Nancy Turner focuses on the plants that provided heat, shelter, transportation, clothing, clothing, nets, ropes, and containers -- the necessities of life for First Peoples in B.C. and adjacent territories. She also shows how plant materials were effectively used in many other ways, such as for decoration and ornamentation, as scents, cleansing agents, and insect repellents, and for recreational activities.

Over the millennia, the First Peoples have become highly skilled in the arts of working with plant materials. Turner describes more than 100 plants, their various uses and their importance in the material cultures of First Nations. Each description has a colour photograph of the plant to aid in its identification.

Nancy Turner is an ethnobotanist, and Distinguished Professor Emerita, School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, Canada. She has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 50 years, helping to document, retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and environments, including Indigenous foods, materials and traditional medicines. Her two-volume book, Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge (July, 2014; McGill-Queen’s University Press), integrates her long term research. She has authored or co-authored/co-edited 30 other books, including: Plants of Haida Gwaii; The Earth’s Blanket; “Keeping it Living” (with Doug Deur); Saanich Ethnobotany (with Richard Hebda), and Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples, and over 150 book chapters and papers. Her latest edited book is Plants, People and Places: the Roles of Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology in Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Canada and Beyond (2020). She has received a number of awards for her work, including membership in Order of British Columbia (1999) and the Order of Canada (2009), honorary degrees from University of British Columbia, University of Northern British Columbia and Vancouver Island and Simon Fraser Universities.

Nancy Turner's profile page

... this volume is a culmination of plant knowledge form the fields of ethnobotany, botany, ethnology, and particularly the work of Turner and the multitude of Aboriginal peoples she has worked with in the province. Plant Technology of First Peoples in British Columbia is a well-organized, written, and formatted resource. The photographs, though small, are clear and now in colour ... These various attributes combine to make this a multi-purpose that reaches a diverse audience, including aboriginal and academic researchers as well as the general public.

The Midden, vol.32, no. 1-2000

This excellent field guide to many plants native to British Columbia emphasizes the traditional technological uses of plant materials by the First Peoples of the region ... This well-organized, clearly written book contains a wealth of fascinating information for both the ethno-botanist and the interested layperson.

CBRA, 4226