Historical ecology and land-use legacies: Quw'utsun and settler histories in the Cowichan Estuary

Estuaries are highly contested landscapes, disproportionately impacted by industry and climate change. In the Cowichan Estuary (BC, Canada), contention between settler-colonial and Quw'utsun land use is currently mounting. Using a historical-ecological approach, including field-based and archival methods, this research seeks to address tensions by considering integrated Quw'utsun and settler-colonial land-use histories in the Cowichan Estuary over ~175 years. Results indicate that settler-colonial land use has consistently driven environmental change across this period, contributing to substantial ecological degradation and to the dispossession of Quw'utsun food systems. Although policies governing settler-colonial land use in the estuary have evolved, they continue to undermine and devalue Quw'utsun food systems. Accordingly, results show that settler-colonial ideologies, deeply ingrained and adaptive, endure in contemporary discourse and remain largely unchanged from earlier periods. Overall, this research foregrounds the Cowichan Estuary as a landscape-scale Quw'utsun food system, emphasizing the subtle but ongoing role of people in shaping ethnobotanically salient ecosystems.