Dusk to Dawn II: Cranberries Naturally Mural

Illuminating the story of the cranberry for the Coast Salish peoples, this mural vibrantly expresses the importance of a natural resource and how Coast Salish peoples were the ones to teach settlers this storied knowledge.

This mural, Dusk to Dawn II: Cranberries Naturally, a continuation of a mural painted in 2006 for a company in Fort Langley which harvests and manufactures culinary products purely from cranberries. To connect the story of this wild resource to the company, the mural expresses how Coast Salish peoples brought knowledge of certain types of foods, their benefits and how to cultivate them to settlers in the area.

This subversion of what eventually becomes a colonial narrative is codified in the vibrancy of the peoples depicted among the cranberry imagery. The Cranberry was a wild resource that grew in abundance in the boggy areas of the territories. We harvested this resource for food, medicine, preservatives and stored it in surplus for winter months (especially as a vitamin c supplement). When the Hudson’s Bay Company first arrived, the berry was traded with them to nourish traders and the first settlers.

The cranberries of today almost wholly come from Coast Salish territories. Juice, sauce, all its forms. The mural depicts how it was then, and how it continues to be today.