Digging before
the flood

>>As Hydro-Québec prepares to divert the
Rupert River for another mega-project, local
Cree and visiting archaeologists race to unearth
as much of the past as possible

CREE HISTORY SEES THE LIGHT: (l to r) Hunter’s musket part;
household items circa 1955; sifting around Lake Goulde

by CHRIS SCOTT

NEAR NEMASKA, QUEBEC—

To Anne-Marie Matoush, Grandma Neeposh remains the lady with the accordion.

Though it has been 10 years since the Cree elder, now in her 80s, has been able to play the instrument, Anne-Marie and her cousins remember growing up to the cadences of Kitty Neeposh’s music.

A Cree contemporary from Mistissini speaks of a talent that helped pass away the lonely nights spent in a winter bushcamp north of the Rupert River. Johny Husky Swallow, now 76, was a young man in 1955 when he wintered with Neeposh, her kids and husband and another family in a canvas and bough shelter erected along the pine-covered banks of Lake Goulde. In Johny’s recollection, the winter of ’55 was an especially cold one. Despite a successful beaver hunt, the Cree families did not subsequently return to the site.

But in September of 2008, Matoush, along with a group of archaeologists and Cree diggers, climbed into a helicopter and flew to the remote location where Neeposh endured that tough winter back in 1955.

Using trowels and root cutters, the crew spent the next few days meticulously stripping away the turf that covered the 60 square-metre area. As the vegetation was removed, they classified and bagged several kilograms of artifacts: bits of tablecloth. A kid’s boot. A musket barrel. Medicine bottles. And two plates from an accordion.

I ask Anne-Marie, 26, how her grandmother had reacted when she learned Anne-Marie would be spending her summers excavating the old campsites.

“She was happy,” says Anne-Marie.

LAST CHANCE AT HERITAGE

For the Cree of Anne-Marie’s generation, this summer and next may represent the last opportunity to salvage something from their recent heritage before it is forfeited.

Under the terms of a 2002 treaty signed between the Cree and the province, Hydro-Québec received the go-ahead to flood a 1,000 square-kilometre area by diverting the Rupert River, a historic trade corridor, north into a hydroelectric reservoir. As part of a compensation package, the Cree self-governing body, known as the Cree Regional Authority, was handed a $2.5-million budget to conduct commemorative and archaeological projects on the affected lands.

The 2002 settlement fits into a pattern of repeated compromise in the face of hydroelectric mega-projects that not all Cree support. Following a 1973 reversal in a land claims case, the Cree leadership felt compelled to sign away a portion of their ancestral title in exchange for promised social programs. Since the 1970s, the provincial utility has constructed roads and flooded vast tracts of boreal forest, unbalancing ecosystems and accelerating the end of the nomadic trapper lifestyle with which Kitty Neeposh was familiar.

While Cree traditionalists speak of a long-standing spiritual connection between the Cree people and their territory, the importance of documenting the physical record of that connection is not always recognized.

As a freelance writer acquainted with Cree issues, I joined the digs near the Rupert River out of curiosity. By volunteering for a few days, I hoped to sample the experience of the dozen Cree youth, including Anne-Marie, who were hired to spend the weeks from July to September living in a bushcamp, commuting by boat or helicopter to sites whose dates of occupation range from the distant past into the 20th century.

In their work, the youth are trained and guided by four archaeologists. For some, including Anne-Marie, it is their second or even third year on the project.

As the remains of a settlement are disinterred, they are labelled and tucked into clear plastic bags for transport. The evidence from the field can surprise non-specialists. Artifacts from the pre-European contact period point to a nomadic but resilient culture that traded for household items such as pottery with the Iroquois or Huron in present-day Ontario.

During the colonial period, the Rupert River became a vector for the fur trade (the first Hudson Bay Post was built on James Bay, at the estuary of the Rupert in 1668), and relayed influences such as Christianity and literacy.

To an observer, one of the more striking discoveries from this summer’s digging was a Cree Bible, printed in Cree symbols, discovered in a stash thought to have been left by a hunter in the 1930s.

At the end of each season, the artifacts are moved to the offices of the Cree-mandated Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Program (ACHP), located in Val d’Or.

The summer of 2008 represents the sixth of seven seasons of excavation on the territory targeted by the Rupert’s diversion. After the flooding is completed in late 2009, the emphasis of the project will shift to the study and restoration of artifacts, with a view to eventual display in the Cree communities.

TESTIMONY AND TOOLS

During the long, cool evenings spent in camp after a day’s dig, François Guindon squats by the wood stove and shares his artifacts with Cree elders.

“This is my treat,” confides Guindon, 29. For the Montreal-trained archaeologist, the highlight of the ACHP remains its focus on the early to mid-20th century. By corroborating the uses of recovered objects, the elders’ testimony allows researchers to acquire a far fuller understanding of the Cree experience than could be obtained through an unaided analysis of the material evidence.

Reference to contemporary written records also provides context. From historians, we know that the ’40 and early ’50s were lean hunting years for the Cree, and that the occupants of the 1955 site would have been anxious to make good their losses following a several-year government ban on the trade of beaver pelt.

When he describes the Cree lifestyle of several decades ago, Guindon emphasizes the isolation and the scarcity of traded goods which motivated trappers to improvise new uses for everyday items like spoons and tin cans.

“It’s the symbol of Cree ingenuity,” he says. “When I see an object that’s been converted, I tell myself we’re recording something that nobody is aware of. It’s the human spirit at its best. It’s creativity.”

As he sifts the record of succeeding generations, Guindon outlines the chronology of a society that has moved from nomadism through semi-nomadism towards a sedentary existence. “There is an original lifestyle that has endured to the present day.”

As a non-specialist, much of my interest in Guindon’s work lies in the light it manages to shed on those broader sociological issues. But when I ask Guindon if the timeframe of the project allows him to conduct an adequate study, his answer is an unequivocal no.

Guindon uses an analogy to describe digging. “We open a window; we open a big square over a settlement. But there’s lots of stuff around the edges (that we don’t get).

“We’d need three times the time,” he emphasizes. “There are sites we don’t even dig up.”

FIGHTING TIME

Archaeologists chafe at the idea of funding coming on the coattails of development projects, which follow a strict timeline. In these circumstances, big discoveries can be made, but not properly investigated.

As an example, the recent findings of an independent archaeology firm, corroborated by the ACHP, have pushed back the date of earliest known settlement near the Rupert from the previously accepted 3,000 years to a date of 4,800 years ago. Such findings can have a major influence on scientists’ understanding of climate and glaciation. Yet with the Rupert diversion set to proceed in 2009, additional sites that might have yielded further evidence will be lost.

According to Guindon’s colleague Dario Izaguirre, during the first three years of the ACHP, about 200 sites were discovered, but fewer than 50 were excavated. The ACHP explored a total of 18 sites during the summer of 2008.

And as the pace of hydro development accelerates, with projects planned for the St. Lawrence North Shore and elsewhere, it seems inevitable that more valuable artifacts will slip between our fingers. For every accordion plate disinterred at an old campsite, there may well be a violin peg, or a whole instrument—a bearer of its own story—that will slip beneath the rising waters, unthought of, unexcavated and unheard.