This First Nation is recruiting its members to do archaeology and prove their oral history is true

February 28, 2025 Canuck

Chipewyan Prairie First Nation has taken part in archaeological digs in its territory for several years now, according to Shaun Janvier, director of Chipewyan Prairie Industry Relations, who says the work proves what the community’s always known.

“The stories that we have are truth. They’re not lies. They’re not made-up,” Janvier said.

“I’m 51 years old and I have stories that date back to my great-great grandfather… Then you do archeology to find out, and it just proves it.”

Recently, the Dene community 320 kilometres north of Edmonton decided to host a field school.

Field school allows participants to learn the hands-on parts of archaeology, like excavation and processing artifacts. For the Chipewyan Prairie school, students also got a week of in-class training at the university where they heard lectures from experts.

For members of nearby communities, the process was particularly meaningful, Janvier said, because of their connection to land and its history.

“You’re finding artifacts that your ancestors were there,” he said.

The process began when community members, along with University of Alberta archaeologists, were researching in the Winefred Lake area.

For non-Indigenous archaeologists like Ave Dersch and William Wadsworth, a PhD candidate who helped lead the field school, drawing on Indigenous knowledge is a key part of their work.

“Chipewyan Prairie knows their history already, and they know that they’ve always been there,” Dersch said in an interview with CBC Edmonton’s Radio Active.

“Almost exclusively as an archaeologist, you’re working on Indigenous heritage context. So we need to also change archaeology to be better,” Wadsworth said.

At Winefred Lake, he added, they found “cultural continuity” of the Dene community dating back a few thousand years.

That aligns with what is well-known within the community, Janvier said.

All this led Wadsworth to say he hopes that every First Nation can have its own members working as archaeologists to interpret their findings for their own communities.

Two young people are shown sorting through small pieces of debris looking for artifacts. — The program in Chipewyan Prairie is part of a growing trend to promote more involvement from Indigenous people in archaeological field work. (Terri Trembath/CBC)

That sentiment is echoed by Eldon Yellowhorn, an archaeologist and professor of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who is from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta.

Yellowhorn got his own start in archaeology doing field work and says digs like the ones at Winefred Lake can be the starting point for people to begin academic careers.

“I wish more [Indigenous people] would go to university and then become archaeologists who will be able to make valid and accurate claims based on their research and their own cultural knowledge,” he said.

That is a crucial part of his own work, Yellowhorn said, as he’s been using the stories he heard growing up to interpret archaeological records.

“This [traditional knowledge] has all been kind of dismissed. That it’s just myth, and there’s no truth to be found there,” Yellowhorn said.

He said he’s used archaeological records to trace traditions — which are often referred to as dating back to “time immemorial” — back to their likely origins.

Who gets control of what’s found

Items discovered during the Chipewyan Prairie field work are being held only temporarily at the University of Alberta Institute for Prairie Indigenous Archeology, Dersch said.

That is different from what usually happens when artifacts are uncovered. In Canada, provinces and territories decide what happens with archaelogical artifacts.

“So in Alberta, this means listening to the Archeological Survey of Alberta and following the artifacts submission guides by the Royal Alberta Museum [RAM]. Because in Alberta, everything’s going to the RAM,” Wadsworth said.

However, since reserves fall under federal jurisdiction, First Nations are able to decide what to do with artifacts found on reserve land, he added.

In this case, the artifacts from Winefred Lake belong to Chipewyan Prairie. Janvier said the community plans to open a museum or heritage centre in the First Nation or in Fort McMurray, Alta., so that all First Nations in the area have equal access.

Yellowhorn said often provincial rules around archaeological findings alienate Indigenous people from their heritage.

“It has effectively put a rift between descendant communities and the artifacts that we find in the ground, because now they’re saying, since these are resources, they now belong to the province and you have no say in what happens to them,” Yellowhorn said.

Yellowhorn said recent land claims agreements have tried to address this issue by giving First Nations back the control over these finds — but that requires each community to address the issue on an individual basis.

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