Feasting for Change Event Snitcel March 13th 2009

Hello all Feasting Friends

It was a wonderful day, as the students from UVIC, people of Feasting for Change, the SeaChange staff came together to celebrate the beauty and sacredness of Snitcel. The sun was shining and people were getting busy digging the pit and building a fire. The group of UVIC students and community members were split up into four smaller groups the first one went to a nearby stream to collect more rocks; the second harvested salal branches, with the third picked sword ferns and then the forth collected oceanspray. The rocks, salal branches and sword ferns were for the pit while the oceanspray was used for a clam bake and make baked bread too.
When it was time to put the materials in the pit when the rocks were hot enough to cook with; every one of the volunteers worked amazingly fast. There were seven pairs that were lined up in the order that layers in the pit. The layers were salal, sword fern, then the root vegetables, and apples with clams; then the order was revised sword fern and salal on the top. While all of that was going on the clam bake was taking place down on the beach.

After the pit was closed, I (Lewis) told a legend story about how some of the birds got they songs while we all sat to enjoy some medicine tea that was collected by some of the students. The plants that were harvested were:

-trailing blackberry leaves (Rubus ursinus)
-licorice fern rhizome (Polypodium glycyrrhiza)
-Red Cedar tips (Thuja plicata)
-Yerba buena (Clinopodium douglasii)
-stinging nettle (Urtica dioica)
-lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)

We also enjoyed some smoked salmon soup make by Jen, Sue and Doug. It was delicious. The weather was changing a bit so it really warmed us all up.
We then got back to work and split into 2 groups – One group was to learn about the plants in Snitcel and the other was to help remove invasive species in the park. It was amazing to see how much work the groups got done. They were powerful and passionate in removing the invasive species while learning about all the medicines and indigenous plants in the territory.
As the groups came back together they could go down to the water and spend time watching Earl Claxton Jr prepare this Iron wood sticks to bake the clams and bake the oysters by the fire. Earl is such a wealth of knowledge and stories. Thank you.

It was now time to enjoy the bounty of the Pit. As the group got together they opened the pit and we feasted on the root veggies, clams, apples and it was delicious.
Thank you to everyone, Nikki from Seachange, Brenda Beckwith Uvic and her amazing class, the feasting for change working group especially Doug, Sue, Jen and Fiona

Lewis Williams, Tsawout First Nation
Seachange and Feasting for Change