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Fighting to save sacred ground
Unbelievably, the B.C. government has approved plans to use a burial site for
sewage disposal
Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, January 31, 2004
PENELAKUT - On a clear summer day with sunshine burnishing the water, Myrus
James can stroll the beach outside his Kuper Island home, look down Trincomali
Channel and see all the way to Saltspring Island and the village site where his
ancestors sleep.
On the day of my visit to Myrus, however, the ancestors' final resting place is
hidden from the sight of our world. This particular afternoon is a bleak one,
sliding into a dirty winter night. There is sleet on the uplands and the coast
rain hammers straight down, leaving muddy rivulets in the dirt roads, bedraggled
dogs and a dense fog draped on everything like some cosmic shroud.
Maybe it's the right kind of day for Yuhw Yehw Aluq's spirits -- that's the
traditional name Myrus inherited from his own grandfather -- because when the
Penelakut elder looks down the channel now, he has reason to feel as downcast as
the weather is dismal.
Down there on Walker Hook, he told me, our provincial government has granted a
permit to use the old Penelakut burial ground for sewage disposal.
I thought I'd misheard. Myrus was pouring us a strong black coffee in his snug
kitchen while the rain drummed on his roof. But no, I hadn't misheard.
It turns out that this place, potentially one of the richest archaeological
sites in the southern Gulf Islands and of indisputable spiritual importance to
the Penelakut, was approved last spring for use as a dispersal field for
effluent from a commercial fish hatchery.
Then-sustainable resources minister Stan Hagen's department approved the
alteration of the archaeological site and then-water, land and air protection
minister Joyce Murray's waste management branch approved the daily discharge of
up to 619 cubic metres of "effluent" with a maximum of 10 milligrams per litre
of "suspended solids" into the burial grounds.
Unless my math is wrong, that means the province has approved the flushing of
more than 200 million litres of liquid and more than a tonne of "suspended
solids" per year through the bones of Myrus James' ancestors.
Nobody knows how many graves there are -- some estimate there could be more than
700. But everybody knows they were intended to rest for all eternity in the
place that's been home to them for who knows how long -- 20 centuries? Thirty?
Marine charts have called the place Walker Hook since 1859, the blink of an eye
in Penelakut history. To the archaeologists it is DfRu-002, a large village site
and midden the size of four football fields laid end-to-end. Geologists call it
a tombolo, a tide and current-carved spit of sand and rock.
But in the lilting language of Myrus and the Penelakut -- the "Buried Edge"
people -- it will always be Syuhe'mun, "the Place to Catch Up," a site that
resonates in the stories, songs and ceremonies by which traditional knowledge is
passed from one generation to the next.
Some of those memories are personal and immediate. Myrus would go hunting there
with his brothers and uncles in that far-off childhood where every day is
remembered as a sunny one.
When they went to race canoes against the Lummi, they wouldn't even take any
supplies, just harvest food at the rich ancestral sites along the route. That's
why Coast Salish reserves were so small, he said, because they were located in
the midst of abundance.
"We'd get a couple of deer, just enough for the two households. My uncle would
get his salmon or cod. Clams. Crabs. Prawns. We've used that place for a long,
long time," he said.
Knowing that something of the grandfathers and grandmothers and their collective
wisdom is still there to embrace him in this world of trouble and tumult is
reassuring. Although Myrus is at pains to point out the place is important not
just to the Penelakut but to all the Hul'qumi'num -- the Cowichans, the
Chemainus, the Halalt and the Lyackson.
"We have a lot of relatives all over," he insists. "We are all related by
marriage. Even the Tsawwassen have an interest in that site."
It's a place, points out fellow elder August Sylvester, that is governed by
special rules. Fires can't be lit there. Visitors are not even permitted to spit
on the ground.
I confess that I gasped when I heard what the province had agreed was an
acceptable use for the site.
The notion has appalling implications. It offers an underlying assumption about
the value of aboriginal people, even dead ones, that it's almost unbelievable
for a so-called enlightened civil society in the 21st century.
"Using this sacred site as a sewage filtration system is the ultimate dishonour
to the Coast Salish history, traditions and beliefs," says an affidavit sworn by
August in late November.
Yet permits for alterations to archaeological site DfRu-002 and for waste water
discharges there were authorized April 24, 2003.
During preliminary trenching and well-digging conducted under the permit, the
remains of 13 people were uncovered. On May 7, 2003, the province was informed
by an archaeologist that "the exposed remains are visible and already appear to
have been subject to vandalism."
The bones of one woman were covered in red ochre, a sign of her great
importance, Myrus said. In fairness, steps were quickly taken to have the
remains turned over to the Penelakut, who undertook to re-inter them, some on
the spit and some on Kuper Island.
Nevertheless, Myrus said, the process has created great pain for his community.
Offerings of food had to be burned to appease the disturbed spirits.
"It hurts all the people. I went there with some of the other elders," he told
me. "One old lady, she was crying. She said, 'Why are the white people digging
up my ancestors?'
"That's a major grave site for our people," he said. "The thing that really
troubled me was that when the elders visited, one of them said, 'There's lots of
people here.' He could feel them.
"We are very concerned about disturbing our ancestors where they rest," Myrus
said. "Some of our people believe the white people think 'those are only dead
Indians, they don't really matter' -- then something like this happens and it
pretty well proves it for them."
He's got that right. How could they assume otherwise?
Alternatively, how would the province react to a proposal that we site a septic
field among the historic graves of former premiers and famous persons?
We don't even have to ask what the response would be. But somehow, if it's the
first citizens of this benighted place, the answer seems to be dig 'em up, move
'em out, so what if they feel bad about it?
On Feb. 9, the Penelakut, joined by other Saltspring citizens with concerns
about the impact upon the sensitive ecologies at Walker Hook, will ask the
Environmental Appeal Board to reconsider the permits.
"The approval desecrates Syuhe'mun, a Penelakut spiritual place," their notice
of appeal says.
"The Penelakut elders . . . believe that the effluent released will pollute the
shellfish and fish they harvest for sustenance. And equally important, the
effluent will flow over their ancestors' bodies."
Indeed. What more needs to be said?
shume@islandnet.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2004
Copyright © 2003 CanWest Interactive, a division of
CanWest Global Communications Corp.
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