The coastal landscape currently known as British Columbia, Canada represents a complex and rapidly evolving site of collaboration, negotiation, and conflict in environmental management, with important implications for Indigenous community well-being. I ground this work in the understanding that settler-colonialism and its remedies, resurgence and self-determination, are the fundamental determinants of Indigenous health and related inequities. Through a case study of eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) in Nuxalk territory, I take interest in systemic mechanisms of dispossession and resurgent practices of (re)connection and knowledge renewal as mediators of the relationship between environmental management and Indigenous health and well-being. This work is based in four years of observation, participation, and leadership in the Nuxalk Sputc (Eulachon) Project, a community-directed process that aimed to document and articulate Nuxalk knowledges about eulachon. Functionally extirpated from the region since 1999, these valued fish provide an example of contested management jurisdiction and resurgent Indigenous environmental practice. As a resurgent research and management process, the Sputc Project re-centered Nuxalk knowledges, voices, priorities, and leadership while advocating Indigenous leadership in environmental management. This case study was conducted within the context of the Sputc Project, aiming to share substantive and methodological learnings gleaned from the project, which served as an ideal focal point for the interrogation of relationships between Indigenous well-being, research methodologies, engagement and representation of Indigenous knowledges, and environmental management. Applying a critical, decolonising, community-engaged approach, this work comprises four papers, each drawing on a particular thread of the knowledge generated through this work. In Paper 1, I seek to establish the connection of eulachon and their management to Nuxalk health and well-being. Detailing three stages of this relationship (abundance, collapse, and renewal), I show how the effects of environmental management, and resulting dispossession or reconnection, are mediated by cultural knowledges, practices, responsibilities, and relationships. Turning to research methodology in Paper 2, I examine how Nuxalk people and knowledges guided the Sputc Project process, interrogating the role of critical, decolonising, and Indigenous theories in the elaboration of Indigenous research methods in environmental management and beyond. In Paper 3, I consider how the Sputc Project respectfully articulated and represented Nuxalk knowledges in order to retain relational accountability and strengthen Nuxalk management authority, while promoting values, practices, and relationships essential to Nuxalk well-being. In Paper 4, I demonstrate how the Sputc Project strengthened Nuxalk management authority from the ground up, detailing the practical management priorities that arose through the project process, including those related to interjurisdictional engagement of Indigenous leadership. I end with a reflection on this work’s implications for decolonising health equity and environmental impact assessment frameworks. Highlighting how Indigenous health and well-being is supported by ancestral knowledges and reconnecting relationships, including those involving people, places, and practices related to environmental management, I emphasize the importance of Indigenous leadership (vs. knowledge integration) in environmental management research and practice. A final section seeks to inform decolonising community-engaged research, sharing limitations and learnings related to appropriate engagement, articulation, and representation of Indigenous knowledges. / Graduate

The eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), a small anadromous smelt (Family Osmeridae) found only along the Northwest Pacific Coast, is poorly understood. Many spawning populations have suffered declines but as their historic status is relatively unknown and the fisheries poorly documented, it is difficult to study the contributing factors. This thesis provides a survey of eulachon fisheries throughout its geographical range and three analyses aimed at improving our understanding of past and present fisheries, coast-wide abundance status, and the factors which may be impacting these populations. An in-depth view of the Nuxalk Nation eulachon fishery on the Bella Coola River, Central Coast, BC, is provided. The majority of catches were used for making eulachon grease, a food item produced by First Nations by fermenting, then cooking the fish to release the grease. Catch statistics were kept yearly from 1945-1989 but have since, rarely been recorded. Using traditional and local ecological knowledge, catches were reconstructed based on estimated annual grease production. Run size trends were also created using local Fisheries Officers and Nuxalk interview comments. A fuzzy logic expert system was designed to estimate the relative abundance of fifteen eulachon systems. The expert system uses catch data to determine the exploitation status of a fishery and combines it with other data sources (e.g., CPUE) to estimate an abundance status index. The number of sources depended on the existing data and varied from one to eight. Using designed heuristic rules and by adjusting weighting parameters a final index was produced. Results suggest that there have been recent and extended declines in several eulachon rivers particularly the Klamath, California; Bella Coola, BC; Wannock, BC; and Kitimat, BC. Seven of the fifteen abundance time-series were used to evaluate the potential relationships between the declines and some of the factors that impact eulachon. Results suggest increases in shrimp and hake catches, seal and sea lion abundance, and sea surface temperatures were weakly associated with the declines. But contrary to expectations, adult hake biomass showed a positive association with four eulachon relative abundance time-series, suggesting that common environmental factors influenced both species.

The eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), a small anadromous smelt (Family Osmeridae) found only along the Northwest Pacific Coast, is poorly understood. Many spawning populations have suffered declines but as their historic status is relatively unknown and the fisheries poorly documented, it is difficult to study the contributing factors. This thesis provides a survey of eulachon fisheries throughout its geographical range and three analyses aimed at improving our understanding of past and present fisheries, coast-wide abundance status, and the factors which may be impacting these populations. An in-depth view of the Nuxalk Nation eulachon fishery on the Bella Coola River, Central Coast, BC, is provided. The majority of catches were used for making eulachon grease, a food item produced by First Nations by fermenting, then cooking the fish to release the grease. Catch statistics were kept yearly from 1945-1989 but have since, rarely been recorded. Using traditional and local ecological knowledge, catches were reconstructed based on estimated annual grease production. Run size trends were also created using local Fisheries Officers and Nuxalk interview comments. A fuzzy logic expert system was designed to estimate the relative abundance of fifteen eulachon systems. The expert system uses catch data to determine the exploitation status of a fishery and combines it with other data sources (e.g., CPUE) to estimate an abundance status index. The number of sources depended on the existing data and varied from one to eight. Using designed heuristic rules and by adjusting weighting parameters a final index was produced. Results suggest that there have been recent and extended declines in several eulachon rivers particularly the Klamath, California; Bella Coola, BC; Wannock, BC; and Kitimat, BC. Seven of the fifteen abundance time-series were used to evaluate the potential relationships between the declines and some of the factors that impact eulachon. Results suggest increases in shrimp and hake catches, seal and sea lion abundance, and sea surface temperatures were weakly associated with the declines. But contrary to expectations, adult hake biomass showed a positive association with four eulachon relative abundance time-series, suggesting that common environmental factors influenced both species.

The eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), a small anadromous smelt (Family Osmeridae) found only along the Northwest Pacific Coast, is poorly understood. Many spawning populations have suffered declines but as their historic status is relatively unknown and the fisheries poorly documented, it is difficult to study the contributing factors. This thesis provides a survey of eulachon fisheries throughout its geographical range and three analyses aimed at improving our understanding of past and present fisheries, coast-wide abundance status, and the factors which may be impacting these populations. An in-depth view of the Nuxalk Nation eulachon fishery on the Bella Coola River, Central Coast, BC, is provided. The majority of catches were used for making eulachon grease, a food item produced by First Nations by fermenting, then cooking the fish to release the grease. Catch statistics were kept yearly from 1945-1989 but have since, rarely been recorded. Using traditional and local ecological knowledge, catches were reconstructed based on estimated annual grease production. Run size trends were also created using local Fisheries Officers and Nuxalk interview comments. A fuzzy logic expert system was designed to estimate the relative abundance of fifteen eulachon systems. The expert system uses catch data to determine the exploitation status of a fishery and combines it with other data sources (e.g., CPUE) to estimate an abundance status index. The number of sources depended on the existing data and varied from one to eight. Using designed heuristic rules and by adjusting weighting parameters a final index was produced. Results suggest that there have been recent and extended declines in several eulachon rivers particularly the Klamath, California; Bella Coola, BC; Wannock, BC; and Kitimat, BC. Seven of the fifteen abundance time-series were used to evaluate the potential relationships between the declines and some of the factors that impact eulachon. Results suggest increases in shrimp and hake catches, seal and sea lion abundance, and sea surface temperatures were weakly associated with the declines. But contrary to expectations, adult hake biomass showed a positive association with four eulachon relative abundance time-series, suggesting that common environmental factors influenced both species. / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate