Restoring Abalone as an Act of Decolonization
A lot of the solutions to undoing the harms of colonialism and what we've done to our environment are there, as long as we're willing to look past our own noses.
It's taken a few hundred years, but Canadians are slowly, but finally turning towards the beautiful knowledge that has been held by Indigenous communities for thousands of years, some finally willing to recognize we really messed up Turtle Island, and in the process, have hurt the land, and most importantly, its original inhabitants.
It's time to return to the practices of those original stewards before it's too late.
I hadn't heard of abalone until this week and the two-day summit recently held to restore it as a species in northern Pacific coastal Indigenous communities like Haida Gwaii*, an archipelago about 100 km north of the coast of what we call British Columbia.
Abalone (Gálgahl’yaan) is a mollusk and a gastropod that has been central to the diet of coastal areas for over 10,000 years. It is known for its rich meat, beautiful shells, and delicious taste, as well as its vital source of nutrients and overall critical management of the coastal ecosystem.
In the early 1980s, abalone collapsed as a species due to commercial overfishing. In 2009, it was officially characterized as endangered.
In other words, capitalist systems that were hell-bent on sucking all we could from Indigenous territories stole one of the most important parts of the Haida Gwaii traditional diet, threatening food security for the Haida Gwaii. The loss of abalone due to overfishing contradicted the Haida's guiding principle of "Only take what you need."
The summit focused on restoring abalone, highly centering Indigenous perspectives and leadership on the ways this precious mollusk can be restored.
The summit was an admission that we need the knowledge we didn't come to "Canada" with to keep this country and its ecosystem balanced and healthy. We denied this knowledge because we'd labeled the original stewards of the planet as "primitive" based on some really dumb and nonsensical qualifiers.
It's finally being recognized that we cannot continue to save our planet and its species without intentional integration of what we characterize as Western science with Indigenous knowledge. Our earth depends on it.
This summit is just an example of the ways that settlers are realizing and admitting that we really messed up these beautiful lands and denied ourselves, hundreds of communities, and the lands their rightful stewardship.
It's a slow process, but various initiatives and collaborations are recognizing the importance of listening to these lands' rightsholders and considering their perspectives on policy-making.
I feel hopeful about this reliance on and acceptance of traditional knowledge—knowledge we never had the right to override in the first place, but probably would have made the planet a lot healthier had we not denied it.
*On Monday, February 17, 2025, the same day this article was written, Canada’s federal government and the Haida Nation signed a historic agreement recognizing Aboriginal title over the archipelago of Haida Gwaii.
References:
CBC News. (2025, February 17). Haida Gwaii Aboriginal title federal agreement. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/haida-gwaii-aboriginal-title-federal-agreement-1.7461151
Patience, S. (2024, December 17). Northern abalone: Recovering a precious species. Haida Gwaii Trader. https://haidagwaiitrader.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=615:northern-abalone-recovering-a-precious-species&catid=45:articles&Itemid=121
The Pew Charitable Trusts. (2025, February 4). In Western Canada, abalone recovery creates new opportunity for Indigenous management. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/02/04/in-western-canada-abalone-recovery-creates-new-opportunity-for-indigenous-management
Anne-Marie E. Fischer, BA (Hons), M.Ed., blends her passion for the written word with her vocation to create a better world through effective communications, education, and Community Based Research (CBR).
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