culture

Cultural keystone species

A species so deeply woven into a people's material life, diet, language, ceremony and identity that its loss restructures the culture itself rather than merely inconveniencing it. Ann Garibaldi and Nancy Turner introduced the term in 2004. The canonical example is western red cedar for the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest Coast: canoes, plank houses, poles, rope, woven bark clothing, medicine, ceremony and social standing all run through one tree. Salmon for coastal peoples; the saguaro for the Tohono O'odham, whose harvest sets the calendar. When such a species goes, vocabulary loses its referents, social roles built around harvesting have nothing to attach to, and ceremonial calendars lose their keys. At this level ecological and cultural loss are one process, not two.