Clam Gardens chronicles how information was assembled to reveal the vast number of walled sea gardens from Orcus Island to Alaska in which Northwest Coast, indigenous people cultivated Butter clams. The author proposes this unique, female-run, mariculture system advocates a reassessment of the process of anthropological branding of coastal First Nations as “hunter gatherers” totally dependent on salmon stocks.
Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast, New Star Books, Vancouver, 2006. 127 pages.