Tour Overview
Capilano River is a special place and the watershed that has supported the lives of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and their neighbouring relatives for millennia. Our people continue to fish and drink the waters to this day.
Local Talaysay guide and a trained Indigenous ambassador-educator will introduce the students to the forests, the cultural stories and shared practices of the indigenous ecological and spiritual perspectives that have sustained Coast Salish Indigenous people for generations.
- This program shares indigenous practices of living, via sustainable and selective harvesting
- Local history and ecology of the North Shore, the Capilano River
- Salmon – The Cycle of Life. An emphasis on the salmon as a special resource to the local Indigenous People. Water as Life. Issues and the awareness of a shared responsibility to the protection of water.
- Forest Meditation – The students will be invited to participate in a forest meditation
- The Tree of Life – Cedar, it’s sacred gifts: medicine, technology, shelter, clothing, transportation
- West Coast Temporal Rain Forest – an ultimate community network
- The Land is Us and We are the Land – land management techniques, the social practices. Selective burning, the various forms for practiced agriculture, transplanting, pruning
- Your class will learn about the maple tree, Douglas Fir tree, Red Alder tree, the Western Hemlock, and the many wild berries and plants of this region
- Plants as medicine, frog leaves, plantain, horsetail – the forest is our grocery story and pharmacy
- This program will highlight the significance of wild salmon and how it has supported the material and social development of complex indigenous societies here on the Northwest Coast.
LOCATION: Capilano Salmon Hatchery, 4500 Capilano Park, North Vancouver, BC v&R 4L3