Bureaucratic 'logic,' political hypocrisy doom sacred sites
Stephen Hume
Special to the Sun
Friday, November 17, 2006
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=5302ebd5-dd94-449c-a52e-dc3cbabcdb41
Nisga'a Chief of Chiefs Frank Calder fought all his long life to secure the
respect he believed was due British Columbia's first nations.
Yet even as funeral rites to honour him were being planned in Victoria, members
of the Songhees and Tsartlip first nations were protesting the provincially
sanctioned desecration of what Coast Salish elders say they believe is an
ancient sacred site of deep spiritual importance to them.
Dismantling of the site was approved by the same bureaucrats whose job it is to
defend the province's cultural heritage.
I wrote in May about a secret limestone cave and subterranean lake and the
ensuing conflict between the Bear Mountain resort and Coast Salish peoples who
wanted the ancient site protected even if it happened to be on property that
had become private.
"It doesn't matter that we don't have access to that cave," Tsartlip Chief
Chris Tom says. "There is a presence there."
Elders say the cave was a sacred place used for bathing in spiritual cleansing
rituals that are an important part of traditional Coast Salish religious
practice.
"There are many [such] bathing pools still used today across Vancouver Island
and B.C," says Eric McLay, president of the Archaeological Society of B.C. He
also works with the neighbouring Hul'qumi'num First Nation just north of
Victoria.
"Small limestone caves with pools of water inside -- these were powerful
spiritual places that were remote from human life," McLay says. "For Coast
Salish people these were very secret places that weren't talked about."
Those who had visited the cave, including one of B.C.'s leading speleologists,
told me the lake was so clear it seemed almost invisible. This water, hidden in
an underground grotto, was essential to the essence of the place.
"They've pumped out the water, which was sacred to us," Tom says.
I called Stan Hagen's department -- he's the cabinet minister responsible for
heritage -- to ask the rationale. I was told that the site the Songhees and the
Tsartlip said was sacred had to be destroyed to determine whether it deserved
to be protected.
This is not a joke. It is not satire. It is not the script for a Monty Python
skit. It's your provincial government in action.
In fairness, Justine Batten, director of the province's archeology branch, told
me that a geologist concluded the cave was unstable and thus the archeology
firm hired by the developer to do an assessment of the site couldn't work
safely within the cave without taking off the roof.
I asked if, as the Songhees and Tsartlip ventured, the practice of destroying
an archeological site in order to evaluate it didn't seem inherently
contradictory.
Well, archeology and sacredness are not analogous, Batten replied.
That's not the only contradiction. The province's refusal to protect sites that
are of spiritual value to first nations is at direct odds with federal policy
that seeks to acknowledge aboriginal cultural landscapes, which Ottawa defines
as places "valued by an aboriginal group (or groups) because of their long and
complex relationship with that land. It expresses their unity with the natural
and spiritual environment. It embodies their traditional knowledge of spirits,
places, land uses, and ecology. Material remains of the association may be
prominent, but will often be minimal or absent."
Sure sounds like the cave on Bear Mountain. Meanwhile, the subterranean lake
has been drained. The cave that -- sacredness aside -- was graced with delicate
limestone formations which made it an important geological feature, has been
filled with old tires to "protect" the cave's floor when heavy equipment
removed the cave's roof.
"Insane," says Cheryl Bryce, land manager of the Songhees. "A slap in the face
to all first nations," says Tom.
And then there's Premier Gordon Campbell talking about building new
relationships based on mutual respect.
Respect? The hypocrisy of this government beggars belief.
To be brutally frank, the fact that the rest of us permit such practices to be
carried out repeatedly in our name by the people we elect can only speak to a
deeply rooted collective contempt for the province's first nations that no
amount of sanctimonious rhetoric can whitewash.
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