Learning Indigenous history in a 2,000-year-old classroom

NORTH COWICHAN, B.C.— Near the foot of sacred Mount Prevost where Indigenous people say their ancestors first landed on Earth lays buried a 2,000year-old settlement with archeological evidence of ancient tools, homes, hearths and grave sites.

The Ye’yumnuts village near Duncan, B.C., is about to become a living Indigenous history lesson where the local school district will use the 2.4-hectare meadow as a place-based classroom.

The area was slated for a private resi- dential development in the 1990s. But work stopped with the discovery of dozens of human skeletons, some curled in fetal positions and included mothers and their children, archeologists said.

Two elementary schools and a middle school are within walking distance of the village site and the Cowichan Valley School District has plans for field trips and projects with the elders of the Cowichan Tribes to bring a sense of time, place and reality to Indigenous relations classes.

“Ancient Greece is kind of academic and far away and a different place,” said school district superintendent Rod Allen, standing in the shade of trees near the creek.

“This is right in your backyard, and we live here. That’s what makes it so totally amazing.”

Even though the once-thriving settlement is currently covered with soil and tall grasses, the story of what lies beneath the ground and its connection to history and people of today provides realistic experiences for students, he said.

Two years ago, Dianne Hinkley, the land research director for the Cowichan Tribes, started talking with Brian Thom, an Indigenous culture anthropology professor at the University of Victoria, about using the site as an education tool.

“Our boys were in the same class together and we went for the parentteacher conference thing and Brian got hold of me afterwards and said, ‘Did you see that, they were studying Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt,’ ” Hinkley said.

Alittle while later, after that initial conversation, she went back to Thom and asked: “What about Ancient Cowichan? That question got us started in getting involved with the schools.”