Hunting Guide Searches For Ancient Village Sites

The morning sun is still behind the mountains, but Albert Joseph is wide awake. He navigates his van along the slim logging roads carved into the side of British Columbia’s Fraser Canyon.

Joseph has traveled these mountains all his life as a hunting guide and forest firefighter. But it isn’t animals he is hunting on this particular day - it’s archaeological sites.

Hoping his knowledge of the terrain will help with their land claim, the Lillooet Tribal Council has hired Joseph to search for the ancient villages where his ancestors once lived.

They hired the right guy.

Joseph has found seven villages since last summer, as well as prehistoric rock paintings and arrowheads. All the sites are being put on a map that will help Indian bands define their traditional territories for upcoming treaty talks.

“I look for a good place to put up a house, with lots of sun, out of the wind, close to hunting and fishing,” Joseph explains. “If you find an old trail, there’s definitely something along that.

“The challenge is finding this stuff that’s been hid away for a long time.”

This kind of archeology is happening around the province right now, as aboriginal groups prepare for treaty negotiations with the governments of Canada and British Columbia.

Some native groups are working hard to make sure they come to the treaty table with solid proof that they are the traditional occupants of the lands they are claiming.

Since the central goal of the treaties is to spell out the aboriginal rights of the native people within their traditional lands, defining those lands is an important task.

But how are these traditional territories to be determined?

“The rules of the game are very unclear,” said Paul Kariya, executive director of the British Columbia Treaty Commission, which is refereeing the treaty negotiation process.

“A First Nation makes a statement about what it feels are its traditional territories and it’s up to the two government parties to decide if that is legitimate or not.”

The commission is trying to come up with guidelines setting out how much proof natives must provide regarding the boundaries of their ancestral lands.

At this early stage in the talks, the lands subject to treaty claims have been outlined only vaguely in statements of intent submitted to the commission by the 43 native groups involved.

The maps attached to the statements range from sophisticated to amateur.

Some native groups are sending band members to school to take computermapping courses, hoping those skills will help advance their position in the treaty talks.