Traditional Uses of Our Land
We are people of the temperate rain forest and Pacific Ocean. Within our territories are diverse and productive biological communities. These include plants such as algae, mosses, lichens, fungi, ferns, conifers and flowering plants, and animals such as cnidarians (jellyfish and their relatives), mollusks, arthropods, echinoderms, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. This living world has provided for generations the physical and spiritual foundations — the foods, medicines and materials we cherish — of our culture. Beginning in early 1995, the U'mista Cultural Society initiated a program of research to document information on the plants and animals known to and used by the Kwakwaka'wakw. Some of the results — 101 plants and animals — were gathered together and published in a book, The Living World. Use the thumbnails on the left to explore a small sampling from the book.
