Relations

(The video begins with a raven perched in a tree, making a croaking noise as well as a sound like water dripping. The video pans out to an overview shot of a river with forested hills. Drumming music is plays in the background.)

A Narrator says: Indigenous peoples have lived on the Pacific Northwest Coast since time immemorial. When the Europeans first came here, they encountered one of the most densely populated regions in North America.

(A map of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America indicates some First Nations territories.)

Narrator: Thousands of villages were located along the coast.

(Sounds of birds chirping and video of hundreds of birds flying above the ocean.)

(Overhead video of orcas swimming.)

Narrator: These Indigenous communities thrived in this vast and abundant region through their stewardship of the land and water.

Narrator: Salmon and other sea life were harvested annually.

(Underwater video of herring spawning.)

Narrator: Sophisticated economic systems, such as cultivating clam gardens, nurturing camas crops, fish trapping, and reef net fishing, allowed Indigenous peoples to live in their territories sustainably.

(Indigenous people gathering crops and boarding a canoe.)

Narrator: Their ecological knowledge emerged over millennium. It is shared across generations and is continually tested and improved.

(Video of Indigenous people paddling a canoe and of children learning to dance.)

Narrator: Red cedar bark, wood, roots, and leaves were used to construct big houses and canoes, in carving, weaving, and in sacred practices.

(Drone video over a Big House entrance and of dancers inside.)

Narrator: Indigenous communities maintained sophisticated legal traditions and practices that governed their relationship to the land. Diplomatic networks that centre on protocols of ceremony, trade, and intermarriage alliances connect communities together within and across the Indigenous Pacific Northwest.

(Image of Indigenous leaders in their regalia and of an elder with children in the forest. Image of Potlatch ceremony inside a long house. There is a large fire in the middle, and around stands community members in regalia.)

Narrator: It is particularly the Potlatch system that works to redistribute abundance within and between communities.

(Video of children, then of a Potlatch ceremony with singing in the background.)

Narrator: While warfare was not unknown, societies managed, for the most part, to balance the rights of individuals and groups as well as the rights of humans with other life forms.

(Video of Potlatch dancers wearing masks.)

Narrator: These governance, social, and economic systems still remain central to the prosperity of Indigenous nationhood today.

(Picture of sunset from a wide beach with trees on a hill in silhouette.)