Drew Tenasco bustles at a large table where other young Algonquin Anishinabes work in a large office in a nearby parliament tower in Ottawa. The group is preparing a public presentation of its cataloging of artifacts found during summer archaeological digs in the region. Some objects are thousands of years old.
“This work helps to discover our culture, sums up the 23-year-old young woman, who obtained this paid job last year. For us, this is a very important task. We are touching artifacts that were themselves manipulated a long, long time ago by our ancestors. It is very moving. There are many negative stereotypes about our communities, while these objects from the past show how resourceful and skilled our ancestors were. »
The collection of the large classification site is in the custody and in the premises of the National Capital Commission (NCC), which has supervised excavations for decades. The cardboard boxes, typical of archive reserves, house around 300,000 objects from the pre-European period, pottery, jewellery, many cut stones and a multitude of tools of all sizes for hunting, sewing, decorating or cooking. The oldest date back 6000 years.
Cataloging started in the middle of the last decade is now nearly 80% complete. Each artifact is given a reference number hand-inscribed on its surface.
The Borden system guides the assignment of reference numbers. This system distributes Canadian archaeological sites over 16 km quadrangles2. The code consists of four letters (one series per site) followed by a number (one per object).
The Capital Region is in the BiFw square. The first site (BiFw1) was excavated in 1991 and 186 more followed, the vast majority of which were added only a decade ago. The proliferation of sites is explained by legal changes. The laws of Quebec and Ontario oblige to search the ground before approving a construction project.
The young Aboriginals at work to carry out the long and meticulous work come from two communities: Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, located in Quebec, north of Gatineau (this is the case of Drew); and the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation in Ontario, west of the capital.
“We engage them in the work,” says archaeologist Ian Badgley, who has worked for the National Capital Commission for 13 years, playing on the double meaning of engagement. “At the NCC, we are just custodians of the objects. It’s their heritage, not ours. They can touch the legacy of their ancestors and help to better understand it. »
Indigenization
The watchword is decolonization and autochtonization in institutions here as elsewhere in the world. The changes in this direction underway at the National Gallery of Canada are causing a stir. Socio-historical disciplines such as archaeology, anthropology and museology were profoundly influenced by colonial perspectives.
The participation of the Algonquins in the management, processing and enrichment of the collections is part of the desire to change paradigms.
“Integrating our perspective on the collection is fundamental,” says Drew Tenasco, grasping a small carved stone in front of her, an artifact found on Parliament Hill at the very beginning of the excavation program. “You could say it’s a knife,” she said, using the English term knife. But we call it mokoman. At Kitigan Zibi, we are trying to rediscover our language and the collection can concretely help us in this quest. »
Drew’s sister, Jennifer Tenasco, works at another table. She uses a small chisel held with two fingers to engrave pieces of birch bark previously soaked in water. “At first I thought it would just be a job like any other,” she says. I understood very quickly that here I would learn a lot about the culture and history of my community. »
Jennifer Tenasco has just illustrated a fawn surrounded by trees on a hair barrette using a small piece of cut stone, also several hundred years old. In the Algonquin language, the name of this tool is mazinibihigan in badjitowinan. “Our language is very descriptive,” she says. The word does not say the equivalent of “chisel”, but describes the action related to its use. »
If the wrong terms add unhappiness to the world, the right words to designate the right things must spread a little happiness…
On the ground
The Aboriginal youth excavation and classification initiative is the result of an archaeological resource co-management agreement signed in 2012 between the NCC and the two Algonquin nations. About fifteen young people are hired for this double work each year by the Anishinàbe Odjibikan, archaeological school of the two First Nations.
The institution organizes excavations at Parc du Lac-Leamy, home to 13 precontact archaeological sites, the largest complex of its kind in the Ottawa River drainage basin region. The oldest site of the clayey deltaic formation dates back 8000 years.
The Tenasco sisters will be there again this summer. The next campaign open to the public who can get their hands on the trowel and brush will be organized in August, Archeology Month in Quebec.
In the deltaic region, erosion often causes precious objects to rise above the ground. The archaeological teams therefore visit the banks two or three times a summer to collect them. Shards dating from 1530 (five years before the passage of Jacques Cartier) were found in this way in the summer of 2020.
The collection also includes pottery fragments of Huron-Wendat origin, proving the extent of trade between ancient Aboriginal nations, whose contacts extended from Labrador to the Great Lakes, from Hudson Bay to Ohio. One of the pieces of pottery from this exchange retains the mark of the potter’s thumb and Mr. Badgley, who has seen others in half a century of excavations, admits to being particularly moved by this object unfortunately “decontextualized” by its ascent on the surface.
The two Algonquin Anishinaabe First Nations exercise stewardship over the collection. They will ultimately have to decide on the use of the precious objects. A few dozen of them are already on display at the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg cultural center in Maniwaki.