May 19, 2022—Ha-Shilth-Sa—Page 9
ht trial unfolds
ughout northern Nootka Island’s forests
“Therefore, the usual procedure was to split a large slab off a standing tree,” he wrote. “This was done by making two cuts, one above the other, the lower narrow, the upper one a high, open notch. The distance between them was that desired for the length of the boards or canoe.” Using scaffolding to access the upper parts of the tree, each of these cuts were deeply made nearly to the centre of the trunk. “Then wedges were driven in, downward, in the upper cut until a good-sized pole could be inserted in the split,” continued Drucker. “The logger then went home. After some time the action of the wind rocked the tree and the weight of the cross pole combined to extend the split till it reached the lower notch, and the slab fell off.”
‘Standard practice’ of logging cultural forests
Jacob Earnshaw expert witness report photo
peeled off using a traditional Indigenous method.
By the 1990s the provincial government began requiring assessments of cutblocks to identify any evidence of these ancient practices. Now the Forest Practices Code of B.C. stipulates the reporting of CMTs and other cultural heritage sites in locations where logging or road building will take place. The Heritage Conservation Act prohibits damage to CMT sites if they show evidence of human occupation before 1846, but logging can continue if a Site Alteration Permit is granted, which requires the documentation of the pre-contact forestry practices. Earnshaw reported that several Site Alternation Permits were granted for northern
“We feel ourancestors there, because there is no better place to go...The kids today, they want to be connected to Nuchatlaht. We want them to be happy, normal, loved kids, and that’s a good place to be to do that.”
Photo submitted by Jacob Earnshaw expert witness report
A logged culturally modified tree shows the extent of healing lobes that grew on either side of the section where cedar bark was stripped off. Below is a drawing illustrating the healing process after a cedar tree’s bark is peeled off.
~ Archie Little, Nuchatlaht house speaker
Photo submitted by Sierra Club BC
completely cut high above the base, a logging method that allowed Indigenous people to avoid the wide flares around the roots, a practice sometimes called a “barber chair” that leaves an elevated stump. Drucker observed that the desirable cedar with knotless trunks often grew back in the woods, where falling an entire tree would “foul those of the forest giants clustered around it.”
Photo submitted by Jacob Earnshaw expert witness report
t claim area, in the part of Nootka Island that is t territory, two abourglyths were found in trees (bottom ssociated with territorial ownership.
Nootka Island - apparently with little resistance from provincial regulators. “I have not yet come across a Site Alterations Permit, requesting the destruction of a CMT site, having been refused, regardless of the scientific/heritage value of the site identified in accompanying [archaeological impact assessments],” he wrote. “This state of affairs, I would suggest, diminishes the strength of cultural protections for CMTs. The regular felling of cultural forests, including some of the largest on Vancouver Island, appears to have been standard practice in Nuchatlaht Territory.” John Dewhirst, an archaeologist who has studies coastal First Nations for more than 40 years, also gave a report for the Nuchatlaht trial. Some of the CMTs he lists are dated, usually from the 1800s with one as old as 1543. But Dewhirst states that Nuchatlaht people have been harvesting cedar in the claim area for far longer, as logging and inherent forest processes have made older culturally modified stands unidentifiable. “Undoubtedly, CMTs have been made in the claim area for thousands of years,” he wrote. “The natural healing process of standing trees has concealed many ancient CMTs from recognition by archaeologists and foresters. The natural forest mortality and industrial harvesting have removed numerous standing CMTs in the claim area.” Dewhirst cites evidence from Yuquot, an ancient Mowachaht village 20 kilometres south of the claim area, where excavations in 1966 found deposits dating back 4,280 years. “Cultural deposits” were found deeper than where this radiocarbon dating
was conducted, suggesting even earlier occupation on southern Nootka Island. Dewhirst reports that the widespread distribution of CMTs across northern Nootka Island shows “that a body of knowledge based on intimate familiarity of the forest resources in the claim area must have been shared and passed on in the long-standing resident groups there.” “The only collective group known to have occupied the claim area when the CMTs were made is the Nuchatlaht,” he wrote.
‘We feel our ancestors there’ Culturally modified trees are not the only evidence of pre-contact habitation in the area. Over a dozen burial sites have been identified, half in caves where remains and bentwood boxes were found by surveyors. Earnshaw’s examinations of the island found sites where houses once stood, their depressions still evident on the forest floor. And multiple shell middens have been documented, thick deposits of garbage indicating the residue to daily life once lived by people in the remote area. Nuchatlaht house speaker Archie Little will always consider the island home. He spent his childhood in the coastal village of Nuchatlitz before being taken to Christie
Indian Residential School at age 6. “Every square inch of Nuchatlaht Ḥahahuułi was used. Every square inch had a purpose,” said Little. “It’s part of our identity. It’s part of our Ḥahahuułi. It’s part of our lifestyle, it’s our garden, our medicine place.” He recalls watching the abundantly available herring drying on racks. “It was our job as kids to keep the crows away with our slingshots,” said Little, who returned to Nuchatlitz during the summer break from residential school. “We were in heaven, we were free. We were Indian kids again, we were Nuchatlaht kids. We had nobody hoarding over us telling us what to do,” he continued. “We stopped being beaten up for two months.” Aboriginal title entails the right of a First Nation to use, enjoy and profit from its territory, a legal recognition of ownership that the 167-member First Nation sees as a critical part of its future concerning northern Nootka Island. “We feel our ancestors there, because there is no better place to go,” said Little. “The kids today, they want to be connected to Nuchatlaht. We want them to be happy, normal, loved kids, and that’s a good place to be to do that.”
