Nuanced. - 88. David Schaepe: Sto:lo Culture & History

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

David Schaepe and Aaron Pete discuss Sto:lo history, archaeology, land acknowledgements and what reconciliation really means.  Dr. David Schaepe is the Director & Senior Archaeologist of the Stó:lō Research and Resource Management Centre at Stó:lō Nation. He has worked for over 15 years as a community-based researcher addressing issues of aboriginal rights and title, heritage management policy and practice, repatriation, land use planning, archaeological research, and education and outreach. He earned his PhD in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia in 2009. In addition to working at Stó:lō Nation, he is an adjunct professor in Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management, and an instructor of Indigenous Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley. His research interests are multi-disciplinary in nature and include household archaeology, oral history, Stó:lō-Coast Salish settlement patterning and community organization, cultural landscape management, and issues of aboriginal rights and title. Dr. Schaepe has over 25 years of experience in archaeology/anthropology, and cultural heritage research and resource management.  Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

This is Peter Ross is working. Yes. This is the one that just came out. It is. I was just at that today. Yeah, that was today. Right. I was thinking it was tomorrow,

but I know that we couldn't make it to the press conference because of our work planning session. Yeah. But we were partly assisted in the funding of that work. Right. And really interesting to see, like, the results of that. Have you seen it already? Yeah, yeah.

Peter gave us a presentation, at least a high-level overview of, like, what the findings were. Cocaine. Cocaine. Bizarre. What? Yeah. I mean, like, you can understand some of the expected contaminants, like, high levels of people coliform, you know, given that there's a lot of cows. But cocaine, I mean. And splendor.

And splendor. Yeah. Just the stranger thing. So how did that go? It was, hopefully it was a good press-related turnout on the... It was, yeah. CBC, Global News, APTN, Fraser Valley Current, which is one of my favorites. Good.

Yeah. Good, good, good. And they had some good questions. Great. One of them is, I would have, you know, again, all this is going on at that time, the lake is returning. And where are the governments in terms of being out there actively involved in engaged in water quality testing? Yeah. Not at all.

And so, you know, that's the kind of thing. It sort of fell on our shoulders to. organically put this together and work with Peter who was interested in out there doing work and needed funding and support to do that work. We're like, yeah, we'll help. But as far as I understand, it really, it was a need to drag, drag government into this and to taking part and understanding what the impacts of that massive flood were and, you know, what the soil is going to be like after the water dissolves or goes away, not dissolves, but, you know, retreats. Yeah. There's this weird feeling we all have, which is like, things are taken care of.

Like, there's a master plan in place that there's somebody out there who's going to make sure we're taking care of and make sure that things like this are addressed. And when you find out that, oh, this just slipped our mind. And when he says, oh, we actually don't know what like a baseline would look like because nobody was looking. It's like, oh, that's very depressed. Like, that's deflating in and of itself. Yeah, like gathering that baseline data is a lot of our sort of effort these days and some of the work we're doing. So around collaborative stewardship work and getting out there to take baseline measurements of whatever it may be, air quality, water quality, aspects of soils, you know, before change happens or as a way of assessing the extent of change as it happens, we need to understand what it's like now and also to look at that relationship. between now and what was it like before? How did it even get to now? And if you want to look at cumulative effects and build foundations for understanding

the health and well-being of these ecosystems that we're all a part of, we need to understand at least what it is like today and then look at back in time and then forward in time to the future. But baseline data like this is critically important. That was the most interesting part because the comment was like,

oh, it's not good. good drinking water out of like some of these spots. And then Peter was like, that seems like it just makes sense, right? Like you wouldn't drink out of these spots. And he was like, but 100 years ago, you absolutely would have drank from this lake. And that would have been normal. And now it's weird that you'd even consider drinking from these spots. And we've heard that, you know, quite a bit in the time working here in Stolo communities

of what people who are now elders had reported about growing up and where the river itself was, you could drink the water. Yeah. You know, and the degradation of water quality is, is significant in many ways, and just in terms of the availability of water, but also the drinkability of water, the quality of it and its degradation over time is where we are now. And again, getting, having an understanding of water quality is part of our overall perspective throughout Saltzumuk and doing broad-based water quality sampling, you know, at, from the watershed top,

saw and down, to really start to build that foundation for putting the picture together on water quality. But yeah, we've heard that for quite some time from the elders. Like, it used to be drinkable and now it's not. That's terrifying. Would you mind giving listeners a brief introduction of yourself, your name and a bit of your background? Certainly. Formerly Dr. Dave Shepi. I am the director and senior archaeologist at the Stalo Research and Resource Management Center here at the Stalo Service Agency in Stalo Nation. I've been working in the roots of that department since 1997, so started working in the Stalo communities and have been working for the past 25 years in various capacities leading

from, initially as an archaeologist, with a very focused work on archaeological inventory and work in the Chilok River watershed, then branching into aspects of of more deeply connected work in relationship to Stalo, Indigenous rights and title-related issues and advocacy, very strongly rooted in, continuously rooted in aspects of heritage policy development and administration, Stallow heritage policy development and administration, working towards recognition of Stallow heritage and its relationship to activities on the land. and then broadening out to gain a lot of experience in government relations over the years and development and negotiation of various types of government-to-government agreements with BC and Canada,

again, mostly around aspects of land decisions and stewardship and leading to ultimately where I am today as the director for the department overall and looking at its development and ongoing functionality operations and its trajectory of growth in meeting the services and needs of the Stalo communities who we are working for. Fascinating. Archaeology. How did that come onto your radar? When did you say you wanted to be involved in this? When did that become a discipline that you were passionate about and thought that you could contribute to? Because maybe when we start our educational journey, maybe when we're starting to think about a topic,

we don't realize the impact we're one day going to have. And you are definitely at the forefront of so many hot topics, so many critical issues for First Nations people here in the valley. And I'm just curious, when did this start? And could you have ever imagined you'd be here today? I could never have imagined being here today from years ago. Not at all. Not a planned trajectory by any means.

I think the first I learned that I was ever interested in archaeology was in my later teens in early college years. And that's literally the time where I got into taking courses in anthropology and archaeology and had my first experiences and actually practicing the practice of archaeology as a discipline. What is that? Just for people who might not have experienced it? Sure. Archaeology is really the focus on the material remnants of people's past occupation and use of the land.

wherever that may be. So material culture heritage is the foundation for what archaeologists do. And archaeology is the development. It's a discipline that works to really find information out of the ground in those material remains of people's past activities. So, you know, if you're looking to ask questions and understand, well, what were people doing? how are they living, you know, 1,000 years ago, 500 years ago, 10,000 years ago.

The material that's there and left behind in the ground is what we have to work with to find out and find information to answer those questions. So archaeology is really people who are, have training in the approach to gathering information from those remains in the ground. And there's a lot more to it than that that I've learned. You know, in a nutshell, that's pretty well it in what you would learn commonly in a Western university and academic system. You have to understand how soils work and the process of making stone tools and how things fracture and those kind of dynamics and elements of the physical environment and physical geography. What did you like about that? What made you want to keep taking courses on that? I loved being working outside.

And I had found, actually my mother had found something I had written when I was in grade three that said, I want to be an archaeologist. So apparently when I was like eight years old, I had this inclination or interest in doing archaeology. I didn't know if I understood what it was at that time. I had forgotten that that was an interest until I was about 18 when I reconnected with the world of anthropology and archaeology. I had originally gone to university on a pathway towards being an accountant, which my mother

had convinced me I should do. I really wanted to be a writer and was interested in high school and writing fiction, but the practicality of that was brought to my attention, and I should, you know, therefore, go into accountancy and business to support my passion and writing. Well, I ended up going to business school first and as an electives taking anthropology courses. And I was like, this is it, like anthropology. And particularly archaeology was what just simply attracted my attention and my passion. I always loved working outdoors. And this relationship between working outdoors, being physically, something that involved you physically,

mentally, and even emotionally, and now I would say spiritually, was a great combination, and a great set of factors that were a balance for me. Fascinating. When did you start to make connections to the Stolo area? When did you start to build connections? You have, it seems like a trio. You, Keith Carlson, Sonny McKelsey, there's a few other people, but that trio seems so fascinating.

How did that come about? I would say quite by chance, really. Again, no forethought or planning that I could see accounting for accounting for this. coming together of our group, of at least us three, I had moved to BC and 93, and in the prior to that gained a lot of experience in archaeology, and particularly working in areas in the northwest in Idaho that were mountainous forested types of terrain and environments. And, you know, post-1993 in BC, they were, this is an odd answer, but there were changes to the Forest Practices Code Act,

which required archaeological assessments in advance of forestry activities for the first time. And so there was a sudden demand for archaeologists that had experience in the mountains and forested areas, and there weren't very many people with that experience.

So I fit the bill quite well. So started working in the community here, the archaeological community. Ultimately, that led to my going back to school for a master's at Simon Fraser University, and, again, by chance, really, landing a research project focused on the analysis of a collection from the 1970s, excavated from a site in Agassi in the Central Phaser Valley,

kind of right smack dab in the middle of Stolo, traditional lands. That brought me in touch with folks at Stalo Nation at the time in 1995, and that's where I first connected with Sonny McKelsey in particular. the first time I went on one of his place names tours and also connected me to what was sort of the initial operation of a permitting system at that time, Estalo-based archaeological permitting system. So I'm doing my master's work. I'm working in the field in mountainous areas and became interested in, you know, what the needs might be in the Stalo Nation. and realized it and learned that they were going to be posting for a job

that they were going to be looking for an archaeologist to do this inventory of the Chilac River Valley fit the bill quite nicely in my mind of something I would love to do and so I applied for that job, got that job and began working directly for Stalination in 97. Again, for the first year, focused entirely on doing this archaeological

survey of the entire Chilawak River watershed as much as, you know, one can do portions of it in a year. But that was what landed me at Stalo Nation in what was the Aboriginal Rights and Title Department at that time, where Keith and Sunny were both working and in the same department. And just we, I guess, connected. And really, once we got to know each other, this amazing dynamic began to happen in this connection of our interests sort of from different perspectives and fields of

expertise, but put together, create a really holistic perspective on things. And I'd say bound, ultimately bound through the interest in connection to relations of Stala rights and histories and contemporary peoples and issues that there was a meaning and ability for us to connect our work, a foundation for us to put our work together to create this kind of synergy. What did it mean to you to find kindred spirits in a certain topic because it can often feel when you have an interest or a passion strange and lonely because you're interested in something other people might not find as interesting?

And you might want to talk about it for long periods of time where other people go, okay, that's enough on like rap or that's enough on the topic that you're interested in. Yet you found people who brought a different perspective and kind of gave you a new tool to kind of look at things from, and I'm just interested, what was, what was those introductions like? Because all of you have become very prominent figures in your craft, in your understanding of things. Well, experience, yeah, it was, as you say, like, finding Kidrid spirits. It was also very, for me, personally, a comforting thing to be working for an indigenous peoples, for an indigenous

organization, as an archaeologist who's a Western, or a settler, and had always kind of felt somewhat uncomfortable about, and questioning, what are you doing and why and who's given you the okay to be working in a particular area, excavating and creating a disturbance, disturbing what's there in terms of people's past and actually people's present. So, you know, landing in this position and being surrounded in, number one, working for the community directly, and then being surrounded by people who have this expertise in a common foundation was was comforting it was great to be part of a group that was sort of bound and set on the same track of some really really interesting questions and

issues to deal with the the land i would say one of the biggest influences initially in that first year where i was barely in the in the office like for really would come to work and the work for me was outdoors. I would go meet up with my team, who are these four Stalo fellows, you know, Dean Jones, Riley Lewis, Larry Commodore from Shohamel, Squah, and Suwali, respectively, I would say the late Riley Lewis. And we would go out and do our field work together. And spending all those days, number one, on the land, becoming familiar with parts of al-Tamak, Stalo traditional lands, and becoming familiar with it in relationship to these fellows who taught me an enormous amount of approach to what we're doing through Stalo lens.

Right. They were extremely significant in my learning process and really beginning to understand the practice of archaeology is something that's simply that is a practice. And it needs to be informed by the place and the people where it's being applied. And so learning from your feet on the land is a literal experience that really informed me in that first year. Learning from the folks I'm working with were, you know, extension of the whole, like I said, the Stala University system. That has formed me for the rest of my time. And pretty amazing because it was a different perspective on things.

I would never have seen it in the same way had it not been for those three men giving me guidance. Wow. That is always a very humble approach to understand how other people have impacted you. How far do we know back? Like when we talk about indigenous people have been here for 10,000 years from time immemorial, what does that mean to you? What are we looking at when we look as far as we can backwards? What are we looking at?

We're looking way past any human memory can retain. You know, literally in this area within South Sumak, you have the physical remains going back at least 10,000 years of this very long-term continuous history of occupation and use of the land. There are aspects of that, you know, when you think about time, and I've thought about this more recently. in how to represent time, especially going that far back. And if you look at the book, Being Cholquayek, which I had the, uh, worked out in putting that together. In the intro, there's a timeline called this Tamayuk timeline. It was an idea that came to me as to, well, there are no dates you're talking about.

When you're archaeology and your radiocarbon dating things and you say, well, that's 10,000 years old. That's because you've applied a particular, you know, Western scientific practice. gives you this number. Well, is that number meaningful in a Stolo perspective and worldview? Well, it's not. It's not. What's meaningful is the cycle of Tomiuk of generations, how many generations have been here and been interconnected with the places and the land and the plants and animals

and all of this, all of what's needed to continue to perpetuate and thrive, how many generations and how many cycles have occurred? is a more probably appropriate way to look at measuring a length of time. So that Tomiak, which is that word for the relationship, the word in Halcumelam for, you know, great, great, great, great, grandparent, great, great, great, grandchild, seven generations past, seven generations' future. And we're always here in the middle of that.

That is sort of a common present in that extent of that extent of, generational connection, future, and past is all part of the present in our concept of memory and recognition and concern for our behavior and activities. So, you know, how many of those sort of cycles have existed and how does that, how is that represented in the work I'm doing in archaeology? Well, it kind of have to translate the numbers that are acquired through a scientific practice and place it into that more probable approach appropriate cultural context. So the intro to being chokweig sort of lays out that timeline, the Tommy of timeline. It's created in an image of a spiraling band, which to me intentionally represented a DNA strand.

Right. So the genetic relationships through time and connection are part of what's still what's been built over time, what's been expanded and what has persisted over time in this collective connection, a collective memory, a collective history. And it sort of emerges from a period of beyond memory, but where it's always been here then to represent an account for what's here now. And along that timeline where each of the loops and that braid are the sort of that seven-generation past and future. So a 14 generation loop, it goes on and on and on and on over the course of about five or six pages. And occasionally, you put in a marker. So in a Western perspective,

well, here's 1808, more or less, working back from today. And so it gives you a real clear perspective on, I think, the generational, the extent of generational connections and really a Talmud timeline that accounts for how long and how deeply connected, stall of people have been here and are linked into the place. So I don't know if that helps answer your question, but it's trying to find a way to account for the question in a way that's not your standard, well, 10,000 years. What does that mean?

Not a whole hell of a lot, but that extent of multiple interconnected generations, getting more deeply and deeply connected to land and place and people over that extent of time creates a blanket of my mind, in my mind, of like immersive experience, deep connection where no matter what part of the land you touch, it can't be separated from the people here today.

That is really interesting. This is going to be a rather strange question, but like you mentioned DNA. There have been kind of comments, I don't know if it's legitimate or not, that the idea of the two snakes intertwining was civilizations almost first attempted identifying DNA without ever knowing what it was and it may have predated the actual discovery of real DNA and I don't know if that's actually factual or provable or not but my broader question is

how intelligent do you think we were 10,000 years ago there's a sense of feeling that we if you're a hunter-gatherer you're playing in the dirt you're doing nothing you're not thinking and I think that this is a significant misreading of history. When I learned about oral traditions, I learned about this idea that they both act as a geographical identification of where you are. So the story helps you actually figure out, okay, there's this story about this mountain, it has this identification, and she was mean to this person. And you have like a story that tells you whether or not that's the mountain you're looking for or not. And then there's a moral element to it, which teaches you how to be a good person, how to relate to other people. That's

far more complicated than what I felt I was taught an oral tradition was, which is they just didn't bother to write it down, and they're silly for not doing that. So when you look back in our time parameters, when you think back on that, are you thinking these people were intelligent for their time, or are they just hunter-gatherers, not knowing what's going on, just kind of hanging out in the forest? What is your take on that, kind of going back 10,000 years? Well, I would love to decolonize the perspective of hunter-gatherer people. being simple or simple-minded or not as smart or as intelligent as these, you know,

industrialized, civilized, Western societies that are the pinnacle of, you know, of what you're saying is this intelligent human being. I couldn't agree more. No, we've got to decolonize that perspective and understand the influence that has been put on all of us through, I'm going to go right to doctrine of discovery, that has for centuries, actually for thousands of years, created and perpetuated, image of indigenous peoples as lesser than Europeans. And the societies and types of societies that indigenous peoples around the world established, created, and maintained for themselves

as lesser than those that are represented in the Western world. And, you know, when it comes down to really answering the question, equivalency, there's no such thing as a lesser intelligent people that were commonly human. Humans across the world have the same capacities. whether it's today or 10,000 years, there's the diversity of what we do with our abilities, our common abilities, our common mental aptitude. But the differences in our world views and what we understand and how we create societies and cultures according to those worldviews is where you have this extent of complexity and diversity that represents our commonness in different ways. So,

you know, it depends on a view really of, well, what do you account for and how do you account for a people in a culture? And what are you intending to measure it against to assess whether it's, you know, greater or lesser than? I would just do away with that whole outlook. So the question, I would just dismiss the question about, are they, how intelligent were they? As intelligent as anybody at any point in time and life while they're human.

as they're human. And, you know, an oral people who carry an oral tradition, just imagine that the success of perpetuating an enormous knowledge base, or even something, let's say, what people consider to be the simple task of creating a basket. Not at all a simple task. When you break down, you know, the basket making 101 characteristically, let's take something a simple course like basket making. Well, let's look at basket making 101. Is it really simple? No, it's incredibly complex and it needs an extremely detailed understanding of locations of resources, types of resources, characteristics of resources, whether it's grass or roots or branches of trees or bark, where that exists, how to harvest it, when to harvest it, what to do with it, how to deal with these raw materials,

how to process them, and how to put them together into something that is this durable, incredible, incredible design serves a particular function and the variability of all that function serving purposes of having like waterproof containers to containers that are have airflow in them for a particular reason and so on and so forth that knowledge base to gain it is a tremendous feat but to perpetuate that in an oral society you know is an experiential basis the educational system was extremely successful and extremely complicated compared to something that I'd say could be simply, if you were to look at simplicity, well, write it down and hope somebody understands it in a written form. How successful have we been in a Western world

having to convey and perpetuate complex, detailed knowled colleges? And there are different systems, but the ability of indigenous peoples to do that is just assigned to a massively successful system. Yeah, I always say that indigenous cultures and oral traditions integrate better into the person because you can adapt it, you can modify things, but you can pull on other people who also know in order to grasp it where I often compare it to Shakespeare.

How many people actually understand one of Shakespeare's plays and could explain the meaning behind that story that is something where indigenous people were able to tell long stories, complex stories, that had so many depths to them that it's really hard to comprehend. And we don't know how much of that we've lost to fully understand the ramifications. Right. And the representation of society across the board, like all the, what we'll call institutions or central elements of society, all there, whether they're expressed in different ways,

but all there, whether the foundation is based on a, what we call hunter-gathering or hunter-gathered fissures or agricultural people. For Stalo, all those core elements of society exist. And the question is, how do they exist? So we do this in class sometimes. It's this, you know, what's the nature of a society? What are these things we call institutions that we're familiar with? And if you look around us today, so there's, you know, education, there's health, there's legal systems and so on.

Do they exist in Stolo society, pre-contact? Today? Yeah, they do. They always have. They're key elements, but they're expressed differently. And so let's look at that in more detail to try and understand how that system works now and where it came from and how it worked in the past and how things have been affected, again, by the dislocation of some of that, the impact on all of that by Western settler colonialism

and these pervasive effects of the doctrine of discovery that were brought in with settlers, Western settlers. interesting so we are obsessed in some ways with the past 150 years of history which is important but it feels like most people don't even have the opportunity to ponder anything prior to that of what was going on are you able to give us the landscape perhaps of what was going on before 150 years ago before contact what are you seeing when you're doing this research what What interesting you hear about pit houses, you hear about different things that were going on. I'm just interested from your perspective.

What do you see? Well, again back to that Tommy up timeline is part of the reason to sort of draw it out that way is to bring into perspective the relationship as how much time, what time, what space does the colonial experience occupy in terms of the life experience of stalo peoples in their societies? It's a fraction, tiny little fraction. It's like the last little loop in a bit of these many, many, many, many loops that run all those six pages or so, right? You get to that last little loop and they go, that's the colonial experience.

Not to diminish the impact, it's been a huge impact, but it doesn't account for or represent the, you know, the majority of Stalo experience here in South America. And so what could I say about that period of time that was unaffected by colonial settlers? well I mean there are all types of relationships that existed and occurred and probably a beautiful histories of of human relationships and interactions affected by natural disasters affected by love affected by all kinds of warfare you know but but in and of their own doing and in and of their own relationships to the land the environment as opposed to sort of this affected thing coming from the outside in terms of other other societies. But, you know, what can you learn even from the practice of archaeology and what could I say about that very, very long earlier time?

A period of change. So dynamic people's dynamic society, a problem-solving society, and one that if you look at how to describe community relationships over time, which is what I did for my Ph.D. dissertation, what can we say about Stalo community organization over time through the investigation of house structures and sizes and shapes and arrangements in terms of villages? Well, it tells us a story that goes back at least 5,000 years of when early, more permanent houses first started to be built in these, what basic, I think are really the basic units of long houses, sort of smaller families,

extended family-based units that have individual houses. Over time, those expand to become these enormously long plank houses, where if you start to combine those family corridors into one structure, that shows the trajectory of growth and change in society, where families became much more interconnected to be these collective longhouse living peoples. And so, you know, not a static thing, not a static set pattern, but a dynamic changing relationship and organizational structures and one of growth. So you see changes over time in the arrangement of villages and houses to the houses are getting larger and combating more people inside.

The villages are also growing. The locations of villages become somewhat. more particular and, like, located at central places for trade and exchange, like at Hathlatan, the Fraser Canyon, Balchamac, the island village, near hope. And, you know, there were some significant villages here nearby where we are, actually, at Swali, that are kind of hub locations for, again, trade and exchange, interaction and communications. So, you know, I'm rambling on here, but... No, that's fascinating.

And I think part of what I was doing is assessing a more common belief that there was this established pattern that what was recorded at the time of ethnographic contact, you know, the ethnographies were recording the way things were 2,000 years ago. And that there was this developed pattern of Northwest Coast peoples. Well, what I was doing was assessing that. And the findings I came up with through the investigation of houses here showed a very different picture that, you know, life didn't begin to stand still. 2,000 years ago so that it was the same unchanged largely for the past 2,000 years, but in fact did change. It was dynamic and showed this development of a system of the CM, I think, emerging and represented in these large houses, large villages, complex extensive trade and exchange

systems, complex extensive systems of relationships culturally in terms of family-based relationships, where Siam, I equate to those central places of importance that become the glue to this big, huge regional network that extends across the Coast Salish world. And Siam are the leadership, the foundational elements of those points of connection at those trade hubs, exchange and, you know, hubs for trade and exchange and networks, those key network nodes, Siam as highly respected leaders, multiple extensive family networks, unblemished history of their name, and the spiritual connection that's essential to their being recognized as highly respected important people. And so that's what I'm reading into the material,

you know, the material history that's out there in the form of houses. Fascinating. We talk about this idea of a great flood. We hear of ideas of Noah and the Ark. I've heard rumblings, I think Sunny might have mentioned it, that here during that Great Flood, it's suggested that they went up Sumas Mountain. Are you able to walk us through your understanding? Because there's a weird relationship with that, which is it literally sounds like it did happen, and yet it is also recorded in many different cultures, traditions, and I find that

really fascinating because it's almost like a cornerstone for so many. different cultures all around the world around this great flood. What was going on here? Yep, Shuo Kuyam. So the oral histories of the distant past and the histories that account for the narratives of transformative changes through the actions of Khaas, the transformers. I mean, the flood story is part of that extensive narrative of Shulquiam that accounts for how the world came to be the way it is today. And it's, it's a, I think, that's the only way you can really account for it is that it's represented in that element of oral history it's clearly a significant event that occurred it definitely uh points to sumas mountain

as well as a number of other important mountain peaks around here i think all the way up through the phaser canyon that were places of refuge at the time of that tremendous flood If you try to correlate the flood directly to, you know, geological events, you can do that. If you were to look at, you know, what was the record of the sea level over the past, you know, 20,000 years, there is a time when the sea was, you know, it came way farther inland than it is, than it does today. The glacial ice and weight of the ice.

mass on the land in these coastal areas was, you know, talking a kilometer thick or more sheet of ice that was so heavy it actually pushed the land base down, which is why the sea flooded inwards inland to where it met up with the glacial edge, you know, and you'd have what we see those classic images of, you know, Alaska cruises with glaciers calving off into the sea. Well, that would have been happening here right about where Sumass is. Really? Yeah. Matsquee-su-Mass.

That was kind of the connection point between, at least in this reconstruction, you know, the glaciers and where the ice was and where the ocean was. So, you know, there certainly was beyond a doubt from a Western geophysical perspective, geoscience-based perspective, the, like, massive differences in the level, the sea level. Yeah. Whether that accounts for the flood that's talked about in Staloslovakam, I don't really know. but there's equivalencies there. And that record, I think, stands on its own

simply from a stroquiam perspective. And it's trying to see it again through that lens of the importance of those narratives. And what they speak to are also points of connectedness between the Coast Salish peoples. And that's what you hear, and we've heard repeated, I've heard repeated multiple times at gatherings, is the refuge that was taken on

Sumas Mountain and how the rafts broke apart at one point and drifted to the south and drifted to the north and became the scowlitz and Chehalis people that are down in Washington state now or became the folks up in, you know, Belakula, the Newark. That's literally a bastion of co-sailor-speaking language dialect on the north coast, no farther north, but that's, you know, accounted for by the drifting apart of these rafts that were people who had taken refuge on Sumas Mountain to, you know, escape the flood. After that, the land drains and people carry on with their lives, but floods were certainly something that were regularly affecting life and village patterns and architectural structures were built to accommodate those on a regular basis. So even aside from the massive flooding, the regular flooding, is something that was a factor of where people lived and how they lived to avoid living in the wrong place, like in the bottom of what used to be a lake.

I think of like how westernized my brain must be in order to find that absolutely astonishing to think about the fact that there's this oral tradition that says this is how it is and then it aligns with research findings. It aligns with actual scientific finding. Like it makes sense, but it's still astonishing to me. What has that been like for you? Part of the challenge. And again, part of the benefit of the initial,

experience of learning that I had here and the continual benefit of the ability to opportunity, the opportunity to talk to, listen and learn from the elders and people who are knowledge holders, folks like Sunny and others, and the many others that I've worked with over the last 25 years, to try to put aside or recognize you need to stop thinking in the way you were taught to think and open the door to try to gain a new perspective through the eyes and the lens of thinking and, again, worldview of stalo peoples. I'm not a stalo person, but working here and being embedded and immersed in stalo histories of sorts, it's best that I try to understand through that lens.

And I think part of what I'm working on and encouraging others to work on is how to incorporate sort of the best of these worlds, not to see one as conflicting or confronting the other, but to incorporate the methodologies, whether it's a scientific ecological methodology or, you know, or a stalo-based methodology and approach to the ecosystems, bring them together, to work together to create the best possible holistic understanding of something. And I think you can do that with archaeology as a discipline. As long as you understand, you It's just a toolbox to do work for the benefit and at the request of the people who need that work and have a reason to do that kind of work. So don't bring along with archaeology the rest of the Western paradigm, but leave that behind, take the tools and apply that for the purpose and in the framework of a Stalo perspective, because that's what you're dealing with. the Stalo histories, stalo cultural materials, Stalo heritage, you know, attempt to work within that more completely to, you know, paint the picture of what was going on in the past.

So, you know, then there are these really cool convergences, like again, around here in these histories of glaciation and so on, transformation of the environment, transformative events and powers that form the world around us that we see today and explain how. how the world came to be, the actions of Hekels, the Transformers, that was these supernatural powers, the actions of glaciation, supernatural powers, all exist. And I think you can say, it's all out there. And the meaning that's carried in the landscape is written to be

interpreted and understood to represent this incredibly fascinating world that we live in. Better Crossing right here is a place of very dynamic powers, right? So the actions of glaciers, the collapse of a glacial ice dam, which retained this lake that extended from Vedder crossing 20 kilometers up to Slessy Creek. And ultimately, when that glacier in the Fraser Valley collapsed and that water flooded out, it was actually recorded, as I understand it, in oral histories that talk a bit about that ice dam having been there. That's 11,000 years ago. So again, the continuity of oral history in relationship to significant events like that are captured in particular places that correlate, corroborate both ways, sort of the Western outlook on the way the land was and how it came to be, but also the experience of Stala people here at those times. And it doesn't diminish transformative processes. it, I think in its best case, adds to the complexity and the nuances and the fullness of the land and the information that's carried within it.

Right. That is really, really fascinating. I don't know if you've ever heard of Graham Hancock, but he just came out with a Netflix series. I think it's called Ancient Civilizations. And one of his comments is, the Western world, the traditional path of archaeology, seems to struggle with amnesia. and he says that he would diagnose the human civilization with amnesia because I can't tell you what was going on in like England a hundred years ago. Like we don't process information that way when you read it.

It just doesn't sit the same way. And when you learn that the idea of poetry is to ingrain it into your mind and that the flow of it is actually a pattern to help your brain retain the whole poem so you can say like 40 verses, 100 verses off by heart and not have to read something. something. It blows your mind to think that we had processes before writing things down. And it's almost that writing things down allows us to forget things in an easier way because we can always go back and grab it. And so I'm just interested in your thoughts on the idea that now it seems like so many of my peers don't know who their great grandparents were. They don't

know who their grandparents were or what they did. And they almost don't respect them because I have a phone and it works and I know how to drive a car and they didn't have a car. a hundred years ago, so they were dumb, and I'm brilliant because I get my phone to work. It just seems like we really struggle with that memory, that understanding. But to your point, there has been information flowing for 10,000 years in other cultures, and I find that just really profound. And it's out there, and I think that's, you know, what's important in history. Well, part of it is the recognition that there's a participation in that through, you know,

directly through your experience and through the genetic lines and relationships of your ancestors that came before you. Did they leave a written record? Not directly, necessarily. And for the most part, not at all. But there is a record out there. And the knowages that are left intact in many cases are still on the landscape. And they're written on the land, both in terms of the direct human ancestral activities.

but also in the knowledges that were placed in the markings of the land, right? So if you learn to read the land, and if you, like Herb Joe always talked about, you know, being a student of Shuoquiam, the more you're connected, I think the more meaning emerges from your experience here. And the more we're fortified by meaning, it definitely has a beneficial, positive effect on our health and well-being. the diminishment of that connection and the loss of meaning is a significant contributor to, you know, people's illnesses to the point of suicide. And the fortification of that and the prevention of that type of illness can be adjusted through reconnection to the places that have ancestral values and meanings.

and the bringing of awareness to, again, the context of where we live, the context where we live, especially when there's so deep connections out there, to learn to be a student of Shuoquiam means to learn to read the land and what's written in it that are those connectors to knowledge that are still sitting out there, that are established by your ancestors, and that need a form of awareness to occur in order to sort of unlock that interpretive content, that meaningful content of the landscape. So Hechal is the Transformers literally writing on the land, the knowledge base. As Stephen points as, you know, the morals, the values are written on the land all around us.

The land was, the Hechalz did this in writing those morals and values in stone, and marking the land, marking the territory, and essentially creating the constitution of who people are and where stol of people live through those actions. That constitutional content and makeup is still out there. But if it's not understood, if it's not seen, then it's easy to say, well, what am I doing?

I just might as well get in the, I have a car. That's good enough. Or, you know, you can drive on the roads and you can drive through all of this. And what meaning is that giving to you, other than that experience in the car that you have a car? But if you start to add these layers of content around that, it really creates a much more fulsome experience. And in particular, for Stala peoples to have that more fulsome connection to understanding, if I could say so, who you are, where you come from, know who you are, where you come from, and how you got to be here today are some of the key, I think, principles and teachings I've heard of for a long time. To know where you are now, you need to know where you came from in order to know where you're going.

And if that's making any sense, I think a key is that being a student of Shuoquiam, as Herb Joe put it, is an important part of, you know, understanding and being comfortable in your skin and having that confidence in who you are and having that grounding of where you are now and how we move forward in a good way. And you hear that when indigenous people talk will say, like, hello, my name is this, my parents are these people, my grandparents are these people, I'm from this community. And that is sort of the introduction is allowing other people to see their connections to you and understanding perhaps how your worldview is developed, if these are your parents and these are your grandparents, how you've almost been informed over time. Absolutely. And so that's a common thing when exactly in gatherings where someone's introducing themselves. It's the placement of connection. And so others know who you are. So you're already wrapping people, others in, by who have an association to your ancestry.

And also connections to places. And I'm sure Sonny has talked about this and the importance of going back to places that your ancestors lived or were used and maintaining those connections. that kind of interactivity with the environment and with the ecosystems is important. You know, in books like braiding sweetgrass, you know, talk about this perspective of relationships to the ecosystem, to the land and resources that were benefited, where the human interaction was an essential element that was beneficial to both parties, you know, nature and human, meaning it's all interconnected and connected. So I've kind of jumped into a different sort of topic here, but the key, that understanding of connectivity down to the individual level is what would create a very, what would be a representation of a fulsome and like healthy system, right? So a lot of that needs to be considered and rebuilt as a result of the impacts, the negative impacts of colonialism of the past 150 years. That's short, but relatively speaking, I don't mean that to come across in any negative way,

but in respect of the full experience, that's something that I think we can look at as how to recover from that and those connectors and keys to awareness of what is that indigenous landscape unaffected by others still exists in many, many ways. So I think that's probably a little too scattered in the response. there. On the note of land and our connection to it and reconnecting to it and seeing the beauty and you made me think of land acknowledgments. And a lot of the main common land acknowledgements you hear make me personally uncomfortable. And I often tell people I'd rather a focus on understanding the rivers, the lakes, knowing the names of the mountains near you, having that relationship.

And then Terry Lynn put it really nicely, which is like when you know about, it when you know that Laquam Park means always mossy place, you're more likely to protect it. I love that because there's an ingredient of action. There's an ingredient of why does this matter. And the traditional approach to land acknowledgments is very focused on indigenous, this is where you, this is the property you're on. And it doesn't give any life to why does the property matter? Why does this land matter to the community? How did they interact with it? And It just misses something, and I'm just interested in your thoughts on them. Yeah, I mean, the place names are very important.

And again, decolonizing the landscape of place names and bringing back what were the foundational names to a lot of places like Scott Sokol, Chilliwack Lake Park. Some of the work the Chilquayak tribe is doing to regain that recognition and, you know, reestablish Scott Sackle as the official name of that place represented by Chiluac Lake Park. Chilwack Lake, Scott Sokol, Sacred Place, Sacred Lake. And it does serve to, I think, stimulate, well, what does that mean? How do you say that? What's the importance of it? What are the values in that word? And why is it, you know, why is that lake named that? So it opens the door, if anybody has curiosity to a whole other arrangement of information and, again, foundation and meaning different than you're going to get from just going to Chilliwack Lake Park. What does that really mean to you?

It's a park, but it doesn't carry the depth of, you open the door behind asking the question, where did that come from? Well, it doesn't go very far. Scott Sokol, that's a different story. I think the protected places is something to perhaps link into this. And there's a need to, I would say, aggressively, assertively, work to establish names and protections on places that are important to, if you're going to broaden us out indigenous peoples,

but Stalo peoples, and to regain some of those foundational places in terms of Stalo control. So there's work going on not only to reestablish place names in places like Scott Salko Park, but to work on use plans within Salthamuk to work on the protection of cultural sites and places that are, that come from the, you know, the changing in the dynamics of power. Yeah. And the reassumption, the assumption, they continue to place and role of Stala peoples

in taking care of Sa'Al-Tamak, right? And I think that's been an interesting trajectory over the past 20 years, at least, not to say the efforts only have been 20 years old, but perhaps some of the manifestation of results in the past 20 years, we're seeing some good outcomes, the repatriation of things, of knowledge, of, and particularly important belongings, the extension of legal recognition for cultural heritage sites and places, and so on and so forth, kind of all mount to the many parted efforts to reestablish those original places. and to protect them and their integrity from further, you know, further, you know, further assault.

Yeah, I actually, I don't know if you've heard of John Oliver, but he did a really good one on like British museums and how they literally would just go into like another country and like chop off a hand from the sculpture and bring it back and like put it on their wall and say like, look at what we found. And it's like you did not find that. You took it. But do you have any thoughts on land acknowledgments? Do you see a best practice in regards to them? Because as I said, they make me, when it's just about, I like to say that I live, work and play on this, it misses the land piece, which is like the beauty and the connection to it. And I'm just interested in your thoughts on how they're currently kind of just rolled out.

Yeah, I mean, I think what got me on that last little bit on the role is you mentioned property. And it kind of like, oh, there's a whole bunch to say about the concepts of property. Land acknowledgements, you know, when they first, I think, initially started to emerge as a thing, It was Vancouver City Council adopted the need for a land acknowledgement for the city and acknowledging Muscum Squamish-Slewa Tooth. And I had commented on that at that time, a reporter asked me what I thought of. I said, well, this is what others need to be doing. And I think it's, I would still, I would still say that, I would maintain that position.

The other local governments, the other settlements and so on indigenous people's lands need to acknowledge where they are. But to go beyond that, you can't stop there. That's a starting point. And to get people to say the words, say the names, and to know the names of the peoples on whose lands they're living, working, playing, and sewing, enjoying themselves or otherwise, that's like drawing in a background that before was just a blank spot.

so I think that's important to establish at least that as a baseline you know I was in a court in a class the other day giving a guest lecture and you know I was asking people where they're from and then once they went around the room largely from the Fraser Valley areas and I asked well do you know whose lands you're living on and essentially got a big blank I was like okay well we got to do something about this because if you don't have that fundamental base of understanding where you are, you know, where you come from, what you're doing here, and on whose lands you're living, if you're not those original people, then there's a big vacuum. So I think land acknowledgments serve at a basic level to fill in that blank space and situate where we settlers are living on whose lands. Is this a good start point. But there's so much more to beyond that in terms of then what connections to what aspects of the land. and so on and so forth, right? But at least one point of connection to the understanding of a place.

Yeah. I guess my struggle with them is just that they become so quickly lip service. Like I've had professors, I'm on the unseated, and it's just like, if you're going to do it, do it, but let's not, like, this isn't helpful. This isn't fruitful and it's not building kind of connections. You're not checking that box, getting off the hook just by seeing that land acknowledgement. No way. No, no, it's got to fund. medley way deeper than that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, the names of all the different indigenous

communities, we're seeing so much change. It's not Sumas, it's Semeth. It's not Chahelis. It's Dehaelis. We're seeing this reconnection, I think, with the original correct terminology. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you see that? Well, yeah, it's the regaining of names. that were the original and truer names to places and communities where there was, it's one of those impacts that resulted from the process of colonization and the recording of place names by people who really were outsiders and weren't from here, didn't know the differences, and mixed up the language dialects. And so you see that in a lot of the early place names and the processes of reserve creation,

names are given to places that were, you know, just plain wrong. Interesting, Nicomyn, right? Nicomond slew, La Camel is, it's a mixing up of the downriver and upriver dialects of Halcamelum, ends and L's in large part being the ones, the things that are changed from downriver ends to upriver L's. So, you know, if the Nicomond band in the old days, it's now changed to La Camel, First Nation, it's because they've recognized and made the trance. transition to the proper dialect that they're originally a part of in the name for them as a

as a group. So there's, you know, yeah, and it's, it's the counteracting of those, of those, I think, colonial processes that, again, it's the empowerment of and the taking of control, the repositioning, even in the determination of identity, who you are, and what's the more appropriate way to be referred to, right? Like I said, when you were talking about someone introducing themselves, it's like, well, I get up, I'm Dave Sheppie, but in fact, if that wasn't the case, wouldn't I want to introduce myself by my true name, you know, as opposed to, well, that was given me by Joe Blow over there, who didn't have any reference to who I really was, but

I'm going to carry that name. I think so many indigenous people have that horrific experience of haven't been named by an other, and even at a community level, to regain your name is to regain significant aspects of identity and placement in the world. Yeah. So we have, I think, 25 different First Nations communities within the territory. How do we think about this? Has this always been how it's been? Was there less and we've now been separated?

I just think of how challenging it is being on council. to be able to work collaboratively with other communities where it doesn't seem like it would have been this way. It's very, like people compare us to municipalities, which is an apt comparison, but I would add that it's with none of the infrastructure or resources or support in order to manage our responsibilities properly. And so it seems like a huge challenge that we've all, we're all independent and we all do our own things. And then from my perspective, we all kind of go, yeah, this is stupid. Let's all create a stolo council. And then we start breaking off and we start doing our own things again. So what is your perspective on kind of the history of some of these

indigenous communities? Was there 25 and now there's 25 today? How do we think about this? Yeah, great question. And different sort of immediate thoughts on that are some of what I've heard. I'll go sort of quote, Bruce Miller from anthropologists from UBC, specialist into co-sailish peoples. And some time ago, he said, we anthropologists have been studying co-sailish peoples for 100 years, and we still don't understand them. The complexity of

relationships is such, and it's so different than a Western perspective. It's very difficult to wrap your head around sort of the scope and scale and types of relationships that are inherently from here. The

nature of the 25 to 30 First Nations that exist, you know, between the Coast Sailor, the Sailor Sea, Musqueam on up through the Fraser Canyon and Yale, are, if you look at them today and the histories of how they were, you know, now deemed to be, say, Musquium, or deemed to be right here where we are. There is no Chilquayek band. There is a Samath First Nation or Indian ban, you know, all these terms and designations come from the application of the Indian Act. So they're a significant imprint and footprint of a colonial, Canadian colonial process. Is there consistency among the determination of those 25 to 31st Nations? Not at all. It's

very confused and confused as a result of the Reserve Creation and Indian Act ban determinations that were made by others. So, as we've looked at looked into this, La Camel, I think, has 11, a number of different reserves, but effectively all under one designation as a band or a first nation, Chilquayek, seven first nations, a tribe, but divided into seven parts, with no overriding Cholquayek band or first nation. The Tiet tribe, and they're, yeah, I think eight or not eight or so, you know, individual first nations. And again, there's no consistency in the way reserves were allocated and bans were developed or created by and through Indian Act-based processes. So it's created this confusion where in the past there were relationships that developed over thousands of years and, you know, operated at many different levels from relationships of rights through individuals to families to villages, to villages,

communities to the bigger and broader tribes and intertribal relationships and to the nation overall that had a inherent way of operating and where you know that still is an order it's in operation but you know has to jump through and over these hurdles of barriers placed in front of and through and around and you know over and all intertangled with these colonial interferences So it's, is it a municipality? You know, is Chawwatha a municipality? No, it's much more than that, right? It's a, for one, people on council, and I have huge respect for council members in First

Nation communities because they're dealing with the federal government. They're dealing with the provincial government. They're dealing with the local governments. They're dealing with the local peoples around them. It's way more complicated than working at any one of those. those levels. They're working at all of those levels in relationship to and in amongst themselves. So it's extremely complicated and it kind of, I think, indicates the scope and array of societal relations that exist today and the complexity in which they exist. So you can't just simply say,

don't, Tawasin Treaty, it's a municipal level or Chaworthal First Nation. It's a municipal level. Not at all. It's sort of something completely different and unique. And the public at large needs understand that. Yeah. And it has very little insight into how and how things work or what the, the nature of today's ongoings are in First Nation communities. But what I've seen is just a tremendous attention to an effort provided by council members in particular to take care of the peoples that they're dealing with in their own,

their own, uh, first nations. Interesting. When I've heard it described, I think it was like municipal and then like regional, which is this idea, because I'm from Chihuathal. I'm going to continue to say it wrong. I'm just really bad at it. And then it's the Tite tribe as well. So how do we think about the different levels?

Because it's almost like another level of abstraction out, zooming out a little bit more, and saying this region is Tite tribe. Within it, there's these sub-communities or subdivision. How do we think about this? Well, I think, and we've asked the question, and, you know, we talk about things we've done together, and we're asked to deal with and do some research on for years

in our days in the Aboriginal Rights and Title Department, as it was called, A-R-N-T, tell us how it works. At that time, the whole department was the engine behind treaty negotiations that Stalo Nation developed around in 1994, 95. So we're working together in 97, 98, 99.

How does it work? How did it work? If we're going to build a governing system now and establish that through a treaty process, which was an objective of that time, then how does it work? How did it work traditionally? And so we spent a lot of time

going through this and this question never really got answered. What's the relationship between a band, a tribe, an individual, a family, and none of them have clear, solid borders or boundaries? Like, you can't, it's like the difference between space and place. You can't simply draw a line around the tribe and say, there it is. It's all contained the rights of the tribe and the rights are contained within that box. You can, with the municipality, because because the legal system that establishes a municipality through the local government act can simply operate within that box, you know, and that's it. It doesn't go beyond it because the legal systems work that way.

The rights and legal systems work that way. They're constrained, and they're simple. They're sort of edge-bounded, not in these stala systems. So family relationships to place are not limited by a tribal boundary. They can have inter-family connectedness. You could have rights down in, you know, down in Lummy, right? Their co-sailish world is not interruption by the international boundary, for one, is another

factor of this, but you could have rights in the canyon if you're from Katsi. And if you track the relationship of family-based rights, basically every Stalo family has connections to the Fraser Canyon as their ancestral fishing grounds. And, you know, that's a, that means everyone's running up into the, into the Tiet tribal area. How could they do that? Well, they have family rights and connections to the family-based ownership or, you know, relationships to particular fishing sites, fishing rocks. But is it that an exclusive relationship that those families who maintain those fishing sites?

It's, as I understand it, it's an obligation to maintain those fishing sites, not exclusively, but for the purpose of providing access to others through those family lines that then give you an extent, show the extent of those family connections all through the coast, world. So the tribe, what is the tribe then? You know, look, that's the next level up. Well, these collections of villages that are still mobile. They're not, stello people are often get characterized as, you know, well, these are migratory peoples. Well, they're known. They're not migratory people. They're working and living with and moving around and saw them up for thousands of years. They're very, very stable people. And there's a stability in the sense of a tribe

that has sort of these footprints of villages and occupancy of those villages pretty stably over time while yet the family connections are kind of all over the place so there's an element of rights as I understand it that's sort of linked to the land and their resources more broadly

that are more tribally based aspects of rights and relationships and obligations for stewardship, access and use and the nation overall as I've understood it as well being informed by folks like Stephen Point, that there were times and places where everyone was drawn together in times of warfare.

And the work I did, again, looking at aspects of warfare and representation of that, and what that says to social, political relationships in pre-contact times, is that there's an organization around the defense of territory when that's necessary, situational alliances and political connections that bring people together as needed,

whether it's multi-tribal or everybody in the coast-sailish nation to war against those other nations in the surrounding areas, the coastal raiders, for one, in that kind of context. So complex and situational in many ways, not prescribed by what we see as regulation now or legislation, legislative relationships, it's principled relationships. and a range of collective interests and rights that I would say is difficult to get to understand because of its complexity and how it isn't limited by a space-based sort of mapping out of those rights,

but much more place-based and relational and principled. This is so complicated and so interesting to see the depths that you kind of have to think about these issues. I'm curious, where are we at now? It seems like for a period of time, we were all the First Nations communities were fighting with each other over land claims. This used to be our territory. And to a certain extent, there's this seeming challenge of we were everywhere. So to say that this is now La Camel and this isn't my territory and I'm not allowed to go here and this is their property and not mine. How do we think about this issue now as we negotiate provincially and, and try and mend fences and work towards kind of reclaiming our land after it was reduced by 90% by Mr. Trutch. Right. I think there has been a concerted effort through the First Nations Leadership Council, the Assembly of First Nations, U.C. Union Chiefs in BC in particular to sort out aspects of rights and relationships to land, where it's been complicated by a treaty process and the need to map out territory with the appearance of exclusivity in the way the treaty commission required mapping to be done as the first step of their process.

So, you know, built into a process of resolving land claims, you know, in the land question, is something in a mapping exercise, it's a Western mapping exercise of exclusive space-based boundaries that, for, when you put them all together, overlap with each other, inherently create this conflict, this appearance of conflict. That term overlapping territories is something that over time has been pushed aside to be, or the preferences looking at it as shared territories. And I think the efforts have been to create First Nation-based indigenous councils to apply indigenous legal systems and processes to address those points where there are conflicts. And to keep the governments out of there.

It's not their issue. And to revert to indigenous practices of relations to help, you know, settle the world of relations. And back to what we were just talking about, understanding the depth of and complexity of those relationships and how long they've lasted to reconnect and make it more complex than the simple one-lined drawing. of a territorial boundary, replace that with the many point of connectedness to place and so on, to work towards agreements and treaties internally to be between nations and peoples as they existed in the past and as they will be continued to be created and recreated moving forward. I think the effort has been to replace government influence and interference with indigenous processes.

And that move towards indigenous law is something that's emerging very strongly these days. And yeah, I think that's an interesting point. It's been a buildup of that kind of conflict since the early 90s when the treaty process first got going. And only recently is it really starting to become like, well, I think the gravity of change is occurring to address it in a more, again, indigenous manner. Right. I've heard this rumor. I feel like I learned it when I was like 10 years old, but that they had each indigenous

community come in one like separately and they had them draw out their maps and then they overlaid all the maps on top of each other and kind of went you guys don't know what you're talking like this doesn't make any sense how could you all own the same land did that happen or did some sort of event like that take place where they kind of tried to i don't know look down on or make it seem like it's silliness i just i remember hearing that it's it's not like a fully fledged memory but i remembered learning something like that. Yep, yep, the first steps of the BC treaty process in particular were about, you know, getting a mandate, number one, from the community to enter the process.

And, but secondly, out and create your statement of intent. Tell us where your rights exist and what you're going to be, the area you're going to be negotiating in to, you know, square away this issue of rights and this issue of land question and so on. So that was done, I would think, I don't know this, independently, for any First Nation or collective of First Nations that wanted to enter. this into that process starting in 19 you know really began going in 91 but 9094 is when that first really began to get individual mandates or collective mandates the stalo nation went in with like 18

first nations crafted a big collective area and submitted the map and that's what you see still is the stallo nation statement of intent and it's all of solstim well there was a reason for that but it wasn't allowed there was no basis to have that kind of explained so when you you take that map and then you take Sawasin and you take Katsi and you take muskine and all those that have, and cowage and all those that have claims and you put them all together. Yeah, it creates this mess of, you know, in Western terms, overlapping statements of intent. Part of the process was, you know, this being an apolitical, a historical, I was kind of bowed my mind.

There was no screening process. It's like, you tell us what land you're going to be negotiating about and then have at it. Probably a better way to do it would have been sort of get people together. representatives of nations together and look at this approach where collectivity is needed, where dialogue is needed at the outset, to craft a better system and approach that doesn't simply blindly create these base statement of intent maps. And then when you do lay them all together, massive conflict and parent conflict and the 110% of the land being claimed, right?

How is that possible? Well, if 110% of the land is being claimed, there's inherently something wrong. You know, something's not being accounted for. And the shared pieces are what would then, if you did this in a more constructive manner. And I think that's where the intent is now sit down and talk about the interests and the relationships of rights where they mix between nations and where they internally work within the nation to sort out how things could be and how that could be crafted into things like treaties or relationships around land use and so on. but it's created a bit of a mess

and consultative processes represent that as well so the consultative areas where the crown has an obligation to consult with indigenous peoples the crown meeting federal and provincial governments their obligation to consult

is a legal obligation and so how they approach that is simply again the statement of intent kind of an approach where where's the land area of containing rights of a people So when you put them all together, the area where you're sitting in now in the upper Fraser Valley is the hot spot of BC, the most complex by far. And so if any proposed land development is, you know, it's going to trigger potential consultation by up to 35 different First Nations. Right. So you try to sort that out. There's, again, maybe a better way to approach it.

And we've been working towards that as well by organizing. internally within the Stala communities through our Saltamuck Stewardship Alliance and the development of agreements with the BC and the federal governments, how to sort things out. The consultation, we'll call it consultation or the land use decision-making process and policy that was crafted for the and through the Saltamuck Stewardship Alliance as a collective entity starts essentially by saying, we'll sort it out. You know, if you have a proposed development in this area, send it to us and we'll figure out how it's going to work internally, right? We're not saying there's conflict here.

We're saying it's just the internal matter of sorting out the relationships. That's up to us, the rights-holdings, stalo peoples. Don't ask government how to do that. Yeah, that's a really good point. And something obviously that took some time to even consider and to put into place, it seems, from my understanding, being on counsel, we're moving away from treaty. It seems to have changed. Stahela signed a reconciliation agreement, which I thought

was really beautiful in just how it was written and the thoughtfulness of adding in indigenous knowledge and understanding. Where do you think we're heading long term? Do you think we're heading in the right direction in regards to resolving these land claims in terms of recognizing past injustices and improving things? Do you have hope for the future? Absolute hope for the future. And there's a trajectory of, you know, things going well. You know, what I've seen, number one, I'll try not to deviate too much here. But I was super fortunate when I started working in 97 to kind of land at a time where the elders were, there were a certain group of elders, and there was a certain group of leaders. And I was able to work with the leaders at place at that time, like the late Frank Malloway, for a good 20 years.

And then there was a point in time about five or so years ago where, you know, their terms were coming up. in a sense, and they were looking to renew their time. They'd been doing their work for 40 years. As Richie Mello said, I've been doing this work for 40 years, and I've seen in its time in 1997 no change, and it's time for the young people to take over. Well, as of five years or so years ago, the same situation was arising.

The trajectory of hope was, it is. A bunch of young people came forward. Personally, I didn't know who they were. I hadn't met them before. I didn't know who they were. they weren't in my view of the leadership out there. And they stepped right into these roles in these incredible ways. And the capacities of the young people in the Stalo communities that I know of are fantastic in all these realms.

Like what you're doing, what Carrie Lynn is doing. Folks like Dave Jimmy, Derek, yeah, a lot of the folks you've talked to are these phenomenal leaders. And they, in my view, came out of the woodwork. How did you question? How are you doing what you're doing so well? but thank God there's this this young sector of involved people, young people who are really taking on these roles in a fantastic way and sort of bringing those traditional elements of leadership and ability to mix and mingle with the world as it is out there at large in a very sophisticated way. That's the foundation for a very positive-looking future in that maintenance of culture,

tradition and ingenuity, which is what I'm seeing in the past, right? This is why I've described Stala peoples before. This incredibly dynamic in society that's very ingenious, flexible, and able to sustain things through incredible trials. Resilient. That resilience and all of those qualities are coming around today and to the modern dynamic. So I'll stop there, and there were other elements to your question that I want to make

sure I'm hearing in treaty outlook in terms of those relationships on a government to government levels and reconciliation. The field of opportunities is huge and way greater and more, again, fulsome that it was 25 years ago. The idea of a treaty is completely different now that it was 25 years ago. And the possibilities and options to pursue a form of nation to nation or government to government reconciliatory agreement there's a whole bunch of options to choose from.

The doctrine of discovery always pointed to a perspective by Westerners and making agreements with indigenous peoples that they weren't real agreements, right? So you can make a treaty,

the Treaty of Westphalia, you know, that created a treaty between Western nation states. That's a real treaty. We're going to abide by that. You know, treaties are the foundational form of agreement

between nations, recognizing each other's rights and setting out aspects of relationships. The treaty is the top form of agreement, but only if it's recognized as that. And so I think what's emerging now is the defeating, you have to defeat this doctrine of discovery business. You have to recognize it and put it aside, not just put it aside, you have to stomp on it

and throw it in the trash and get rid of it and move reality to, if you want to talk about a treaty, it's the treaty that is the meaningful nation-to-nation-based treaty that's emerging today as, as really the substance of what that kind of negotiation is about and what it's intended to achieve. And the framework of reconciliation is being placed on this suite of agreements that can be very, very broad in like the fullest form of a treaty or have subset more specific types of objectives, whether it's land or protection of heritage sites or processes for dealing with land-based decisions.

Those are all aspects of reconciliation-based agreements. So the suite of opportunities is much bigger, broader, and more robust than it was 25 years ago. Right. So we lost 90% of reserves on average. How much do you think we get back in the long run? How much does that change? Is that 45% or is it 90%? Like, what is the optimistic outlook, even if it isn't back to reserve land?

How do we make sure that we preserve this area, the beauty that is, the Fraser Valley, Saltamuk. Like, how do we do this? Well, you're opening the door for a perspective that I could throw on this, which is around shared decision making, right? So back to property, you mentioned property that kind of triggered a sort of a response. for me in a different in a particular way property and the perspective on property again what does that mean and what is what it what applies to it western property law is a very key fundamental aspect of law that's very very important in a western world property and relationships to property

and to rights to resources resource use and so on in an indigenous perspective are somewhat different um is there an equivalency in terms of this is our land and Western property, yeah, there's an equivalence. There is no lesser than in a indigenous perspective on this is our land, right? How it works in relationship, though, I think there's a possibility of approaching land and land relationships that doesn't require necessarily like all this 90% land back if 90% was taken. When you have the population that lives here now, is that really something that's doable? and I've heard a sharing perspective and principle expressed many times by leadership over the years

and a recognition that everyone's here to stay. So how do you sort this out? And I would go to shared decision making is a fundamental element of that. Having your relationship of rights 100% connected to land and resources doesn't require that level of Western ownership. But the connectedness to land resources and decisions over what's being used and where, and how is fundamentally, I think, critically important to establish in a very, very complete way. Where it does not exist now, but there's a creeping towards, there's a movement towards that. And in thinking through it, and being involved in stewardship for many years, in particular around

heritage sites, you know, and involved in treaty process and negotiations for mixing this all together for many, many years, I was thinking about how and what types of models exist, at the very outset of these relationships between indigenous and Western peoples in the North American experience. And the Iroquoian experience back in like 1613 resulted in this creation of a wampum belt that was called the Two Row Wampum. And it was a model of relations that was set out a treaty that was symbolized in the shell-beated belt of the Iroquoian people. And so the two rows were these blue rows, parallel rows on a white background. Then each row represented the two rivers of life and pathways for the canoes holding the Ukrainian people, the Haudenosaunee, and then the Dutch

settlers who were coming into their territory at that time. And the agreement represented in the model of relations was each respects your custom laws and beliefs, basically stays in your canoe on your pathway of river of life, but you recognize each other's customs laws and beliefs. And you maintain that set against a background of peace and respect. So effectively saying, as long as you stay in your track, everything's going to be good. But the reality of what occurred after that was this colonial process. And, you know, one boat veers into and subsumes the other and the rivers mix and, you know, one sort of overflows into the other. And the settlers in colonial processes bent that treaty out of shape.

So is there a way to approach the application of the thinking behind it, which I think is sound very, very interesting and sound respect for each other's customs, laws, and beliefs, don't interfere with each other. But you're in a backdrop of shared space. So what occurred to me was you need a third row of the two-row wampum as a foundation. You need a third row in between to set out the rules of relations of space, not space, but place and resource use in terms of shared decision-making over land and resource stewardship. So you each maintain your customs laws and beliefs.

There's, you know, there be places in times and areas of society where the others should have no say in how culture works, right? So government should have nothing to do with that. And in similar, you know, Stalo peoples would have nothing to say about certain aspects of how the, you know, the settler system works. as long as it's not interfering with each other. But where you need to have rules and parameters is in the shared place that we all are living now

and the nature of use of land and resources, which involves fundamentally shared decision-making processes as that mediating factor in third row in what I'm calling a three-row model of relations. That's profound. That is a very interesting way to look at it and something it must have taken a lot of years to develop that understanding.

to see the way out of this constant bickering, this constant fighting over resources and ownership and claim and gives me a lot of hope. Is there something over your research, over your archaeological digs that it stood out to you that you've gone like, wow, like what an experience to see this? I just, I want to make sure that we catch the fact that you love being out there in the world and seeing these things and putting your hands on the history. of our beautiful area. Well, yeah, as I'm describing the sort of intangible side of what I, you know, all this

experience being here, starting with your feet on the ground and knowing nothing to this incredible introduction and learning process to help, you know, to come up with these, you know, formulate, again, with others input, these kind of ideas that help deal with aspects of what's in front of us for societal relations, reconciliation, and so on. But the tangible side of that is, yeah, back to being an archaeologist, I love that. You're out on the land. Managed to get out this last summer into some of the high elevation areas in the Chilac Valley through a project that Tribe, Chilquayak tribe was running.

And, I mean, to me, there's nothing better than being able to connect to material belong, the material past, you know, the material present, the cultural materials, the cultural belongings that are out there. And when they're especially in place and in situ and we're coming across places over the last 20 years or so that people haven't been to in a really long time or otherwise haven't recognized for their importance and contribution to maintaining the histories of Stalo peoples and that speak to the way things worked, right? And understanding the way things work can be fundamental to address. issues and arguments and issues around rights, a place in the Fraser Canyon, Chathlath, it's a Shoahamel Reserve, just opposite Lady Franklin Rock, incredible place to go.

And, you know, it's, it has structures there that represent substantial development and extensive relationships. Again, going back to coast-sailish peoples from all of those. over the Coast Salish world going up to the Fraser Canyon to fish in the summertime. Well, this was a major collective location, major important place, and surrounded by transformation places, Lady Franklin Rock is one of those, you know, Halchellimus is the transformed Indian doctor. So you kind of start to find, or not find, that's not at all what I'm meaning, but to experience a place like that and explore it and start to old.

open your eyes to what's there when other archaeologists have been there in the past and not seen anything much. Because of the subtlety of the development of this substantial village seeming so natural. And where rock cliffs were, in fact, created through the quarrying of rock and the construction of rock walls and rock platforms, which coast-sailish peoples weren't expected or understood to be people who quarried. worked with stone. I think I calculated something like over 100,000 tons of rock being quarried and used locally from that place. And so to the point where when you start to recognize that, and you realize, wow, those bluffs aren't natural, that they're a result of quarrying, creating vertical stone faces. And why is that for the sake of creating, expanding, you know,

enhancing defensibility of a place that is housing a lot of capital in terms of dried salmon? and needs to be highly defensible, the development of the land was substantial, but in a way that fits so naturally into the landscape that you can almost not detect it. And then overcoming what I think were some anthropological biases of, well, that can't be, whether you can see it or not, again, if you open your eyes and you don't, you're not carrying bias into your perception, whether that's the case or not in terms of previous investigators. It certainly, I think, has an impact when you're led to believe people are of a certain way, are simpler, or less complicated, or not as smart or intelligent, right?

Don't work with stone. Therefore, these piles of rock are natural, right? Or need to be explained in some other way as opposed to a cultural construction. So, you know, going to a place like that, seeing it, experiencing, it touching it, feeling it in having that sort of multi-sensory experience and input of information through your feet, through your hands, through your eyes, is very much embodying the nature of investigation for me as an archaeologist. Fascinating. Advice for others, you've looked deeply into history, and they say people who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. What advice do you have for others, seeing the pitfalls of the past 150 years, the wars prior to that? What advice do you have for people when they're moving about in their life, when we're trying to work towards reconciliation?

What advice do you have? Yeah, sort of wake up to, as a settler, in particular, to understand where you are, why are there and what you're doing there. And I think those are three questions that I've heard put out there by elders and generally that we have to be able to address for ourselves. And not just as settlers, but as anybody. And if you ask those three questions, then you're going to have to encounter history, its place, its meaning,

and you're part in that to then, you know, be healthy in the system, recognizing your place in the system and giving you a foundation to, then participate in a good way in the place and systems where you live. If you answer those questions, I think there's a truth in that that starts to locate us

as individuals in the context of the broader societies and places where we all live. That's incredible. Can you tell people the books that you've been involved in and how they can get access? We have the Stolo Koselish Historical Atlas

here, and you mentioned the Chilquoic Tribe book. Can you mention those for people so they can learn more? Certainly happy to do that. And yeah, where to go, where to learn more and more resources out there these days. Astalo Coast Salish Historical Atlas was a book that I was first had the honor to work on with a group of folks in the outcome of the Aboriginal Rights and Title Department. So myself, Keith, Sunny, and a number of other folks were involved in putting this one together. It was published in 2001, and we've redone a little bit of it in 2006 to kind of bring it up to date on a couple of particular points. But that's out there. And interestingly,

that one was a big surprise for us in terms of actually being recognized as a bestseller in BC for a period of time, which was, you know, we kind of were all like happy we survived making it. And then it's actually being picked up and become very popular. So, you know, that's a good overview of, you know, elements of Stolo co-sailish peoples and place and relationships over a very long period of time, but sort of this broader regional Stolo perspective. An element, a subset of that would be the more recent book in 2017 that it was a part of, that I edited and worked on with Chilquoic tribe as their production. And that was being Chilquayek.

It's about the identity of, and histories of Chilquoic tribal peoples as part of the broader Stolo Coast Salish world. So it's a more particular focus on the Chilcoaic tribal sort of land basin, Chiloch tribe, Chilquoic River watershed. And that's put together in a different way, somewhat more reflective of a piecing together of narratives around. themes. So the structure is different than the Atlas. The structure is really thematic and trying to include as much as possible only Stalo voice directly through the accumulation and the collection and clipping of relevant statements of people who were interviewed and putting them in order to speak to the themes that we're talking about with spiritual hunting, so on and so forth. So a collection of voices to represent as like this perspective on what it is to be chalquayic.

Some other non-books, I, scowlitz, it was a community, Stoloko-Sailish community in the Central Fraser Valley as a website that we developed and again launched in 2017 with a group of, well, group of collaborators from UBC, SFU, some, other individuals who, a great team, who worked on this closely, very connected to Scalots, community and leadership. And that's a website that's just looking

at. Again, it's focuses on Scalots as a tribe, as a tribal group and connections to where where Scalots is today, the cultural landscapes in and around Scalots. And also has a very strong archaeological connection

And a lot of the collaborators were deeply involved in the archaeology work that occurred at Scalitz with Scalitz community permissions and involvement since the late 19th, since the 1990s onward. So the archaeological content of those investigations becomes a touch point for looking at the contemporary community and the continuity of teachings that are important and can be drawn from and connected to. to that past, to that material past, but are persistent today and points of learning and teaching for the young people moving forward into the future. So I would strongly encourage people looking at that Scallets website, digital scallots.caultz.a. I hope I got the dot-CA right, but digital scallets,

S-Q-E-W-L-E-T-S. And that's, you know, those are three really good resources to a book and virtual that are, We can certainly speak to and suggest people go have a look at. Absolutely. Dave, you humble me. Like being able to sit down with you, Sunny, Keith, it's just a reminder of how little we know and how lucky we are that people like yourself dedicate yourself not only to learning this,

but to really stewarding the information and allowing and supporting people getting access and reconnecting with their culture, their community, and moving forward in a better direction. think we're just in a really good time right now where things are changing and moving in the right direction, but it's through the hard work, the years and years of effort that have been going on that we don't get to see. And I think that's just what's so admirable about the work you do is because I can tell we could do another three hours, we could do another five hours. You teach a whole course, which is three hours times 12 weeks. And even that isn't enough. So I just feel very lucky to have even spent a little bit of time with you because it's, it's,

shows so much how much you care about this, how protective you are of explaining it properly and encouraging others to connect with it as well. So I really appreciate you being willing to do this to share such insightful knowledge and your time with us today. Well, Eric, it's a pleasure and an honor to be invited to participate in your podcast series. And yeah, I just want to congratulate you and put my hands up. You're doing such a great job. And yeah, it's an honor to be here. So thank you very much. No problem. Go check it out. Stolo Coast Salish historical Atlas, being chelquoic, such fantastic work going on. And I think some of the proceeds go towards supporting your great work, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it's all reinvested if the

proceeds are coming to us at the Stala Research and Resource Management Center, which is where this is all where we are now. That then, yeah, it all goes back into supporting our capacities. Brilliant. Thank you.