Grave Situation by vatooz

Grave Situation
by
© vatooz

He hired a small boat in Chemainus and he and his partner headed out
to explore the many Islands that seperate Vancouver Island from the
Mainland. They say they travelled about a hour and a half when they
came to rest on one of the bigger islands that is called Valdes after
the Spanish explorer who sailed through this area in the late
seventeen hundreds. It was here that he and his friend discovered one
of the countless burial caves which are hidden throughout the
traditional territory of the Hul'qumi'num First Nation People. He was
worried about getting back before dark so he took one of the ancient
cedar burial boxes and filled it with as much of the human remains
and artifacts as he could stuff in to it. He did not care that he was
mixing the remains or that he was disturbing this sacred site. He
left with his treasure like a thief in the night and he returned to
his home in Alberta where he is a high school teacher. Here he used
these ramains and artifacts in his show and tell demonstrations. This
went on for many years until one day he startd to feel uneasy when
ever he came in contact with that which he had taken. He eventually
decided to rid himself of this growing burden and he contacted the
local museum and told them that he was willing to donate his find to
their collection. The museum informed him that he could face criminal
charges and that they were not allowed to accept human remains from
unconfirmed sources. He threatened to deposit the remains in the near
by garbage dumpster if they did not choose to assist him and it was
under this pressure that the Alberta Museum contacted my office.

since the person who removed the remains chose to remian nameless it
was difficult to assemble the information we required to return these
objects to their original resting place. This person did not know the
names of the islands nor did he know the direction that he had
travelled from the town of Chemainus. Working through the Alberta
Museum we were able to fax a map of our islands to them and they
worked with this school teacher to narrow down the exact location
that we were looking for. Eric McLay a University of British Columbia
Archeologist and myself loaded up our small boat and headed out to
what we thought might be the location where these remains were
removed. We have mapped out hundreds of known burial sites through
our the area.

As we visited many of the sites we noticed that a good many of them
had been disturbed since last they were accessed. On Leach Island the
nearby residents of Thetis Islands had dug up the area and used the
diggings for road bedding thus exposing the burial area to the
weather and passing boats. There no longer were any remains to be
seen here. On Hudson Island a small air port had been built over the
burial area. On Tumbo Island the parks department had installed a
outhouse over the burial site they say they moved the one body they
found there but this still left many unresolved issues in our minds..
The beautiful moss covered burial caves located on the northeast
corner of Thetis Island were also explored. It was here where Wilson
Duff had removed a good number of Burial boxes loaded with blankets
and human remains and taken them to the B.C. Museum.

After a through search of these and a good many other similar islands
we determined that Valdes Island was the most likely of them all.
This long island is home to the Lyackson First Nation the early
Indian Agent reports and the missionary reports tell of a huge
defensive Indian fort which was constructed on the southwest side of
this island at shingle Point. They go on to say that at one of the
gatherings held here over two thousand souls gathered and held a huge
feast which lasted a number of weeks. Many large canoes would come to
the shore lashed together with a cedar plank platform in between them
and on this platform dancers would sing and perform until they were
invitited ashore by those who lived in the area. The white shelled
beach which we refer to as a midden is over seven feet deep in bright
white oyster and clam shells. The Lyackson at one time had their
village located her until the Navy came and burned most of the
villages in the area as they tried to locate a Lamalchi Indian named
Achewan who they said had killed some settlere. But that is another
story.

it was determined by our elders that it was unsafe to return these
remains to the site in which they were removed so a site was prepared
within the pre historic cemetary located on the northeren end of this
old village site. Many boats of elders and community members joined
us on that rainy early sunday morning and prepared for the work of
returning these remains to their final resting place. Our burial
experts were on hand and they had conctructed a beautiful box within
which to lay the remains. Our guests were all protected with red
ochre. The much respected keepers of the rattles were on hand to
perform their timeless ritual. They formed a line of three on each
side of the box and they sang three songs before reaching the area
which had been prepared. They sang one song outside of the area one
at the entrance and one at the actual site. One of the elders told of
a dream she had the night before she had dreamed that hundreds of
canoes were pulled on the shore here and that the people were very
happy to see that we were doing the right thing with our ancestors.
After the work was complete we ajorned to the small big house located
on the island and warmed ourselves and shared a simple meal.

This is just one example of what we are up against in protecting our
lands and the remainis of our ancestors. I could go on forever with
just what I have encountered since I have worked here. We are working
to get a system in place with the local governments and land trusts
to insure that no development happens with out checking with us first
but this is very difficult. Recently some kids went through one of
our cemetaries and tore up the burial tombs and scattered the
remains, the local mill did some illegal digging to repair a sewer
line and tore a buried body into many pieces. This occoured even
though this mill was well aware that there were remains in the area
since we had reburied about a dozen not that long ago from the same
area. In Duncan we were able to stop a developer from extending his
housing development to include a well documented Cowichan burial site
which has twenty four recorded burials within it. The developer is
not discourged he is resubmitting his development request to the
city. On Saltspring Island a local resident called my office and he
and his wife discovered a body sticking out of a shell midden located
along the beach in a park located on the north west side of the
island. We ended up uncovering four bodies from this site there could
be many more in this site. People here have a different mind set
about Indian Human reamins then they do about the remains of another
race it is like our ancestors are nothing more than an attractive
curio to be placed on the mantle piece if we were to take the same
attitute about their ancestors remains we would be writing this from
behind steel bars.