Sealaska Heritage Institute: Lecture: AN "ARCHIPELAGO OF CONNECTIONS" AND A LIVING HERITAGE | Sealaska Heritage

Alright, hi, welcome everyone. All right. Today we're going to be hearing a lecture from Arnaud Chandevert. He is an anthropologist at Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier, France. Born near the Atlantic Ocean, he lives with his family in a small village in the Pyrenees Mountains in the south of France.

A specialist in heritage issues, he has made several stays in Southeast Alaska since 2023, particularly in Hoonah, and has gradually developed an interest in the topic of traditional foods. This lecture will provide insights into traditional food issues in Lngit Aani and Hoonah. Taking the form of a travel diary, the lecture will focus on the multifaceted nature of traditional foods and foodways. Drawing on the concept of the archipelago proposed by the Caribbean thinker and writer Edward Glissant, as well as the idea of a sea of connections developed by some anthropologists, the lecture will explore in particular the notion of multidimensional relationality as it applies to traditional foods. Thank you all for being here.

Please silence your cell phones at this time. There will be an opportunity for questions at the end of the lecture.

Thank you, thank you for introducing me.

Hello everyone. So I feel very honored to present a lecture at the Sealaska Heritage Institute for different reasons, but for me it's a real great pleasure and the responsibility too, because through SHI and Rosita Weldon and Chuck Mize— who Chuck is retired, but Rosita is still working there— they have played a major and a crucial role when, without having never been to Southeast Alaska, I was trying to prepare a first stay there. And so SHI opened its doors to me in 2023 and allowing me to discover your magnificent region with with a lot of humility and joy, and to meet with such warm and generous people here. And so it was and still is a real gift, and I feel indebted. Giving this lecture, I know, will not solve this debt, but I'm really happy to be able to do it.

And also would like to thank Mr. Jacob Irish for organizing the event. I feel a great sense of responsibility in speaking in front of you, I'm aware of my place here and also of the importance of words. As a gentleman in Hoonah once told me when he was speaking about Tlingit ways of life, that's the union of our words that binds us together. And so speaking in public, therefore, is no small matter. It's a little, or rather quite maybe, intimidating, you know?

And what's more, my English is not perfect because I'm French. And my French accent is also terrible, you know, so even if people think that I speak too fast in French, today I will try to speak slowly, and I will also use my written notes because I'm not confident enough in my English skills. So to start with, a few words about myself. So I was born and raised in the northwest part of France. In a city called Nantes.

You can see it on the map, and it's near the Atlantic Ocean. And on my mother's side, my family comes from Brittany, which is a region which is also in the northwest part of France. You see on the top arrow. And so my mother's family lives on the shore of the Channel, and I've always loved the ocean and the sea. And on my father's side of the family, come from central France.

It's a region which is called Berry. But I have lived for 30 years now in the mountains in the French Pyrenees. It's in the south of France. And I have dedicated my PhD dissertation to the Pyrenees, working on several topics and issues. And so this mixed interest for ocean and mountains partly explain why I've been so attracted since quite a long time by Southeast Alaska.

I live in a very little village in France, in the Pyrenees, with meadows, forests, rivers, and mountains around my house. So I came from rural France to visit rural Alaska. And as a scholar, I work at the University of Montpellier. It's a city which is located near the Mediterranean Sea. And I'm currently the co-director of the Department of Anthropology in my university.

And so I love teaching, and I often explain to my students that if I give you an object, you have it and I no longer have it. If I share my knowledge, we both have it. That's why I love teaching too, you know. And so I've been visiting your region, Southeast Alaska, and Shingit Haani, every year since 2003. Staying a little over a month each year.

I've learned a lot, and many people have shared their knowledge with me. And so in order to share what I have learned, I will present in this lecture a few thoughts on the topic of traditional food, and I will also explain why I use this word or this expression. And as a scientific visitor, a sort of kind of tourist, let's say, I think it would be a good idea to give this talk look like a travel diary. So it will mix— it would be a mix between maybe more theoretical aspects and this idea of a travel diary, giving back my experience. So I have tried to do my best, but please forgive me if I make any mistakes.

And so a few words about the perspective I will develop in this lecture. Traditional foods and foodways broadly correspond to what is called subsistence food or subsistence practices. In federal and state regulations. Native people in Alaska consider that hunting, fishing, and gathering are central to who they are. They also generally consider that the notion of subsistence is inappropriate to qualify these practices.

And they are deeply engaged in their perpetuations as part of a legacy and as a right inherited from their ancestors. But as we all know, unfortunately, Native traditional foodways are under pressure nowadays Federal and state regulation, climate deregulation, competition with the commercial sector, and with also sport hunting and fishing, evolution of ways of life, which is something which is normal, you know, all have a negative impact on traditional foodways. Even so, natives really care about these traditional foods. They say that it's good for you, that it's healthy, and that it's healing too. They also say that it can be used in a way that doesn't harm the environment.

These are very convincing arguments, but in this lecture, I will try to explore other arguments and other directions. I will focus on past and contemporary connections on relationality. Food is a perfect subject to talk about that because sharing a meal with family and/or with friends with friends is a good way to connect to each other and to develop relationality. Tlingit have a well-known saying, you know, "When the tide is out, the table is set," because you can gather cockles, clams, etc. And when the table is set, people gather around and they eat, they chat, they have good time, and so they create happy memories for the future too.

So even though the idea of connection generally evokes positive things, connections are not always good. We are about 8 billion people on the planet. We have never been so connected to each other, and we all depend on one another. This connection generates a tremendous number of positive relationships and creativity too. But at the same time, we live in a more and more individualistic divided and polarized world.

The way we interact with the natural world on which we depend is also not always working well. As explained by the French scientist Christophe Bonneuil, and so I quote, the collapse of the entire living tissue has never been so rapid and massive in 65 million years. Humans and their livestock account for 97% 97% of the weight of terrestrial vertebrates, leaving only 3% to the other 20,000 vertebrates on the planet, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. So in addition to generating forms of isolation, globalized webs of connections are deeply rooted in anthropocentric disconnection with the living world. How could traditional foodways— I prefer to use this expression rather than subsistence, which is rightfully very controversial— help us to go beyond basic oppositions between spirituality and materiality, between land and ocean, between animals and human beings, between keeping and giving, between the self and the other?

That's what I would like to explore in this lecture. Which will be divided in 4 parts and last something like 40, 45 minutes. So first part of my talk, Globalized Connection and Disconnections. And so I go back to my travel diary. You can't imagine how happy I was when I first arrived in Juneau at the end of May 2023.

It was my first day in the US and my first day in Tasiistaalaxkaa. And so I had found an accommodation in the Mendenhall Valley, which is at the north of Juneau. Many of you maybe are familiar with this area, but I was immediately charmed by the valley's scenery. Huge mountains, glacier, creek, rivers, and the Pacific Ocean, because in France I only have the Atlantique Ocean, which is a good one too, but the Pacific Ocean is really beautiful. And so it was love at first sight, let's say, and that was just the beginning, you know.

And after getting over the time change between France and here— 10 hours, you know, it's a lot— I also had to deal with more basic needs: eating. And maybe you've heard about the French fascination for food. And when the French enjoy a meal with family or friends, They always talk about past and future meals and recipes, you know. And it's especially the case for me as I've been a cook in France in French gastronomic restaurants when I was young in order to pay for my studies. And it was long ones.

I have an organic vegetable garden at home. I always try to buy some local food to support the producers. Restaurants where I live also try to promote local products and local culinary specialties. And so the situation I have discovered in Juneau was quite maybe surprising to me, let's say. Local products proposed in restaurants are quite expensive, and food in general is expensive.

By gathering information on this issue little by little, I understood that in Alaska, something like 90 to 95% 80% of non-wild subsistence food are imported. And I also understood that it was cheaper to buy industrially prepared teriyaki chicken skewer than French locally fished salmon or halibut. And it's easy to buy pizzas, an original recipe coming from Italy, nachos from Mexico, or lamb curry from India, but it's not easy to find local or native food especially in restaurants. I don't say that it's good or bad, even if I have my own opinion. I don't know if you agree with what I just said, but it's based on my own experience and observation.

So without continuing this quite maybe perhaps naïve description of foodways and foodscape in Southeast Alaska, we can establish a first argument. Non-traditional foodscapes in Southeast Alaska are mainly based on long-distance globalized connection. They correspond to what the French anthropologist Charles Stepanoff calls spread-out social ecological networks. So I have to explain this notion, you know. So these networks are characterized by a spatial separation between where people live and where the things they eat are produced.

In these networks, the relationships to the species eaten are few in number. People don't raise, don't catch, or don't kill them by themselves. Many intermediaries intervene between the producer and the consumer through a vast processing and supply chain. This argument must be balanced because many people fish or hunt in Alaska, of course, and relying on wild harvesting becomes more important the further you get from cities, and the further you get from cities, the higher food prices are, which is fully understandable because of the cost of transportation and things like that. So leaving these aspects aside for a moment, let's call this model of food imports a globalized, long-distance system of multiple connections and disconnections between human beings, food, animals, plants, et cetera.

So this situation I think is not specific to Southeast Alaska. I've got the same at home. So I think it's more or less a product of our, let's say, modern world or something like that. But there are two specific parameters in Southeast Alaska: distance and the limited scale of local productions, with also possible consequences on autonomy and food sovereignty. And food sovereignty is something very important.

This food system has also some health consequences which concern everybody, but maybe more the natives, especially those who don't necessarily have the means to buy fresh and good food.

Let's go back to my travel diary, second part of my talk, holistic foodways. Let's go back to my travel diary. After a few days after my arrival, the first time I came in 2023, thanks to Chuck Smyth, who was senior anthropologist here at the Sealaska Heritage Institute, who retired this year, I think, I was able to attend to a conference organized by the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau Thunder Mountain High School on culturally responsive education. And so during this conference, which gathered educators from all Southeast Alaska and mainly natives, I began to learn different things. What was clearly noticeable was the strong attachment native people have to their culture, which involves deep relationships to the land, with the living world, and with traditional food.

I learned about harvest values— I will come back to that later— and balanced relationship to plants and animals. During a medicinal plants workshop organized at the UAS campus, which is on the north of Juneau too, on the Mendenhall Valley, I was also able to see for myself the knowledge and skills involved in the harvest and processes of local wild plants. A few days after this conference, I met with a native commercial fisherman. He lives in Juneau and is a friend of a friend of mine in France. Hard to say.

I will have to say more difficult things later. So the friend of a friend of mine in France. And my French friend, who has spent a lot of time in Southeast Alaska and the asked me to bring a present to his friend in Juneau. When I gave him a call, to this guy on a Sunday morning, he was fishing. He proposed to take me on his skiff.

So I spent the day fishing king salmon with him on the north of Douglas Island. I learned a lot this day, especially about sharing. Maybe you remember it, for all the people who live in Juneau, It was a time, the time when in June 2023, the traditional Hawaiian voyaging canoe was in Juneau for celebration and ceremonies because the wood which was used to build this canoe come from here. And so what I learned attending to the ceremonies was the connection between natives and with and through the Pacific Ocean. Maybe you remember that a declaration was signed also at this time honoring the connection between Pacific peoples and the ocean that connects us.

And the Hawaiian boat was at sea at the end of the day when I was— when we were fishing king salmon. And so the friend of my French friend suddenly had the idea to give a salmon we caught to the Hawaiian boat crew. And so you can see it on the picture here on the photos. We went full throttle to the boat and gave them a big king salmon, so, which made them very happy, of course. And after that, we came back to Stater Harbor in Oak Bay, and my friend cut salmon into pieces to distribute to relatives and especially his auntie.

And he also gave a piece to me, which I agreed for the dinner I was I was very happy about that. It was the first time for me in Southeast Alaska, and I was there for 5 days. So not too bad, let's say. And so I learned a lot and had a firsthand experience of sharing and sharing values. What was taking shape under my eyes was something really different from the globalized, spread-out, socio-ecological network that I mentioned before.

The nature of the connections between people between people and the living world, between people and food too, was also completely different from the long-distance globalized links through vast supply chains, which I have already mentioned. Some of these connections were long-distance ones, for example, with the case of the Hawaiians. But it was deep ties with the Pacific Ocean not being what separates, but what connects people and places. And so I will come back to ocean and connection later. But let's continue this travel diary.

I was lucky enough to visit Huna and meet with very kind and generous people in 2023, 2024, 2025, and now 2026. And so I would like to take this opportunity to thank several people and organizations. This is quite difficult for me because there are so many people that I want to thank that it would take up the time, the entire time of my lecture, you know. So I will do it short. So I would like to thank the Huna Indian Association, HIA, its president Frank Wright, and its tribal administrator Nathan Moulton.

I also want to extend my warmest thanks to HIA environmental team, Jan Johnson, Jeremy Grant, Jackson Combs, Thomas Mills, and Julian Narvaez. And I simply cannot fail to thank Darlene See as well. How can I talk to the Huna Heritage Foundation HUNA too. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to Amelia Wilson, Rebecca Sowers, as well as to Sonya Johnson and Nakima Burke. After the gentlemen at the HUNA Indian Association environmental team, it's the turn of the ladies at the HUNA Heritage Foundation.

Thank you, thank you, you hold a very special place in my heart. A huge thanks to Heather Pullall Mills, who for all she does in Hoonah and elsewhere in Southeast Alaska, and for her kindness toward me. Thanks to my friend Jeff Skafelstad, and I've got to promise that I will cook you the gourmet meal we talked about. You know, I will do— I will go to the grocery store today to bring back food to Hoonah too. Thanks to Reynold Hill and his family for their hospitality, and thanks also to Bob Hughes and to so many others who make my trips to Huna are truly incredible adventures.

But let's continue. In 2023 and 2025, I was invited to participate to the Haa Tu Yeyati Huna Culture Camp. Sorry for the pronunciation.

This culture camp was organized by Heather Powell Mills with the help of the City School, of the tribe, and of the Huna Heritage Foundation. During this camp, Many activities were proposed like fishing, like harvesting black seaweed or beach asparagus, spruce root weaving too. And these activities were certainly aimed at young people so that they could experience all the things by themselves while also practicing Tlingit language and say, "This is inside me." But among those present were also babies, adults, elders, And so on this occasion, I've discovered the importance of transmission of Tlingit culture and traditional foodways among generations. I also began to discover the fact that these traditional foodways embrace a deep spiritual dimension. This spiritual dimension joins together past, present, and future and concerns the relationship with natural species.

Spirituality also embodies a connection to land and place, And places, and these places in their turn embody a sense of being, as shown by the anthropologist Thomas Fontaine in his wonderful book, Being and Place Among the Tlingit, which was published in 2007. During my stays in Hoonah, I've heard several times one of the school teachers, Heather Powell Mills, asking to the young, what is alive?? And they all answered with one voice, everything. This respect to the living world, deeply involved in traditional foodways, contrasts sharply with globalized industrial farming systems based on ever-increasing intensification of human and animal exploitation. Far from being a mundane aspect of daily life, in native traditional foodways, food is multidimensional.

And holistic. Relationships to plants and animals are physical, spiritual, metaphysical, moral, and social. All these dimensions are integrated into Kres and Atuu. I do not feel at all qualified to speak on this subject, and I don't want to show disrespect to anyone. I just would like to highlight the space the spatial nature of the relationships to the living world which is imbued in such considerations.

What we can observe are deep and powerful webs of significance bringing together things and categories which are considered as separate in the modern thought, let's say. Past and present, human beings and animals, stories, visual representations and objects, What is also striking to me is the fact that what is alive? Everything. Atuu are living and they depict relationship with the natural world and with living species, which may involve the death of a clan member, of an ancestor. These ancestors are still living through the Atuu.

Death and life are not considered as opposite. They are part of the same cyclical relationality. Biological dimension of the natural world and historical biographical aspects are always intertwined. This is not— intertwining has repercussions on traditional foodways and is expressed in terms of respect due to plants and animals. This respect equals and duplicates the importance given to balance and reciprocity with regard to social relationships between moitiés and clans.

Relationship to animals and plants are expressed in terms of moral principles and behavior. Be respectful with animals and plants. Only harvest what you need and take processes into account. For example, don't harvest what you will not be able to process, wasting it. Thank for what you have harvested.

Share with others. And so a friend of mine who is in his 70s told me when he was a boy, he went hunting with his uncle for the first time. I quote, "And when you kill your deer, your uncle told you, 'You have to give it to someone. You can't keep it for yourself.'" That was the first lesson. A few days ago, I went hauling crab pots with a friend near Hoonah.

Unfortunately, out of 5 crab pots, we only caught 2 Dungeness crabs. Coming back to the dock, he offered them to me, and so I politely declined. So he gave them to an elderly woman in the village who he knew. And I will go back to this notion of sharing later too. Of course, as with all societies, moral principles and social or cultural values can be expressed but not necessarily followed.

You can also follow them without talking about them because they go without saying, you know. "Oh, okay, that's evident." And for example, another friend of mine pays close attention to the quality and the precision of the fish cuts, you know, cutting the fish the perfect way. He doesn't say, "You must pay respect to the fish." He's just doing it in practice, you know, being a accurate in cutting the fish. So returning to what I was saying earlier about the work of the anthropologist, French anthropologist Charles Képanoff, one can consider that what I have described about traditional food corresponds to the notion of dense social ecological networks developed by this French scholar. These networks are made up of multi-species and are crisscrossed by multidimensional connections between humans and between humans and the living world.

Nowadays, spread-out socio-ecological networks and dense multi-fiber ones are intertwined in Tlingit Haani. This intertwining has good facets. A friend of mine describing a recipe of red rock fish— red rock, sorry— fish he loves and for which he uses a specific black bean, which is not produced in Southeast Alaska, of course. So commercially, food distribution networks are thus expanding and diversifying the range of dietary practices. This has also most problematic aspects.

Many people, all of them natives, have told me that traditional foods are becoming less prevalent, and so the use of spread-out social ecological networks increases. This could be the result of the concept of subsistence being devalued in society, with the prefix "sub-" indicating an inferior position compared to food produced by the global and dominant food system, as a friend of mine once told me.

From another point of view, the dense multi-fiber networks of traditional food are also spread-out ones. The harvested food, be it black seaweed, salmon, herring eggs, et cetera, is in fact part of widely spread networks. If salmon were born in the mountains, and if they swim in the ocean, and even in the forest, as we can see on these beautiful drawings, they also take plane and ferry. And they, as all of you know, of course, and so salmons migrate in very different ways. And they can even go to space, as you can see on the drawing there.

So, uh, I didn't, uh, in this case, spread out networks are not networks of disconnection with the living tissue. Salmon, berries, herring eggs, Hollywood are the connectors between people on families, on friends, and also past and future generations. By this way, it's not possible to oppose bad spread-out networks and good multi-fibers one. Networks are never a problem by themself. It's the basis on which they are built and the way we use them that define what they can be.

A connecting or a disconnecting tool, creating isolation or solidarity.

Part 3 of my talk, Living Heritage Inside the Arbor Fishing Culture. Based on my experience, I'm not able to accurately describe the cultural meaning of subsistence practices, traditional foodways, or the relationship between these foodways and clan stories, for instance. Thanks to discussion I had, I have an idea of these aspects. The encounters and experience— the encounter I experienced, sorry, were more directly focused on the contemporary features of local food culture. And thanks to these encounters and to some friends, I discovered what you might call the harbour fishing culture.

Hoonah is famous for its fishing fishing and for its history in commercial fishing. Even though, as in all Alaska, commercial fishing faces major difficulties nowadays. And so I spend a lot of time with fishermen, commercial fishermen, but last year, a fisherman totem pole was installed at the entry of the harbor in Hoonah, thanks to the city of Hoonah and the Hoonah Hunna Heritage Foundation. I wasn't there for the unveiling ceremony. I arrived a few days later, and the pole honors the village legacy from canoe fishing to longlining, trawling, crabbing, etc.

It's a sign for anyone who enters the harbor. The kutia is not only about the past. Even though there are fewer boats in Hunna today than there were during the million-dollar fleet era because Khunai is very well known for, in the '70s, there were a lot of vessels at the harbor, so they were called the million-dollar fleet. So it was in the 1970s. And the two temples also speaks to the present and to the future, honoring a living heritage.

Many people clearly know all of these better than I do, and as I have done through my presentation. I speak about this with a great humility. But I can attest to the strength and beauty of this fishing and harbor culture. It's something I mainly discovered last year that really touched me. The people who make this culture alive are not all native and Tlingit.

But I was lucky enough to discover that through a Tlingit perspective. What I discovered is a world of boats and legendary places, like especially one, the famous Laundry, which is a pass in the Indian Islands when you go on icy strait to the outer ocean, and where only native fishermen were skillful to fish there in the '60s and the '70s.

And staying with those people and so sharing with them, During all these moments, I greatly improved my technical English vocabulary related to the fishing sector. And I think also I've been positively influenced by that, by this fishing culture, because the first thing I did this morning when I arrived in Juneau was to go to a store to buy fishing gear to bring back to Hoonah, you know. So, and within this community, not everyone is a dedicated practitioner of traditional food. The old ways, but it is still very common. And this is where I think you find the people who harvest and transform the most traditional food.

In the scientific literature, they are called the superhousehold because we— some scholars know that there's only few families, you know, who play a real important role in gathering, fishing, hunting. And so that's why they are called superhousehold. In the scientific literature. Commercial fishing and traditional foodways are connected for many different reasons. Commercial boats are allowed to fish for subsistence.

They are also used for other purposes, like going to some islands to harvest black seaweed. Many people with whom I met and who practice subsistence have some background in commercial fishing. It is thanks to people who really belong to this fishing culture that I was invited to participate as an observer because of the regulation, you know, to fish halibut using a longline escape or to put crab pots for Dungeness or things like that. And during these moments, I have witnessed the cyclical dimension of these practices. Less desirable fish caught while fishing, for example, for halibut are reused as bait, either on long line or in crab pots.

So the cycle of the catches mirrors that of the relationship between the past, the present, and the future, honod in the fisherman kutia. The time periods are entangled, and the communities are multi-species ones, including human beings, animals, and the ocean. This multiplies the number of connections And so this is what I would like to develop in the last section of my lecture entitled "An Archipelago of Connections: Foodways and Relationality." I will begin by some theoretical thoughts and I will go back to more normal thing, let's say, after. So the French Caribbean writer and poet and thinker Édouard Glissant, I probably I pronounce it the French way, Édouard Glissant, has developed the idea of archipelago, which is a large group of islands, in his writings. Quoting some scholars who have published a book dedicated to the work of the thinker in 2020, I quote, "The archipelago is more than a geographical reality.

It defines a paradigm." According to Édouard Glissant, it offers a new way of measuring the world based on relationships. Going beyond the traditional opposition between islands and mainland, it implies recognition of each place, each language, and each culture within a relational whole. It seems to me that the archipelago paradigm and this idea of relationality perfectly fit with what I wanted to develop in this lecture and also correspond quite well to Southeast Alaska geographical, the Alexander Archipelago, cultural, spiritual, political, and also political context. I found another source of inspiration when I discovered the work and thoughts of Epeli Howa Hoffa. An anthropologist and writer from the Fiji Islands, who sadly passed away in 2009.

He has developed the idea of sea of islands to positively define Oceania and its identity against stereotypes and misconceptions.

So I quote, "Do people in most of Oceania live in tiny confined spaces?" he asks. The answer is yet— is yes, sorry, if one believes what geographers are saying. But the idea of smallness is relative. It depends on what is included or excluded in any calculation of size. If you live on mainland, and the vast majority of human beings live in this region, you can see Polynesia and Micronesia islands as small and tiny.

This calculation is based entirely on the extent of the land surfaces. But if we look at the myths, legends, and oral traditions, and the cosmologies of the people of Oceania, it becomes evident that they did not conceive of their world in such microscopic proportions. Their world was anything but tiny. In another paper published in 2000, he developed his thought about the Pacific Ocean. And so it's also going back to what I said at the beginning of my talk, the meeting with the Hawaiian people.

The ocean is not merely omnipresent empirical reality. Equally importantly, it is our most wonderful metaphor for just about anything. Contemplation of its vastness and majesty its regularities and unpredictability, its shoulders and depth, its isolating and linking role excites the imagination and kindles a sense of wonderment, curiosity, and hope.

Édouard Glissant's archipelago paradigm and éperiháupha views of the Pacific Ocean and of Oceania as a sea of islands islands are powerful and inspiring notions. And I consider that these notions are part of what I have experienced and discovered as a visitor during my journey in Southeast Alaska. But I also consider that archipelago and ocean are not only metaphors, and that they have a real basis. This basis has been explored by some of my colleagues in France, especially Élodie Fache, who works in Oceania and on Pacific native fisheries. Taking into account the continuity and connectivity between land and sea, Élodie Fache and other colleagues have proposed to go beyond the sea of islands metaphor and to think about the notion of a sea of connections.

Transporting this concept and mixing it with Édouard Glissant's idea of archipelago, I propose to develop the notion of archipelago of connections. Speaking of an archipelago of connections can help us to conceptualize what I have already developed in this lecture about holistic traditional foodways and multi-species communities. So let's go back to food.

Food is necessary for human life, as it is the case for many species. However, this metabolic dimension can be managed in very different ways. It can be done through spread-out social-ecological networks, the one I mentioned earlier. And in this case, food is not only a metabolic component of life,. If I go to the supermarket, to the grocery store, and I prepare a good meal that I share with friends, I try to create and maintain some relationships, you know.

And these relationships can also have an ethical or spiritual dimension. If I prepare food for a needy person, for example, in order to be helpful and to develop empathy and solidarity, you know. But things are quite different in traditional foodways. The metabolic dimension is still central, but the nature of the social-ecological networks is very different. At first sight, we could consider that this difference lies in the fact that traditional foodways networks are local and that spread-out networks are globalized.

But that doesn't fit with what we have seen. Remember what I have evoked about the Hawaiian voyaging canoe. It was long-distance connections through the Pacific Ocean. And the anthropologist Thomas Dalton, who I already mentioned his name, and some of his colleagues have also shown that traditional food can sometimes do long-distance travel to be shared with family and friends, as it is the case with herring eggs. It's something that I have witnessed by myself for black seaweed, for example, or for fish, be it salmon or halibut.

We must also take into account what Epeli Howofa told us about supposedly tiny islands. If size is relative, then so is distance. In the Tlingit culture, the same can be said about time, maybe. As an elder once told me, "I just met my brother," I quote. "I haven't seen him for years, for a few years, and when we got together, It's just like we were talking at breakfast time and now it's lunch.

Time doesn't mean anything. We picked up right where we left off. And we don't recognize time. That's us. End of quote.

If distance and time are relative, there are no remote regions or islands. The same can be said about wilderness. When the so-called wilderness is right where you live, You just call it home. And home is a beautiful world, a big one. Traditional food waste networks don't differ from spread-out networks because of the size of the connections, but because of their very nature.

In spread-out networks, food can have a solely metabolic dimension— provide proteins to the body. It is not the case with traditional food waste networks, which always embody multi-fibers, dimensions, and connections. When elders in Huna are offered, offered goose eggs from Glacier Bay, the most important thing is not the protein in the yolk. It is the fact that these goose eggs provide spiritual and cultural nourishment. As this example shows, one of the most important means to create multi-fiber connections through traditional foodways networks is sharing.

Sharing of food is something very common. It's not specific to Southeast Alaska and Tlingit, Tsimshian, or Haida people. It goes from food aid, as I mentioned earlier, to giving some of the mushrooms I found in fall in my own mountains to my neighbor and friends who didn't find some. Sharing can be examined scientifically in very different ways: through economic theory of exchange, through theory of moral behavior, but also through what we could call a theory of transgenerational joys and smiles, a theory of love and hope. Based on what I've been told, what I've seen, on what I have experienced in Hunan and elsewhere during my visits, sharing, especially with elders, creates joy and smiles.

It manifests a sense of cyclical respect. I'm doing for you today what you did for the elders of your own generation, and I hope the next generation will do the same for me. Remember the notion of archipelago according to Édouard Glissant. The archipelago offers a new way of measuring the world based on relationships. In this archipelago, there is no big or tiny islands.

Because the world is measured thanks to transgenerational joy and smiles. Let's use traditional foodways to develop this theory of joy, smiles, happiness, and hope as a new way of measuring people, things, islands, mainland, and the world. But what also makes traditional foodways networks very special is the relationship to wild species and ecosystems through fishing, hunting, and gathering. Considering that what is alive, everything, generates a sense of respect toward the living world. Long durée processes of co-evolution between humans and other species, detailed knowledge gained from observing species behavior and ecosystems functioning, multi-species communities,, and land-stream-ocean continuum, all of these create deep networks of connections.

That's what I witnessed during my stays in Tlingit Hani in Southeast Alaska. From the top of Thunder Mountain near Juneau to Freshwater Bay near Hoonah, from Montana Creek near the Mendenhall Glacier to Glacier Bay near Hoonah too, from clan stories to the harvest and process of David's Club, Spruce Tips, or Dungeness Crab. From fishing to sharing, what I have discovered with a lot of humility and excitement is not a remote region which depends on import for 95% of its food supply. What I witnessed and gradually became aware of is the existence of a vast archipelago of multidimensional and cyclical connections of deep networks of attachment, a world in itself, reversing the taken-for-granted relationship between centers and peripheries. What I also witness and experience is the profound dedication of native people here in Southeast Alaska to perpetuate and enhance this multidimensional living heritage, even if it is fragilized by local regional, national, or globalized forces.

And so, as you can see, it was an incredible journey for me, and I warmly thank all of you for making it possible. Thank you for your attention.

All right, that was great. Thank you. Um, do we have any questions from anyone?

Alright, not seeing any. Thank you so much for your time. That was a great presentation. Thank you on behalf of SHI, and thanks for making the trip over.