Slocan Narrows Archaeological Project
Field School
In the credit-bearing, eight-week field school, students live in a remote location where they build life skills, learn archeological field methods, and interact with the local community. Through on-site research, students consider connections between present-day people and their ancestral past, thereby exploring cultural diversity and civic engagement through interactions with indigenous people in the local community.Many members of the indigenous group known as the Sinixt call Slocan Valley their ancestral territory and continue to live there despite the fact that the group was pronounced extinct in 1956 by the Canadian government. However, the Sinixt are recognized as part of the Colville Confederated Tribes in northeastern Washington and as part of the Okanagan Nation Alliance in west central British Columbia. As a result of the “extinction” declaration, most local community members maintain that indigenous people never lived in the area. Part of the Slocan Narrows Archeological Project involves public outreach and educating people. Despite its pithouse sites (historical dwellings), the upper Columbia River drainage landscape has been altered extensively as a result of hydroelectric dam construction. The Slocan Valley research site is located on one of the only undammed rivers in the upper Columbia system. Thus the river bottom remains similar to what it would have looked like in the past.
During each field school, the project team hosts a public education event at the site where students engage in teaching groups. Over the course of three to four hours, between 300 and 400 people learn about the research and archeological data through short presentations by students. Because one of the most frequent questions is, “What are you doing back at the lab at Hamilton with all the artifacts?”, Goodale formed a team to create a documentary that shows how the research in the field connects to the lab work, all in an effort to demonstrate the past human use of the site.
