The garden keepers plan to release a cookbook in September 2010

Bannock is a quick bread that doesn’t require yeast. It is a post-contact food (similar to Irish Soda Bread) that that was picked up and embraced by Aboriginal cultures across Canada as European settlers came in to first peoples’ respective territories and brought their flour and sugar.

Preheat Oven to 400 degrees (F) Grease a 6” by 6” baking tin.

Measure the following ‘Dry’ ingredients into a mixing bowl:

• 2 cups organic whole wheat flour
• 2 cups organic un-bleached white flour
• ½ cup organic sugar
• ½ cup organic quick rolled oats
• 2 Tbsp baking powder
• ¼ salt

Measure and whisk together the following ‘Wet’ ingredients:

• 1 organic free range egg
• 2 Tbsp grapeseed oil
• 2 cups of cold water
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1. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and, using a fork, mix the ingredients together without kneading or over mixing the dough.
2. Incorporate the flour into the wet ingredients or vice versa just until the point that the dry and the wet ingredients are mixed together, but do not over mix or you’ll have a tougher product.
3. Pour into greased 6×6 tin and place in a 400 degree oven.
4. Bake for 40 minutes, until the top of the bread sounds hollow when you tap it or knock the top.
5. When the cracks are dry and the bread light or golden brown, take out of the oven.
6. Butter the top of the bannock you have just completed baking.
7. Turn upside down onto a drying rack.
8. Cover with a clean tea towel and let cool on a drying rack for 20 minutes before slicing.
9. Use a knife to pry the bread out of the pan.
10. Serve up with butter or margarine and a low sugar fruit/berry compote or jam. If you’re not eating the bannock within 24 hours, freeze the loaf to eat another day.

Note: if you double this recipe, bake in a 9 x 13 greased baking pan. You will get about 16-18 slices out of the double loaf, depending on how thickly you slice.

Recipe courtesy of Mary Holmes, garden project coordinator. It was originally developed by Ron Plowright and Chef Maleah.

John Skulsh still remembers growing his first cauliflower in 2005.

Growing a cauliflower can bring childlike joy to a grown man’s face. At least, it did for John Skulsh, who still talks about his first garden-grown vegetable.

“I lifted it up,” said Skulsh, who hails from the Gitxsan Nation. “What a feeling that was! You know, the only time I’d picked up cauliflower was from Safeway, wrapped in cellophane.”

Skulsh is among the many residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside who steward the Urban Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden, a half-acre of fertile land at the UBC farm. The project aims to shrink the distance between the garden and the grocery store, while celebrating Aboriginal traditions around food in the context of the city.

For many involved, this means cultivating a more direct relationship with what they eat—a process that can begin at any age.

“Even some of the seniors didn’t know how things like radish grew,” said Cathy Goupil, a seasoned gardener from the L’il’wat Nation, “They’d never seen one without a rubber band.”

Goupil is one of the garden’s founding matriarchs, affectionately called the grannies, who have worked with the project from its beginning in 2005. Since then, roughly 500 people have spent time at the garden. Some actively work on small projects while others visit for large celebratory feasts, like the Blessing of the Land.

Waking up indigenous knowledge

On a Monday afternoon, many local goods were scattered around the farm’s indoor kitchen table, where a small group of community members talked, laughed and worked together to prepare a meal.

Granny Goupil explained the healing benefits of XwU’sum (pronounced “hoshum “).  It is a traditional berry-based drink that strengthens the immune system and cleanses the body.

Louis Joseph, a Native Elder from the Tlowitsis Nation , had handpicked the blackberries in the salad dressing. Rob Morgan, a Gitxsan Downtown Eastside resident, had carried in a bucket of freshly harvested herbs from the nearby garden.

“We wake up old traditions and indigenous knowledge systems,” said Project Coordinator Mary Holmes, “and we find a place for them both at the university and within the larger community.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aboriginal culture in the city

The garden plot belongs to the Musqueam Nation, who shares the space with other Aboriginal people in Vancouver.

“Access to land is a huge issue for First Nations folk living in the city,” said Holmes.

Nearly half of all Aboriginal Canadians now live in urban centers, according to a new study by the Environics Institute. Its research shows that many indigenous city dwellers see the city as “a venue for creative development of Aboriginal culture” and roughly 60 per cent feel they can maintain cultural ties in an urban setting.

All the food in the kitchen is prepared by volunteer chefs.

The study highlights Vancouver as a city in which “residents are both more aware of Aboriginal cultural activities in their city and participate in them more frequently.”

Community members at the garden learn about each other’s traditions. They sit down and talk about what to plant, what to eat, and how to cook the meal itself.

“There are very different ways to prepare clam chowder,” said volunteer and UBC student Jocelyn Greer. “Trying to find a happy medium is very interesting to watch, but it always turns out delicious in the end.”

Seeds of change

Community members bring all kinds of skills and struggles to the table.

Residential school survivors, the mentally ill, and troubled youth, for instance, find out about the program through its parent organization, the Vancouver Native Health Society, and its community partners.

Skulsh came to program through the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. To him, the garden is a sanctuary.

“All you see is trees surrounding you,” he said, “You don’t see the hustle and bustle of the Downtown Eastside … No drugs, no alcohol.”

In this space, many people plant the seeds of change.

“It is a healing garden,” said Skulsh, “Being out there clears your mind, makes you energized, makes you happy.”

Slideshow: Inside the Aboriginal kitchen

How to make organic bannock

Wanying Zhao, MA Candidate at UBC Psychology Department

Wanying Zhao’s lips were itchy, and her tongue felt slightly numb.

In a roomful of Fijians, the young researcher was , a mildly intoxicating beverage that comes from a plant of the same name. Kava, she explained, is the foundation of social activity in the village of , where she lived as a cultural researcher in the summer of 2009.

“Kava looks like muddy water and it tastes pretty much the same,” laughed Zhao, who explained that the drink becomes more potent over time, creating a body buzz that makes the drinker feel mellow.

To demonstrate one of kava’s effects, Zhao momentarily closed her eyes, smiled and swayed gently.

Not all could describe such details first hand, as some don’t believe outsiders should actively participate in the cultures they study. But Zhao’s team consciously chose  as their research strategy, doing ethnography by and interviews, as well as engaging in day-to-day routines.

“I’m used to living in large cities where people mostly leave each other alone,” said Zhao. She described the strong kinship in the small 26-family village, where it was possible to walk anywhere in 15 minutes or less.

Her team’s interest was in understanding how and why people cooperate, and having intimate access was a very important advantage. Teci is one of more than a dozen field sites, where researchers like Zhao are actively examining human cognition through the  to see what people around the world have in common and also how they differ.

Little Sione, the mischievous child featured in Zhao's audio story (see below).

“Fiji was really good in terms of people being very inclusive, warm and inviting,” said Zhao, who didn’t take the Fijian’s openness for granted, “It’s harder to understand a culture from the outside when you’re being treated with suspicion.”

From a solar-powered bure

(Fijian hut), Zhao and her team engaged with tremendous questions, such as “what are norms?” and “what solutions have different cultures evolved to maintain social order?”

While engaging with the villagers, including large groups of enthusiastic children, Zhao gained what she calls an “embodied understanding” of her host community.

“You miss a lot when you don’t engage,” Zhao explained. “It’s only by participating and interacting that you begin to understand what it means to live, think and feel in another cultural world.”

Listen to Wanying Zhao tell a story about the Fijian “”

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“He’d whack the dogs and chase the cats…”

]]> http://thethunderbird.ca/2010/03/22/a-cup-of-kava-ubc-student-gains-insight-on-fijian-culture/feed/ 0 http://thethunderbird.ca/2010/03/18/the-deepest-wilderness-ubc-student-was-a-missing-person/ http://thethunderbird.ca/2010/03/18/the-deepest-wilderness-ubc-student-was-a-missing-person/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:29:35 +0000 Fabiola Carletti http://thethunderbird.ca/?p=8704

Robert Singley, PhD candidate in composition at the UBC School of Music

There’s something wrong with Glastenbury Mountain, at least according to local lore in Bennington, Vermont.

Many people, especially watchers of the paranormal, have about that stretch of the Appalachian Trail. A number of people are said to have there.

But none of this fazed Robert Singley, a PhD candidate at UBC, who used to hike the trail when he lived in Bennington. That is, until the day he too got lost in the woods.

Two years ago, while hiking back to his car, Singley became disoriented.

“I still think I was sucked through some sort of time space continuum,” said the composer, who channels his long hikes into creative impetuses for .

“All I know is that it got dark. It got foggy,” he said, adding that head lamp he’d brought with him wasn’t working. “I followed the trail for as long as I could see it, but then I lost the trail and I was totally alone in the woods.”

As his girlfriend worried at home, Singley struggled to find his way out of an area with an eerie reputation.

Some call it Bennington’s triangle, a reference to the mysterious . Others tell tales of a Bennington monster. And still others refer to Native American stories of rocks that swallow people up in this place where the four winds meet.

Regardless of which stories Singley believed, if any, there was no doubt he was in for an unusual night.

Robert examines the type of wood that "saved his life." Photo by Frank Singley

Next came the rain. The young American’s attempts to make a fire became futile and he eventually lay down from exhaustion.

“Later I started to shiver and I knew I was starting to get hypothermia,” said Singley. He got back up and started to look for kindling. Instead he was alarmed to find animal bones.

But somehow, in this precarious situation, Singley found a way to calm himself.

Listen to Robert Singley explain what was going through his head that night, and why he turned it into music

Featuring an excerpt of his wilderness-inspired string quartet

(runs 1:56)

In the end, Singley managed to survive the night–largely thanks to finding a birch tree with highly flammable bark and coming up with wilderness-inspired musical ideas. In the morning, he ran into police that had been searching for him, and the local newspaper featured his story as an escape from danger.

But Singley heard his experience differently: “It was a magical experience, quite life affirming,” .

In fact, in his work as a composer, he has tapped into the “non-directionality” he felt that night, creating music that is neither going forward nor backward–as in –and that values the journey as a series of individual steps.

“Getting lost really solidified these ideas for me, of just being happy wherever you are.”

Sarah Klain, Grad student at UBC's Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability

Sarah Klain had been out swimming when she saw a massive gray shape in the corner of her eye. She almost gagged on her snorkel when she realized what it was.

“It was a dugong. It swam toward me and looked me right in the eye,” said Klain, joking that the large marine mammal had resembled a fat mermaid, smiling at her before swimming away.

“But that’s anthropomorphizing it,” Klain quickly corrected herself.

Her inner scientist appeared in such qualifiers, even as she excitedly told me stories from Palau, a Pacific Island nation where she lived from 2005 to 2007.

Klain currently studies marine resources, including their social dimensions, at UBC–but the young American still has vivid memories of her two years in Palau. She had gone there to work as a Peace Corps volunteer, aiding in the conservation of a special trio of aquatic creatures.

Beside dugongs, Klain was also focused on saltwater crocodiles and sea turtles. She worked very closely with crocodile hunter-turned-conservationist Joshua Eberdong to collect data and talk to Palauans about the protection of those species.

“They just don’t bounce back as quickly,” said Klain. She explained that the rise of industrial fishing and the expansion of the human population has meant that the relationship between people and animals has started to change. And sustainable use, she said, is tricky with species like sea turtles and dugong that take a long time to reach maturity.

Photo courtesy of Sarah Klain

Location matters: In places like Northern Australia, there is a sustainable harvest of dugong due to their healthy numbers–but not in Palau, where the “sea cows” are a threatened species protected by law. When clarifying the island’s unique ecological situation, Klain also explained that she had to navigate the norms of her host community.

“Unfortunately dugongs are really tasty,” explained Klain. “That was a very sensitive complex part of the work that I did. These endangered animals had been food for hundreds of years.”

But Klain learned a lot from such negotations, and she feels lucky to have benefited from what she considers extraordinary local knowledge from islanders like Joshua. She has carefully documented her lessons in pictures, print and in a detailed slide show.

Her concluding words paint an evocative picture: “My thoughts often drift back to my home for two years, where sea turtles crawl ashore on beaches lit only by the moon, crocodiles hunt crabs and fish in the mangroves, and dugongs graze on sea grass.”

Listen to Sarah Klain describe her role in a “sea turtle rodeo”

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Jake Wall PhD Candidate, UBC Department of Geography

Jake Wall jolted awake, struggling to free himself from a nonexistent mosquito net. It was the latest in a series of bizarre dreams, but his reality was no less surreal. He was, after all, in the middle of the Kaisut Desert in Kenya, resting alongside a quintet of stubborn camels.

Back in Vancouver, nearly two years after his journey, I sat down with Wall to find out what had motivated the PhD candidate to cross lava rocks, drink from recycled cooking-oil containers, and risk daily encounters with deadly puff adders.

His reason was simple: It was the only way he, as an elephant conservationist, could see the world from the perspective of his study subject.

It had all started with Shadrak, a solitary bull elephant that was being tracked by Wall and his colleagues at the non-profit group Save the Elephants. Shadrak was special: In 2007, he’d traversed a 208km stretch in five days, thereby completing the longest elephant streak on record. After that, his satellite collar had gone dead and he’d disappeared off the face of Google Earth.

“We thought it would be really cool to follow that path,” said Wall. He wanted to get past the “GPS crumbs” and, on the one-year anniversary of the streak, follow the trail and maybe even find Shadrak. Wall worked with David Daballen, a Samburu researcher with Save the Elephants, to plan a journey of unprecedented scale in the field.

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Photo courtesy of Jake Wall.

“As the leader of that trip I was really concerned with safety,” said Wall, who was accompanied by an eight-person motley crew of camel tenders, local guides, security guards and journalists. The group had planned to walk in the elephant’s exact path and at his pace.

What Wall didn’t know was that Shadrak’s five-day journey would end up taking his group nearly two weeks, that their food and water supplies would run dangerously low, and that their four-legged companions wouldn’t always want to stay the course.

“The camels would get spooked at night,” Wall explained, adding that his equipment carriers were prone to both “freaking out” and scheduling their own breaks. The journalists from Adventure Magazine documented such moments in print and photographs as Wall collected detailed and unique scientific data.

Despite the difficulties, Wall believes the trip was worth it. He doesn’t take for granted his ability to walk elephant corridors that may one day cease to exist.

“Elephants in Marsabit number around 350, and it’s looking more and more like their habit will disappear,” Wall said. He explained that human population is quickly expanding and squeezing out the elephant’s migratory routes. Although the challenges continue, researchers like Wall will keep working to make sure the world talks about the elephants in the room.

Listen to Jake Wall describe the day he finally met Shadrak, the bull elephant

(runs 3:45)

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The Ubyssey has given front page coverage to the rezoning issue

Allie Slemon, a fifth year English student at the University of British Columbia, was surprised to find a strongly worded email from President Stephen Toope in her inbox.

Toope warned of Metro Vancouver’s proposal to regulate academic lands on the Vancouver campus. He said this would be “devastating” to academic freedom and could put a “choke hold” on the university’s future.

Currently, Greater Vancouver’s governing body, known as Metro Vancouver, has the power to regulate family housing property on campus while UBC maintains control over its academic lands.

In November, the city proposed to extend its power to include academic and non-residential buildings through a contentious new zoning bylaw.

The university administration sees this as an invasive threat, while the city maintains it is an overdue update.

Rezoning would change decision-making at the university’s highest levels. But students interviewed said they feel disconnected from the debate surrounding Metro Vancouver’s technical and lengthy proposal, especially if they aren’t already engaged in campus politics.

Toope’s passionate email was not the ideal primer for Slemon.

“In universities we’re taught to read and think critically and to receive this email from the president was kind of an affront to that,” she said. She would have preferred to receive unbiased information that would let her form her own opinion.

Changing face of UBC

Metro Vancouver argues that UBC cannot continue as the sole and unelected supervisor of the use of its academic lands.

“Let me put it in clear terms: we’re not prepared to continue with the status quo,” said Derek Corrigan, the mayor of Burnaby, on behalf of Metro Vancouver.

He argued that the way UBC is run leaves the city in a situation where they are “responsible for things [they’re] not actually in control of.”

“When you chose to have 6000 people living in the neighbourhood, UBC changed, and you have to accept the reality of that,” said Corrigan, addressing UBC administrators at a recent meeting.

Students are more interested in the fate of AMS president Blake Frederick than rezoning

The city’s rezoning proposals closely follow the October release of the final draft of the UBC Vancouver Campus plan, which will effectively guide development and decision-making on UBC’s academic lands for the next decade and beyond.

The Ubyssey, the official student paper, has been covering the re-zoning issue since Metro Vancouver first announced its intentions.

It published four big articles in the paper, including a full-colour front page story complete with an eye-catching robot.

Still, news editor Samantha Jung admits the paper has had next to no response, especially from students who do not have official ties to organized groups.

Listen to Samantha Jung explain why students are disconnected from rezoning issues:

The timing of the rezoning row is awkward. As well as cramming for exams, most students are preoccupied with the plight of a different president at UBC.

The limelight is on Blake Frederick, president of the Alma Mater Society, UBC’s student council. Frederick is up for impeachment after filing a complaint to the United Nations without consulting the rest of the AMS.

As the two issues unfold side-by-side, students seem more interested in who controls the council than in who controls the campus.

The low response toward the Ubyssey’s coverage of re-zoning is in sharp contrast to the overwhelming feedback that the paper has received on stories about Frederick’s potential impeachment.

“We got about 1500 hits on our website when we first put up the original story. Just a huge conversation and a huge backlog of information,” said Jung, who also described the high interest on Twitter, Facebook and on their live-blog.

Many students are interested in both issues, but Slemon admits the impeachment has been far more engaging for her.

“What gets me excited about administration, about politics, about student involvement in issues has not been the issue of zoning,” she said, “I don’t think it’s because it’s a less contentious issue inherently or because it’s a less interesting issue inherently. It’s just not what students have decided to pick up.”

Divisive issue

Metro Vancouver wants a greater say over the use of land on the UBC campus

Students already engaged in campus politics have a range of opinions about  Metro Vancouver’s proposal.

Angus Cheung is a student representative in UBC Vancouver Senate, the body responsible for academic governance. Although Cheung said Frederick’s impeachment “seems to be so much more important to students these days,” he has also thought through UBC’s concerns.

“I am a very big proponent of keeping academic land within the academic administration. Personally, I have met Toope many times and other members of the faculty and they’ve always been really receptive to student opinions,” said Cheung.

Frederick sees it differently. Speaking as AMS President before the threat of impeachment, he said the Board of Governors doesn’t respond in the way that elected politicians do.

“It’s an issue of representation and it manifests itself in different ways,” said Frederick. “Under the current structure, students don’t have as much say in their campus as they should have and that affects their ability to shape the university which they’re paying into. We’re the reason the university exists.”

Actively engaged students recognize that many of their peers are not as informed.

“What we see so much at the university is that decisions are not made in a way that students can relate to,” said Andrew Carne, a fifth-year undergraduate engineering student who sits on the AMS council.

“The biggest problem is that this is so confusing,” said Bijan Ahmadian, a student representative on the Board of Governors. “People don’t know exactly what’s going on because it’s deep in the governance and unless you’ve been involved you’re scratching your head and wondering how this is different from what we had before.”

First encounter

Fewer than ten students, all with official ties, were present at the first meeting between UBC administrators and Metro Vancouver representatives on Nov. 25 after news of potential rezoning broke.

The two parties faced one another, with an audience of thirty-odd community members sitting behind them. The participants did not clearly introduce themselves and spoke with a great deal of presumed knowledge, dropping acronyms like OCP (Official Campus Plan) and MOA (Memorandum of Understanding). There was no question period at the end.

UBC defended the style of the meeting, saying it wasn’t aimed directly at students.

Stephen Owen, vice president of External, Legal and Community Relations at UBC, said joint committee meetings between UBC and Metro Vancouver are not the space for consultation. The university runs both “meetings that are open to the public” and “public engagement meetings.”

“There are intricate and repetitive and lengthy consultation processes where the public, including students, are directly engaged in campus and community planning,” said Owen.

Some see room for improvement in these channels.

Brendan Guy, a fourth year undergraduate, said that students who want to voice their opinions to the Board of Governors often have to go through a variety of representatives, many of whom don’t necessarily have a strong connection to students at large.

Guy has experience with facilitating cross-campus discussion, as he is the Education, Dialogue & Training Coordinator for an emerging network of community members called Common Energy UBC. He said the line of communication between students and administrators “could be a lot more transparent and a lot more inclusive.”

“The obvious solution is educating people in the university community, and students in general, about their options in who to go to when they have concerns about land usage issues,” said Guy.

Owen acknowledged the possibility for change. “It’s complicated but I think whenever changes are forced upon an institution, as this is, then there’s still an opportunity to make things better.”

Stormwater reached knee-level at TRIUMF on Sept. 29. Photo courtesy of Jim Hanlon.

Curtis Ballard rushed to fasten plywood between parking curbs as rain cascaded down Wesbrook Mall. The water runoff streamed toward TRIUMF, the laboratory for particle and nuclear physics at UBC.

“The water outside eventually rose to our knees,” said Ballard, TRIUMF’s operations manager, who worked with personnel from the lab and the physical plant to clear catch basins and set up dewatering pumps.

Although the water from the flash flood seeped into offices and damaged flooring, the group’s work spared a nearby laser lab filled with high precision equipment. They now refer to it as the great flood of 2009.

Such temperamental tales become lore at the University of British Columbia, which sits on the outskirts of rainy Vancouver.

The project team behind Campus and Community Planning know the challenges of managing stormwater, but are also creating policy that may channel it into opportunity.

The planners are entering the final phase of drafting the UBC Vancouver Campus plan, the guiding document for the next 20 years of development on the University’s academic lands. Taping the copious amount of rainwater as a renewable resource is finally on the agenda.

Planning up a storm

The current plan commits the administration to following 12 general policies found in section 4.6.4 of the draft, which deal with stormwater management and water waste on campus.

“We think we could take a more integrated approach and think of water as a resource rather than as a waste,” said David Grigg, associate director of infrastructure and services planning. “Water is not being seen from a natural systems point of view.”

Instead, the free-flowing resource is often seen as a nuisance, evidenced by the Facebook group UBC Drainage Sucks!, where students gather to gripe and discuss specific trouble spots, such as the west entrance to the chemistry building.

“There is a patch of dryish grass to the right of the stairs,” said Nicholas Steinberg, a member of the group. “Hop there, then hop onto the railing of the stairs. From there, you can climb to safety.”

Another member, Emily Lai, called UBC “a swamp with rare dry spots”.

Effective rainwater management could help reduce the number of puddles on pathways, though the plan is more focused on managing runoff systematically.

Community members examine the campus plan on display boards in the Student Union Building

As water travels through campus and inconveniences community members, it also becomes more polluted, eventually contaminating the base of the Fraser River estuary or flowing into a system of pipes that lead to the ocean.

Grigg said UBC must move beyond approaches that simply aim to drain the water, get rid of the bottlenecks, and get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

The natural systems alternative is to see stormwater as part of an ecological cycle that the community can come to appreciate. New designs will make it possible to capture some of that water and find uses for it, like irrigating lawns and plant life on campus.

The planners also want to improve the quality of the water that returns to the ocean.

Students weigh in

Kristen Van Esch, a graduate student studying geological engineering, said she is impressed by the ideas thus far.

“When I think of stormwater management, I imagine sewers and flood mitigation,” said Van Esch. “I’ve never heard of this natural systems approach.”

Other students think the plan may be overly ambitious.

“There seem to be a lot of different goals, and I’m not sure if it’s all feasible,” said Owen Marmorek, a first-year undergraduate arts student, as he examined other priorities on the open house display boards.

Besides feasibility, other students wonder about funding.

“They’ve done investigations to see if these sorts of things are possible,” said Andrew Carne, a fifth-year undergraduate engineering student, “but at the same time, it is a wish list.”

Carne, who has attended three feedback sessions for the campus plan, said the planners seem well-intentioned. Still, he said the difficulty with long-term visioning is that planners often create comprehensive designs that do not come to fruition without funding.

But the cost of inaction may be considerable. In 1995 alone, campus-wide flooding cost the university upwards of $300,000 in damages, said Grigg.

“Could we learn to think of [water] as being a scarce commodity that deserves due respect?” he asked.