The beauty underneath: A critical coastal governance approach to revitalize indigenous shellfish harvest

Indigenous communities have feasted from their tidelands since time immemorial. Yet today, many are disconnected due to land development, pollution, overharvest, and colonial law. Coastal First Nations live within the reality of their inherent laws and ways of being, held in tension with the restrictions and confusion of Canadian laws, funding models and bureaucracies. There is a need to bring enriched understanding and clarity to coastal ecosystems governance to address the overlapping crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, and food insecurity. Indigenous-led governance could provide a way forward. Featured through the example of shellfish management in Boundary Bay, Canada, this participatory action research study applies a critical coastal governance lens and systems thinking approach to evaluate existing colonial governance frameworks and complex interjurisdictional, intertidal relationships. By amplifying Indigenous voices and knowledge from a specific coastline through community filmmaking and story mapping, current gaps and dysfunction are addressed. Our analysis reveals that to operationalize this approach to coastal governance, Indigenous communities must be acknowledged and supported as leaders with the capacity and authority to carry out governance in their territory, influencing land and water management on a watershed scale. While legal resistance tools are effective in some cases to address issues of Aboriginal rights and title, collaborative approaches can be more effective. We elaborate short, medium and long-term recommendations to achieve a revitalized shellfish harvest and healthy bay ecosystem by centering Indigenous-led coastal governance. • Barriers to revitalizing shellfish harvest include: jurisdictional complexity, polluted runoff, and capacity constraints. • Indigenous-led watershed governance can shift paradigms within Canadian shellfish jurisdictional frameworks. • Indigenous-led collaborative remediation and monitoring rebuilds reciprocal relationships and enables food sovereignty.