Digs on Triquet Island
Going back 14,000 years
by Katy Dycus
[Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of Katy Dycus’s original article that appeared in Mammoth Trumpet, Vol. 39, No. 2]
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William Housty, Director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, says that archaeological investigations on Triquet Island opened up a whole new chapter for him to understand his own ancestors.
Housty remembers standing at EkTb-9, the archaeological site on Triquet Island excavated by researchers from the University of Victoria and the Hakai Institute, thinking “Wow, we’re really uncovering the history of our own people right in front of our eyes here.” It’s a history that stretches back 14,000 years.
For Housty “coming from these places and having ancestral blood of these places, you feel it in your bones and in your spirit. It’s one thing to sit and talk about it, and another to be there where you have an understanding of what’s happening in front of you, what that means for you as an individual and as a tribe. It’s a big feeling.”
Alisha Gauvreau, then a UVic Ph.D. candidate, served as field crew lead and investigator of the EkTb-9 site from 2015 to 2019 and subsequently published the results in the Journal of Archaeological Science. She and colleagues and members of the Heiltsuk Nation, including Housty, used a two-eyed seeing approach throughout the research process “to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing, and to see from the other eye with the strengths of Western ways of knowing, and to use both these eyes together for the benefit of all.”
Gauvreau’s initial role as crew leader was to manage the excavations at the site and conduct relevant lab work while engaging with the Heiltsuk community. Working with Elroy White, a professional archaeologist and member of the Heiltsuk Nation, was particularly rewarding for her. They prioritized initiatives that benefit the community and followed Heiltsuk protocols for data collection. Gauvreau concedes that although Western science and Indigenous concerns may not always align, “they don’t necessarily need to because they fill in different parts of the story.” Both represent incomplete sources of information, but much like shingles on a roof, Gauvreau explains, Indigenous oral histories and archaeological research have edges that overlap. Regarding this study, Gauvreau emphasizes that archaeology shouldn’t serve to validate oral histories, but rather to enhance our collective understanding of the past.
Archaeology can temporally anchor events in the oral narratives. In a reverse payoff, archaeologists can rely on oral histories as guides for locating sites. Housty recalls working in the Culture and Heritage department “consulting with archaeologists through various stages of research and helping them locate the best place to conduct their archaeological assessment work. “Housty admits his people “had no idea the results from EkTb-9 were going to be so deep and ground-breaking. Archaeological evidence corroborates our nu’yem [oral history and stories] for at least 14,000 years here.”
In this part of the world few early post-glacial sites are known. Although human presence is documented on the Northwest coast by 14,000–13,000 years ago, only a few outer coastal sites date older than 12,000 years. Work at EkTb-9 fills in gaps in the late-Pleistocene archaeological record of the Northwest coast. And in this work, Indigenous culture is represented linguistically as well as culturally. “Heiltsuk words have been around a lot longer than the English language,” Housty reminds,“and since oral history is provided for thousands and thousands of years, it’s important for us to express those words in our language. Heiltsuk people who are living here, who understand and know the language, can feel that connection back in time.”
Language is what gives expression to the Heiltsuk identity and adds more weight to the results of the project. “This isn’t just a place on the map that’s obsolete, where nobody lives, where nobody comes from,” Housty says. “We have a functioning Heiltsuk government here. There are 3000 people in this tribe, and a lot of these people come from our very first ancestors on Triquet Island. It’s important for the outside world to know and understand that we are here. We exist here.”
Archaeology is science, but it’s also storytelling. And the stories of Triquet Island are best told through layers of stratigraphy. The 13 strata at EkTb-9, laid down like a layer cake, show how occupants lived through different epochs in time.
Decades of archaeological work at a site called Namu, located on the mainland 25 km east of Triquet Island, uncovered evidence that people had been living at the Namu site for 10,000 years. “And then,” says Housty, “we found over 14,000 years of existence right across the channel from Namu.” Today site EkTb-9 on Triquet Island is recognized as one of the oldest sites in North America. Nearby Calvert Island, 20 km to the southeast, dates back almost as far: witness 13,200-year-old human footprints.
Because of the long-term record of human occupation at EkTb-9, Gauvreau patterned her research along the lines of historical ecology, which studies how people shape and are simultaneously shaped by the environments they inhabit over time. “Environments aren’t static,” she reminds us. “It’s not just biophysical processes that are constantly in flux, but also human activities taking place on those landscapes.”
Archaeologists found wooden artifacts at EkTb-9 that looked like carved wooden balls or knobs; Gauvreau at first thought they may have been used as weapons or projectiles, but she now believes they were probably toys. “Many little things indicate a multi-generational presence on the landscape,” she says, “something you’d expect from a more regularly inhabited site versus a resource-based camp.”
Triquet Island lies on the coastal corridor, which many anthropologists believe was a conduit for human expansion southward from Asia into the Americas along the western edge of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. Because Triquet Island has been an island for at least 15,000 years, early settlers arrived by boat. They doubtless had knowledge about specialized technologies and subsistence strategies for harvesting sea mammals, bottom-feeding fish, and marine birds.
Gauvreau believes red cedar dugout canoes were the principal marine vessel during the late Holocene, although available evidence suggests other available tree species were used before cedar became established. She cites evidence of dugout canoes used for thousands of years along the Pacific Rim. Gauvreau recalls the days she spent on Triquet Island doing field work, when she and her crew got to the island in boats and paddled kayaks around it. She remembers the exhilaration of viewing the island from the water, just as original peoples arriving in canoes must have experienced.
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Katy Dycus holds a Master of Letters from the University of Glasgow and currently writes for the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. Her essays and reviews appear in Appalachia, Harvard Review, Hektoen International, World Kid Lit and Necessary Fiction, among others. [Editor’s Note: Katy Dycus recently reviewed a book by Megan A. Smetzer and wrote about archeological work taking place in Haida Gwaii’s Karst Caves, originally published in Mammoth Trumpet, but republished in The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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