276_Arnett_Shiya'hwt-Ganges-Grace-Islet-History.mp3
otter.ai
19.04.2023
no
Speaker 1 0:00
It's great to see so many people showing interest in this subject, I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we're on unceded. Territory owned by various Coast Salish families from Vancouver Island and other areas. And yeah, it was actually when I read the driftwood, they sort of the Caspian is an expert on First Nations stuff. And I should qualify that then I'm a non native expert on First Nations stuff, I would never compare my knowledge to any of the various elders that I've worked with, I've been really fortunate to work with a lot of elders who have had family connections to this island. And it's been a study of mine since I moved here 27 years ago, to kind of seek out these people and their stories to teach myself about the history of this place. And what uh, you know, as many of you probably know, when it comes to First Nations history, it's very hard to, to get information. And, you know, it's really not surprising, and you understand the history of the place we live in. You know, just think about it, you know, 90 of people go into consulting after about 155 years, and most of the history that's been written about the school province is written by newcomers. For the last two years, when Chris was requested to use the microphone. He was the last few 100 years. Nobody, even the last few. But anyway. So an interest of mine is to reconcile that history with First Nations history. I'm an archaeologist, and I'm also an anthropologist, and as an anthropologist, I'm interested in cultural diversity. I mean, that's what we studied cultural diversity, and social relations. So I'm also an archaeologist and I sort of study, you know, let's say extinct, or fossilized or the material remains of culture. But I'm also very cognizant and very aware that the material I study is connected directly to living people today. And actually, that really is a privilege for me to work in a place where there's direct historical and cultural continuity with between the past that I study and the present day people. So a lot of my work involves working with the Senate communities, working with the historical records, historic records, and the archaeology, which are the subsurface remains of the past. So today, I'm going to talk about the eight I'm going to give a history and archaeology of Ganges area. Again, it's only been known to scam us for a while. Here we got a bunch of different names to this place Ganges. The oldest names of the places she hoped with which you can see the hot comedian version of the talk, followed by the Sun chocolate version showed both pretty similar presentations. And it's varying opinions about what what this translates as Saanich people have told me it means a place of caution, hope comedian people think it's hollow place to the very unsure but the name and they all say this refers to the fact it's very, very old place. And Saanich people have told me that there's a recollection of showed a connection to their origin stories, you know, first origins, so it has a lot of history that still preserved in the communities, but it's not very accessible because a lot of this knowledge is family owned, privileges and knowledge and you know, if you're lucky, and respectful, sometimes you can gain information, or gain access to this information, and then Ganges. This place is named after a river on the Indian subcontinent. It was also the name of royalty worship worship, it was in a spiral for three years, little less than three years actually, the HMS Ganges was never in these waters, it's too big. And the waters at that time were were kind of sketchy. They weren't well maps, so it was a dangerous place for a Giant warship be traveling around. And of course, again, this is also the name of the president town of Ganges Captain Richards who was the surveyor for the Royal Navy, and he named Well, actually, you didn't even name it. I don't know who chosen and yeah, there's probably somebody somebody here I know, that bought some damages was established as a town in the early part of the 20th century. They chose that name. I mean, even I'm just trying to think now, you know, Dante's Harvey's to call Admiralty harbor but anyway, they're all references to officers and ships Royal Navy, that sort of clung Richards kind of a storehouse of data and we sort of winter as a name places after his colleagues, friends anyway. Getting back to the older history people have probably lived here. Well, we don't know. And I got also qualified as to archaeology is not much known about the archaeology in this area, there is very little work done. It's the nature of the business archaeology is, even though there's a lot of uncertainty in it, there's a lot of sampling issues. But over the years, the cumulative data starts to give us a little sketch of the past, you know, just the stuff here skeleton really, and archaeologists aren't all created equal. I like to like an archaeology to the medical profession with the two distinctions. The medical profession has a sort of a universal approach to disease and to health care, and all that sort of stuff. And they also have general practitioners and specialists, archaeology has no universal approach to anything. There's as many different archaeologists as there are archaeologists, and it's very many theoretical perspectives. And so that's a good thing to bear in mind. But there are but there are specialists in archaeology, there are people that are sort of general technicians that can work anywhere in the world with the skills they have to excavate. Subsurface means that there are also specialists who do their archaeology in a specific cultural areas, and they make themselves very aware of his weight as well as it can be of the culture that is in the place that the Senate communities and I aspire to the ladder, I tried to incorporate a lot of indigenous knowledge into my archaeology, the science and the, the essence of science, if you will, because I ultimately, for the goal of mutually compatible histories, that's what I'm really interested in. I don't like these divides between history and prehistory. Anybody who's thinking previously in mind, you know, just forget that word. That's a really ugly word around here, because these people aren't free anything. You know, they, there's, that's an artificial divide that's actually used. It's very handy for separating us the newcomers from the people who've lived here for 1000s of years. There's no prehistory, it's just history. And just to situate, and to show you, we're in a very interesting place, he has a Saltspring Island, it's the largest for the Gulf Islands, and had the largest pre contact populations. Just to throw this out there. There's been a lot of new demographic studies done in British Columbia. And they estimate the Caribbean 1 million people create context, in which place known as British Columbia. And this area, British Columbia was one of the most populated areas on the coast Saltspring was there may have been three, four or five different village sites here. But it contains a large population, the evidence is quite obvious to anybody who knows where to look. And the interesting thing about Ganesh is that it's sort of a crossroads, a nexus of different languages. This is the Shortland speaking people down here, and this was the whole Camino them speaking people languages related to the languages of the Fraser River, the people of Fraser River, and they all share this island, this island has a reputation amongst all the native people that I've worked with as being a place that a lot of different communities came to us, because quote, is so full of food. And this is what people were about in those days. So your food production, that was the basis of their economy. And they had a very sophisticated economy, that at least 4000 years of documented, sustainable use of the natural resources. And here the people didn't just access local resources they every summer, they would take dismantle the villages and all these communities from the nine of sanit and move them wholesale over to the Fraser Delta reestablish villages and fish, the sockeye. And of course, over the years of denial, this and, and a lot of negative results to community, basically, their economies were taken away. So how these people live, they lived in primitive village sites, consisting of different families that had ancestral connections to these villages. Here's a photograph taken 1868 that quadrant sent on the couch and delta showing three large houses, each one of these houses would have held a family, a family with special privileges and knowledge and, and their own leader. In this case, there'll be three chiefs and each one of these houses is no single chief in any pre contact First Nations society. The chiefs were the heads of all the different families. They had participated in Pretoria democracy, where leadership is situational, depending on the situations fishing warfare, you know, whatever you can name, leadership, went to whoever was the expert in that field a little bit
Speaker 2 9:48
further in your slides, yeah, it's very obvious. That votary that red line that was finding territories, when of wet just like halfway A spring in their pathway over. Well,
Speaker 1 10:06
this is just general ages, it's imprecise, the red lines showing the the overall language and their lines is showing dialects within the languages. Those are all language groups, which is how usually was anthropologist that's how we kind of defined as people we study. So these people are very vibrant economy here and and did quite well. And this is well demonstrated in the archaeological record. And until a large epidemic came in 1780s, which had a devastating effect in this area. And this is a well documented epidemic by human geographers and other people who study this stuff. And this started in a Spanish garrison in Mexico City came up through the Great Basin desert, down the Snake River into the Columbia and went all the way up this way into the Gulf of Georgia and then petered out around Cape mileage. Now, this was a real demographic disaster, oral traditions estimate 90% fatalities in this so you can imagine, the tele Ganges is when they're weak, nine out of 10 people drop dead, you would have an idea of the impact that this epidemic had on the people here before they saw any native or any non native people. And this is, you know, 1782. So this was on the verge of a colonized colonization, Syria. The impact of this epidemic is it is obvious to archaeologists, you know, you can name any inlet on the coast, any area of the Gulf Islands and you'll find a huge discrepancy between the existing villages that are occupied today, and abandoned reserve locations or abandoned Winter Village sites. It's really quite astounding. And this this goes all the way down the coast. And Salisbury is no exception. Here we have the sights of three winter villages. Just to give an example in the north end, which makes them Saltspring Secchi Eichmann, which is Walker's book, these were Winter Village sites that were probably disappeared the epidemic now I'm speculating on that, because as an archaeologist that haven't done any work here, nobody's really done much work at either these sites. So we're not sure about the abandonment, but based on studies and elsewhere, and the general over the demographic, archaeological pattern or DC, it seems very likely that these were abandoned in the center wake up in 17 at play, but now we'll get consolidated and this community is still whist and its largest indigenous community and adult violence up here on Panella. Island. But yeah, we're not going to talk about salt stream. We're going to talk now but she helped. And this is a great postcard. It's available at Molex at the counter or used to be anyway, and I highly recommend you getting it. This is a detail and it's a 1930s aerial view of the village and what what's so cool about this is that it shows you original land form here. And you can see and this is the part of focusing on particular this stuff spiff here, this has all been filled in for the Centennial Park. This is up again is road here, of course is mullets, and it's Gracepoint. And in gracile is off here. But I just want to draw your attention to this spirit, and the group of islands off here and just kind of that general configuration. Now this. And this, according to the native elders is the the site of the village of sharp she hopes. So and here is a map that was done recently showing the extent of the archaeological remains that have been discovered over the years since about 1908. Up until recently. And this sort of shows you the boundaries of so called archaeological deposits. So it's quite an extensive site. And yet, there isn't, there's pretty well nowhere around the harbor that doesn't show some sign of ancient intensive occupation. Very little work done here. So what does this place look like? This this this geographical formation conforms really well to a typical Gulf Island settlement pattern. This is the village of Manas, that Coulee Bay. It's not the greatest shot but what we have here is a similar thing. We have a spit that's connected to a surrounds an estuary with a bunch of houses built out on it. And with a burial place that went in this is the photograph of the village of Connecticut on an island and you can see the old village here this house fell down shortly after I took this photo of a 95 but you can see these foundations there was originally ability or 15 long houses long the beach And then on this end here, one end of the village, you found these features which are wooden barrel huts. So you find this pattern everywhere in the Gulf Island settlement pattern a village of on a spit attached to some other islands. And one end you'll find the burial place in close proximity to the winter village. And this reflects a belief in the Coast Salish. A belief the Coast Salish dead, don't go off somewhere else, they're always there, present in the vicinity of the relations. And to keep an eye on what's going on. Here's another shot showing the village of Ganges before it was filled in you can see stuff very good built up, you can still see the the configuration here the spit, and then these islands now No, it's what's not in this picture. But we know it's trading house was built in 1908, the uncovered burials underneath the, I guess the screen store now. And so I have a feeling all of this area could have been a site of verifications. And then of course over here is gray silence, which we'll talk about in a bit. And but again, it conforms to this pattern of a village site down here. And then an adjacent of spit and then an adjacent to a burial site. Is she hope? So. I mean, talk a bit about the archaeology now she helped knows, but a lot of focus lately on gracile it and a lot of them. archaeology has been sort of done varying capacities. And they often refer to how Ganges is, you know, the archaeological site, again, has been destroyed. And really, there's there's quite a bit it hasn't been destroyed so much as kept by the concrete asphalt and buildings of subsequent occupation. But the place was designated an archaeological site in 1966. Again, I think it's Tom Brown. Some of you may know him, he was a sort of a collector, and he there was a pipeline being built, where the heck was it, somewhere along here, and then coverage, a human burial. And so he notified the Grinch Museum, and he sent up Donald Abbott in October 1966, get a look at the burial and realized there's all kinds of deposits visible here and there. And so he was the first one to designate this place as an official archaeological site registered in the Canada wide system. But yeah, some of these. But yeah, so there's a lot of attack deposits. And I have some friends on the island who, what their hobby is collecting artifacts, no, I'm not really interested in collecting artifacts. I mean, they're interesting to me. But isolation, they don't really tell you much about anything. But what they're useful for at this point is for dating, you know, so these points up here, and these type of ads is and these types of points, this sort of thing. All of these things have been found elsewhere in the Gulf Islands, and stratigraphic situation. So we know the dates, and these all dates into the last 3000 years. So based on this kind of evidence, and stuff, like here's another few things found on site. And the harder date ads is to say the least the interior over here, too. And this is very typical hammer that's been broken, and has a characteristic nipple topic, all that the states from within the last 2000 years as well. So can this sort of thing more different to projectile points and things that need he's a good proxy evidence for the antiquity of the site shot symbol found by a co op gas station. So And recently, this really came on recently, when they had a great idea of tearing down all those old funky stores and building Mark's work wearhouse and suddenly tore them down. And you know, I knew this would happen.
Speaker 1 19:31
They encountered five, what we call Mark old burials. The Mark hole is just a name, the archaeologists get to a certain time period based on identity of certain types, artists apps, but it was a it was a very flourishing period of the Reach peaks of art and technology. The bow is introduced here and replace the avalaible. This is about 2000 years ago, and this there is a very wide and replace and what they found when they were doing excavations For the for the new building where these fine intact markable variables and they're very interesting to and we're double burials, people in Flex positions through the pits were dug down into the ground and sunk into earlier deposits. So MARPOL dates, maybe 2020 500 years ago, but the these burials are sunk into early deposits that could go back as much as 5000 years. That's speculation, but I would not be surprised most set former settlements that we find in the Gulf Islands have a minimum date, 5000 years, that's in the sea level here stabilized about 5000 years ago, and that's more of these historic villages flourish. So yeah, so five burials here, and they were very unique in that the and hid this is the type of point so in each burial, and the single the salt points, you know, this is just putting as an offering is symbolic meaning here, and these points, all these are actually, you know, date within the last 3000 years to and this jade cell, and these are very rare, rarely found in burials on the coasts, they're very frequently found in the interior would never break originates, but this was found in to the burials in Ganges, which is a very interesting greeting meeting. These barriers are removed and revered somewhere on the island. And I don't know how well they've been documented or studied. I've been brief contact, the archaeologists now in our ships has disappeared. So keeping that's a GE has. Yeah, and this was a close, you know, can hold an edge almost like steel, but more than that it had high prestige value, like it does everywhere else everywhere in the world. So certainly go along year after the plague and 1780 populations rebound, because he's resilient people. And then the non native people moved in the 1820s. They are, you know, we built a fort in Fort Langley, and then 1846 For just before that, you know, when they when they were deciding the boundary between the future United States and Canada, all the Hudson's Bay Company operations that were down on the Vancouver, or the Vancouver area, the original Vancouver in Columbia River had to move up north, so they relocated at Fort Victoria, but between 43 and 8049, the colony of Vancouver Island was established at 46. The border was established. And so the first step one of the first things the Governor did, or the the chief factor, Governor James Douglas was to take a little trip around here and this is a map he did on a night an 1852 canoe journey from Victoria, up to Nanaimo. As you can see. He has no real clue about anything here. Today, it's free river the couch and you shouldn't make fun of him because he did not know he had just moved here. This place was just totally unknown. There is Saltspring Island, and they've given it the name Tron twine. Only. It is a it's a crutch of a place name. It's now called Mount twang. It's down here in the southern end. And I figure I've done this is going around here in a canoe. And then he spotted, you know, Mount Swan area. And he said, you know, what's that? If so it's qualm song, because you know what that's placing. And Douglas assume the name applied to the whole island, that really solid spring has about 27 Different place names that I've encountered. There's no single name for the island, though, that people refer to different places on the island, where they had fiscal two gathering areas or whatever. So now during this period, you know, this is a pretty turbulent period. Because a lot of you know, once switchboard Victoria was established down here, I mean, this is the Costco of the colonial period. And right away, people were coming down the coast and his droves from high glide from Sabatini from Sushant areas and caulk walk with people. And as they move down here to to, you know, shop, they will travel through this area to cause lots of conflict, because these people, you know, often didn't get permission to come down here. They often rated on the ways around this applies. There's a lot of animosity, there's a lot of warfare going on in this area, and a lot of uncertainty amongst the people who lived here. And as a result, people that lived in the Ganges or at least the Saanich people, one group of them left again, it's harder temporarily to relocate, it's solid. Everybody knows about Soweto, you know that place on the Saanich Peninsula. That name means a fence village, and that's what it was. It was a fortified village that house people from In the Gulf Islands from Saltspring, for tender for me, who relocated down there temporarily during this really unstable period, because you can imagine if you lived in gadgets in those days, and you know, you may be there two or three families and two or three houses, the very vulnerable to attack. And this may refer to one of those place names at the 73rd of the Saanich have for Ganges, which is placed with caution, because it's very exposed place. So that's 1848, or 43, Saanich, moving out. There, some of them anyway, but there are people still living there, and one of the best. So anyway, things are going along in the calling Vancouver Island, you know, Douglas has been given instructions by the home office to, you know, to settle the title to extinguish title before there's any settlement. These are the devil's treaties, which some of you heard about their basic land sale agreements, based on land sale agreements in New Zealand. And they were fraught with issues, what to misunderstanding like in the translation. But when you say these documents, there's nowhere to understand, at least from my point of view, we have a text that purports to, you know, give the bulk of the land to the white settlers, in exchange for the maintenance of the indigenous way of life. So that's pretty explicit in the test, the rights, the fishing, the rights, to hunting the rights to the villages, and your funnels. And we know that there was the the day that people accepted what was being offered in this deal, which was basically, we will allow colonization, as long as our way of life continues, as it always has. That was the case in New Zealand. That was the case here. And these are the signatures names, that up signatures, their their marks, these are the names of the witnesses, the heads of the different families, who were, who were who were gathered in Victoria, to to hear what that was had to say, and to let their voices be heard. The very fact that their names were announced that this shows that they and they were they were given Blankets by Douglas, they're given blankets, their names are announced. This is a traditional type of Potlatch situation, where they listened to what was being said they agreed what was being said, because they allow their names to stand and to accept the blankets the Federalists gave up deciding buying land, native people saw it very differently as a you know, as permission to occupy these lands under conditions. So you while people are still living here, here's this is a really cool map making 59 When the first detailed maps of Saltspring Island, and it records the these lots now this this island was was illegally survey, there were no agreements made with the First Nations prior to survey this is totally contrary to royal proclamation of 1763, which was governed British policy even at this time. So there were reasons that they didn't seek permission because the people probably said We said no way. But anyway, be that as a Navy surveyors did come here and survey up these 200 acre lots. You know, and, but what's really interesting about this map is the way the survey started, like right in here, right away, there hiving off this little piece here, which is the village she helped, which is still occupied. He was still living here. They've been living here for at least 3000 years based on the artifacts. He was still living here. When the settlers started to come in November 1859. Thomas Linacre and his his family they would from Australia and New Zealand. They built a little cabin right here in November 16 1959 story, the first
Speaker 1 28:58
non native house on Ganges harbour, and it will be your follow up with quite sure. Just within a few months, like W Isaacs and George Richardson, who are two black men from United States who settled here and as you can see, though, their cabins were built back here from a way from the shoreline and have a really interesting account one of the crops that's, that's preserved in event in the salzburgerland archives. We're waiting to descend into the Croft and family talks about how the blast set was built the houses back from shore because they were concerned about Native people. And, you know, or just, you know, with good reason because they were trespassing really, and the Lakers have an account of being an academy if people regularly occupied the cabin and use it. These people are here at the the house in the tolerance for the people who lived here at she'd hoped. I would also say that so I'm at 60. This is a really interesting account and you've asked yourself smile related by Pioneer. And this is Miss Mrs. Eliza Griffis octogenarian. This is amazing woman who was a little girl lived in the Andes Harbor. And it's interesting, you know, I've read some of her I haven't collected all this stuff yet. But chief example of whatever interview she said, you know, they said, Oh, what Saltspring like back in the day, so I never went to salt sprint, what I've been able to get into targets and no Saltspring was like returning with us. So this is kind of an idea showing, you know, that these places are all kind of really plays bass back in those days, so she never been to Salt Spring. But anyway, this is a really interesting count, because she talks about the early days here how rough it was a tough that was for them to make a living. And she was an eyewitness to a a very interesting event that took place in the harbor, the so called Battle Ganges, and describes it in detail. And yeah, it's a fascinating account that has yet to be really important for you and into any historiography the island, but
Unknown Speaker 31:11
what happened what happened? I'm
Speaker 1 31:12
going to tell you okay, the battle Ganges was really there. The voucher people were yours. They can 60 July one, there was a Needham white man, who was up at Furman Saltspring. And the canoe Kitimat people came down either Simpson right from Douglas channel. So they were coming down enroute to Victoria, and this Macaulay finagle dementia taking him to get started to say I've got to see medically and I'm going to talk to him about something Linacre, of course living over here, here, you can see the a lot lines, Rainbow Road with black comb preemptions, where black settlers lived up here, Richardson. So anyway, they he convinced the kid about taking the gadget they were worried about because as I was saying earlier, it was like conflict, you know, the same as people who didn't like one of these northerners coming through, you know, they're very different people, different culture and, and, you know, not all protocols, this change over time. And at this time, there's a lot of danger going on. So they they brought him in, they dropped him off at linic, his claim, and he went up to visit Linacre, and then they went over here, this kind of comes from Williams from start, Louis start, who was also an island. So it's a really interesting, we think this battle, we'd have two, three eyewitnesses to it. And he talked about other canoes parts here, and the collection are here in their shops and houses. And also the fight broke out. And the rest of it's about 200 College and camped here. And there were I think, to 10 or 11 Kitimat people in this canoe. The linic is talking about getting over 200 Shots fired, some of the bullets hit their cabin up here. So it was quite a fight. And then when they find that when the settlement of the firing died down, the settlers came out, and suddenly all have the kidnapper killed, except for I think two women, one of whom was killed, and then the other one survived. And then she escaped and whatever Medscape with all the rest of the the the kidnap people were killed. And we don't know how many couches. And anyway, when they interviewed couch, and later they said this is because we appeal to these people. There's some event that happened here previous so this is just part of this, this this tumultuous period. This is was the way indigenous people always dealt with each other in conflicts. But in this time, the world is toxic 30 Lots of people in this area didn't belong, there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of conflict. So it's interesting. Going back to her account, she talks about how the Cowichan than when collected the dead, develop the earth the Kitimat and bury them on an island, put them on an island and Ganges harbour covered them with stones, which is very interesting. And I don't It's not specific about which Island. And anyway, they put money aside and cover them with stones. And then the settlers, I guess, because of the deep decomposing bodies actually wrote out robos the first to this burial place and covered the cannons with earth just to get them a more more of a decent burial. And to you know, yeah, just a more decent burial. But we don't know where that is. This is only something that this is something we can only determine to archaeology, DNA analysis of bones and other work. But it shows you know there's ongoing use of this area to 1860
Speaker 3 34:42
that have been the same way to Kuwait to the theory their people.
Speaker 1 34:47
Yeah. Okay at different times, and I'll get to burial practices in a bit. There's a lot of variability in burial practices, especially when you're looking at it over a long period of time. So, battle again does happen Most interesting thing happened the couch, you know, left the village, which is what they do. So you know, people just move and go around, you know, come back. And the settlers were really worried because the Cowichan had left and they felt unprotected. So that shows have an interesting dynamic and a settler native relationship. You know, who, who was protecting him. So they sent a message to Victoria to set up this gunboat, the HMS satellite. And this guy was on board, left handed Richard name, who's who's gave his name to main island. And he wrote a really cool book, every British coming to read it for four years in British Columbia, Vancouver Island, a very interesting, pretty unbiased account by Royal Navy officer. So he went to Ganges because No, actually, yeah, getting him on. This boat came twice. It came first in April, because some of the people, the black settlers were complaining that they've been robbed by Native people. So they came out in this gutter to check on this. And so meeting with NASA people, you know, what's the problem here? And they said, Well, these natives, you know, we moved here in November, and they come back and reestablish this or built this village, you know, and main thought, this is kind of odd, you know, why would they do that? So you get to be the native man. And the guy just laughed, and said, What do you mean, you think we've only been your safety, you know, I didn't pointed right away to a grade of his father. He said he was very, very Kentucky seven. So three years before, two years before any White City have shown up in the item. And we're not sure where this dialogue took place that shows that people were being buried in the native people being very in the city again, in April of 1860. So that, again, just happened in July, that year, satellite came out again. And now this time, there's according to Liza Griffis, and I haven't got the log of the satellite yet, but I'm gonna get it. There's some little gunboat diplomacy going on. And we'll do shelling and arias and demonstrations of firepower and the the people that she helped actually fire back. So it's an interesting thing, that I'm going to research in more detail just to get a sense, because I'm really interested in what happened to the people that she had, like, why aren't they there? Now? When did they leave? It's very vague and sketchy part of them are history. But RICHARD MAY, another thing he acknowledged, he made some other observations. He, he he thought that, you know, what really has to be done here is there has to be some negotiations for extinguishment of title. And he said that it's going to be very difficult. And he knew that he and he recognized that there were at least four different indigenous groups that had a claim from the village of Chiho, through their family connections, and he sort of said, how would we ever resolve this? Because you're dealing with, you know, cultural, different cultural notions of properties. And, you know, in something in a direct irreconcilable, real Bishopville. Reverend could Reverend Bishop Hill to around Do you see any conflicts he also came down the Ganges, and there's another eyewitness of the builders who stood there on the spit. So we've got all this anecdotal evidence of the buildings. So getting up to 1863. What happened is people here, there was a win the the colony Vancouver Island, its charter or its charter to colonize. This area was revoked. And so as the interest nine just before the charter ran out, surveyor, Emerton went and illegally survey these areas. And this caused a lot of trouble in the communities here, because there were no prior agreements about this. And they actually occupied couch and Bay making 62. There's a smallpox epidemic here in Victoria, the Brooklyn in 1862. And this gunboat took canoes of Haida back to the north and as they were commuting back the past Ganges harbour they were fired upon as people from shout out. And then it was a little more gunboat diplomacy, the forward loaded is Canada great and you know, threat to the destroyed village. And if the keyboard handed over, so they handed some somebody over and they were slaughtered, and aboard the ship. Anyway, this is just part of this whole nasty thing, leading a patient 63, which was aluminum colonial war that took place here. It's documented in a book I wrote in 1999. And it basically ended with the defeat of the homos see for Malta, people who lived on on Anelka Island, who were sort of self appointed voters, they may not have been self appointed. They were they were sort of a guardians of this area, and they were attacked at Cooper island on April 28. In 63. In a battle that lasted one and a half hours, the gunboat cheated with casualties was recently doing work here find remnants of the fight as the fragments 32 pounds shattered lodged inside a shell knitted rifle tips. So we're doing work on this battle, only known to see the Royal Navy by an Aboriginal fighting force, April 2018 63. They won the battle the last war because within a few months, the warriors of the multifeed were captured mostly with the help of native Allah to you know, were siding with the British. Well, summers actually coerced into working with the British with some of their own grievances against the law mochi and so side of the British to help capture and apprehend and most of them and for the leaders were hanged investment square in July for 1863. And these people the Panella hut and control the law, basically the north with an elephant and the loss of control the North and the Saltspring pretty well from getting started today. I have a feeling they were connected to those that she helped people lift and shout for the next 10 years or so there was a lot of tension between the natives and the settlers. We have a letter in the archives written by Dan Collins, who's is on one of those earlier preemption maps, who talks about his family getting used to being shot at was the natives in a canoe. And you know, just shows that there's a lot of tension going on. Even as late as 1870 a separate talk of 500 Native people digging in Ganges harbour for clams so but then the village was gradually occupied and Neva TQL course Lee Oh, yeah, they had guns from the get go. And, you know, they're people right to you know, somebody shows up with some high tech I want it and native people are no different than anywhere else. And this you know, I mean, guns, that's a huge issue that caused a lot of disruption in this place, in terms of scale warfare, and I noticed in New Zealand a million tomorrow we fight lots of wars and stuff, but our forests are usually done between sort of gentleman you have your men out there and then two guys have had an issue of gun fight that same was here to hear guns were introduced, all of a sudden you have a bunch of warriors armed with 400 or 100, muskets fighter close ranges cost warfare just went off the map in New Zealand from the introduction of guns in a three year period of 50,000 Maori casualties and wars so very similar thing that happened here so yeah, when people get a little weaponry and they want the best, you know, the bow and arrows not not gonna cut it anymore. So anyway, now I'm going to talk about so that's sort of the history show a good research question for somebody would be and what happened to the people that she hopped, I kind of know what happened they were forced to disperse the different reserves like when BC going, Confederation 1871 commissioners came over here and the establish all these reserves. And somehow these people here were forced off. These stories I'm sure resonate in, in various families on Saanich Intelligen, wherever these people ended up, but they still have this connection with the space a lot of things about people been hearing about Native people coming from CEQA from certainly you know why to kind of hear right and to stay over and to deal with issues. You know, this is their issue. This is this is part of their territory. They have connections here. And their concerns. So I'm going to talk about this, use case eyelet, which is off brace point. This is what you would call it in hot commitment, smart, quick lab. Ala, that's a cool word interesting word. It means a place to have funerals and containers for the dead. So eight Love is a container and a container to guilt friends, things can be a box, it can be a canoe, it can be a stomach care, all these different types of burial practices were used. We don't have a definite ideas, archaeologists have little progressions of these things, because like I said, a lot of work has yet to be done. But there is a PhD and a new newly minted PhD from the University of Victoria down versus Matthews has done an in depth study of this, this this this cultural thing for for over a decade and looked at 1000s of burials and look numerous sites. And he visited this island and recognize the signatures of the former use anyway. So the so this is a was a private property. It was purchased. I think 1989 And
Speaker 1 44:39
like a property in BC, if you're going to develop on your own archaeological site is process that you have to go through. And this property owner did go through this process. And that's actually when we found out about this, because you know, highlights are 27 years and very interested in archaeology. And I had no idea that great signup was better Lila, and and then, you know, some some critics of the people that are trying to protect this place say, well, well, the Indians didn't know it was very needed blah, blah, blah, and they only got involved because the time was very long when you work with stateless people, and I had a bit of experience with them. They don't talk about these things, you know, oh, here's a barrel flavor, there was one of the one of the see this one, you know, they're just not appropriate. It's not done. And so it's not surprising to me that nobody would talk about this place or even mention it. And they certainly don't go there and put flowers and I remember somebody said, Well, they don't go there and put flowers in the greens every day here. That's cultural. That's culture. That's what we do. They actually don't do that. And they don't do it here. They only go to this place if they're going to bury somebody,
Unknown Speaker 45:49
or to protect it. I don't know. It's an answer. If somebody never, you know,
Speaker 1 45:56
maybe connected them or family. I don't know. Anyway, so anyway, yeah. So so like I said, the schedule and see the process is a little cool. So he hires an artist, he hires actually an environmental fair, called St. John sector environmental consultant may have a very nice website and talking about, you know, how they're really interested in First Nations issues and respectful and stuff. Anyway, they hired an archaeologist and he went on here and identify all these features. Now, you notice there's a bit of a discrepancy there, not all the same, some say rocks feature, Rafi 12, rock these 15. But we have very wide here, and where's the very to? And so this? Yeah, so these things came to light. These are archaeological signatures of what I would say, is a smart play, like a burial site to definite burials. These characters were not explored. And actually, I think there may be a couple other ones here, I have to admit, I'm not an expert on this one who really knows this thing is Eric and clay, I would defer to him on anything that I'd say. But the pattern here of these rock features, and known burial Cairns and unknown burial found in a shovel test seal these little holes here were shovel test some of the archaeologists this human schemer was found here, 25 centimeters below level. So, so this is how they mitigated the site identify these features, they did a whole bunch of series of shuffled PIP tests here, this is done pretty, you know, pretty linearly, and you need to sit, okay, we're gonna do this very, you know, systematically and be unbiased. We're just gonna pick an area and go along the transit, bang, bang, bang. So I don't know how many of you did hear over 100. But only six? Yep, we're actually in soil, restaurant rock, so nothing here. Clank. But anyway, some of these deposits are 25 to 30 centimeters deep, which is quite significant. And they were selected with a quarter inch screen, which will miss basically, it could miss up to 100% of material you're looking for. And I noticed this from my own experience, I'll get into that. But unequivocally, a very liland, conformed soul the the features. But what's really interesting in this report, this guy said he did a literature search of the site and the ethnic ethnographic stuff, and came up empty, obviously did not do a very thorough job. And this is a problem. Like I mentioned earlier, that archaeologist is a general practitioner, and then they see a specialist. And in cases like this, they could have had some specialists working here. But the trouble is, you know, we have an archaeologist working for the landowner, there's immediate bias and compromise there of scientific integrity. And it's something that may come out of this whole controversy and issue more rigor in the permit process, and some more rigor or a peer review of any kind of work of the sensitive nature. I mean, it's, it's just him, it has to be done, or this sort of thing is just gonna continue. So So anyway, the guys follow the rules. They say, Okay, this year, we have the, what looks very much like a, a burial island here. And it's funny when you read the report, the archaeologist saying, Well, there's only two archaeological features on the island, he's referring deliberately to the burials, ignoring all the other stuff, like, you know, when you're an archaeologist working for somebody, and they're paying you, you know, what puts them off. You want to get paid, right, and he wants the information that allows him to proceed. So the branch and its wisdom with the support the archaeologist, you know, advice, he'll actually he said, The best solution feed no development. So, the key to recognize this, but as a report when it said well, if development is proceed, the house should be built in such a way not as not impacted features, and all work should be monitored. by an archaeologist and preferably, along with First Nations, field assistants, so what happened? This guy, instead of doing all this, according to the law went ahead and have excavated on the island and basically stripped all of the soil down to the bedrock and pile it up into a large pile in the middle of large ramp down to his dog future dock using the soil from you know, from the island and you know, he went in, there's supposed to be a two meter buffer zone around every care strip right up to the care just showed you the picture. All the soil around you stripped down, there's the carrying. So, you know, this is an Iraq features in there that are all taken out and pile. All of this done without supervision. This guy is trying to pull a fast one. And he was only caught because my good buddy Eric McClay happened to be just pulling into the harbor Phillip gasps he's a hard working guy. He's running a field school on Pregel Island, keyboard against the groceries, sees trees coming down to the next video and goes what the you know, and checks it out. RCMP shut him down. Refer to the branch, the branch sent a guy who has no real qualifications for this kind of work came out here with the owner when he only buddies bunch other big wigs. And they decided well, I don't think there's any attacks here. And instead of being fine, under the law, you know, you should find this guy. And then, you know, monitored like crazy. But he was just allowed to mitigate his his technical disaster. And they hired another firm to go on basically sift through this pile of dirt. And, you know, and they found a few things. Let's see, here's the, here's a big, yeah, here's all the earth that's been removed. Here's the giant mound of dirt. And they only went through this one. I mean, there was another big pile. And but you know, and they found these points too, which are actually really old points. He's like, 3000 years old. But typical funerary offerings, we saw the early ones, they showed him Ganges and found them to Mark's work wearhouse place, almost identical in age and material to these ones.
Unknown Speaker 52:21
But these are scale.
Speaker 1 52:27
CMP, but you know, they're doing their job. Just you know, they have to be helped along. Okay, this is this is work I've done in the Sinai River Valley, just to give you an idea of, I think the the scale of destruction that happened here. This is what's that 1013 centimeters site, I exceed 30 centimeters down to sterile soil. And this is a little one meter by one meter unit that I got to the base of a rock shelter with rock paintings. And we use a three millimeter screen, which is half the size of the screens that these archaeologists are using on Grace eyelet. And we recorded I mean, so much data on there, 127 pieces of red ochre, here's some little pieces here and see how tiny they are. There's a millimeter screen detailing of the fragment of a pectin, shell scallop shell, like a smallest thing is couple of millimeters. These things, these are seeds, including a chart like they were probably isn't PE production. And these tiny little, this is microbiotic Taj. This is the leftover material from people making final razor sharp tools for who knows what, I think blog, I'm not sure. But anyway, you know, a time at your plots for radiocarbon dates between 1550 and 1812. All in this small little area. And that's the kind of stuff that they didn't find in here, especially after it's been ripped up. Things like females bones. Yeah, okay, you know, archaeology, we just don't know if they're a bunch of souls that have taken away. It's done like 70 or a centimeter very controlled. We recover everything. We take both soil samples, because the soil is the artifact. There it is. And solvent pushed out away from the graves. You know, we'll never know what happened here. Because not that they noticed. But you know, and also when you're dealing with cremations, I mean, this is what Darcy I don't know who saw if any of you saw the Rocky Mountains presentation while that library, he showed an excavation of the burial Karen remarkably similar to the ones that gracile it like a lot of ones. I wish I had more pictures of them that are just sort of a bunch of stones piled together. The once you take those out of your way carefully. You can see like, it might be a fragment, a toothpick, or some calcite bone, and then charred and you know, once you bulldoze that stuff out, it's gone. So this is what I'm saying, Today, well, that did nothing in it, I very much doubt that we will never know. Because the soil is gone. It's put in a big pile, all the context is gone. As archaeologists, that's all we're interested in this context. You know, I don't care what artifacts and stuff people find on beaches, I want to find stuff where it was left by the people. And here, you know, we have permission to show this. It's actually amongst archaeologists today. In British Columbia, once we work with First Nations, we rarely, only under special circumstances, show burials, this just shows you this is a babylights, grave ugly, where the stones were taken off. And there's the bones here of a of an adult and a sub adult teenager, a mature child. And that could very well be, you know, we don't know when nobody's David them. Yeah, to date these bones. You can take a sample from the bone or from charcoal in here, and you can get an idea. And the DNA isotope analysis will tell you about diet and even place of origin. So remember, I said a little clip of that Fidel Adela? Or is the Kitimat coming down? Say in the future, we did some good archaeology here and really studied the place maybe find out that these are the bones came out people that would no way, Minish the coast, Salish claimed in this place. But it shows, you know, some of the history that's associated with this place, that is not ancient, but this is one thing. I mean, a lot of this place in the ancient human remains and into burials, this island was used up until the 1860s, you know, for 1000s of years. Yeah, this was on great silence. And I don't know, if you read the owner's letter, and the colonists unequivocally states that there was no barriers. You know, it's just kind of a kind of a reader's. And that's why we're gonna be giving a presentation at the archaeology forum, in a week. And the title is nothing could be further from the truth and got that line from this dude. So I'm really thankful and reinvestigate sort of all the process here. Recently, I'm not sure. I'd be curious. But, you know, it's been known as an archaeological site since 1866. I don't know if the realtor form this guy. I don't know, when I get a piece of land. I mean, not that I don't land. Well, I didn't want to, you know, I like to find out what's going on in there before I purchase it. A lot of dough. Anyway, so all of this came to no avail. Really, all the information you have been on this for about six years, you know, when I first found it was very nice of how exciting this is like awesome. It really there. I can't think of anywhere else until finals. We haven't been intact. A very live like that. With all the teachers in tech, so close to populated this, populated in a town and the busiest harbour and go finals is extraordinary. But we're losing something here because the house is being constructed. The site teams archaeologist is very interesting, because this is part of the site formation process continuing, like, I'm an archaeologist, but my I'm mostly interested in the present. I'm not interested. I mean, it how do we know the President? We got to know about the past? That's like an old Maori saying, that's like a no brainer, you know, how do you figure out how we got here today? It's by setting the past and 100 years, somebody's gonna look at this site. And who knows, it'll be there at the foundations of Karen's an interesting CFM interpretations. They come up with this, oh, they were respecting the dead look at them, they carefully paste them in these Karen's that shows a lot of respect. For the burials that are on the periphery are still intact. You know, it's just, it's part of the feature and not making any kind of ethic or moral judgment. And archeologists, we just recited the so called compassion, bias, observes unbiased observer. And, yeah, this is what story will this tell to the future? And so the Justice paper we're giving, we're gonna use written and oral traditions of the BC government and the Asians to show that those things are not reliable. And it's kind of a tricky thing, because as archaeologists are always having to say advocating for the, for the, the legitimacy of oral traditions amongst native people. But when it comes to power, oral traditions and your Christy Clark and government ministers, stating that they want to acknowledge and protect your nation's interests. The archaeology says otherwise. Archaeology it's the only direct historical evidence. So it doesn't matter what this guy does, the record will speak for itself. Anyway, that's my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions
Speaker 1 1:00:29
okay, that's good question. They very well, there's different ways those about the question, was it such a rocky island? How could they bury the dead. And when he did have a different burial practices, a lot of it was about drown, it might be a series of plants and the bodies of left and the plants, they decompose. And then they would gather the bones and put them in care. That was one day, or they put them in a box, or they even have a box and we put a tree have tree burials, or there's even had carved wooden statues holding locks. So you didn't wasn't like our practices, we need six feet of soil to bury people. So they didn't, literally buried in the ground, they buried most of the above ground, or just slightly subsurface. And in the case of a cremation, people would be cremated. And then you know, the remains just be put, like we do who would do the cremation cremated remains of our loved ones, you know, we put an O pop somewhere, covering with something. So that's the culmination of recession. Yeah, this is what Darcy has shown in his study of burial. Karen's, you know, but you have, like I said, Go and excavate these places really carefully, can't just sort of do shovel tests, you know, every three feet, you know, thinking about the beer at the end of the day, you have to do this really carefully, and record everything and collect everything, otherwise, it's not our pot.
Speaker 3 1:01:57
And your question, yeah. To the First Nations of Canada, are they aware of this? And what do they have? How do they do?
Speaker 1 1:02:10
You know, the first thing is a candidate likes to use. He's really talking about them. I don't know how to do it. But they have all the info. But you know, when you think about it, I mean, this is even the people that have to come over here all the time. And it really pains me to see these elders that come over here and go through this process. They have so much to do in their own communities. And that's one thing that's really actually, I think, really cool about Saltspring, and has really inspired a lot of people in these communities, native communities, because you know, a lot of them feel very marginalized, that there are people on the side of extra care about the significance of this place. As far as I'm concerned. You know, when I first heard that, I was so excited. I thought this could be a National Historic Site, just leave it there. And you know, people could just know it's there to be great. And we've lost that opportunities. I mean, hey, maybe we have lost it. But yeah, first, a lot of people are aware of it. But you know, they have so many other things happening.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:07
You know, no other island has an archeologist like you.
Speaker 2 1:03:19
You mentioned they were given Blankets by some dignitary in Victoria. Was that already a tradition that first nations would do give with each other or that they start that because you know, now that when chiefs covenant and then visit, and they it's a way to honor people, as they give them? So
Speaker 1 1:03:47
it's a really old customer of like, Zealand, the Potlatch with the called the Potlatch, which is, you know, a situation where you have a group of people come in for some kind of work, it can be all kinds of things can be named getting ceremonies, funerals. Yeah. Lots of things. And then when people are there, you invite all these people to come. And then you distribute gifts. Totally Yes. And nothing except the gifts that shows that they have recognized that everything was telling was cool and proper and legitimate. So they've set the map yet they're giving their assent to the work that was done if it goes away. Yeah, that's great. kind of blanket. I heard that says Get a new name. This is great.
Speaker 2 1:04:28
So government officials thought Oh, give them a blanket.
Speaker 1 1:04:34
Yeah, I think that was the literally what he's doing. He was he was throwing a potluck. And he gave a speech to them. And they, you know, we're not actually I kind of know what he said. In fact, I know what he said. He basically said, you will be confirmed in with what? Because that was a way of living. We took away their livelihood, people like getting your dog taken away. I just
Speaker 2 1:04:53
wanted to say that. I often wondered how to say say out loud I asked when I was over there. Stay out. Okay. And I said, Oh, that's like, stay out. Yes, I learned it. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:15
Question. What's up? is quite low. Make it first First Nations
Speaker 1 1:05:29
to accuse native but she's Cree. Oh, okay. She's from very similar. Now as his mother, she was from Ghana, British Ghana. She was a colored women you don't know much about her history.
Speaker 3 1:05:44
Really quick question is the talk. Is it professional association in Victoria?
Speaker 1 1:05:49
No, no, no, it's in Nanaimo. It's called the archaeology forum. And it's something that's held every year, I think, the last decade, and it's hosted by First Nations community. And the focus this year is on stuff like this information online. Yeah, I'm good, like Art Forum, archaeology forum, and IMO. Now, and anybody can go, and it'd be fascinating to be a day of really cutting edge papers research in BC, government gonna be there. So
Speaker 2 1:06:20
it isn't this, isn't there an archaeological associate Association point of like, lawyers do this with each other and they be barred?
Speaker 1 1:06:31
Like I said earlier, we're not archaeology is not like, the legal system. It's not like the medical system. We don't have a universal approach to anything. All we were technicians like I'm a technician. That's all. I know, how to excavate things that can collect thing,
Unknown Speaker 1:06:47
bring out something about the work that was done by somebody.
Speaker 1 1:06:51
Yeah, I don't even know if they do. But you know, I think that will come one day, because I know lots of archaeologists, and most of them don't really care much about cultural history, cultural anthropology. I know it sounds shocking. But it's true. And that has to do with the nature of archaeology, you know, it's become a profession, and it actually does is employed mostly by business, land development, whatever, that sort of all the cultural resource management codes, and that's mostly archaeology done in BC is professional archaeology but done for business purposes. So it's driven by a business model, not a research model. So I find that really problematic. On that note, I will cut off the questions and
Unknown Speaker 1:07:39
thank you, Chris, for your