Architecture x Agriculture - 2

This is a series that we originally hosted on Instagram where we shared ongoing research, precedents, and agriculture related practices that have inspired us at MOTIV.

June 21 is Indigenous peoples day and we marked it by sharing a few indigenous farming practices, and ancestral food/processes found in local BC and North America.

Three Sisters refers to an indigenous farming technique involving companion planting of corn, beans, and squash. The beans pull nitrogen from the air to the soil and use the corn stalk for climbing infrastructure. The large leaves of the squash shade the soil and their prickly texture keeps pest away. The sisters provide a balanced diet from a single planting.

“Pimîhkân” in Cree or Pemmican, refers to a mixture of tallow, dried meat, and dried berries combined to create a highly nutritious food. It can be consumed raw, cooked in stews, or fried with onion and potato. The meat was cut in thin slices and dried over fire or in the sun until hard and brittle. It was then pounded into a powder form with stone to be combined with melted fat and local berries. Pemmican was produced as a means to achieve year-round food security.

“Eulachon”, or “halimotkw” [which translates to “salvation fish”] refers to a smelt fish that is aged and processed for its oil. Harvested by generations of indigenous people in British Columbia, it is also commonly smoked or dried. The eulachon's buttery flesh is so rich in oil that a dried fish will light and burn like a candle. Eulachon are left to ferment for several days on a bed of cedar boughs. To render the fish for oil, it is cooked at a particular temperature in order to release the grease.