Nancy Turner’s Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples , Food Plants of Interior First Peoples, and Plant Technologies of First Peoples in
British Columbia provide an unsurpassed collection of ethnobotanical
texts for British Columbia that have a great deal of relevance to foraging in
the Pacific Northwest.
Preview Food Plants of Coastal First
Peoples on GoogleBooks
Buy Food Plants of Coastal
First Peoples, Interior
First Peoples, and Plant
Technologies from Amazon
Earth’s Blanks by Nancy Turner is a book
filled with Indigenous wisdom and teachings on sustainable living.
Preview on GoogleBooks
Purchase from Amazon
Ethnobotany
of Western Washington by Erna Gunther. Originally published in 1945,
this book draws from her life’s work interviewing Salish and Makah elders. An indispensable resource to anyone seriously
interested in the ethnobotany of this region.
View on GoogleBooks
Purchase from Amazon
The
Feast is Rich by Carol Batdorf is an amateur ethnobotany of
the Coast Salish in Western Washington with an emphasis on the Lummi Nation.
Limited Availability from the Whatcom County Museum
Native American Ethnobotany, Native American Food Plants,and Native American Medicinal Plants
by Daniel Moerman (see searchable online database)
attempt to catalogue all the primary ethnobotanical accounts on this continent. These works provide excellent starting places
for further ethnobotanical reading.
Purchase from Amazon
Cedar, Indian Fishing, and Artifacts
of Northwest Coast Indians are written and illustrated by Hilary
Stewart. These books are about the
material culture and technology of Native Americans in the Pacific
Northwest.
Preview Cedar
and Indian
Fishing GoogleBooks
Purchase from Amazon
The People of Cascadia by Heidi Bohan is a wonderful author-illustrated book on the
history of the Pacific Northwest Native Americans.
Buy from Author
Nch’i-Wana “The Big River”: Mid-Columbia Indians and Their Land by Eugene Hunn is an ethnography that includes a chapter devoted to
the food of the Native Americans living along the Middle reaches of the
Columbia River. It is based on years of
careful and collaborative work with Sahaptin elders.
Preview on GoogleBooks
Keeping it Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation
on the Northwest Coast of North America edited
by Douglas Deur and Nancy Turner is an academic examination of how Native
Americans in the Pacific Northwest sustainably managed plant food resources.
Preview on GoogleBooks
Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson
tells the fascinating story of how California Native Americans managed plants,
communities, and entire landscapes to sustainably produce food and fiber. A revolutionary book in anthropology and a must
read for foragers of acorns and bulbs.
Clam Gardens by Judith Williams
describes the Indigenous system of constructing and managing productive clam
gardens. Williams is not an academic and
her relationships with some of the Native Americans and scholars who she
interviewed are strained, but it remains the only book on this fascinating
subject.
Preview on GoogleBooks
Traditional
Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples by Harriet Kuhnlein and Nancy Turner is very difficult to find in print
but there is an extensive preview available on GoogleBooks. This book includes plant descriptions, black
and white photographs, ethnobotanical uses, and tables with nutritional
information. While species coverage is
for Canada, it is very pertinent to the Pacific Northwest. This is the best researched book available
that covers both the ethnobotany and nutrition of numerous food plants.
Preview on GoogleBooks
Buy from Amazon
For a thorough list of (mainly academic)
books and articles related to Coast Salish Culture, see Brian Thom’s Website
hosted by the University of Victoria, Department of Anthropology.
