Project Collaborator
Sm’hayetsk Teresa Ryan
Biography
Sm’hayetsk Teresa Ryan, PhD., (Ts’msyen) is a Lecturer of Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Science at UBC Forestry. Her current research investigates the relationships between salmon and forests informed by ancestral knowledge and traditional practices, and also investigates the potential to restore salmon abundance by using ancient fishing technology and strategies. For her dissertation she examined colonial dispossession of Aboriginal lands and trade by exploring ecological-social institution linkages and the connection of these complex adaptive systems to heterogeneous mosaic landscapes. She demonstrated how thousands of years of sustainable use based on ancestral knowledge of cyclic resource production and variability was an intuitive component of Aboriginal stewardship. She is a traditional Ts’msyen basket weaver with emphasis in western redcedar, and taught by her mother Bilhaam ne’ex Loa Ryan. Teresa is also a Scientist on the Pacific Salmon Commission Chinook Technical Committee (Canada). Teresa is First Nations Liaison for the Mother Tree Project.
Project
