Doing Things

 In Ann Arbor

A cup of coffee at Argus

… we told them to find another way to trim the trees away from the power lines!

Favorite News Item

In the Salish Sea near Seattle — AP photo:
A little seal escapes a pod of orcas that wanted to have it for dinner.

Story of the seal in the Guardian. (This is only a screen shot of the video).

When we were there…

We saw seals furiously barking at a pod of orcas when we took a National Geographic cruise
 there: my photo (© 2018).

From Miriam in China

A mural on a street in Shanghai. More of Miriam’s photos will be posted here.

Recent Reading

The narrator of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (published 2014) seemed very unsympathetic to me, and so did almost all the other characters. The narrator was an assistant to a famous (obviously fictitious) pop singer: a woman with an enormous ego and not much else to her. The other assistants and employees were uniformly impressed by their employer, and utterly empty-headed. A major theme of the novel is race and its importance to the narrator, her friend, her employer and quite a few others, all of them brown or black individuals dealing with the emerging racism in England towards the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century.

The novel alternates between the narrator’s description of her relationship with her employer and her childhood and friendship with a girl who eventually became a successful dancer and then a failure. Here’s her eventual insight into her friend, around half way through the book:

“She was a dancer: she’d found her tribe. I, meanwhile, was caught completely unawares by adolescence, still humming Gershwin songs at the back of the classroom as the friendship rings began to form and harden around me, defined by color, class, money, postcode, nation, music, drugs, politics, sports, aspirations, languages, sexualities . . . In that huge game of musical chairs I turned round one day and found I had no place to sit. At a loss, I became a Goth—it was where people who had nowhere else to go ended up.” (p. 215)

 I had to force myself to keep reading. In fact, I don’t know why I did, but I persisted. I remember liking her earlier book White Teeth.

Blog post © 2025 mae sander

Shared with Eileen’s Critters,

Sami’s Monday Murals, and 

Deb’s Sunday Salon

Endangered Eating

Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods by Sarah Lohman is a very readable account of the efforts to preserve several cultural culinary treasures. Inspired by the organization titled Slow Food International, and their endeavor called the Ark of Taste, Lohman selected a few very interesting American traditional foods, and described their current state, their cultural significance, and some recipes that use them. In addition, she presented the history of the owners of these foods. I really enjoyed reading this book.

Foods that are covered:

• A few special varieties of dates from the Palm Springs, California, area
• Native Hawaiian sugarcane now raised only by a few descendants of the original Polynesian inhabitants of the islands
• Navajo sheep, a special breed that’s become quite rare
• A specialized type of salmon fishing practiced by natives of the Puget Sound area in the Pacific Northwest and nearby Canadian islands
• Wild rice from the Great Lakes region (now being replaced by cultivated forms of the native marsh crop)
• Heirloom apple varieties once used for making cider, now almost lost
• Louisiana Filé Powder, traditionally gathered by native Americans and used for making gumbo
• Carolina runner peanuts, a small and flavorful variety that was almost lost because they were not good for mechanized processing.

As I read many of the chapters, I thought about the way I had visited the locations that Lohman describes, and how I had heard about some of the rare and endangered foods she discusses. This made me especially enjoy reading these chapters. Here are a few of my memories.

Santa Barbara: Dates from a Farmers’ Market

At a California Farmers’ Market: empress dates and honey dates (source)

The first chapter of Endangered Eating is titled “Coachella Valley Dates.” As I read, I recalled the date vendors from the Coachella and Palm Springs area who came to the Santa Barbara Farmers’ Market where I shopped during several long visits there in the past. I particularly remember the incredible variety of dates, and the way the vendors offered samples so that one could decide which were the most delicious. 

Lohman writes:

“Although the Coachella Valley primarily grows commercial date varieties like Medjools and Deglet Noors, several small farmers still carry on the tradition of growing unique date varieties that were developed in the area a century ago. It’s these rare American dates, grown nowhere else on the planet, that have been onboarded to the Ark of Taste: Empress, Abada, Blonde Beauties, Brunette Beauties, Honey, McGill’s, Tarbazal, and Triumph.” (p. 2)

Although as Lohman points out, few trees with these special date varieties still are growing in California, it’s interesting that they can be tasted at least from a few sellers at the farmers’ markets of the area. I’m curious as well about the dates we tasted at a date farm in Israel, where we also encountered a number of different and interesting date flavors.

Santa Barbara Farmers' Market Date Vendor with his samples (2011)

Maui, Hawaii: Sugarcane and Native Agriculture

Early Hawaiian agriculture shown at Iao Valley State Park (2009)

Sugarcane first reached Hawaii with the original Polynesian colonists, centuries before the famous voyage by Captain Cook. This variety of cane was kupuna kō or Hawaiian legacy sugarcane. It was cultivated by the native people along with their traditional crops including coconut, taro, breadfruit, Hawaiian purple sweet potato, and Kalua pig, sometimes known as “canoe foods” because they were brought on the canoes of these early settlers. I wrote about this native agriculture here: Native Species and Canoe Foods.

Now, in the twenty-first century, Lohman visited a few farmers who are growing the native variety of sugarcane. She writes: “The Ark of Taste has five entries for Hawaiian sugarcane, chosen to represent the over forty varieties of legacy kō that have been identified as unique to the Hawaiian Islands.” (p. 38)

Native sugarcane is different from the variety imported by Europeans and cultivated in destructive, farming operations and refined in huge industrial refineries (which entirely ceased production in 2016). Her chapter on native Hawaiian sugarcane explores the current efforts and the history of sugar in the islands. One interesting fact is that sugarcane cultivation had two distinct histories: one with the Polynesian settlement of the islands in the Pacific, and the other with its spread to the west via Arab and European merchants and then to the New World, where it was cultivated in the Caribbean and the American South.

A sample of native foods that I tried at a festival on the Big Island in 2013. 

New Mexico: Navajo Sheep

Near Sandia, New Mexico (2015)

I’ve been on Navajo reservations more in Arizona than in New Mexico, the subject of Lohman’s chapter on the endangered species of sheep that are precious to the Navajo people for their wool and for meat. Thanks to the Tony Hillerman novels and their sequels by his daughter Anne Hillerman, I feel as if I am very very familiar with the people on the New Mexico part of the area!

Lohman describes the sheep and their special wool, which makes very beautiful weavings: 

“Navajo-Churro have an inner coat of lustrous wool and a shaggy outer coat that can reach up to 14 inches in length. The low lanolin content of the wool means that very little water is required to wash it, which is ideal in desert conditions. The wool is perfect for hand weaving because it is remarkably straight, strong, and durable. And it comes in over a dozen different natural colors, ranging from dark black to pure white as well as heather gray, tan, peach, and a light reddish-brown. Navajo-Churro wool is so recognizable and connected to Diné weaving that in the Art of Native America gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a Diné chief’s blanket dating to 1840 is labeled “handspun undyed and indigo-dyed Churro fleece.” The sheen of the wool in the blanket is unmistakable.”

I love learning about Navajo art and history, so this chapter was especially interesting to me.

A Navajo weaving — “Two Grey Hills” — in my home.

Traditional Salmon Fishing in the Pacific Northwest

Graffiti in Alert Bay, Canada (2018)

A few years ago, we traveled on a National Geographic cruise to see the Puget Sound and many islands and towns in Washington state and Canada. The cultural specialist onboard the ship introduced us to many historic facts about the Native Americans who lived in the area, and he especially talked about a tribal group called the Lummi, who employed a traditional type of salmon fishing with nets. He described. how this method had been lost but was being reintroduced. (My blog post about this is here.)

Lohman’s chapter called “Sxwo’le Straits Salish Reefnet Fishing” describes this exact restoration of a nearly forgotten fishing technique, and describes the struggles of Native Americans in both the US and Canada to recreate their traditional practice.

Reefnet fishing (Sxwo’le) is an ecologically responsible method of trapping the salmon on their run up one of the rivers where they go to spawn. It’s non-destructive of by-catch, and humane to the salmon. It uses a net called a reef. Lohman’s description:

“The reef is a web of rope which guides salmon both up from the ocean floor and in toward the net, like a funnel. The reef starts with two 200-foot rope lines that extend upstream from the platforms; the lines float with the help of buoys. The ends of these lines are about 80 feet apart at the upstream end, and narrow to the width of the net between the two floating platforms. Ropes are tied at intervals horizontally between these two main lines. At the upstream end, these horizontal ropes are anchored 80 feet below the surface of the water, nearly at the bay’s floor. Gradually, the ropes slope upward until their depth matches the opening of the net strung between the platforms. 

 

“Onto these horizontal ropes are tied blue or green plastic ribbons that shimmy in the tide and look like underwater plants. The ribbons trick the salmon into thinking that they are swimming safely on the ocean floor up a shoal, a natural shallowing of the bay.” (p. 111)

There are no illustrations in Endangered Eating, but I found this image helpful in trying to imagine the activity, involving several boats and a large system of nets:

Reef netting near Point Roberts, ca. 1940 (source)

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Photos by mae sander or as credited

 

Who Was Emily Carr?

The Forest Lover, published 2004.

Reading about places that I've been is always a great pleasure: a pleasure I enjoyed when reading Susan Vreeland's novel The Forest Lover. Vreeland created a fiction based on the life of Canadian painter and memoirist Emily Carr (1871-1945). Carr lived and painted in British Columbia with a one-year stay in Paris to study art. A major subject of Carr's paintings was the art of the native American villages in the Vancouver-Victoria area. She also visited Sitka, Alaska, where native art was dramatically visible. I have visited these places which intensified my enjoyment of the book, though I do not recall seeing Carr's works in the Canadian museums we have visited. 

Carr is one of many highly creative people who was ahead of her time, and was rebuffed and rejected in her efforts to be recognized for her work. The narrow-minded, anti-woman, anti-modern-art, anti-intellectual, and pompously religious attitudes of the Canadians of her time is very well depicted in Vreeland's novel. Carr was attempting to use the vision of Parisian artists of the pre-World-War I era to depict the beauty of the Canadian forests and of the native wood carvings, including especially the many historic totem poles that were being neglected and destroyed as the native people were being dispossessed. Her struggle to preserve her visionary appreciation of native art, which was held in contempt by her peers, is a fascinating story.

Emily Carr’s painting of Sophie, a native woman
who was a major character in her life and in Vreeland’s novel.
This image is from Carr’s memoir Klee Wyck, -- my next read.

In 2018, I paid a very memorable visit to Alert Bay, BC, a village where a great deal of Vreeland's novel takes place. Alert Bay is particularly remembered in history because of a shameful episode where the Canadian officials confiscated the tribal possessions, especially the masks used in their ceremonies. I learned about this on our visit to the town, and thus I was fascinated by the novel's treatment of Carr's eyewitness experience of the terrible mistreatment of the Kwakwaka’wakw tribe of Canadian First People in Alert Bay. I wrote about my visit and about the history of Alert Bay and the dramatic return of their property in the 1960s here: 

• Alert Bay and the U’mista Cultural Centre

While I found the novel and its depiction of Emily Carr engaging, I was captivated by the art works themselves, as I looked them up while reading Vreeland's description of her struggles to create them. Carr was finally recognized, after years of rejection for her creative use of the style of the cubists, the fauves, and the other moderns, and these works were finally included in major Canadian art shows late in her life. My review of the novel is © 2021 -- the following images are credited with their sources.

Illustration from Carr's journal of her trip to Alaska in 1907 (source)

Carr, Indian Village Alert Bay, 1912. (source)

War Canoes in Alert Bay, 1912 (source)

Tanoo, Queen Charlotte Island, BC, 1913 (source)

Big Eagle, Skidegate, BC, 1930 (source)

The Burial Ground at Alert Bay, BC. From our trip in 2018. In Vreeland's book, Emily Carr saw the totem poles
in burial grounds of native villages falling into disrepair. Now, 100 years later, they are treated with respect.

Wordless Wednesday: Whale Museum, Friday Harbor, Washington

Murals and Public Art in Alert Bay

As we walked from the dock where the Sea Bird was moored to the U’mista Cultural Centre and then to the "Big House" for a dance performance, we enjoyed a wide variety of outdoor artwork in the small town of Alert Bay, B.C. We saw totem poles, wall paintings on the sides of houses and shops, wood carvings, and other decorations, including murals that were more like graffiti in modern cities than like tribal art.

The "Big House" where over 1000 people can watch ceremonies such as 21st century potlatches. We were here for
a dance performance presented to the Sea Bird passengers and a group of school children. (Blogged HERE). A few days
after our visit. the Big House was to host a very large potlatch for tribal residents of the entire area.

What did North Coast American Indians Eat?

Salmon and fry bread -- two Native American foods served after a dance performance we watched last week in Alert Bay, B.C.
Accompanying them, our hosts from the community offered us jam made from several different fruits, as well as maple syrup.

After we attended a dance performance with refreshments at the "Big House," or Indian meeting place in Alert Bay, I thought about the foods of the British Columbia First Peoples would have eaten before European contact. Salmon, which is widely available in the seas, streams, and rivers of the area, was the most important source of nutrition for the area in the past, and was eaten fresh or was dried and traded with people who lived further from water.

In contrast to salmon, fry bread -- popular with Indian tribes throughout the US as well as here -- is made entirely from introduced European foods: wheat flour, baking powder, and fat, usually lard. The jams, which were very delicious, could be made from local native berries, but the sugar in the jam is not native. Northwest coast maple trees do produce sweet sap, which I believe the Indians used traditionally -- though I don't know whether their product was boiled down as much as modern Canadian maple syrup.

Museum reconstruction of early First Nations kitchen.

The fascinating First Nations galleries in the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria also left me curious about the hunting and gathering activities of the peoples in the area we visited. Clearly, the riches of the region were bountiful, and the people made good use of them. Though they lived in villages, they were able to live by fishing, hunting, and gathering forest products, not needing agriculture. The only domestic animals that I know of were dogs -- very interesting dogs with wooly hair useful for weaving; now extinct. Their houses, wood-carvings, totem poles, fishing gear, woven blankets, and other material goods were extremely effectively designed and manufactured. They traded with other local tribes as well as engaging in very long-distance trade with native people elsewhere in North America.

Map of our route on the Sea Bird from Seattle to Alert Bay.

The Kwakwaka'wakw, whose village we visited in Alert Bay are one of the tribes of the Salish Sea region, which spans both the US state of Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Before the Europeans, the Indian inhabitants of the region lived in villages both on the coast and in the interior. They spoke a number of different languages, but were deeply connected by trade and inter-tribal relationships, including a lingua-franca with a few hundred words all could understand. Goods were transported in large canoes made from the very tall cedar trees of the region. I was particularly fascinated to learn of the many ways the First Nations invented for taking fish. For a very complete study of this subject, see "Traditional Animal Foods of Indigenous Peoples of Northern North America," a very complete site with many links from McGill University. 

Fishing and Hunting for Whales

"Little Ike (Yurok) fishes for salmon with a plunge net at pame-kya'-ra-m,
Klamath River, California, before 1898." (source)

"Yelm Jim’s fish weir on the Puyallup River ca. 1885." (source)

Salmon fishing was one of the most important endeavors of the native people, yielding large catches that could be used immediately or preserved and traded. The people fished from shore with nets and spears, they fished from canoes in open water, and they built fish traps the width of entire streams to take the salmon during their late-winter and spring runs upstream to spawn. In the museum in Victoria we saw quite a few examples of the way the traps and nets were constructed from wood and various types of fiber.

A smaller type of fish, the eulachon, also migrates up the streams and rivers to spawn, and was a very valuable source of oil for the Indians, who still enjoy using it. A eulachon fish could be dried so that its oil was preserved, and then used as a candle -- hence its other name, the candlefish. Eulachon oil was a very important trade item. These smaller fish were caught in woven baskets. The Indians also used nets to fish from boats in the open sea, and fished with hooks and with spears. They took halibut, smelt, shell fish, and seaweed.

Cooking the fish might be done over an open fire, but the Indians also made water-proof cooking boxes from cedar and other wood. A rock heated to a high temperature in a fire could be lifted into a box with water, fish, and vegetables to be cooked. Elaborately carved boxes were used for many other purposes as well.

Modern Lummi Indians using traditional reef nets for fishing, 2013. (source)

Indians from northern California through the Canadian Provinces and up to Alaska today all fish for salmon. Some have returned to using traditional nets suspended from two canoes (see image) as well as fish traps.

Unfortunately salmon of all sorts are threatened by a number of different environmental hazards. Over a century of dam-building and other construction in and near the streams where salmon spawn have vastly reduced the number of fish, as has commercial fishing both in the streams and at sea.

Another major source of damage, especially of disease, is the salmon farms that have been built in the last 25 years. The salmon farms and many other dangers to the salmon also severely affect the population of orcas that live permanently in the region, because the local pods of orcas depend on eating salmon almost exclusively, especially chinook salmon. Weighing up to 16,000 pounds, the orcas need to eat a whole lot of salmon! (Transient orcas feed mainly on smaller marine mammals, so they are less dependent on salmon.)

The opinion of the people of Alert Bay of the salmon farms in their waters.

Whales and seals were another source of food and oil to the native people. Remarkably, whale hunters in canoes were able to spear these huge beasts. In the museum in Victoria, we saw some photos of native hunters and learned that the man who speared the whale was rewarded with the most desirable part: the heart. Beached whales were also used for food and as a source of bone for carving and tools, as were bones of other marine mammals.

Onboard the Sea Bird, we enjoyed several lectures by the Cultural Specialist Owen B Walker.
For his lecture on the First Nations and their fishing methods, he wore a traditional hat including ermine fur.