By Mary Fowles

Walker Hook beach drew over 30 people to its shores on August 23 for a lavish potluck picnic and to discuss ongoing concerns about developments that have taken place at the Coast Salish burial site and shell midden over the last three years.

"We have come to show that we will not forget about our burial ground," said Penelakut First Nations elder August Sylvester as the barge transporting him and other Kuper Island residents pulled up on the white sandy beach.

"It's a disgrace. If I dug up a white man's burial ground they would put me in jail and throw away the key. And they didn't even ask our permission. That hurts a lot of our people. It hurts to have two funerals in one lifetime."

Walker Hook, a low-lying coastal sand spit, has been privately owned and held as a pioneer family farm over the last century. In 2003, part of the property was leased to Sablefin Hatcheries Ltd. for a black cod fish hatchery and the company soon found itself in a tangle of controversy.

Black cod, a previously undomesticated fishery, represents a new aquaculture industry which is actually quite exciting, said Eric McLay, an archaeologist with the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, representing Vancouver Island Salish Nations.

“The problem,” he explained, “arose when Sablefin placed its wells and utility pipes through the midden area as a natural filter for its industrial effluent into the marine environment."

Backhoe trenching of over 250 metres through the site unearthed the remains of at least 13 individuals. Those bones were recovered by Penelakut elders and reburied on Kuper Island.

Protection of their ancestors' bones is an important part of Coast Salish cultural beliefs and practices, as the dead are believed to interact with and remain part of the living family. Disturbing the bones is believed to have severe consequences for the living, such as illness, death and misfortune.

"Our people don't die," said Sylvester, adding it is common practice to pray for and feed the dead every year by burning food such as crab and salmon. "They're here with us as our guardian angels."

Sablefin president Gidon Minkoff told the Driftwood Monday that the Penelakut elders had agreed to all the digging that was done on the midden. "We wouldn't have done it without their approval," he said, in contradiction to claims of the elders and documentation from the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group, which requested preliminary archaeological studies be completed before any digging happened on the site.

"This is really a very minor issue," Minkoff said, "The First Nations are looking for political gains and it is plausible they created this [controversy] in order to go into land claims with a stronger footing. I got the feeling we were taken for a ride by them. If it was major you would see a very different reaction and you would see the government reacting as well."

Sablefin was granted provincial government permits to dig wells and discharge effluent through the midden, but no preliminary Archaeological Impact Assessment study was required to evaluate the site's exact size, depth, content and scientific and/or cultural significance.

"We have no way of knowing what is gone or damaged because there was no baseline study," said Kim Kornbacher, an archaeologist and member of the Salt Spring Island Residents for Responsible Land Use. That group has accused Sablefin of causing unknown environmental harm to an ecologically sensitive area, as well as disturbing a culturally significant site.

In January of 2005, the archeology branch of the ministry of Sustainable Resource Management denied Sablefin a permit to do further digging in the area which would have resulted in 45 more metres of excavation. “This is one of first times that the cultural significance of the site was protected,” said McLay.

"Nothing else is going to change here," said Nancy Dixon, who works in administration for Sablefin. Watching the picnic from the sidelines, she gestured to the lush green, undeveloped hillside that ascends from the beach. "We've got 500 beautiful acres of pristine land here and that's not going to change."

The Penelakut Elders continue to say their "interests and needs have not been met" and the next step must be a settlement agreement between themselves, Sablefin, the Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection, the Ministry of Sustainable Resources Management and land-owner Henry Caldwell.

Sylvester told the Driftwood he would like to see a monument erected in honour of the burial site. "We might as well mark it now that they've desecrated it," he added, highlighting that “settlement” is about respect and not about money.

Following the potluck lunch of barbecue salmon and a fresh salad buffet, elder Laura Sylvester (August's wife) led a prayer circle atop the Walker Hook tombolo, chanting a song passed down from her father's grandfather.

"The song says, 'teach me to pray, oh Great Spirit, teach me how to pray'," said Sylvester, a grandmother of 17 and great-grandmother of six. "I prayed for those that are [buried] and I pray for those that are still here," she said.

Laura Sylvester remembers camping as a child under the shade of the trees that line the end of the tombolo. Her family would stay three to four days to fish ling cod and harvest eel grass for basket weaving, or for insulation for a longhouse. They also harvested clams.

"No body came to bother us," she said. "We knew that we weren't allowed to step onto the spit because it was a gravesite and our own mother's ancestors were buried there.”

E-mail the writer: Mary Fowles

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