Lead Archaeologist Nadine Gray talks about her team's ongoing projects in this year's annual report. Below is what she had to say about their progress:
The Archaeological Management Plan is a five year plan that strives to mitigate past impacts to culture and heritage.
Focus
Working across St’át’imc territory, the team works to protect, preserve and manage all aspects of St’át’imc heritage and culture, with a focus on sites that have been impacted by BC Hydro’s past operations.
The team works to:
• Document St’át’imc cultural heritage sites
• Promote the internal exchange of St’át’imc knowledge, beliefs and values for the protection of cultural traditions past and present
• Protect heritage sites through education and communication with St’át’imc and non-St’át’imc organizations
• Provide capacity building opportunities to enable St’át’imc heritage workers to continue to serve as stewards of St’át’imc Territory
• Maintain the integrity of St’át’imc heritage by ensuring heritage sites and objects are protected, preserved and managed in line with St’át’imc values and traditions.
Information
To ensure communities are informed of the team’s work, meetings to explain and answer questions about the Archaeological Management Plan and other protection issues have been held with St’át’imc communities including Xwisten, N’Quatqua, Ts’kwaylaxw, Xaxli’p, T’it’q’et, Ts’alalh and Sekw’el’was.
Incorporating all communities into the upcoming projects will be possible in the later stages of the Archaeological Management Plan. This will include a land use and occupancy study.
The heritage and culture team understands that communities have the capacity to undertake archaeological work. With this in mind, the team ensures that work requiring a Heritage Permit, which is mostly on traditional lands but not on reserves, is done by the team. Trained community workers can then focus on working on reserve land, where no Heritage Permit is required. This past season, the team has employed 12 St’át’imc heritage workers on a range of field work projects.
Past impacts
The heritage and culture team’s field work involves work at registered archaeology sites that were impacted by BC Hydro in the past. These sites were identified by communities during years of negotiations with BC Hydro. There are approximately 200 sites where field reconnaissance, artifact recording, and digital site mapping work is being carried out. The digital mapping is being completed with a GPS machine through a rental agreement with Peg’peg’lha Geomatics. This makes information easy to work with and preserves information for future generations.
The heritage and culture team works closely with other SGS teams including the environment, stewardship and fisheries teams. The Exploratory Analysis of St’át’imc Knowledge (ASK) project was initiated in the winter of 2012/13 to assess the data collected during the years of negotiations and identify any gaps. This project will continue in the winter of 2013/14.