i ns faa ah iad cd y) eee j es OR os ed ms Fame hes Datel Ae i” Th eee ee he J ae WAIN AZ, pole eet ik ek rl ccendiakicock Ak ab aac eee PT errs jee nae TE et Poe ep EE NG) On ON frac) a esa (604) 520-5400 Mailing Address: P.0. Box 2503, New Westminster, B.C. V3L 5B2 700 Royal Avenue, New Westminster, B.C. Alan McMillan begins another adventure this summer when he leads an excavation on Vancouver Island’s west coast. He’s hoping to uncover some previously hidden facts about the Toquaht people. INSIDE INSIDE Print Futures Program oe 2 President's Commission: Update on Hearings Art Committee Seeks New — Members _ 3 Royals Lead, A Jain A Teens Counsell es Anthropologist or The Past Digs oe College anthropologist Alan McMillan hopes to rewrite the history of the Toquaht people, a Nuu-chah-nulth (Noot- ka) Indian group of Vancouver Is- land; or at least uncover some new truths. Funded by a B.C. Heritage Trust grant, which will be ad- ministered by Douglas College, McMillan will lead the three-year Toquaht Archaeological Project. Set in the Toquaht’s traditional ter- ritory of Barkley Sound on Van- couver Island’s west coast, the project will entail two months of summer excavation in 1991, three months in 1992, with final reports being presented by 1993. The main significance of all this exploring and sifting is literal- ly to dig deeper into Toquaht his- tory. “The knowledge presented in standard texts, written early in the 20th century, reflects only the late period. We think things were quite different in earlier times,” says Mc- Millan. The lack of more information, something anthropologists call “time depth”, has probably resulted in distortions about population, migration, lifestyle and history. “There is evidence the Toquaht traditionally had a much larger population, but many of the groups in the area were almost wiped out by smallpox and war- fare," says McMillan. “The groups remaining in Barkley Sound were actually amalgamations of surviv- ing populations.” Inspiration for the project came from the Toquaht people themselves. McMillan was ap- proached after he and co-inves- tigator Denis St. Claire, a Victoria teacher, worked with the region’s Tseshaht people to publish the 1982 book Alberni Pre-History. The information collected during the project will be provided to the Toquaht for band manage- ment, and the artifacts are to be held in trust for them at the Provin- cial Museum in Victoria. Several native workers will participate in the work and McMillan also hopes to hire several student workers through a Challenge ’91 grant. Be- sides the field explorations, the study will also involve interviews with native elders in the area. McMillan says work in the summer 1991 will involve probing the area for buried sites. During 1992, the study will concentrate on a large traditional summer village and an adjacent fort which may shed some grim clues about the toll of local conflicts. “The village is associated with an adjacent fortress site, deposited on a high, steep-sided cliff. This is an important defensive. It will allow us to look specifically at war- fare, its antiquity and how it af- fected the history of the Toquaht people.”