If we could con­ceive in some warm lit­tle pond with all sorts of ammo­nia & phos­phor­ic salts,—light, heat, elec­tric­i­ty &c present—that a pro­tein com­pound was chem­i­cal­ly formed, ready to under­go still more com­plex changes, at the present day, such mat­ter would be instant­ly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before liv­ing crea­tures were formed.

—Charles Dar­win, let­ter to his friend Joseph Hook­er, 1871.

Inter­ac­tion assumes that there are indi­vid­ual inde­pen­dent­ly exist­ing enti­ties or agents that pre­ex­ist their act­ing upon one anoth­er. By con­trast, the notion of ​“intra-action” queers the famil­iar sense of causal­i­ty…, and more gen­er­al­ly unset­tles the meta­physics of indi­vid­u­al­ism (the belief that there are indi­vid­u­al­ly con­sti­tut­ed agents or enti­ties, as well as times and places). Accord­ing to my…ethico-onto-epistemology (an entan­gle­ment of what is usu­al­ly tak­en to be the sep­a­rate con­sid­er­a­tions of ethics, ontol­ogy, and epis­te­mol­o­gy), ​“indi­vid­u­als” do not pre­ex­ist as such but rather mate­ri­al­ize in intra-action.

– Inter­view with Karen Barad by Adam Klein­man, ​“Intra-actions,” Mousse34, Sum­mer 2012, 77.

***

What counts as his­to­ry? How are we to recount his­to­ry? Who will count?

Which of you will repeat words told to you from on high? Which of you will keep the small­er fires burn­ing?

Why were they so quick to be on the side of the vic­tors, those car­ry­ing the sticks, hid­ing the risks and per­pet­u­at­ing tragedy? Why have the vic­tors been numb to oth­ers’ suf­fer­ing?

When will the wave hit you against the side of the head?

Between the time it takes for the wave to crest and the time it takes to crash, a door yawns open and you fall into obliv­ion. Trun­cat­ed lives enfold them­selves into sundry accre­tions, live­ly mat­ter turn­ing over into pri­mor­dial mat­ter, becom­ing humus, grad­u­al­ly recon­sti­tut­ing in dis­persed form into for­eign bod­ies, here and there reborn as live­ly mat­ter, as sim­ple or com­plex forms, then dis­in­te­grat­ing again, and on and on, all mat­ter inter­pen­e­trat­ing, an ani­mate com­post, all emerg­ing from what has passed before, all adapt­ing to chang­ing con­di­tions.

The trick is to read what has been pre­served against the grain, to look deep into the gaps, to chan­nel the ghosts lurk­ing with­in clos­ets, cab­i­nets, cas­kets, muse­ums, and archives. The trick is to put your ear to the ground, to lis­ten for the undead, for the bur­bling of the uncon­scious, nor­mal­ly muf­fled by the con­stant din, and the detri­tus dis­persed through­out. We are moral­ly bound to being atten­tive to what is latent and silenced.

***

In one of Goya’s Black Paint­ings, Fight to the Death with Clubs, twin fight­ers face off, each bran­dish­ing a club, not con­scious of the earth­ly foun­da­tion that serves as their his­tor­i­cal stage. They don’t notice that they are sink­ing in a quag­mire or quick­sand.

With every move they make, a slimy hole swal­lows them up, so that they are grad­u­al­ly bury­ing them­selves togeth­er.… The more heat­ed the strug­gle, the more vio­lent their move­ments become and the faster they sink in.… ^A ren’t we for­get­ting the world of things them­selves, the sand, the water, the mud, the reeds of the marsh? In what quick­sands are we, active adver­saries and sick voyeurs, floun­der­ing side by side?¹

A few ter­ri­to­r­i­al ani­mals are anatom­i­cal­ly prone to get­ting tan­gled up while fight­ing one anoth­er, unable to release them­selves from one anoth­er. They find them­selves per­pet­u­al­ly caught between vio­lent strug­gle and unwit­ting embrace. Rival deer lock antlers, fas­tened hence­forth for­ev­er. Eagles’ talons can hook togeth­er in mid-air; they strug­gle to extri­cate them­selves to the point of exhaus­tion, and then cas­cade to their deaths. Mute swans’ exquis­ite beau­ty hides yet anoth­er design flaw: their feet, wings and necks can get inex­tri­ca­bly entan­gled while fight­ing. More a con­se­quence of urban con­cen­tra­tion, as many as thir­ty-two rats have been known to have their tails knot togeth­er, stuck in a cen­trifu­gal tug-of-war of no return. These rats’ uncan­ny for­ma­tion came to be cat­e­go­rized as cryp­tid in the 1500s, dubbed rat king, their appear­ance inter­pret­ed as an omen.

Life comes to be expe­ri­enced as a bio­log­i­cal trap.

***

Art his­to­ry tends to begin its nar­ra­tive with Pale­olith­ic cave paint­ing, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of megafau­nal herds gal­lop­ing across cave walls. One might under­stand these images to be instances of ani­mal wor­ship, or one might view these beasts as flee­ing human preda­tors. Either way, their exis­tence is cred­it­ed to human attempts to com­mu­ni­cate with divine forces to ensure future suc­cess in hunt­ing quar­ry. It is like­ly many of these ani­mals were going extinct at the time (mam­moths come to mind). Ursu­la Le Guin writes that such per­sis­tent nar­ra­tives exude patri­ar­chal and hero­ic hubris, sacral­iz­ing hunt­ing cul­ture over gath­er­ing cul­ture. More space need be made to cel­e­brate the car­ri­er bag way of life, not the killing spear:

If it is a human thing to do to put some­thing you want, because it’s use­ful, edi­ble, or beau­ti­ful, into a bag, or a bas­ket, or a bit of rolled bark, or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being anoth­er larg­er kind of pouch or bag, a con­tain­er for peo­ple, and then lat­er on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for win­ter in a solid­er con­tain­er….²

Ancient graves have been unearthed to reveal col­lec­tions of ​‘pre­cious objects’ along­side the skele­tal remains of loved ones. Piles of semi-pre­cious stones, ochre pig­ment, shells, and ivory and basalt beads are found buried with the dead. Collecting/gathering appears foun­da­tion­al to the artis­tic impulse.

Being made of per­ish­able mate­r­i­al, the col­lect­ing bag would not have been pre­served over sev­er­al mil­len­nia. It has unfor­tu­nate­ly been for­got­ten that, more than large ani­mals, one would have sur­vived with lit­tle effort on gath­ered ​“seeds, roots, sprouts, shoots, leaves, nuts, berries, fruits, and grains,…bugs and mol­lusks” as well as trapped ​“birds, fish, rats, rab­bits, and oth­er tusk­less small fry…. The aver­age pre­his­toric per­son could make a nice liv­ing in about a fif­teen-hour work week.”³ The car­ri­er bag dis­in­te­grat­ed, as did any mem­o­ry of a less aggres­sive sourc­ing of nour­ish­ment.

***

Seden­tism was not, as pop­u­lar­ly believed, the effect of any supe­ri­or way of life cre­at­ed by agri­cul­ture and ani­mal domes­ti­ca­tion, but rather from learn­ing to live sea­son­al­ly with the rhythms of fer­tile wet­lands. Flood­plains car­ried nutri­ent rich silt, giv­ing rise to an abun­dance of plants, which in turn attract­ed a great vari­ety of birds, fish, shell­fish, and small mam­mals. For hunter-gath­er­ers wet­land abun­dance would have been part of a much vaster sup­ply of resources acces­si­ble to nomads liv­ing from a mixed sub­sis­tence econ­o­my that the earth sup­plied in abun­dance, all con­tin­gent on fluc­tu­at­ing cli­mac­tic con­di­tions. Humans had entered the ulti­mate Goldilocks zone, a time dur­ing which humans relied on a fusion of wild and domes­tic sub­sis­tence economies, com­bin­ing hunter-gath­er­er ways of life with the first grain crops.

Hav­ing learned from the nat­ur­al rhythms of sea­son­al floods, humans came upon the idea to exploit the land more inten­tion­al­ly as pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty grew. Over time the ease of wet­land exis­tence became habit­u­al, lead­ing to more long-term set­tle­ment.

Civ­i­liz­ing arid lands means irri­gat­ing them; civ­i­liz­ing swamps means drain­ing them; the goal in each case is mak­ing arable grain lands, ^turn­ing ungovern­able wet­lands into tax­able grain fields by reengi­neer­ing the land­scape.⁴

Canal­iza­tion was invent­ed in order to bypass unpre­dictable sea­son­al con­di­tions, but was also required to replen­ish for­mer wet­lands that had been deplet­ed due to human exploita­tion. The dis­rup­tion of the alluvium’s nat­ur­al rhythms in turn deplet­ed and drove away the birds, fish, shell­fish, and small mam­mals. The build­ing of canal sys­tems was the foun­da­tion to Empire build­ing. Even­tu­al­ly usurp­ing fac­tions came to see an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a new class to rise above the fray. This allu­vial abun­dance enhanced by rerout­ed water sys­tems ​“rep­re­sent­ed a unique new con­cen­tra­tion of man­pow­er, arable land, and nutri­tion that, if captured…could be made into a pow­er­ful node of polit­i­cal pow­er and priv­i­lege.”⁵

The ear­li­est set­tle­ments had an oral cul­ture and built homes with imper­ma­nent mate­ri­als such as reeds, sedges, bam­boo, and wood. With­out any writ­ten doc­u­ments, no knowl­edge of the suc­cess of allu­vial set­tle­ments was passed down into his­to­ry. By con­trast, the usu­ru­pa­tion of such con­cen­trat­ed set­tle­ments by a new oppor­tunis­tic class meant the need for inden­tured labour and a mono­cul­tur­al agril­o­gis­tics in order to stock­pile grains to sus­tain a pop­u­la­tion, as well as accu­mu­late cap­i­tal (e.g., land taxation)—the foun­da­tion nec­es­sary for the for­ma­tion of ​“ear­ly states.”⁶ Stone and fired brick came to replace plant-based build­ing mate­ri­als. Walls would have been built around these set­tle­ments to keep out the ​“barbarians”—those humans still sub­sist­ing on a hunter-gath­er­er way of life.

But how could these ear­ly states have had such a hold on its peo­ple, who could eas­i­ly have fled to their for­mer nomadic exis­tence?

One con­vinc­ing expla­na­tion for how this cul­ti­vat­ing pop­u­la­tion might have been assem­bled as state sub­jects is cli­mate change.… 3,500 to 2,500 BCE was marked by a steep decline in sea lev­el and a decline in the water vol­ume in the Euphrates. Increas­ing arid­i­ty meant that the rivers shrank back to their main chan­nels and the pop­u­la­tion increas­ing­ly hud­dled around the remain­ing water­cours­es, while soil salin­iza­tion of water-deprived areas sharply reduced the amount of arable land. In the process, the pop­u­la­tion became strik­ing­ly more con­cen­trat­ed, more ​“urban.” Irri­ga­tion became both more impor­tant and more labor intensive—it now often required lift­ing water—and access to dug canals became vital. City states (for exam­ple, Umma and Lagash) fought over arable land and access to the water that could irri­gate it. Over time a more retic­u­lat­ed canal sys­tem dug with corvée or slave labor devel­oped.… The short­age of irri­ga­tion water con­fined the pop­u­la­tion increas­ing­ly to well-watered places and elim­i­nat­ed or dimin­ished many of the alter­na­tive form of sub­sis­tence, such as for­ag­ing and hunt­ing.⁷

In the wake of aque­ducts and qanats, ram­parts, mon­u­ments, and tow­ers were built as exul­tant expres­sions of stal­wart reign­ing power—symbols of an imposed state iden­ti­ty. More demo­c­ra­t­ic was the pres­ence of pub­lic foun­tains where water could be sourced freely by the town’s pop­u­la­tion for drink­ing, bathing and wash­ing. In ancient Sume­ria, Assyr­ia, Egypt, Greece, and Crete, dai­ly life would have grav­i­tat­ed around pub­lic foun­tains, peo­ple com­ing-and-going with their water jugs, loi­ter­ing, and exchang­ing sto­ries and knowl­edge that flowed effer­ves­cent­ly between them. Foun­tains were not just the cul­mi­na­tion of life’s well­spring; they were a foun­da­tion for the com­mons.

Only lat­er were foun­tains con­struct­ed more inten­tion­al­ly in pub­lic space to express the wealth of those in pow­er, no longer sim­ply a nec­es­sary ele­ment of sur­vival but an object of plea­sure. Foun­tains evolved sculp­tural­ly to dis­play grotesque orna­ment and frol­ick­ing chimeri­cal crea­tures, lit­er­al­iz­ing the live­ly mag­i­cal qual­i­ty that con­tin­ued, how­ev­er uncon­scious­ly, to be attrib­uted to these water-bear­ing fix­tures. The abun­dant aque­ous flow from a hid­den far­away source was no less than a gift of the gods.

***

The Banū Mūsābroth­ers were three ninth-cen­tu­ry schol­ars and inven­tors of Per­sian descent who lived and worked in Bagh­dad: Abū Jaʿ­far, Muḥam­mad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir; Abū al‐Qāsim, Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir; and Al-Hasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir. Among their many accom­plish­ments work­ing under the Abbasid Caliphate (dur­ing the decline of the Roman Empire) was the salvaging/collecting of Hel­lenis­tic texts, retrieved from monas­ter­ies and schol­ars’ homes. Inspired by these texts, which they trans­lat­ed from Greek into Ara­bic, the broth­ers left behind a detailed record of the one hun­dred mechan­i­cal devices and automa­ta they had invent­ed and amend­ed. Their Book of Inge­nious Devices(850 CE) explained how to make and use these inven­tions, reveal­ing an obses­sion with auto­mat­ic con­trols, self-oper­at­ing valves, tim­ing devices, and delay sys­tems, using pneu­mat­ic, aero­sta­t­ic and hydro­sta­t­ic pres­sure sys­tems. Among their many mechan­i­cal mar­vels were sculpt­ed fig­ures that dis­charged cold and hot water from open mouths, foun­tain­heads that eject­ed water at vary­ing inter­vals in dif­fer­ent shapes (jet, shield, lily-of-the-val­ley), and auto­mat­ed musi­cal instru­ments, like the per­pet­u­al flute. The Banū Mūsābroth­ers also invent­ed the ear­ly gas mask to pro­tect work­ers whose job it was to clean out pol­lut­ed wells. Three cen­turies on, Mesopotami­an poly­math Badīʿaz-Zaman Abū l-ʿIzz ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ar-Razāz al-Jazarī con­tin­ued the tra­di­tion of these mechan­i­cal inven­tions, record­ing them in a sim­i­lar­ly titled book, The Book of Knowl­edge of Inge­nious Mechan­i­cal Devices(1206). He served as chief mechan­i­cal engi­neer to the Artuqid kings of Diyarbakir.One extrav­a­gant device described in this book is a pea­cock foun­tain with auto­mat­ed ser­vants:

Pulling a plug on the peacock’s tail releas­es water out of the beak; as the dirty water from the basin fills the hol­low base a float ris­es and actu­ates a link­age which makes a ser­vant fig­ure appear from behind a door under the pea­cock and offer soap. When more water is used, a sec­ond float at a high­er lev­el trips and caus­es the appear­ance of a sec­ond ser­vant figure—with a tow­el!⁸

Con­trast this to the para­noia of our present-day pub­lic lava­to­ries, replete with auto­mat­ed faucets, soap and paper tow­el dis­pensers, and toi­let flush­ers (why go to the trou­ble of clean­ing one’s hands only to have them soiled with oth­ers’ germs and excre­tions after turn­ing the water faucet off?).

Sir John Har­ing­ton invent­ed the first mechan­i­cal flush toi­let in 1596, the year of Descartes birth, installing one at Rich­mond Palace for Queen Eliz­a­beth I. It was Descartes who pop­u­lar­ized the belief that, in the great pull-chain of being, ani­mals were lit­tle more than automa­ta. This was in turn ​‘proven’ in 1739 when Jacques de Vau­can­son invent­ed the Digest­ing Duck: a duck was giv­en a ker­nel of corn, then appeared to metab­o­lize it when, after a few min­utes passed, it defe­cat­ed. While the pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion itself was pure quack­ery, one has to won­der at the hours of inge­nu­ity spent demon­strat­ing such a the­o­ry, with the aim of anaes­theti­ciz­ing human minds to ani­mal exploita­tion, suf­fer­ing, and con­sump­tion. And while we’re on the sub­ject of water birds and scat­ol­ogy, in the great pull-chain of sym­bol­ism, why has the white swan come to rep­re­sent clean­li­ness and puri­ty, its brand image some­how psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly civ­i­liz­ing what is oth­er­wise dis­gust­ing about bod­i­ly func­tions (elim­i­na­tion of filth and waste in the bath­room)?

***

Ris­ing jets, down­ward falls, com­bi­na­tions, an odd­ly issu­ing spray, divert atten­tion from the great con­stant imper­son­al desires so that we may notice and enjoy the sup­ple nap and recep­tiv­i­ty of human thought. Light and gai­ety and move­ment stim­u­late our civic thirsts. Since gen­er­al­ly indoors we are quar­rel­some and demand­ing, we wish for an air of fête and refresh­ment in the streets and squares.⁹

There is a con­do com­plex that is sit­u­at­ed between stal̕əw̓ (the Fras­er Riv­er) and a con­gest­ed net­work of train tracks. It is one of those con­do­mini­ums built in the 1980s, a sure sign of degrad­ed qual­i­ty eject­ed from a new­ly dereg­u­lat­ed econ­o­my, fly-by-night devel­op­ment devised to steal the peo­ple blind—a leaky con­do. With­in two decades, the com­plex was draped in tar­pau­lin and scaf­fold­ing for a full year, under­go­ing mil­lions of dol­lars work of repairs. On one side, indus­try can be heard chug­ging up and down the trib­u­tary; the smoke­stacks lin­ing it fill the air with bil­low­ing efflu­via. On the oth­er side, trains can be heard screech­ing, met­al on met­al, day and night. A foun­tain, fed by the riv­er, found at the cen­tre of the con­do complex’s court­yard, has proven use­ful. The sound of gush­ing water has a calm­ing effect, pro­vid­ing a kind of respite—a per­pet­u­al white noise that drowns out the son­ic accel­er­a­tion fol­lowed by the appli­ca­tion of emer­gency breaks.

Mov­ing upriv­er from the con­do in qiqéyt¹⁰ (New West­min­ster), past c̓əwχeləməɬ off Mitchell Island, c̓əsnaʔəm,past kilo­me­ters of well-watered golf cours­es, the Musqueam Indi­an Reserve #2, xʷəyeyət (Iona Beach), then out into the Sal­ish Sea, fol­low­ing the penin­su­la north  past q̓ələχən (UBC/Point Grey), then west­ward past pəqʷə́cən (Span­ish Banks), into the Bur­rard Inlet, past skʷəyəws (Kit­si­lano Beach), then south­west of Eng­lish Bay, past Granville Island, we sud­den­ly find our­selves at a dead-end.

Buried beneath the streets of Van­cou­ver are mul­ti­ple creeks and streams which once emp­tied into Snauq,¹¹ which, after Euro­pean inva­sion, was dredged and drained to become False Creek. Once upon a time these water­ways were team­ing with salmon: “…Chi­na Creek, Brew­ery Creek, Bridge Street Creek, Mack­ie Creek — their ghosts still per­sist in the storm drains.”¹² The streams and creeks are now divert­ed into sewage pipes topped by asphalt, dri­ven over by count­less cars, their pas­sen­gers spir­i­tu­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly cut off from the land and its his­to­ry. Dur­ing the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry pulp mills spewed out waste direct­ly into False Creek, cut off from any nat­u­ral­ly flow­ing creek, the fish now obso­lete.

***

We have large­ly lost the sense of won­der asso­ci­at­ed with our life-giv­ing water sources, sac­ri­fic­ing allu­vial and ripar­i­an wilder­ness habi­tats in the name of urban devel­op­ment, indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture, hydro­elec­tric pow­er, and the ridicu­lous mar­ket­ing scheme of redi­rect­ing moun­tain glac­i­er waters into plas­tic water bot­tles. It is no acci­dent that the trag­ic suc­cess of the bot­tled-water indus­try coin­cid­ed with the dereg­u­la­tion of mar­kets and pri­va­ti­za­tion of social ser­vices by neo-lib­er­al boos­t­er­ism, lead­ing to the pol­lu­tion of our most prized nat­ur­al resources. Who will foot the bill? While plas­tics take thou­sands of years to break down, petro-cap­i­tal­ism will sim­ply dis­solve, ush­er­ing in dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism. Yes, of course, the peo­ple will pay.

***

So long as cul­ture was explained as orig­i­nat­ing from and elab­o­rat­ing upon the use of long, hard objects for stick­ing, bash­ing, and killing, I nev­er thought that I had, or want­ed, any par­tic­u­lar share in it.¹³

Grow­ing up under the pall of cap­i­tal­ism, we haven’t had much of a choice; we have either been com­plic­it with or vic­tims to the tech­no­log­i­cal descen­dants of ​“long, hard objects.”  What­ev­er gains made through resis­tance have been undone, appro­pri­at­ed, ridiculed, roman­ti­cized, ostra­cized, recy­cled, drowned out, cen­sored, lost, or buried in archives. It is time we ded­i­cat­ed our ener­gies to the ​“car­ri­er bag,” that which pro­motes atten­tive­ness and care for the land, and serves to pre­serve knowl­edge.

The ouroboros bites its own tail, a locked-in cycle in the great web of life, which includes nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic mate­ri­als, the per­sis­tence of plas­tics and the build-up of car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere. There is a con­tem­po­rary irony to this head-bit­ing-tail phe­nom­e­non. The use of tox­ic mate­ri­als has come full cir­cle to bite all life forms by the tail—including chem­i­cals from plas­tics, deter­gents, elec­tron­ics, pes­ti­cides, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and crop fer­til­iz­er, which sim­u­late the effects of female sex hor­mones, estro­gens, that have leeched into our water sys­tems. Add to this syn­thet­ic and nat­ur­al estro­gens from live­stock, includ­ing dairy cow­sto increase milk pro­duc­tion, and of course human birth con­trol pills. All of this excess estro­gen flushed down drain­pipes, and seep­ing into ground water and estu­ar­ies, has been known not only to make life forms ster­ile but also to trig­ger the for­ma­tion of female sex char­ac­ter­is­tics. If one were at all prone to karmic belief, one could inter­pret this phe­nom­e­non as a built-in retal­ia­to­ry mea­sure Nature has devel­oped to curb the human­cen­tric, indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, patri­ar­chal (“stick­ing, bash­ing and killing”) vio­lence aimed at the bios­phere.

¹ Michel Ser­res, The Nat­ur­al Con­tract,trans. Eliz­a­beth MacArthur and William Paulson(Ann Arbor: Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Press, 1995), 1–2.

² Ursu­la K. Le Guin, ​“The Car­ri­er Bag The­o­ry of Fic­tion,” in The Eco­crit­i­cism Read­er: Land­marks in Lit­er­a­cy Ecol­o­gy, ed. Cheryll Glot­fel­ty and Harold Fromm (Athens: Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia Press, 1996),151–152.

³ Le Guin, 149.

⁴ James Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep His­to­ry of the Ear­li­est States, (New Haven/London: Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2017), 61.

⁵ Scott,104.

⁶ Scott, 104.

⁷ Scott, 107–108.

⁸ Mark E.Rosheim, Robot Evo­lu­tion: The Devel­op­ment of Anthro­bot­ics, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994), 9.

⁹ Lisa Robert­son, Occa­sion­al Work and Sev­en Walks from the Office of Soft Archi­tec­ture, (Asto­ria, Ore­gon: Clear Cut Press, 2003), 54–55.

¹⁰ All Musqueam place names found here: http://old.musqueam.bc.ca/applications/map/index.html

¹¹ The Coast Sal­ish Vil­lage that exist­ed at the mouth of the inlet, also called Snauq, mean­ing sand­bar. ​“Snauq is in Musqueam ter­ri­to­ry across the inlet from T’sleil Wau­tuth, but the Squamish were the only ones to occu­py it year round, some say as ear­ly as 1821… Before that, it was a com­mon gar­den shared by all the friend­ly tribes in the area. The fish swam there, tak­ing a breather from their ocean play­grounds, ducks gath­ered, women cul­ti­vat­ed camas fields and berries abound­ed.” Lee Mar­a­cle, First Wives Club: Coast Sal­ish Style, Pen­tic­ton BC: They­tus Books, 2010, 16.

¹² Ter­ry Glavin, ​“Rivers run beneath us,” Geor­gia Straight, July 21, 2005, https://www.straight.com/article/rivers-run-beneath-us

¹³ Le Guin, 151.