Shellfish harvesting in Boundary Bay - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 105

5 Shellfish harvesting in

Boundary Bay
Transboundary environmental
justice and the politics of counting

On a summer day in 1997, several members of the Semiahmoo First Nation travelled
to the tidal waters of Boundary Bay, a small body of water on the Pacific coast of
North America, to harvest shellfish. Across the bay, members of the Lummi tribe
were also harvesting shellfish. This situation was not out of the ordinary: for
centuries, Coast Salish communities relied successfully on these waters as primary
sources of food, with clams, crab, oysters, shrimp, and many other species readily
obtainable for harvest year-round.
However, what made this situation unique and important is that, on one side
of the bay, the Semiahmoo community members were “breaking the law”, while,
on the other side, the Lummi community members were harvesting “legally”. At
the day's end, several members of the Semiahmoo band were fined for “illegally”
harvesting shellfish, while the Lummi tribe continued harvesting without
interruption. The reason for this discrepancy is simple: the Semiahmoo members
reside in Canada, while the Lummi reside in the United States.
These divergent experiences stem from distinctive colonial histories after the
establishment of the international border on the 49th parallel, reflecting different
legal regimes that were created around respective American and British interests
(see Textbox 2.1) . To this day, these different framings continue to impact how
communities relate to natural resources. In Boundary Bay, the tidelands have been
summarily closed to shellfish harvesting since 1962 in Canada, but have been opened
conditionally since 2004 in the United States as a result of monitoring and
restoration.
Asking the simple question “who's counting?”, both in terms of shellfish
numbers and pollution inputs, provides insight into the spatial politics of ecosystem
management, particularly in relation to Indigenous rights to access culturally
relevant food. In this chapter, I explore the ways that historically connected Indi-
genous communities are divergently impacted by shellfish regulations and water
pollution. I describe how ecocolonialism employs a series of political technologies
(including calculative techniques such as the enumeration of contamination levels)
that have significant political effects on Indigenous communities. Unpacking
what Gregory calls “the extraordinary power and performative force of colonial
modernity” (2004, p. 4) helps to shed light on critical environmental justice issues
tied to ecosystem protection and access to traditional food resources.