Teresa Ryan, also known as Smhayetsk, from the Gitlan tribe of the Tsimshian Nation, carries the wisdom of her Ganhada clan and her mother, Loa Ryan. Her career in forestry and conservation sciences intertwines scientific rigor with Indigenous knowledge, creating a bridge between ancestral wisdom and modern ecological understanding.

As a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Forestry, Teresa’s work delves into the complexities of forest ecology and the profound relationship between Chinook salmon and the lands they traverse. Her insights into ancient Indigenous practices and their relevance in contemporary conservation shed light on the intricate balance within these ecosystems.

In this conversation with Bioneers, Teresa’s narrative offers glimpses into the interconnectedness of diverse species, the intelligence of forest systems, and the imperative of honoring Indigenous stewardship practices in land management strategies. Her approach is not solely academic but emphasizes the enduring bond between humans and the natural world, rooted in millennia of Indigenous care for the land.

BIONEERS: Can you tell us about your research?

TERESA: I work with the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia in forest and conservation sciences. I’m an Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Science lecturer. 

I did my post-doc at the Faculty of Forestry. It was the first aboriginal post-doc there, a decade ago, and I’m still there.

I entered into a forestry program because the work that I had been doing was related to Chinook salmon. I’m a salmon scientist. I’m a fisheries aquatic ecologist working in forest ecology. We had come across this situation in which there was an observed increase in Chinook abundance in a particular area that had been ravaged by pine beetle infestations, which I thought was odd. 

The regulatory authorities didn’t have the funds or even the personnel to investigate that type of question, so I suggested that I enter a forestry program and build a research program based on this relationship between salmon and forests. As an Indigenous person, I have a different understanding than most other researchers. I have a science background, but I also have an Indigenous knowledge base that I can draw from at all times. 

I wrote my dissertation for two audiences—of course, my committee was one, but I also wrote it for Indigenous communities on the coast. They were surprised by colonialism when it landed on their doorstep 150 years ago. We’ve been tortured trying to figure out why we can’t maintain our stewardship practices. 

Whatever goes on in the watersheds, such as forestry, agricultural activity, or mining, goes right into the streams and affects salmon. Indigenous people in areas where salmon occur have observed enormous changes in salmon runs over the last 150 years. 

We have to figure out how to get back to expressing our stewardship traditions to protect salmon, to manage our resources better than the way this colonial system has managed them because what we have been doing is counting fish that are going extinct. If we can change the way we are attending to the salmon consistent with our Indigenous knowledge, belief systems, technologies, and strategies, we will probably see a difference in the abundance of fish. 

There are ways to do that. I’ll give you one example.

We have a traditional method of fishing that allows the largest fish to go up to the spawning grounds to escape. We do this from a scientific perspective. Those larger fish have higher fecundity, which means the female fish have more eggs. If we allow the largest males to go up and spawn with the largest females, then we have this progeny of larger fish and more of them, which is amazing. 

This is something that is kin to the principles of generosity and reciprocity from an Indigenous worldview. Indigenous knowledge tends to apply these types of principles, allowing the biggest to flourish, which provides for future generations.

This is accomplished through an important salmon-management technology that has been documented to exist for at least 5,000 years, known as tidal stone traps, which are massive walls in the intertidal area. The tide goes up and down, and when water comes in and inundates the enclosure created by the rock wall, the fish don’t see it, and they head up to their spawning stream. Then the tide goes out, and the fish aren’t going to spend all of their energy fighting that tide, they’re going to just hang out. When the tide comes back in, the next group will head upriver.

During the lowest tide, the fish get entrained in a pool area, and you can walk in and pick out the fish you want. You can also leave the fish that are going to go up and escape. So instead of managing the fishery using a modern stock assessment bell curve that gives you days of a week and timing of the peak run, this traditional practice manages human use, not the fish. The fish aren’t being managed. It is the human use that is being managed according to the tide schedule, which matches a lunar cycle. 

BIONEERS: These technologies, techniques, and practices have co-evolved over thousands of years, as you say, and they’re in tune with the complexity of this entire system. How do the salmon fit into this whole forest-river network?

TERESA: These are beautiful systems that are interconnected. 

Salmon coming from the ocean bring marine-derived nutrients into the river system. When they swim into the rivers, they’re feeding many predators. The one most people think of is bears. It turns out that bears are picky eaters. They’ll catch a salmon and take it to the riparian area alongside the river, and sometimes even a little farther inland. They’ll go up to their favorite spot and eat their favorite parts, and then they’ll leave the carcass and go catch another fish. Depending on location and species, some bears might catch up to 150 salmon per day. 

An amazing thing happens when the carcass decomposes into the soil. Other critters like birds and insects come along and nibble on it too. Once it starts decomposing into the soil, organisms in the soil also feast on it. It’s this annual abundance of food that just shows up on their doorstep.

These nutrients are carried along mycorrhizal networks in the forest, which are fungi associated with tree roots. A student in our salmon forest project, Dr. Allen Larocque, demonstrated that marine-derived nitrogen can be found above waterfalls. Salmon can’t actually get to those spots, which shows us that this marine-derived nitrogen is transmitted below-ground in these vast networks of root systems.

We know that these nutrients are being dissipated throughout the forest, and it isn’t just nitrogen. Nutrients originating with salmon are everywhere in the forest, and that’s pretty amazing when you think about the size of our trees. Salmon play an important role in their life cycle. 

It’s a feedback mechanism. It’s simultaneously balancing and reinforcing the health and success of the forest, and it’s also beneficial for the salmon. The forests provide the shade, the canopy cover, to keep the streams cool. They also modulate the precipitation that comes in off the Pacific Ocean. When the forests receive the precipitation, some of it evaporates and creates a beneficial vapor. Cloud forests are known for that vapor. 

When the precipitation reaches the ground, it permeates the soil. The forest and its roots help modulate the flows. 

So there is a reciprocal relationship between the forest and the salmon. This is something that is known in the Indigenous knowledge systems. It’s recited, it’s repeated, it’s a story. We have this knowledge in our stories and in our histories, and our identities have histories, but the expression of this knowledge has been limited in the last 150 years as a result of colonialism. 

BIONEERS: Do you see these forest systems as intelligent?

TERESA: You could say there’s sentience there, but “being” might be a good word. Everything that is living has spirit—everything. So yes, I would say that also means intelligence, but I don’t know how salmon figured out how to go out to sea. I’m sure the glaciers kind of forced them into that. But it’s having this spirit…

The way that we think about these beings has an impact on how we adjust our management and how we behave as stewards. For example, if there is a geological slide that increases sedimentation in a salmon stream, we might take cedar branches into a spawning bed area to sweep the sediment away so it doesn’t suffocate eggs.

We don’t want to offend those spirits. We don’t want to offend those beings, because they’ll know, and they may not return. 

When we think about intelligence in the forest, from a scientific perspective, we are seeing responses from beings in the forest, particularly through the work on mycorrhizal networks. We can actually demonstrate that we’re seeing responses. It’s a work in progress, but it’s come such a long way in helping us to understand these relationships.

They’re probably smarter than us. And they’re probably having a good laugh at us.