Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples

Nutrition, Botany and Use

Harriet Kuhnlein, Nancy Turner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000092325
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

First published in 1991, Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples details the nutritional properties, botanical characteristics and ethnic uses of a wide variety of traditional plant foods used by the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Comprehensive and detailed, this volume explores both the technical use of plants and their cultural connections. It will be of interest to scholars from a variety of backgrounds, including Indigenous Peoples with their specific cultural worldviews; nutritionists and other health professionals who work with Indigenous Peoples and other rural people; other biologists, ethnologists, and organizations that address understanding of the resources of the natural world; and academic audiences from a variety of disciplines.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

 

 

 

The primary purpose of this book is to describe and to reference the published literature on the nutritional properties, the botanical characteristics and the ethnic uses of traditional food plants of Canadian Indigenous Peoples. Since it is recognized that Canadian political boundaries are not honored by plants in their biological habitats, the nutritional and botanical information presented here is often relevant to other regions with northern latitudes where the same species are found, such as northern regions of the United States, Europe and Asia. However, the ethnographic information reviewed and presented in this book is only from Canadian Indigenous Peoples and their immediate neighbors in Alaska and other states bordering Canada.

This reference guide is intended for a variety of users: Indigenous People, nutritionists, and other health care professionals working with Indigenous People or with other rural people, biologists, ethnologists, the variety of organizations serving Indigenous People, wildlife enthusiasts, and the academic audience in a variety of disciplines. It is written with academic-style referencing, using language that is intended to be easily understood by a variety of readers.

It is recognized that the identification and description of useful plant species for food and medicinal uses has captivated the attention of academics and botanical entrepreneurs in recent years. The focus of this book is plant species that are “edible”. This infers that if a plant food item was used for both food and medicine, it would not be threateningly toxic. Since Indigenous People often do not delineate between “sustenance” and “medicine” in the same way that contemporary academic science tends to do (ie: sometimes a food is a medicine, etc.), this reference work can be generally helpful in identifying useful plants in the general environmental milieu of Indigenous People.

We have not attempted to thoroughly document published knowledge on the possible toxic components of these plants. However, in the sections describing use of particular plant species, warnings are given on known toxic constituents, and how they can be avoided.

The scientific literature was searched for nutrient information for approximately 1,050 species that were identified as edible and available in Canada. An overview of the regions where the plants are available, and their botanical characteristics, is given in order within the major plant groupings. The ethnographic literature of Canadian Indigenous Peoples was searched for available information on the patterns of use of the particular species, and thus is also summarized.

It needs to be stated clearly that the existing knowledge of nutrient contents and ethnic uses of Canadian edible plants is less complete than is the botanical knowledge. Hence, we have made the generally loose supposition that if a particular species has edible parts, then Indigenous People somewhere would have taken advantage of them. Further, that if descriptions of ethnic uses of a particular plant are known, but the nutrient value for a particular plant part is not reported, it is because the knowledge does not exist (no analyses done), not because there are no nutrients in that particular plant. Thus, this book reports our contemporary existing knowledge, as of 1990, on nutritional, botanical and ethnological data for more than 1,000 species of edible plants. It will become obvious to the reader that there are great knowledge gaps, particularly in the ethnic uses and nutritional chemistry of these foods.

Some definitions are in order here:

Indigenous People - For the purposes of this work, the term “Indigenous People” refers to a cultural group in an ecological area that developed a successful subsistence base from the natural resources available in that area. Indigenous People in a particular environment are recognized as the definitive sources of knowledge of successful uses of plant and animal resources, particularly within their culture. The term “Indigenous Peoples” refers to the plural—that is, more than one cultural group considered simultaneously.

Edible - Able to be eaten without recognized hazard, or with only minimum hazard.

Food - Whatever is eaten or drunk for replenishment of the species.

Human Nutrition - The science of food and the nutrients and other substances therein, and their action, interaction and balance in relation to health and disease. It includes the processes by which humans ingest, digest, absorb, transport, utilize and excrete food substances. In addition, human nutrition includes certain social, economic, cultural and psychological characteristics for the successful use of food.

Traditional plant foods - Technically, in the Western Hemisphere, this term implies plant foods from the natural environment used in traditional indigenous cultures before contact with Anglo-Europeans. However, for the purposes of this book, we have included some species introduced from other regions that are either known to have been used by Indigenous People, or which contain edible parts. Generally, we have avoided giving attention to introduced food plants that are used in commercial agriculture, because botanical and nutritional data on these species is published and readily available elsewhere. We have generally dealt with plant species that grow “wild”, or at least are not cultivated in the usual definition of the word in modem agriculture, but we have tried to include plant food species known to have been actively cultivated by precontact Indigenous People (for example, maize, wild rice, etc.).

This book contains several cross-referencing tables that are presented to accommodate readers with different kinds of backgrounds. There is an alphabetized table of common English plant names given with botanical names (Appendix 2); there is an alphabetized table of botanical names given with common English names (Appendix 3); there is a table presenting a composite of information of each species (Chapter 5) alphabetized by botanical name. In addition, there is a chapter giving an overview of the known ethnic uses of the most important and universally used species (Chapter 4); and there are large tables which present the known nutrient contents of the edible parts of approximately 500 species. We would have liked to present a table of indigenous language names used for species, with English names and botanical nomenclature, but the published literature is very sparse in this area. Moreover, the linguistical symbols for the different indigenous languages which are published, often make the interpretation difficult for non-linguists. Furthermore, the large number of different languages and dialects spoken by Canadian Indigenous Peoples, and the complexity of their botanical nomenclature and classification precludes the inclusion of such a table. The index to the book, together with the cross-referencing tables, make the information easy to locate from a number of starting points. Maps of the locations of Indigenous Peoples of Canada are given in Appendix 1.

CHAPTER 2

What’s So Special about Indigenous Foods?

Foods from the natural environment which became included into the cultural food use patterns of a group of Indigenous People are known as indigenous foods. There is a great diversity of cultural ecosystems that sustained Canada’s Indigenous Peoples throughout history, and hence, there is a great variety of indigenous foods that are part of our collective human knowledge. Indigenous foods can be categorized as plant foods, animal foods, earth elements such as salts, and water. The tremendous diversity of plant foods available to and used by Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, which is the subject of this book, is an area deserving of careful study and documentation.

It is common knowledge that the collective wisdom of resource use in natural environments known to Indigenous People is disappearing in the face of “modernization” and “technological development”. Young people are no longer systematically taught by their elders to survive using only the natural environment. Hence, valuable information on these resources is being passed to fewer and fewer people, and gradually being lost from indigenous societies, as well as from collective human knowledge. In the face of this loss, one of the purposes of this book is to help bring recognition to the great variety of potentially useful plant foods that exist, and to stimulate research and further documentation on nutritional and botanical properties and use of plants by and for Indigenous People.

Research on indigenous foods can benefit efforts to protect the world’s natural environments. By knowing the plants useful to Indigenous Peoples, temporal and longitudinal studies can demonstrate environmental integrity, or lack of it. The knowledge traditionally-living Indigenous Peoples have on the presence, absence, and/or general health of the plants and animals in their cultural milieu can be developed for environmental monitoring. This has been well demonstrated with the use of harvest studies to monitor the presence of animal wildlife by Indigenous People in the Canadian Arctic.

Indigenous People are logical beneficiaries of attention and documentation of their traditional food resources. In many parts of the world, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, indigenous groups are working diligently to document their elders’ knowledge of use of natural food resources, and to revive their use as much as is feasible in a contemporary world (cf. ’Ksan, People of, 1980; Jones, 1983; Kuhnlein and Moody, 1989). This occurs primarily in groups who still have regular access to their aboriginal lands and the natural environment still provides food resources. These people are often eager for scientific (nutritional, zoological, botanical) documentation, since the elders universally relate their impression that young people would be much healthier if they would rely more on these resources and less on marketed foods which are limited in variety and quality in the low-income areas which are usually inhabited by Indigenous People. As well as physical health benefits, it is recognized that leaders and elders of indigenous groups want to preserve and protect the knowledge of traditional environments and lifestyles for the cultural benefits they provide to people of all ages within the group. Hence, both health promotion programs and cultural enrichment programs for Indigenous People will benefit with more and better information about indigenous foods.

The diversity of physical environments in Canada has provided an array of ecologically-determined food systems for Indigenous People. This ecological diversity combined with the broad cultural diversity of Canadian Indige-nous Peoples presupposes a wide range of dietary patterns, health patterns, as well as disease risk and risk for morbidity and mortality. By and large, it is assumed that if a population was successfully maintained in an area, the food resources were sufficient and morbidity and mortality was low enough to carry individuals through the reproductive age. It is also recognized that food resources are environmentally dependent and that there were episodes, whether seasonally each year, or in an occasional entire year, when food supplies were short. All groups had access to the variety of nutrients essential to health (carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, water) but short-term malnutrition probably occurred during food shortage.

In the scheme of dietary diversity, plant foods are generally viewed as good sources of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. However, the latitude and climatic patterns greatly influence the type of plant foods, indeed, of all foods, available to indigenous groups. Agricultural groups in mid-southern to eastern Canada (Huron, Ojibwa, Iroquois) cultivated maize, beans and squashes, and harvested maple sap, and wild rice. West Coast peoples had a great diversity of berries, roots and green plant foods to supplement diets rich in fish and game. Northern peoples utilized seaweeds, berries and tundra greens (Figure 1). The quantity and variety of plant foods were balanced with quantity and variety of animal and fish foods utilized to make nutritionally complete dietary patterns. Research and understanding of the nutritional vitality in the diversity of food systems developed by these indigenous societies provides new knowledge and depth of understanding to contemporary dietary patterns of indigenous cultures as well as to our larger multicultural populations.

Figure 1. Attic net-veined willow (Salix reticulata). A green herb eaten by Inuit in the Eastern Attic.

This kind of research is particularly imperative as we recognize that indigenous dietary patterns are being displaced for Indigenous People with marketed foods. This displacement is accelerated in areas close to urban centers, but it is also taking place in the most remote regions of Canada, including the Canadian Arctic. For a variety of reasons related to the “modernization” of contemporary society, the indigenous (”wild” or noncommercialized) food resources are falling out of use. It is hoped that this resource book will call attention to the variety of useful plant foods in Canadian environments.

It is intended that the definition of indigenous plant foods contained in this reference will be useful as a resource for groups of Indigenous People who wish to stimulate interest in their natural resources, and who can then use it for purposes of nutrition education and health promotion. A parallel effort on traditional food plants of Eastern Africa has recently been undertaken by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Hussein, 1987; FAO, 1988). Ebeling (1986) authored a fine volume on Indian foods and fibers in arid America.

Those participating in wilderness education programs are also potential beneficiaries of published knowledge on indigenous food resources. Plant identifications, ways of preparation, cautions on potential toxicity, and nutritional benefits of specific plants are highly desired information for individuals who are teaching/learning about wilderness survival. By the same token, this information is useful for general education programs on environment awareness and protection (Kuhnlein, 1984; Kuhnlein, 1985).

Another area of usefulness for information on indigenous plant foods is for genetic research and development of agricultural crops. Germplasm conservation programs and data bases of indigenous foods are valuable resources for enhancing existing crops or for development of new ones (Duke, 1977; Turner, 1981). Wild plants have been shown to successfully improve the genetic stocks of agricultural crops: the cases of Mexican teosinte maize (Robson et al; 1976) and winged bean (NRC, 1981) are excellent examples. Commercially grown fruits have been derived or genetically improved with wild species—this is true for cranberry, gooseberry, grape, blackberry, strawberry and blueberry, among others. Some wild food crops known to be used by Indigenous People, and which have now been directly adapted for commercial markets, are chia seeds, pin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. What’s So Special about Indigenous Foods?
• 3. An Overview of the Nutrient Value and Use of Plant Foods by Indigenous Peoples
• 4. Descriptions and Uses of Plant Foods by Indigenous Peoples
• 5. Comprehensive List of Plant Food Species
• 6. Nutrient Values of Traditional Plant Foods (Tables of Nutrient Composition)
• Bibliograph
• Appendices
• Index