1.1 Overview
The pursuit and use of wild food resources have shaped the human species—our physical nature, our ability to reason and plan for the future , our capacity to interact with others to achieve important societal goals. Although we have moved into an era in which ready-made foods and sedentary lifestyles are commonplace, the human past is deeply imprinted in our genome. Indeed, if a now conservatively estimated 130,000-year lifespan of Homo sapiens (Klein 2009) is proportionately represented by the 24-hour clock, and if the advent of the industrial revolution is seen as marking a new era of human social behavior, then our history as hunters, gatherers, and horticulturists had lasted for 23 hours and 52 minutes of the human day .
In an evolutionary sense then, being human equates fundamentally with successful long-term adaptation to basic environmental challenges and opportunities around the planet. Most of the “human day ” has been dedicated to the development of understanding about the natural environment and its resources, and efficient means for pursuing, harvesting , consuming, and effectively managing those resources. Modern societies have developed to their current state only because our forebears successfully adapted to the planet’s marine and terrestrial environments over the course of time.
Basic life requirements such as acquisition of food , shelter, and medical services continue to drive human behavior across the planet. Adaptive responses to the shifting environmental conditions that condition food security occur at all levels, from the molecular to the macro-social. Today, individuals in most human societies are dependent on commercial-scale agriculture , and most participate in capitalist - or state-based modes of production. As such, the majority of humans are both removed from the direct production of food resources and are in some way subject to market impacts resulting from broad-scale environmental change such as drought or shifts in the availability of seafood . When pursuit of wild food resources does occur in such societies, it is typically for purposes of commerce or recreation under the governing scrutiny of the state .
At the other end of the spectrum, individuals in a small number of societies located in remote parts of the world continue to subsist primarily, and in some rare cases solely, through pursuit, use, and consumption of living marine and terrestrial resources and the products of rudimentary agriculture that require natural resources of arable soil , soil-based minerals, sun, and air . Fully isolated hunting and gathering societies are increasingly rare, and although a few tribal groups in Brazil , New Guinea , and the Andaman Islands continue to resist sustained contact with the outside world, virtually all have in some way been affected by modern technology and other sources of external change (Anderson 2016).
Members of yet other contemporary societies around the world take part in both ancient and modern ways of living. They participate in various forms of contemporary economic production while supplementing the household economy with foods harvested through hunting , fishing, gathering, and small-scale agriculture . Today, as in the past, such activities often involve strong inter- and intra-familial social relationships in which reciprocal sharing of food , labor , and other resources are typical and critically important for survival . This way of life is common across the globe in the twenty-first century, particularly in rural areas where economic opportunities are limited and relationships between people and traditional use of wild food resources have persisted despite centuries of profound social and economic change. This is true in certain rural areas of the United States, for instance, and it is certainly the case among many Native Hawaiians, American Samoans , Chamorros (Guam ), Refaluasch (Northern Mariana Islands), Alaska Natives , American Indians , and other indigenous culture groups in what is now the United States and its territories.
Many active members of indigenous groups around the United States and elsewhere in the world retain a deep interest in their ancient cultures and ways of life while creatively negotiating the many requirements and opportunities of modern lifeways . This dynamic process is a core theme of this book, and, because acquisition of food from land and sea is an essential part of the survival equation, and a pivotally important area of indigenous knowledge past and present, special focus is applied to strategies that continue to ensure food security for those involved.
The pursuit and use of wild foods are beneficial in many ways. For instance, farming, hunting , and fishing require cognitive understanding and metabolic energy, thereby contributing to individual and collective fitness —in keeping with the evolutionary architecture of the human body and mind. Such activities also require cooperative interaction with others and thereby provide opportunities for enhancing social relationships between individuals and families as well as within families.
Hunting , fishing, and gathering also require knowledge of when, where, and how to pursue wild foods . Such ecological and practical knowledge is often communicated across generations , thereby positively reinforcing aspects of family and community life, including customary use of wild foods . Among anthropologists , this form of understanding is generally known as traditional ecological knowledge .
Wild foods are also typically rich in organic nutrients and provide immediate dietary benefits to consumers. Such foods are often also shared, bartered , or customarily exchanged or traded in family and community settings, supporting culturally mediated forms of social and economic interaction. When wild-sourced foods are sold in the commercial marketplace , some portion of the monies so generated is often reinvested into natural resource harvesting activities, contributing to household and community economies and cultures in a mutually reinforcing manner.
Finally, the harvest of wild foods in many cases indirectly facilitates conservation of the natural environment. While hunting and fishing may seem contrary to the goals of many non-indigenous conservationists, such activities are often undertaken in keeping with site-specific customary practices that involve careful attention to effects on local ecosystems inasmuch as such effects may affect potential for food production over time. This book discusses various settings in which subsistence -oriented wild food harvesting traditions and environmental conservation objectives are complementary rather than incompatible.
That indigenous persons in contemporary American societies should continue to regularly pursue and use natural resources of land and sea for purposes of sustenance, while also taking part in modern forms of economic production is the combined outcome of history, modern economic pressures , ongoing interest in acquiring and consuming nutritious wild foods and persistent valuation of cultural identity . Each of these factors clearly holds true for many in contemporary Native Hawaiian society, the group that is the respected focus of this book.
Even today, many Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders prioritize activities that were fundamental to the successful colonization of the most remote archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Descendants of the first colonists continue to hahai holoholona (hunt animals, such as wild boar ) in the uplands and mountains ; lawaiʻa (fish) along the nearshore zone and in the deep sea ; harvest fish from loko iʻa (fish ponds ); gath...