Indigenous caretakers of the land through showcasing their stories and language.
In order to build community on the land, we need to be like Jack rabbit (pictured here at the Museum), and use our ears to truly listen and learn, to the land and the human and more than human inhabitants. We need to take advice from this story of Walrus on Haida Gwaii (where the Indigenous People spoke of Walrus being present there, and scientists not believing it until a 42,000 year old skull was found in 2017) and trust those speaking even if their story seems surprising to you; stop and listen, and you may just learn something you didn’t know before.
“O Our visit to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum reminded me of the interconnectedness of the natural community. The tour of the museum reminded me that every single species is connected in some way to another part of the ecosystem, but is also critical to human interaction with the environment as we interact with every species in a different way. This was exemplified with the creation of the sturgeon harpoon, but upon reflection I thought of many other objects and activities which are connected to many species. This is important for our enhancing community in connection to the land as we need to remember the role and the specific knowledge in all species that live in our community, and if we are seeking to enhance community it is important to recognize and cultivate the biodiversity which exists in our community. As the loss of biodiversity is a loss on community knowledge and “human” community diversity. (I see this picture as representing the natural environment looking back at human actions and questioning our decisions).
“N During our visit to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum today I thought a lot about ‘community’. Oftentimes, when we think of community we think only of the people that live within a given area or space. I believe that in most Western cultures we more often than not forget about the fact that our community is not only made up of diverse people, but also a diverse ecosystem filled with plants and animals. I grew up hunting, and so I was always aware of the local plants and animals that lived in Northern California, where I am from. However, even though I have lived in BC for almost ten years, I only really discovered the different plants and animals that live in our community during my practicum when I was creating my local plants and animals unit which had a focus on Indigenous knowledge. Our visit to the museum yesterday seemed like a perfect wrap up to my research to that unit!
“J Our visit to the Biodiversity Museum reminded me that while there is so much that we have learned through scientific research over the years, hundreds of years in the case of some of the pieces that lie in the museum, there is still so much for us to learn. I felt that the tour guide’s made very insightful comments about the importance of Indigenous traditional knowledge being brought into an academic scientific research space. The western lens has been so centred in our discussions for so long that when we go to places like the Biodiversity Museum, it feels as though we already know what to expect, we have learned the basics of all there is to learn. However, this tour served as another reminder that this is not true, Indigenous histories hold deep rooted knowledge, much of which were ways of thinking I never was given the opportunity to dive into during my time in elementary and secondary school. There is always more to learn, there are always new perspectives to understand. A piece that really caught my eye on the tour was this projected video on the concrete wall. While the projection begins with a black background, blending into the wall as if nothing was there, a wolf runs through the screen giving the audience a quick scan before running off, leaving us with a black screen once again. This served as a reminder to me that there is always something there, something to learn and understand, even if we think there isn’t, and if we want to build our sense of community with the land we need to always remember this.
“M Our visit to the Beaty Biodiversity museum focused on unlearning some of our pre-existing stereotypical views of Indigenous knowledge. We saw xʷməθkʷəy̓əm language featured prominently on some displays with an accompanying description about what makes the artefact significant, the author and the traditional knowledge stores from which it has been derived. This was vital to our inquiry question ‘How can we enhance community in connection with the land?’ since it put the spotlight on community i.e. the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people, on whose traditional lands Beaty is situated. This deliberate focus away from UBC or other kinds of settler-derived knowledge is but a small step moving forward…