You are hereEndless saga pits developers against aboriginals
Endless saga pits developers against aboriginals
By Jack Knox, Times Colonist, November 26, 2009
The Cowichan Tribes are pretty excited about what archeologists have found on the banks of Somenos Creek: Evidence of human activity going back maybe 4,600 years.
It's in the same area they discovered the remains of three dozen of their ancestors, including the 1,600-year-old bones of an infant buried with more than 400 slate beads on six strings around his neck.
Developer George Schmidt, on the other hand, is excited about finally getting to do something with the North Cowichan land he bought back in 1972. He has played by the rules, paid close to half a million bucks for archeological work over the years. Now he wants to build some houses.
Welcome to chapter one million and one in the ongoing saga that pits B.C. property developers against aboriginals -- a clash of interests that keeps reoccurring because, heritage advocates contend, nobody in power pays attention to our buried history until the bulldozers fire up. Politicians stand accused of losing interest in B.C.'s history, abandoning the preservation of important archeological sites to the development process -- and the developers almost always win.
The North Cowichan story goes back to 1972, when Schmidt was among the developers who bought 100 acres of farmland. About 300 homes eventually arose on what became Timbercrest Estates. Not developed was a six-acre piece where human remains were found in 1992, and where archeological investigations later turned up a feature -- a hearth, perhaps, or a house foundation -- dating back to the time of Christ.
The Cowichan Tribes think there's more to be found, that it is important to preserve all six acres, perhaps use it for educational purposes, but Schmidt thinks a dozen houses can be built around the perimeter of the area of proven archeological significance. The natives' hope now is that government will recognize the importance of the property and buy it, an idea they pitched to cabinet minister Kevin Krueger last week. His reaction? "It wasn't negative, so I think that's positive," says Cowichan Tribes lands-research director Diane Hinkley.
Krueger says there isn't money to buy such lands outright, but he wants to see what can be done to work things out.
For his part, Schmidt just wants to be done, one way or the other. Either the province or Ottawa buys the land, or he applies for a development permit. "I'm into it too deep to just let the land sit there."
There is precedent for government stepping in. In 1994, controversy erupted over a condo development planned for a 4,000-year-old settlement and burial ground at Parksville's Craig Bay, where the remains of 165 natives were unearthed. The conflict ended when the NDP government of the day bought the land for $7.8 million.
But more often than not, heritage sites end up getting paved over. Hinkley rhymes off examples: the development of Poets Cove on Pender Island, sewage works through a Saltspring burial ground, a staircase through an ancient site to provide public beach access in Ganges, all sorts of foreshore middens dug up for sea walls and docks. "It's legalized vandalism. It happens all the time." Not every site merits preservation, but some do, she says.
Hinkley contrasts the treatment of ancient sites here with that in Greece, where a Duncan student was briefly jailed for picking up a stone near the Parthenon in 2005. Hinkley asks how it is that senior governments can find
$4 million for the 89-year-old Kinsol Trestle -- a worthy project, she hastens to add -- but not a penny for a native heritage site dating back millennia?
B.C. actually has some of the strongest laws in North America, legislation enacted in 1995 threatening fines and jail terms for those who disturb heritage sites. What we don't have is the political will to preserve our past, says archeologist Eric McLay, who worked on the Somenos Creek site.
B.C. has gone backwards, he says. When the government dissolved the B.C. Heritage Trust in 2003, it did away with the only agency that actively sought to preserve archeological sites, whether through direct management or the funding of research and conservation. In consequence, the heritage question only comes up when developers apply for the alteration permits necessary to work on one of the province's 33,000 registered archeological sites -- and those permits are almost always granted.
Like just about everything else, heritage funding suffered in the provincial budget.
But Krueger points to the recent reactivation of a joint working group that involves aboriginal leaders trying to address heritage issues. We're taking this stuff seriously, he says.
Still, it seems to come down to the price of preserving our past versus the cost of losing it.
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