Taylor Roades (b. 1990) is a Canadian documentary photographer based in Victoria, British Columbia. Her work is grounded in place and the natural sciences, exploring our connection to land, culture, climate and the environment.






































































  
         


                   05.W̱SÁNEĆ Hereditary Chiefs Protect Herring in Salish Sea

Photographed: November 2024
Location: Saanich, British Columbia, CA
Environment and Climate, Indigenous Stories

Published: The Narwhal, November 2024
W̱SÁNEĆ hereditary chiefs are urgently trying to get a fishing moratorium in place, for
B.C.’s commercial herring fishery in the Strait of Georgia.
They signed a declaration calling for a 20-year closure in the Strait of Georgia to allow herring to recover. They are asserting their rights to fish as they did before contact, as protected in the Douglas Treaty and maintaining W̱SÁNEĆ Title. 

Before contact, First Nations had access to herring year round, herring provided a big feast in the spring, while smoked and dried fish lasted through the winter and served as a trade item.

Even in his own youth, WIĆKINEM recalls, fish were plentiful in the area. Right into the 1970s, herring was still a reliable food source. Then, the decline began. “Every year the spawning got worse until there was nothing,” he says.
Hereditary Chief TELAXTEN, Paul Sam Sr. of Tsartlip First Nation, is one of the W̱SÁNEĆ hereditary chiefs who say they haven’t heard any movement from the federal government on their assertion of Treaty Rights to fish and their demand for a moratorium on the commercial herring fishery in the Georgia Strait.
Tsawout Hereditary Chief Eric Pelkey, or WIĆKINEM, says herring spawns used to be common in the Saanich Peninsula but now his people have to venture further out to harvest. The herring spawn of the Georgia Strait is the “last gasp” in the territory, he says.
SXÁLIYE, Tsawout Hereditary Chief Vernon Harry, said herring are “vital to the health of our people” and sea life.