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From time to time as I travel around the country working on First Nations issues, I sometimes hear from non-Aboriginal people how First Nations were immigrants too, as if this somehow undermines the notion of Aboriginal title. While no one population group ever seems to stay put for very long, First Nations have had a very long history of occupation of the coast. Here in the Vancouver area settlements dating back 9000 have been discovered in a number of places along the Fraser River and in parts of Burrard inlet. These settlements would have been established not long after the ice melted 10,000 years ago.
But today comes news that even older settlements have been discovered on the coast. According to this story (read quickly; the link will rot), there has been occupation of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) for up to 12,000 years:
Animal bones found in sediment layers next to the spear points on the west side of Moresby Island outside Gwaii Haanas National Park are confirmed to date back 11,800-12,100 years (a figure calculated from 10,500-10,800 radiocarbon years).”
If you compare that against what was happening in the rest of the world at that time you can see just how old First Nations occupation in British Columbia really is. For example, 8,000 years ago, most of these non-Aboriginal folks ancestors were just discovering how to grow cereals and domesticate sheep in Mesopotamia and Persia. It was only 5,000 years ago that Egyptian civilization got going. First Nations folks have been in this province for more than twice that amount of time.
Kind of funny to be involved in “land claims” with that kind of pedigree eh?
