Saturday, December 18, 2010

Holiday Closure

The Museum and Archives will be closed for the holidays from December 19 to January 3.  We look forward to bringing you fresh exhibits and exciting events in the New Year.  Happy Holidays!

A wintry scene on the Granthams Landing Wharf  in the 1930s (subjects unknown). SCMA photo #3620

Monday, December 6, 2010

Sunshine Coast Day of Listening a Great Success!

On Saturday November 27th, the SCMA in collaboration with Christenson Village hosted a Day of Listening, a chance for participants to interview someone special in their lives and have the conversation recorded with professional audio equipment. The event was a resounding success - all of the time slots were booked up in advance and the participants raved about their experience.


As the participants arrived, they were treated to the hospitality of the organizers who had created a cozy environment in the museum’s library for the interviews to take place. Once the tape was rolling, the participants told stories and shared memories as their conversations were recorded by a make-shift recording studio set up outside the room. The 40-minute sessions were over in a heartbeat and many of the participants commented that they were just getting started, obviously enjoying the atmosphere and conversation! After the session was over, the organizers burned a copy of the interview onto CD so the participants could take a copy home to share with others or keep for the future. All in all, it was a wonderful day and a great way to kick-off a series of events to honour the act of listening and preserve the stories of the Sunshine Coast residents.


Due to the success of the event, another Day of Listening is planned for the new year, so keep posted to our website or call the SCMA if you have any questions at 604.886.8232


Rob interviewing Bertha.


Fabulous Bruce Devereux
Activities Coordinator at Christenson Village

Friday, December 3, 2010

A Piece of Gibsons goes to Poland

We receive visitors to our Museum & Archives from all over the world, but not all of our visitors come through the building’s front door. Our website and blog help us to reach people that may not have the opportunity to visit us in person.

We recently had a pleasant exchange with Mr. Dominik Sasim, a private collector from Warsaw, Poland. Mr. Sasim collects museum tickets and lapel pins, and he happened to contact us to inquire about acquiring items to add to his collection. We happily sent Mr. Sasim a Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives rack card and a Town of Gibsons lapel pin, in exchanged we asked him to share a bit about himself and his collection. He wrote,

I have been collecting lapel pins and badges from museums all over the world for over two years now.

My hobby has begun with the collection of post stamps together with my father. Later I switched to badges and lapel pins from various museums.

See Gibsons'  Molly's Reach - 2nd row down, 2nd pin from the right.
Now, after nearly two year of collecting I have managed to gather over 600 of them, out of which 300 are of foreign origin. My collection expands mainly thanks to exchange with other collectors as well as via internet auctions. My friends and colleagues also remember of my hobby and often bring these small souvenirs  for me from their domestic or international voyages. Additionally I often visit museums myself in search of new gadgets for my collection. With some of them I maintain contact relation. Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives has recently made me a great surprise: they have sent me beautiful lapel pin for my collection!

The oldest and most valuable exhibit in my collection is the badge from the already nonexistent Mausoleum of Zwirko and Wigura in Cierlicko that dates back in 1935. I also posses rare exhibits from most remote locations in the world, like for example the ones from Dorothy G.Page Museum in Wasilla, Alaska, or from the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum in Japan. My favourite badge is the one form the Juna Museum of Earth from Szklarska Poreba as well as the badge representing   Bluenose II Lunenburg schooner from the  Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in New Scotland.

This is in fact only a start of a collection which I intend to systematically develop and expand with new exhibits!

Museums & Archives are wonderful places for sharing histories, stories, and interests. We are fortunate to be able to be part of people’s lives, including those that live on the other side of the world.



Wednesday, November 17, 2010

A Day of Listening

Your chance to interview someone special in your life
And have their stories recorded for the future…


Date: Saturday, November 27th
Time: 1 hour sessions - from 9 am to 3 pm
Where: SCMA– 716 Winn Road, Gibsons
Contact: Call the Museum at 604-886-8232 to book a time

 
Is there someone in your life whose stories have always amazed, intrigued or inspired you? On Saturday November 27th, the SCMA in collaboration with Christensen Village would like to invite you to a Day of Listening, your chance to record a conversation with someone special in your life. You choose the person to interview and the questions you would like to ask them, and we will provide a private location at the museum for your conversation to be recorded with professional audio equipment. The question and topics that you speak about are up to you: there is no right or wrong answers and it is important to keep in mind that this is an informal process. Picture a kitchen table conversation with that person whose stories make you laugh, learn or capture your heart and imagination. Afterwards, we will burn a CD with your recorded conversation on it (or transfer it to a USB memory stick-user provided) for you to take home and share or to keep for the future. Do you have someone in mind but can’t find the right questions? Check out the Story Corps website to get started at http://storycorps.org/record-your-story/question-generator/list/.



It is the act of listening that honours another person and it is our goal to help capture the stories that are important to your life and help preserve them for the future. To pre-book a one-hour time slot, please call the SCMA at (604) 886-8232. Book soon as there are only 6 slots available and they will fill up fast.

 

Friday, November 5, 2010

Stone Artifacts Older than the Pyramids

In collaboration with the Archaeological Society of British Columbia and the Squamish Nation, we invited a group of archaeologists to catalogue, photograph and analyze the collection of over 200 stone artifacts that have been curated here at the SCMA. We invited the public to come and watch them at work and ask questions. Over the course of two days, we had close to 40 people come by, some with artifacts of their own that they wanted to have looked at. Here are some pictures from our Artifact Analysis event - public archaeology in action...



Jim Pound referencing "Stone, Bone, Antler & Shell" by Hilary Stewart

Archaeologists hard at work. Back to Front: Sarah Kavanagh, Robyn Ewing, Jennifer Lewis, Jim Pound.

Rudy Reimer speaking with a museum visitor.
Robyn Ewing, Jennifer Lewis, & Jim Pound

Sean Alward

Sarah Kavahagh photographing a hammerstone.
Jim Pound speaking with museum visitors.
Public Archaeology in action!

The work they are doing will be used to enhance our own database as well as to create a shared database that will go up on the Reciprocal Research Network an online research environment that provides access to First Nations items from the Northwest Coast and British Columbia. It allows you to search through items from many institutions across the world, all from the same convenient interface. For more information, go to http://www.rrnpilot.org/login, Pretty exciting to be a part of this! Local reporter Christine Wood came by and spoke with me and Rudy. Here's the article that appeared in today's Coast Reporter:


"HISTORY RESTORED, RECALLED IN GIBSONS"
Christine Wood/Contributing Writer
There are artifacts older than the pyramids resting at the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives in Gibsons.


Recently, a group of professional archaeologists came to the museum to analyze the First Nations wood, bead, shell and stone artifacts housed there, effectively dating some pieces to a period 5,000 years ago.


“To put that into context, the pyramids were built about 3,500 years ago, so we have pieces here that are the same age or older,” said Rudy Reimer, president of the Archaeological Society of B.C., adding that most of the artifacts are 2,000 to 3,000 years old, but some date back 4,000 to 5,000 years.


While some of the artifacts have been in the possession of the museum since 1963, the collection had not been thoroughly analyzed by an archaeologist.


“The collection has been developed over decades, and we have catalogued it, but we don’t have any expertise to properly analyze it,” said museum curator Kimiko Hawkes.


Hawkes met with Reimer while he was visiting with a Squamish Nation delegation, and she sought his expertise. Reimer was excited at the prospect of uncovering more First Nations artifacts, and he decided to bring a team to the museum to help shed some light on the history housed there. Last weekend the museum was a buzz of activity with archaeologists examining artifacts, photographing them and poring over reference materials to determine dates, uses and origins of the articles.


While Reimer’s team worked, the public was invited to come and view their efforts. More than 40 people took the time to see what was happening, and some even brought in artifacts of their own for identification.


Reimer was happy to see the community come out, noting archaeologists have been working behind closed doors for many years, not sharing their discoveries with the general public.


“We’ve kind of gotten away from our original mandate, which was to blend the interests of all people and do archaeology in public. We want to involve the community and create awareness about the fact that there are thousands of years of history here,” Reimer said.


Some of the discoveries in Gibsons included an ancient warrior’s club, pieces that show evidence of fishing and hunting technology and an unusual carving found on Mount Elphinstone that is made of a natural concrete and shell.


Some of the pieces will be studied further with the use of X-ray fluorescents, a non-destructive technology that shows where stone used in an artifact came from.


“Basically we take a chemical fingerprint and we can tie that chemical fingerprint back to the source, or where it came from,” Reimer said.


Hawkes said the museum learned a lot from Reimer’s recent visit, and they are inviting him back again in the fall to continue his work.


In the meantime, Reimer encourages anyone in the community who thinks they may have found an artifact to contact the B.C. Archaeology Branch at 1-250-953-3334.


“Some people have these things sitting in their living rooms, and I would encourage them to bring them in and have them looked at. There is a broader archeological context that we can put things into, and if we don’t we will lose that knowledge,” he said

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Voices of Women in History

The book launch on Saturday turned out to be a lovely little affair with family, friends and community members coming out to support this recent publication. Four of the women who put "Women of Pender Harbour" together were in attandance and each spoke of their role in the 10 year project. They took turns reading different passages and highlighting some of the interesting women and stories from Pender Harbour. After the talk, the crowd mixed and mingled in the gift shop area over tea, coffee and treats.

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Dorothy Faulkner

Karen Dyck

Aaron and John

Joan

l to r: Kimiko Hawkes, Pat Jobb, Karen Dyck, Dorothy Faulkner & Cathy Jenks

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Artifact Analysis


Come and watch archaeologists at work!


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Three separate communities have come together to create a public event that will showcase local First Nations history, archaeology and our local communities on the Sunshine Coast.
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Many ancient artifacts have been curated at the Sunshine Coast Museum but very little information exists around the meaning and function of these items.
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Please come and join us as archaeologists photograph, catalogue and analyze these implements so that they can be developed into an educational exhibit.
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At the Museum
716 Winn Road in Gibsons
Friday and Saturday
October 29th & 30th
from 11 to 4 each day.

"What were these used for?"

"How old are these?", "What are they made of?"

"Who used these?"

Through a collaboration between the Squamish Nation, the Archaeological Society of B.C. and the Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives, we have the rare opportunity for Rudy Reimer and other archaeologists to come to the Museum and work with the stone artifacts in our collection. They will be on hand to answer your questions and explain the process of analysis.


 

Friday, October 8, 2010

Join us for a book launch!


“Women of Pender Harbour: Their Voices, Their History”
by Dorothy Faulkner, Elaine Park, & Cathy Jenks

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
at the Museum – 716 Winn Road, Gibsons, B.C.
Reading, Q&A, and book signing with authors.
Refreshment will be served.

For more information, contact the Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives at (604) 886-8232


The coast of British Columbia is indented by inlets where early logging and fishing families established independent settlements in the wilderness. Women of Pender Harbour: Their Voices, Their History presents part of B.C.’s history through the words of the early women settlers of one of these coastal villages.
Modern Pender Harbour, today a thriving community of 2500 on the Sunshine Coast, northwest of Vancouver, was for much of the twentieth century a place that tested the courage and ingenuity of its women. The book contains life stories of women who laid the foundations of the community, such as Thawquamot Theresa Jeffries, a Shishalh girl sold into marriage to one of the first English settlers; her daughter Mary Ann Rouse, the harbour midwife in the 1920s; her granddaughter Martha Warnock, who fought the government to get a road to school for harbour children.
Women of Pender Harbour: Their Voices, Their History is published by the Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society, a voluntary non-profit group working to preserve the history of the Pender Harbour area. The book began with an idea by members of the Pender Harbour Women’s Connection group to honour the local women pioneers. After nine years of work by volunteers conducting interviews and gathering information and photographs, project leader Dorothy Faulkner, writer Elaine Park and graphics editor Cathy Jenks have woven the recollections of more than 40 pioneer women into a colourful tapestry of remembrance. The historical narrative is augmented by more than 200 heirloom photographs, biographical profiles, a Pender Harbour historical timeline, genealogies of some of the founding families and an endpaper historic map.  An original painting donated by internationally renowned artist Motoko, entitled “Boat Day at Irvines Landing,” graces the jacket cover.
Production of the book was made possible by the donated skills of Howard and Mary White of Harbour Publishing. All proceeds from sales of Women of Pender Harbour: Their Voices, Their History will support preservation of historical records and artifacts in Pender Harbour.
Jean Barman, Professor Emeritus of educational history at the University of British Columbia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is the author of several history books including The West Beyond the West, Stanley Park’s Secret, The Remarkable Adventures of Portuguese Joe Silvey and British Columbia: Spirit of the People.  She has made the following comment on the book:
“Women’s lives recounted in their own words are rare indeed. Women of Pender Harbour is a welcome exception, following forty remarkable everyday women across a century and more. These diverse women share their upbringing and first romances, their roles as wives, mothers, and fisherwomen, and their determination to build community. Through these women’s recollections, we glimpse the coastal enclave of Pender Harbour. Once isolated and self-contained, it increasingly appealed to ‘summer people,’ some of them so entranced they became residents. Women of Pender Harbour is an important slice of British Columbia history.”
On Saturday, October 23, 2010, Dorothy Faulkner, Elaine Park and Cathy Jenks will be reading selections, sharing stories, and discussing their research here at the Museum from 2 till 4 pm.  Join us for some lively conversation and refreshments. Copies of the book will be available in the gift shop and admission is by donation.


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Community Oral History

This past Saturday, we had a lively group of 17 participants gather at Christenson Village for a workshop with Prof. Helene Demers on the subject of oral history. There is never enough time in the day to cover it all but we touched on the basics and everyone received the revised copy of the Community Oral History Kit created by the Cowichan Valley Museum & Archives. Professor Demers drew from her work over the years to highlight the importance of sensitivity, compassionate listening, and ethics. The participants came from various backgrounds – residents and staff at Christenson, Quest University students, Canada World Youth participants, friends of the Museum, and interested community members; they ranged in age from 20’ish to 80’ish; and there was a nice balance of both men and women. Everyone was engaged, enthusiastic, and willing to share their own stories. By the end of the day, there was a very real sense of a collective group and a wonderful energy that comes from that. Thanks to all the participants, to Professor Helene Demers and to Bruce Devereux and the folks at Christenson Village.
 L to R: Kimiko Hawkes(SCMA), Qaqamba Koyana (Canada World Youth), Prof. Helene Demers (VIU), Selena Boan (Canada World Youth)

Bruce   

Jennifer and Jim
Rebecca, Gordon, and Jeanie

Jennifer

Sandra and John

Joanne and Caroline

Lynn and Maynard

Gordon and Jeanie


Qaqamba

I am in the midst of planning a follow-up recording session here at the museum where folks can familiarize themselves with the equipment, practice their interviewing skills, and record a session or "conversation" with a partner. Participants will receive a copy of their recording to take home. The idea is based on the StoryCorps concept:
“The heart of StoryCorps is the conversation between two people who are important to each other: a son asking his mother about her childhood, an immigrant telling his friend about coming to America, or a couple reminiscing on their 50th wedding anniversary. By helping people to connect, and to talk about the questions that matter, the StoryCorps experience is powerful and sometimes even life-changing.”
Check out http://storycorps.org for more info.
Bruce Devereux and a few others in the community have expressed interest in organizing this event and providing some of the necessary equipment. I hope to have this happen by mid-November so if you’re interested in booking a recording session, would like to help out, or just want some more information, please get in touch.


Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Monday Movie Night a Success!



It brings a smile to my face when we have a full-house for an event here at the museum - and that's exactly what happened on Monday night for the screening of the documentary, "SFU Tla'amin Field School - Summer 2008". It was standing room only for the 36 minute film and the discussion continued on into the evening. Invited guests from SFU--Barbara Winter, film director and curator of the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, John Welch, one of the field school project directors and a professor in the Department of Archaeology and School of Resource and Environmental Management, and Roxana Slujitoru, a Communications student, who did the post production and graphics for the film--answered intelligent questions and carried on a thought provoking conversation with the audience.

The title of the film doesn't do it justice. It really should be something like "Archaeology Rocks!" or "Archaeology for a Better World". Joking aside, it is a surprisingly powerful and moving documentary...who knew archaeology could be so far-reaching. A range of topics were covered like the process of collaboration, the importance of the herring fishery, the effects of logging on archaeological sites, and the intertidal zone. The message throughout was one of conservation: conservation of archaeological sites, of herring as a 'keystone species', and of Tla'amin culture and heritage.

The reason I felt this film was so relevant to show to the community at the public museum was because it speaks so directly to the power of collaboration. The SCMA is in the process of community bridging and working collaboratively with both the Squamish and Sechelt First Nations on a new exhibit, and it's a very exciting time. On another level, events like this bring people together. The museum becomes a place where conversations take place, and points of view are shared with the understanding that the multiple perspectives are what create a vibrant community. After watching the film (for the fourth time) and partaking in the event as a whole, I was left with a renewed sense of commitment to community involvement, collaboration, and creating links.

SFU Professor Dana Lapofsky is interviewed in the film and her words give me goosebumps: "I think for a lot of people these days, we're really aware that the Earth is hurting, it's damaged, it's just on this trajectory of doom. And for me, the way to take back the Earth and the trajectory we're on, is to make small changes...to build relations, from person to person, and from community to community, and making those links...realizing that we are all good people, and we all care about the future of the planet, the future of our families."

This field school is a collaboration between SFU and the Tla'amin, the students and the Tla'amin youth, the project directors and the elders. And yet, it's a powerful example for us all. As Lapofsky points out, "One-on-one, group-to-group, community-to-community, I feel like we're strengthening the fabric among people and that can only, only make the world a better place. And I take just huge joy from that". 

So do I.

check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pged9cYg0NQ

Friday, September 3, 2010

Community Bridging in Action - Part II

Here is another article that provides some background to the collaboration between the SFU Archaeology Department and the Sliammon First Nation:

Our once teeming shores
BY RANDY SHORE, VANCOUVER SUN JULY 24, 2009

SLIAMMON -- The herring are all gone. Most of the chum, too. Clams and oysters lie uneaten on the beach, made poisonous by the industrial encroachment a few miles up the beach in Powell River.

Those foods were once the currency of a sophisticated marine economy for the local first nation, the Tla’Amin people. The life they supported exists now in the memory of village elders, those who are left.

On this day a handful of elders attend a community day planned by Simon Fraser University archeologists Dana Lepofsky and John Welch and their students, but there is sadness in the air. The village is planning a funeral for Bessie Peters, an elder who has died.

It is the ninth funeral this year, each a devastating blow for a small community of 700 people struggling to maintaina relationship with its past.

Welch and Lepofsky are here to help flesh out the oral history using the archeological record. They are conducting surgical excavations of the human habitations that have ringed these bays for at least 2,000 years.

The elders’ living memories are of a time when the beach turned white with herring roe each spring, when
carefully constructed pools on the beach were so thick with fish they could be harvested by the basket.

“We used to come every year when the tide went out to branch for herring eggs,” said Tla’Amin elder Charlie Bob.

As a boy, Bob helped weight and sink cedar boughs and tree tops just below the low tide mark so they wouldremain submerged.

Desperate to spawn, the herring mistake the cedar for kelp and lay their eggs in thick layers on the branches. Hemlock boughs were sometimes used too, but Bob disliked the needles that would inevitably get mixed in with the roe and usually used cedar for its sturdier foliage.

“We’d have it anchored out there and leave it maybe two nights and the eggs would pile up on it,” he recalled, looking out into the bay where he once harvested his family’s food from a dugout canoe. “Then we would pull them all out and dry them.”

Bob learned to harvest all that the ocean had to offer from his grandmother and other village elders and spent most of his days as a young man hunting and fishing.

They also taught him the Tla’Amin tongue, which he had forgotten because he was forbidden to speak it during eight years at a government-run residential school.

He still speaks the language and teaches it to the children in Sliammon along with the basics of wood-carving three times a week.

The beaches now are empty of herring roe, its harvest a lost art.

Empty, too, are the fish traps and clam farms that spread like a lattice-work across the beaches here, on Harwood Island and at camp locations throughout Tla’Amin territory. The traps are carefully engineered complexes of holding pools and guideways that concentrated the fish on the beach or in holding areas just below the water’s surface.

Rather than living passively with the topography provided by nature, the Tla’Amin people terraformed and
managed their lands and beaches intensively, said Lepofsky, who is in Sliammon for a second summer of study with the community.

The archeological team has already unearthed evidence that the Tla’Amin moved large amounts of earth to build foundations for their longhouses and that their provenance is ancient. A line of boulders on the beach stretches for several hundred metres, the remains of a fish trap that would have been buttressed by an equally long row of wood pilings. The beach on the point north of Sliammon village is entirely covered with a complex of traps that catch fish, trap cod roe and warm standing water to encourage clams to grow there.

“The memory of the place is of incredibly rich, diverse ecosystems and with that a deep ecological knowledge,” said Lepofsky. “There was very specific timing to do things, like not fishing the herring until the water turned white with the spawn.”

A time of plenty

The people moved from place to place in ancient times to intercept runs of herring, chum, sockeye and pink as they came into season.

Everywhere they went fish traps were built and maintained, with similar design features repeated in far-flung locations but adapted to local currents and conditions.

Some crossed streams, others were placed below the low water mark while others still were higher on the beach, suggesting that different kinds of technology and different parts of the intertidal zone were used for different prey or at different times of the year.

“The knowledge about the fish traps is fairly limited today,” Lepofsky said. Living memory of the traps is nearly gone, however, the archeological record points to continuous, systematic harvest of a whole range of sea life stretching back many centuries.

Some traps were still in use as late as the 1950s.

“I remember going with the grandmother down there to scoop baskets and take out herring,” Emily August said, nodding toward the pools revealed by the day’s low tide. “We would bring it all up the beach in a wheelbarrow and everyone would get their share.”

Herring was smoked on the beach for consumption throughout the year.

As a member of the chief’s family, August would have to wait as each family in the village took a share of the catch. “That was the way that Chief Tom did it and his dad, too.

“We always went last because as chief it was his job to look after his people,” she explained.

It was a time when a man didn’t need a job to provide for his family.

“It was peaceful and people shared,” said elder Peter August, Emily’s uncle. “If you couldn’t get it for yourself someone got it for you, you didn’t need money.”

“Now we have to get our food from the Safeway,” he said. “But it’s not the same.”

Sliammon Beach was once speckled with shacks and cedar racks that were used to process, smoke or dry oysters, clams, fish roe, herring, salmon and ground fish. Today the foreshore is a soccer field and a children’s playground built of red and yellow plastic.

“We used to get all these things on the beach here before the water was contaminated,” said Bob. “You can’t even touch it now.”

Clams were steamed and then skewered on sticks and fire-dried. Roe was cured in the sun on the racks. Both could be rehydrated for eating by an overnight soak in water and both were used for trade.

“We would take it over to Cape Mudge and trade it for oolichan oil, medicine or women, like a wife,” Emily August said. Marriages between first nations were often sealed with the delivery of a dugout canoe loaded with preserved food.

August’s great-grandfather, hereditary Chief Tom Timothy was betrothed as per tradition to a woman from Cape Mudge with a boat full of plenty, but caused a scandal when he chose a younger sister of the woman to accompany him home.

“That was a very bad problem,” she said, though his descendants are able to laugh about it now. “The one that he paid for got the boat and the paddles and all the food and he got a wife that didn’t speak a word of our language.”

The beginning of the end

Herring catches in B.C’s coastal waters exploded in the 1950s and 1960s and the commercial fishery grew unchecked until the unthinkable happened: The fish were gone.

The commercial catch peaked at more than 250,000 tonnes in 1966 and dropped to zero in 1967. The fishery remained closed for four years to allow stocks to recover and some did. But the resident stock at Sliammon has never returned to its historic abundance.

The herring catch in recent years for the whole coast of B.C. averages around 25,000 tonnes, though it dropped as low as 12,000 tonnes in 2007.

“The seiners came in and cleaned [the herring] all out,” said Bob, who watched from the beach as commercial fishermen emptied the waters of his people’s staple food. “I think there were 300 of them.”

Though the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Tla’Amin have long disagreed about the existence of a local resident herring stock, recent DFO studies indicate that herring populations in B.C. run the full continuum from entirely resident to entirely migratory.

“If it wasn’t a resident stock, why didn’t they come back?” asked Peter August. “This used to be one to be one of the richest places for herring, salmon and bottom fish.”

The seiners returned in the 1980s and took what was left.

“Back in the ’80s was the last time we saw herring in this area,” said August, once a fisherman himself.

A 2003 agreement in principle for a treaty negotiated with the provincial government conceded that the Tla’Amin would likely have to go outside their traditional fishing area to obtain herring afforded them under the treaty.

The Sliammon fish traps rarely produce today and haven’t been actively used for decades. But when a school of chum was stranded in a trap on Sliammon Beach the whole village came out to see them. Then they had a barbecue, just like old times.

The creek that flows through Sliammon was once overloaded with chum, elders say. Today a fish hatchery operates in an effort to rebuild what has been lost. But without the herring as a food fish, it seems unlikely that the salmon can ever fully recover.

“It’s hard to fix once it is destroyed,” he said.

The hatchery has been working to help the chum and coho recover for more than 25 years and Sliammon Creek has a few thousand returners some years, other years not as many. A community smokehouse on the site was built to help the community’s young people regain the art of smoking their own fish. Chum emptied of their eggs are used for smoking.

Looking back to look forward

The archeology project at Sliammon is a collaboration between SFU and the Tla’Amin people. For Lepofsky and Welch it is a chance to study a first nation that academia has largely ignored. For the Tla’Amin it is a chance to recover some of what has been lost.

“When you look, there are herring bones everywhere and they supported people for thousands of years and created an elaborate fishing technology and now there’s none of it left,” she said.

The number of dwellings identified around the bays at Sliammon indicate a population much larger than exists today, Lepofsky opined. “We are finding there were huge numbers of people here,” she said. “But those settlements have passed out of memory.”

The regular impressions left by the longhouses are easy to spot and make popular building sites even today as they are already level and angled to face the bay and each other. Many of the longhouse excavation sites are cut into people’s back lawns.

At a time which has yet to be determined, many of the longhouses suddenly ceased to be dwellings and were covered with midden material, which suggests the locations were used for shellfish processing. The remains of clams, oysters and surprisingly thick layers of urchin shell, banded in both green and purple, are clearly visible in the excavations.

A smallpox epidemic in the mid-19th century killed about 80 per cent of the first nations people in B.C., Lepofsky said. A theory circulating among archeologists points to another pandemic several hundred years earlier, meaning the smallpox epidemic of 1862 killed most of what was already a decimated population.

Swift death by disease devastates the knowledge base of a society based on oral tradition as those with the history and the expertise are lost before they can pass on what they know.

“These cultures were harmed in ways we can’t even get our heads around,” Lepofsky said.

In addition to the archeology students working on the project are two young Tla’Amin: university student Lisa Wilson and Tanner Timothy, a descendant of Chief Tom Timothy.

Wilson hopes to return next summer as a student rather than an employee of the project, but for now she is happy to begin to uncover some of what has been lost.

Wilson spent her summers in Cowichan as a child and didn’t learn as much of the traditional knowledge as she would have liked. After each day on the project, she rushes home to tell her father what she has learned.

“It’s amazing because I am sharing history with him,” Wilson said. “We’re learning it together.”

Wilson is constantly surprised by what the archeological record reveals about the complexity and inter-relatedness of the ecological knowledge of her ancestors. “It’s all-encompassing,” she said. “I feel so blessed to be able to come home and use my abilities and share what I know with my friends.

“They are getting excited about archeology and what it means to our community looking forward,” she said.


rshore@vancouversun.com
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Saturday, August 28, 2010

MOVIE NIGHT! Monday, September 13th at 6:00 pm...

Screening of SFU Tla’amin Field School – Summer 2008

36.34 minutes, Documentary Film, General

Presented by the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives

The Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives invites you to attend a screening of the documentary film “SFU Tla’amin Field School – Summer 2008”on Monday, September 13th at 6:00 pm. Working on the beautiful British Columbia coast within the Tla’amin First Nation’s traditional territory, SFU archaeologists and Tla’amin community members uncover some of the fascinating history of this people and this land. Learn more about community-bridging and collaborative partnerships as Archaeologists and First Nations work together on this project. The film also looks at the effect of logging on archaeological sites in the region, clam gardens and other inter-tidal features of the area, and traditional herring fishery and conservation. Meet the director of the film, Dr. Barbara Winter and one of the project directors, Dr. John Welch. Both will be in attendance and available for questions and discussion after the screening.

Barbara Winter is the director of the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology with research interests in museology, visual archaeology, video and new media, artifact conservation, ethnology and ethnoarchaeology, heritage legislation and issues in the curation of archaeological and ethnological collections. Dr. Winter explores ways to enhance exhibits in the museum gallery with new media, and creates complex award winning websites and short videos on various topics in archaeology, ethnology and forensics.

John Welch is an anthropologist and social archaeologist with research and policy interests grounded in broad questions about how communities develop, employ, and sustain environmental and cultural conservation precepts and practices. In pursuit of indigenous heritage stewardship, Dr. Welch facilitates partnerships that formalize and advance community agendas to explore what archaeology can do - how archaeological sites, methods, perspectives, and data can enhance land and place histories, stewardship practices, Indigenous community capacities, wellness, education, and intercultural reconciliation.

Seats here at the museum are limited so be sure to arrive a few minutes early. We are located at 716 Winn Road, right across from the Post Office in lower Gibsons. For more information about the event, contact us at 604-886-8232. To learn more about the project, check out the award winning website:

http://www.sliammonfirstnation.com/archaeology/index.html