BURNABY, BRITISH COLUMBIA—According to a statement released by Simon Fraser University, a genetic study of the beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornu), which is native to British Columbia, has given researchers new insights into Indigenous stewarding of plants in ancestral lands. A team led by Chelsey Geralda Armstrong of Simon Fraser University has decoded the plants' DNA to show that, starting some 7,000 years ago, Indigenous people actively cultivated hazelnuts across the continent, disproving the settler-colonial notion that Indigenous peoples were simply hunter-gatherers. Armstrong and her team worked with Indigenous Elders and knowledge-holders to gather oral histories of ancient cultivation practices and retrace the spread of native hazelnuts across western North America. “We found that people were actively transplanting and cultivating hazelnuts hundreds of kilometers from their place of origin,” Armstrong said. “People were moving hazelnut around and selectively managing it to the point that it increased genetic diversity. This type of activity was previously thought to be entirely absent in the Pacific Northwest.” The researchers studied specimens from the Skeena Watershed to identify clusters of hazelnut with similar genes that were only found where Gitxsan, Ts’msyen, and Nisga’a peoples lived, thereby allowing them to map trade activity. “This research confirms what Indigenous peoples have always known: plants were cultivated and engineered to a level that is now observable in the genetic structure of hazelnut," says Jesse Stoeppler (Gwii Lok’im Gibuu) of Wilp Spookwx of the Lax Gibuu Clan, who is a Gitxsan land steward and deputy chief of the Hagwilget First Nation. “Our people saw value in the hazelnut and practiced stewardship of the land. The flora and fauna in the area were able to thrive in that environment. Understanding this can support food sovereignty in our communities.” To read more about how North American hunter-gatherers managed the landscape around them, go to "Letter from California: The Ancient Ecology of Fire."
