The History Of America Before Colonization

The History Of America Before Colonization

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This channel is part of the History Hit Network.
The Americas before 1491 were home to thousands of societies,

(00:22):
each with its own distinct social, cultural, and political
structure. Throughout the two continents,
Indigenous people formed clans, confederacies, alliances, and
even empires. Indigenous people interacted
between these communities through a complex network of
trade that connected every region of the Americas.

(00:45):
The Hodon Noshone Confederacy was formed nearly 900 years ago,
making it one of the oldest representative democracies in
the world. Before the five founding
Iroquois nations came together in peace, they were locked in an
endless cycle of retribution andintertribal war.
You had five warring nations andthe descriptions in the oral

(01:08):
histories is very, very explicitand talking about how there was
fratricide, there was cannibalism, basically human
relations had totally broken down in that part of the world
amongst their own people has allto do with this cycle of
revenge. Every Iroquoian chief engaged in

(01:29):
retaliation, but it was Tadadaho, the Serpent chief, who
was known throughout the territory for his ruthlessness.
This guy was terrifying. He put live snakes in his hair,
you know, live and writhing snakes.
He's a very powerful spiritual person whose mind was twisted.

(01:50):
So the imagery they have in the stories is his fingers are all
twisted and his body's all gnarled and so forth.
And he was able to control the wind and the waters and he was
causing a lot of harm. As internal wars continue to
tear the Five Nations apart, an outsider known as the Peacemaker
arrived in a stone canoe and began to share his vision of a

(02:13):
society based on harmony and peace.
He travelled to every corner of Iroquois territory, promoting
the Great Law of Peace. And the founding of Confederacy
really is the story of the Peacemaker, a person from a
related nation who came into ourterritory and connected with a

(02:35):
leader in our nation, Hiawatha. Once part of his nation's
warrior society, Ayanwatha had changed his way of thinking and
started to promote his own vision of peace.
Tara Daho saw this as a betrayaland had each of Ayanwatha's

(02:56):
daughters killed 1 by 1. The pain of his loss LED
Ayanwatha to leave his communityand isolate himself in the
forest. Ayahuata's story is not just
Ayahuata, it's the story of him and his daughters and how the
loss of his daughters affected him and what drove him to do
what he did was the loss of his daughters.

(03:17):
Your daughters are your posterity because when you
follow is a female. Why?
After they met, the peacemaker convinced Ayaanwatha that they
should become allies in seeking peace among the nations.

(03:41):
Isn't in Yagon. Even though he was overcome with
grief, Ayanwatha chose to work with the peacemaker to promote
his idea of an intertribal alliance between the five
warring nations. Because of the revered role of

(04:03):
women in Iroquois nations, Ayanwatha and the Peacemaker
travelled to the fire of Jigen Sasse to seek her advice on how
to bring the great law of peace to the Iroquoisan people.

(04:35):
In the Iroquois way of thinking,women were on par with men in
terms of the authority they wheeled in the political realm.
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(05:18):
Syeda Nene scanner unis. So.

(06:48):
The chiefs of the four Iroquois nations supported the
peacemaker's vision of the GreatLaw of peace.
It's important to consider the objective.

(07:10):
The objective wasn't to enhance the power of these nations or to
increase the territory or the wealth.
It was to create peaceful, honest.
Coexistence. But continued to resist joining

(07:36):
the alliance. Not Paul.

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How is he going to agree with this peace?
Because he'll. Lose all power.

(08:44):
Then something extraordinary happened.
Based on astronomical records, asolar eclipse covered the
northeast region of North America for 4 minutes on the
afternoon of August 31st, 1142. After this historic event,

(09:09):
Tadaho agreed to join the Confederacy.
The Onondaga became the keepers of the Central Fire, a role that

(09:33):
they hold to this day. 1142 would be the founding of the
great Peace. And so, yeah, Tara Daho then is
named the main chief of the Confederacy.
He's actually taken as the symbol of the meaning of this
message, which is that even the worst person, even the most

(09:54):
powerful evil force can be turned around and made into
good. If you think back into terms of
what was the first message it was brought by the peacemaker to
our people is that you should treat each other kindly and you
should think of each other as one family.
That's the central power of thisteaching, is that you should be

(10:16):
treating everyone like your brother and sister.
The power of it is extremely long lasting.
It's shown. It's been how many years now?
How many generations of people have been bound together by
that? This ancient indigenous
government continues to be part of Iroquoian society nearly 900

(10:38):
years after its founding. The development of large urban
centers evolved from small farming villages as mass
production of food supported thegrowth of populations and
cities. For centuries, the Marowitic

(11:08):
Kingdom thrived as it was too distant for foreign nations to
conquer it. This Nubian Kingdom was
surrounded by fertile land and supported a large urban
population. For two centuries, the Assyrian

(11:32):
Empire was a formidable society.Rulers displayed their power by
constructing impressive palaces and temples.
Before the empire fell, they hadextended their influence over
most of the Middle East and Egypt.

(11:56):
The Inca Empire was the largest civilization in the Americas in
the early 16th century. In its short existence, the Sapa
Incas ruled a Society of millions of people from Ecuador
to Chile. Over the past 5000 years, large
city states with dynamic political and religious rulers

(12:19):
emerged and held power in every part of the world.
The ancestors of the ambitious Inca rulers had humble
beginnings as farmers in the Andean Highlands about 900 years
ago. The descendants of those farmers
founded the largest indigenous society in the Americas 600

(12:39):
years ago. And like other great
civilizations, the Inca Empire began with a vision.
The Incas are going to claim that after the creation of the
world in Titicaca, some of them took this passage, this tunnel
from the lake and they are goingto emerge in Pakaritambo the the

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the the place of their origin. According to oral histories, the
first Inca family left their birthplace in Pekari, Tambo in
search of the perfect location to establish a homeland.
They were carrying a golden staff and they were basically
testing the soils, and the idea was that they were going to find
a place where that Bolton Rd. was going to be able to be

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sunken into the ground. And that happened in Cusco in
one specific spot, and that's going to be the USHNO.
And the USHNO is the center where all the vital force of the
universe radiates. When the Inca arrived in Cusco,
it had been the home of the Kilkit people for hundreds of
years. The land is already inhabited by

(13:48):
those people who have always been there, and they have to
come with an idea of this possessed the local inhabitants,
and then they becoming the the masters of the.
Place in the first of many conquests, the early Inca rulers
either ousted or absorbed the Kilke people, maintaining Kusko
as the logistical, political, and spiritual heart of their new

(14:12):
society. 600 years ago, the IncaEmpire extended over much of
what is today Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and
Argentina and was home to 20 million people.
You are going to have four primary lines which are going to
be the roads of the Tawantinsuru.

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Cusco was organized into 4 quadrants, and leaders from
cities and villages throughout the empire were required to
build a house and live in Cusco part of the year in the quadrant
that corresponded to their region.
And then based on that, you are going to have all these close to
80 provinces in an area that basically went all the way from

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northern Chile to Ecuador. All along the Andes you had
these systems that the Inca built upon.
Their empire extended in length some 2000 miles from north to
South. This grew in tandem with
conquest and population growth. To control such a massive

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territory and diverse population, the empire's leaders
convinced regional chiefs to join the society with promises
of material riches and special status.
But mandatory allegiance had a cost.
Most of the leaders of these small nations accepted the new
government peacefully, but for those who resisted, the Incas

(15:35):
well trained army forced compliance.
The Sapa Inca was the emperor, aposition passed down from father
to son. The SAPA Inca's wife, known as
the Koya, was typically his sister.
We can think about the Incas as a oligarchy of of 10 royal
families. Those are the ones who are

(15:57):
intermarrying among themselves. Just remember that according to
their own traditions, they have to maintain the the this
dynastic line pure. So they are allowed to marry
with their first cousins and of course the sisters and and
brothers. In addition to the importance of
blood purity, the Incan Royals also believe their emperors were

(16:19):
blessed with immortality. The Emperor never dies.
Your body continues to have vital powers that are useful
political purposes because the people who are going to be in
charge of of keeping the bodies of the Incas, the mummified
bodies of the Incas are called the Panicas.
They are going to operate as a small Congress that are going to

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they're going to put checks and balance on the Inca.
So they are going to be able to decide and advise and sometimes
direct the ideas of the Inca towards specific purposes only
because the mummy of the deceased emperor, at least some
of the relatives can talk with that mummy.
And then it's like your grandfather says that you are

(17:03):
doing wrong, that you should better think do this.
The Inca hierarchy placed the royal family at the top,
followed by the nobility, including the priests, governors
and tax collectors. Rounding out the social
structure were the farmers, herders, servants and slaves.
Much of the population consists of a peasantry, agricultural,

(17:25):
rural, and then you have the cities and the cities kind of
wield all power and they extracttax in labor from each of those
communities. In the case of the Incas, they
want tributing labor, but they want you to go and work in the
land of the Incas, produce the crops.

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And then an Inca officer is going to show up and say, like,
guys, it's time for us to put all these in the storehouses
because we are going to live outof these food if it doesn't rain
next year. So often tributaries would pay
into the Inca state and the Incas would then through their
meet. That tax system would basically

(18:07):
warehouse foods, typically potatoes, maize and other crops,
and they had an incredible abundance of different crops
that would be stored. But these allowed armies to be
maintained and fed while on campaign, but also for the
communities that work these areas to be able to maintain
themselves during periods of drought, for instance.

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So it was a system that was a give and take, but virtually
everything in the Income Empire belonged to the Inca himself.
Maya society was made-up of citystates that dotted the landscape
in Mesoamerica. Moving goods and services to a
population in the millions was done through a highly evolved
system of trade and commerce. They were bringing in shell from

(18:51):
the Gulf Coast, they were bringing in shell from the West
Coast, They were bringing uniqueand and prized green obsidians
from the Pachuca sources in Highland Mexico, a basalt,
ceramics, even turquoise coming out of the American Southwest.
This was traveling over some of the most circuitous and
mountainous regions and even Gulf lowland regions all the way

(19:13):
to the Maya area. These are people that they
didn't have draft animals, they did not have horses, they did
not have cattle, oxen, they didn't have any of these things.
So everything had to be ported on foot on the backs of human
burden bearers. In turn, what the Maya were
giving back was access to the Matagua River Jade source.

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True jade occurs only in a few places on the planet, and the
Maya had access to it, so jade was being moved throughout
Mesoamerica. And of course, elites who
identified with jade as related to the Earth and to the
ancestors wanted to be a part ofthat.
They began using ritual objects and belief to draw on the
interests of outsiders who beginto trade or to pilgrimage to

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these sites. So you get some of the earliest
pilgrimage centers in these regions.
Maya trade went well beyond the valuable jade market.
Various other commodities were transported in their raw or
manufactured state from the Mayaregion on foot and by boat.
When the Spanish first arrived, they had encounters with Maya

(20:17):
boats or ships if you will, and these were multiple canoes
lashed together in the platforms.
And they were essentially sailing ships that were
traveling up the coast with large quantities of ceramics as
well as rubber, copal, chocolate, vanilla, and
virtually all of those other things that we as well
Westerners so much enjoy, which all originated in ancient

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Mesoamerica. One of the most important trade
items in Maya society was maize.This crop was at the center of
the Maya diet and culture and was in high demand in the urban
centers. Eventually, maize moved into
North and South America through trade with other indigenous
communities. Considering the importance of
corn for people's diet and all that went with cornets was a

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valuable food to trade. Societies throughout the world
have traded, bartered, and sold food for thousands of years.
This exchange fostered importantbusiness and social
relationships and contributed tothe development of cuisines that
were unique to regions and nations.

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Salt was an essential mineral for African diets and an
important trade item with other nations.
Salt cakes were transported by camel caravans and traded for
gold, ivory, and kola nuts across the continent.

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Spices have been a major trade item for thousands of years.
Cinnamon, ginger and turmeric were exchanged between Africa,
Europe, the Middle East and Asia, making spices one of the
most important economic and cultural enterprises in the
world. Societies throughout the world

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have been producing wine for thousands of years as both the
religious and social beverage. The earliest wine production was
in Armenia 7000 years ago. After 1492, fruits and
vegetables cultivated in North and South America were exported
to Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of the world's most widely

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used ingredients had their origins among indigenous
societies in the Americas. Around the same time that the
Maya were the dominant trading center in Mesoamerica,
indigenous people in North America were transporting
materials by boat and foot alonga trade network known as the
Hopewell Exchange. We had a a great deal of trade

(23:03):
and we think a lot of it followsriver valleys.
In my area in the Southeast, people were trading with one
another, so there was a lot of contact between different groups
and trade was people were trading as far up as the Great
Lakes, down down the MississippiRiver into the, you know,
Louisiana area. It wasn't a bunch of tiny little

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groups just living alone and notknowing what someone else is
doing, just down the street, so to speak.
The people who traveled from distant territories into the
Ohio River Valley area were bringing valuable raw materials
from their region to trade with residents who were turning them
into finished products. We had these networks already
and it was a familiar way of interacting with another group.

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In the Hopewell interaction sphere, we have this huge trade
network and we can see where materials are coming from.
We know that at least by 700 AD there are groups that were
bringing Obsidian from Wyoming, they were bringing iron ore from
Oklahoma up, they were bringing shells from the Gulf Coast, they

(24:09):
were bringing Micah Sheets from North Carolina, and it was all
coming up to help basically do ahigher River Valley.
Catlonite, which is the pipestone, a red pipestone that
people really prized and that was traded all over the place,
sometimes as nodules but sometimes as finished products.
You know, somebody might carve anice pipe and then trade that if

(24:32):
that gets into the trade route. The Hopewell Exchange region was
populated by agriculture based communities.
The artisans in these communities created intricate
art pieces, pottery items, pipesand tools.
And it's surprising that many ofthem are coming from 1000 miles
away. It was there we recognize that
people were interacting on a continental scale.

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The reason for the decline of the Hopewell trading system
around 1500 years ago is a mystery, but what is known is
that this highway system of rivers and lakes connected the
peoples and cultures of the northern continent for over 500
years and was one of the most extensive trade networks in the
world. 1000 years ago, indigenous people built the

(25:18):
largest urban center north of Mexico near what is now the city
of Saint Louis. Over several 100 years, Cahokia
became one of the most influential trading centers in
North America. There were a whole series of
cultures on the Mississippi, andthe apex of that was, of course,

(25:39):
Cahokia at the confluence of theMissouri and Mississippi rivers.
So this was a major hub for all people traveling North and South
and North America. When people got up on those
mounds, that would be the thing that they saw was the the river
in the distance and another river coming in from the West.

(26:03):
Maize was introduced into North America from Mexico about 2000
years ago and eventually moved into the eastern regions of the
continent about 1000 years ago. Archaeological research has
currently shown that the development of agriculture in
that region occurred a lot earlier than previously
believed. And so this further developed

(26:25):
over time where we see the development of large towns and
even cities like places like Cahokia and many others all
across the region and only now we are coming to understand
those complex sites in more detail.
Indigenous people in central andeastern North America have
constructed mounds for burials and ceremonial use for thousands

(26:48):
of years. The city of Cahokia has one of
the greatest concentrations of mounds in North America.
We can follow the evolution, if you will, of of mound
construction. From 300 AD on up, we get small
mounds, we a little bit larger. We get Mortuary mounds, we get

(27:08):
mounds that have houses on top. A lot of these large mound
structures seem to be places where a large grouping of people
came together. Because of its central location
along traditional trade routes, Cahokia proved the ideal place
to exchange resources. Excavations of Cahokia have

(27:29):
revealed a range of treasures, mother of Pearl from the Gulf of
Mexico, silver from Ontario and copper from Lake Superior.
At its peak, Cahokia reached a population of at least 20,000
people, with many more thousandsof people living in the farmland
nearby. The centerpiece of the city was

(27:50):
a massive 30m high dirt pyramid with a base covering 5 1/2
hectares. Found beneath this and many
other mounds in Cahokia are objects made from materials that
originated hundreds and even thousands of miles away.
There's such a wide variety of materials that we know it's of
importance. We don't know what started it.

(28:13):
We don't know what the importance is.
But, and it wasn't just an economic thing, very important
people, the people with status were using it to identify the
fact that, you know, I'm not having to to use just local
stone for my projectile points. I have material that comes all
the way from 1000 miles away or 20 days travel.

(28:35):
But however they used to measureit.
So it was both a status symbol, it was an economic relationship,
and it did become ceremonial. It became a point in time where
there were materials that are ofsuch beauty that they are not
really being used for hunting. They're being used to
demonstrate that I don't need touse this for hunting.

(28:58):
It, it's, it's so ceremonially important that I don't have to
waste it. Cahokey itself is sort of seen
as one of the mother locations, if you will, of, of a large
number of groups. During the, the, the little Ice

(29:19):
Age in 12/13 hundreds people started realizing that they
could no longer exist within onelarge area that they had to, to
pull apart again. And then for the end of the
twelve, 13th, 14th century, these people start pulling apart
and they become separate groups,the the Choctaw, the Chickasaw,

(29:41):
the the Okmulgee or the Creek peoples.
The origin of the people of Cahokia remains a mystery.
Like the Hopewell Exchange before it, this once bustling
city was an essential hub for trade, connecting every corner
of North America. Since ancient times, people have

(30:10):
traded food, tools and raw materials that could not be
found in their own territories. This was the earliest form of
commerce and LED the way to the development of trade routes that
still exist today as the Greek civilization began to expand
into new territories. Food, raw materials, and

(30:32):
manufactured goods spread the Greek culture throughout the
nations bordering the Asian and Mediterranean Seas.
The Vikings were a seafaring people who traded timber, furs,

(30:54):
and food with societies throughout Europe and the Middle
East. They established a bullion
economy, trading silver in the form of coins, ingots and
jewelry for goods. The Maya established extensive

(31:18):
trade routes with other societies in Mesoamerica.
Maize, jade, fabric, and raw materials were some of the items
that form the basis of the Maya economy over several thousand
years. Ancient trade networks were more
than a means of exchanging goods.
They were central to cultural interaction and the sharing of

(31:39):
ideas and technologies between nations.
The Aztec Empire was founded 600years ago in Mesoamerica and
soon became one of the largest societies in the Americas.
The Aztec had complex spiritual beliefs that played a role in
every part of their culture and day-to-day life.

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They Aztecs in their own words. They are not from Mesoamerica.
In their own works, they came from somewhere in the North.
The founders of the Aztec Empirearrived in a region already
settled by major societies. To survive, they had to master
the art of conquest. The Aztecs were people, having

(32:22):
come into the Valley of Mexico and establishing themselves in
the 13th century, very quickly found themselves under the
auspices of a a brutal warlord by the name of Tesos Amok.
Eventually the Aztecs formed a triple alliance with the cities
of Tlacopan and Teshkoco and Tenochtitlan, and that that
formation in in the 1440s basically allowed the Aztecs to

(32:47):
go up against this Kingdom at Azkaputsalco and they literally
annihilated it. Having done that, they then
stood up against some 40 other major kingdoms and they wiped
them out as as part of that juggernaut of development and
expansion. Resolved to maintain its status
as Mesoamerica's dominant force,the Aztec rulers demanded

(33:08):
commitments of military support and resources from each city in
its domain. You would be assigned the
equivalent of an emissary and that emissary would be assigned
to that site and there would be a companion emissary in the
capital to receive the tribute. And as long as you paid tribute,
you were allowed the autonomy necessary.
What the Aztecs are actually promoting in their empire is

(33:31):
what we can call an imperial boxor an imperial peace, which
means that while that tribute ismoving, is moving through safe
roads, whoever dares to steal the tribute is going to be
punished. And what it allowed was for a
mobilization of resources acrossvast areas while allowing
Indigenous autonomy in every community.

(33:54):
So long as you pay tribute to the Cabecera or the head, in
this case Tenochtitlan and the Aztecs, you could maintain your
system of deities, gods, your system of agriculture, your
polity, your kings, etcetera. So now I can walk not only to
the next town, but I can walk hundreds of kilometers inside
the Aztec Empire with whatever thing I want to sail and trade.

(34:20):
The debut that is being perceived by the Aztecs is also
being returned to the Mesoamerican economy and is
going to create growth. The capital of the Aztec Empire,
Tenochtitlan was a sprawling city of canals, pyramids,
markets, residential neighborhoods and artificial
islands on what is now the present day site of Mexico City.

(34:42):
The Aztecs have the the belief that nothing comes out of
nothing. In order to create life,
something needs to die, and the most precious life they could
give was the life of humans. The energy of the individuals is

(35:05):
in the blood, in the fluid, thissacred liquid.
Let's put it this way. They created a religious economy
in which basically lives have tobe given to the divinities.
So were the Aztecs violent? Yes.
But it's organized violence, Violence with a purpose.

(35:27):
The Aztec rulers built a societythat in many ways was
unparalleled in the world. In the Pacific Northwest region
of North America, indigenous people developed a complex
society that was governed by theownership and passing down of
songs, dances, titles, and names.
These laws and privileges were embedded in a ceremony known as

(35:50):
the Potlatch. During the Potlatch, people from
neighboring villages were invited to witness a ceremony
and gifts were distributed as a sign of wealth and power by the
host chief and his family. Gatherings of families and
communities often took place during the winter months.

(36:15):
During the winter time is when we held our most important
ceremonies when we would invite other villages to come to our
communities and we would host them and and feed, feed them the
whole time that they were there.So they might be there for two
weeks or or a month. Our people were very giving of
of everything that we had. And that's how you connected

(36:37):
with your other villages. That's how an alliances,
loyalties and trust was created through those connections.
And that didn't just happen amongst the Quoc, Quoc, Quoc.
We were very interactive. And that's a misconception too,
that the Hydas, the Gymnsians, the trinkets, the sailors, the

(36:58):
West Coast people were separate.No one people, one family.
Of course, we spoke different languages, but we shared the
same customs, we shared the sameblood.
When I think of potlatching, I think of marriage, which is a
sacred union between two people,between two houses.

(37:19):
What's really important is the dowry, what the female brings to
her husband's family, validated through potlatching.
Marriage leads to the birth of children, naming our children,
honoring the children when they come of age, lifting them up

(37:41):
into adulthood with dignity, with the teachings of their
responsibilities. Those sort of things were are
entrenched into the potlatch system and that's again that
connectedness with the other villages and how we interacted
on the coast. Alliances were formed for trade,
which was our survival depended on it.

(38:05):
You had to get along and governance systems, protocols,
these things have to come into play in order to have harmony.
Throughout the ancient world, ceremonies were created to
honour birth, marriage, death and other important social and

(38:27):
human transitions. The tea ceremony emerged in
Japan as a way to honour different types of teas and to
acknowledge the beauty of the items used in their preparation.

(38:59):
Incense was a common trade item in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Stone altars were used to hold these aromatic resins as they
burned in household and temple rituals.

(39:28):
Tobacco and pipes are sacred to the nations living in the
Central Plains of North America.Sharing a pipe was often used to
initiate peace talks between warring nations.
Ceremonies are part of every society, and many of these

(39:49):
rituals still take place in traditional cultures today.
From societies as large as the Inca Empire in South America to
the smallest hunting communitieson the Great Plains of North
America, rituals were created toheal and protect the people, to
bring the rains, and to resolve conflicts.

(40:12):
For thousands of years, the people of the Central Plains in
North America smoked tobacco, konikonik and other leaves in
ceremonial pipes. This was their link between the
earth and the sky, a sacred ritual for connecting the
physical and spiritual worlds. We generally think of life of
people as bison hunters, huntingand gathering cultures, and

(40:34):
that's definitely true. But they did take one plant
under cultivation and that was tobacco.
And they learned a very, very intricate rituals and ceremonies
around tobacco. Before tobacco came into
Blackfoot culture, they used to have local plants that they

(40:55):
would smoke. They would take the leaves of
the bear Berry and mix them withthe inner bark of red ozier
Dogwood. Then when tobacco came along,
they just added tobacco to the blend.
People were smoking before they got tobacco.

(41:17):
The earliest pipes we find on the northern plains actually
come from the era around 5000 years ago.
So smoking and tobacco were not synonymous.
Tobacco moved out the Missouri River how the beginning about
the 8th century AD and it probably got into the Blackfoot

(41:39):
culture by about 900 AD. And we know that at that period
there was a warm spell in globalclimates and this warm spell
that lasted for about 5 or 600 years.
And that probably created the conditions where it was easier
to plant the crops and and to harvest them.

(42:03):
When they're ready to plant their tobacco crops, they would
leave it there. After they prepared their
gardens and put the seeds in, they would live there.
And they in their mythology, they said there were these
little people who lived in the woods, they lived in little
caves. So they were the ones who looked
after the tobacco plants while Blackfoot people were out

(42:25):
Buffalo hunting and they had to go off and do their Berry
picking or their collecting of other foods so they can't come
back and forth. The Tobacco Society of the
Blackfoot was a Horticultural Society and what they curated
was the traditional knowledge for how to plant tobacco and how

(42:47):
to bring in a crop. They said the little people were
very shy and that they could cause you harm if you saw them.
And then in the fall time, when they were getting ready to
harvest the crops and they'd go by there, they always sent a
couple of people ahead to make lots of noise and to let the

(43:09):
little people know that they were coming, coming back.
And then it gives them time to get away.
They would leave gifts of like food and little clothing, all
these things. They would treat them well.

(43:31):
The tobacco smoke is is also considered very sacred because
it's it's a visual manifestationof your breath.

(44:08):
When people wanted to make an oath, they usually captive by
taking a puff of smoke. Or else if you wanted to
solidify a trade deal, you smokethe pipe.
If you want to end war between your peoples, you smoke the
pipe. So there's this very close
connection between the spirit ofbreath and tobacco.

(44:50):
Blackfoot, Waka Waka, Aztec, Inca, and Maya are just a few of
the thousands of indigenous nations that develop
sophisticated political systems and vast trade networks
throughout the Americas. Before 1491, these nations were

(45:16):
not only formidable societies oftheir time.
In many ways, their laws, rituals, and beliefs continue to
influence our world today. The Americas were home to

(45:55):
groundbreaking achievements in science and technology long
before 1491. In Mesoamerica, indigenous
people developed a complex writing system, calendars, and
books. In South America, a precise
accounting machine was created more than 5000 years ago.

(46:15):
Throughout the Western Hemisphere, sophisticated
knowledge and the use of plants as medicine has been practiced
for thousands of years. Some achievements, like the
earliest use of the #0 and brainsurgery, were among the most
advanced in the world. For their time, indigenous men
and women gathered, studied, andadministered thousands of

(46:38):
species of plants for healing purposes.
These skilled ethnobotanists adapted plants for use as
sedatives, painkillers and othertypes of medicines.
Native peoples had a very ancient and traditional
practice, but there were multiple dimensions to it.

(46:58):
Some of that was as essential asherbs and ethnopharmacology, as
we call it, In other words, a botanical repertoire of things
that are medical. The reality is, much of the the
medical tradition we have here in the Western tradition is born
precisely of those herbs and their alkaloids in the way in
which we've extracted them. Indigenous medicine was not

(47:21):
simply a process of preparing plants and offering them to a
sick person. Healers had a deep knowledge of
plant chemistry and how different plants interacted as
medicines. In the Western tradition,
there's a tendency to engage in a primitivist rhetoric about
Native American medicine. The idea that, Oh well, it's
about superstition and it's about evil spirits and it's

(47:43):
about herbs. Because some of the people could
literally walk through a forest and identify plants and their
curative properties simply from visual inspection alone, such
that the chemovars, which are the active ingredients that
allow for the healing or the relieving of symptoms, could be
relieved and they knew which plants those were.

(48:03):
One of the more common plants that was used is a plant known
as Yarrow. And Yarrow is a, is a very good
example of curative plant because this was one that was
put on wounds and cuts, because if you take the arrow plant and
then just chew it up, you masticate it, you release all

(48:25):
the alkaloids that are in there and you put it onto an open
wound, it actually has properties that will cause the
blood to clot faster. But other plants such as
sweetgrass, these are plants that are used more in ceremonial
uses. You know where if you're
starting a ceremony and you put sweetgrass on there, coal and

(48:50):
the smoke from the sweetgrass has the properties that you're
looking for. For those who don't buy the idea
that herbs can cure us, the reality is much of the medical
tradition we have here in the Western tradition is born
precisely of those herbs and their alkaloids and the way in
which we've extracted them. Today, many modern

(49:14):
pharmaceuticals trace their origins to medicines developed
by indigenous people. Aspirin, you know, acidosilic
acid, which comes from Willow orAspen, the bark.
This was a very common one that was used from ancient times and
the active ingredient was isolated and was then used to

(49:38):
become aspirin in modern times. And many of those plants and
many of these people were being used by the medical industry to
find those very substances. Many of those have been
introduced into our medical tradition, but in the forms of
capsules and pills and and injections.
And thereby the American Indian is taken out of the equation,

(49:59):
though they are the discoverers and innovators of these
medicines. One of the the ancient
manuscripts that came down to ushad an entire listing of plants
used by the Aztecs. And there was a an incredible
period in which after having examined that book and it's
curative properties or the properties of the plants
identified, one of them spoke ofa disease that basically engaged

(50:24):
the the withering of the human body and ultimately the death of
the individual. And it was supposed to be a
means by which to relieve the symptoms and or cure the
disease. And those that were studying
this document came to the conclusion that it was a plant
that had properties to defeat cancer.
There's a range of treatments for cancer and other diseases in
use today that are based on medicines originally developed

(50:47):
by Indigenous people. One of the plants are common
plants that was used in the pharmacopia of traditional
healers was the Yew Tree and that bark of Yew Tree has also
been used in breast cancer treatment because that's where
the active ingredient of Taxol is taken from that plant.
Through a holistic approach to healing indigenous medicine, men

(51:09):
and women of the Americas combined herbology with
spiritual care. When people used them,
traditionally they would be usedin a complex with prayers and
ceremony. And you know, you can't
underestimate the power of the ceremony.

(51:32):
Brain surgery was being practiced throughout the ancient
world as far back as 7000 years ago.
In both North and South America.Thousands of skulls with
evidence of surgical treatment have been found, which
demonstrates that this specialized medical practice was
widely used to treat injuries and sickness.

(51:53):
The precision of these operations and their high
success rate is evidence of advanced surgical skills by
Indigenous people. The archaeological evidence
makes clear, from mummy bundles in Peru to excavated burials in
Mesoamerica, that cranial trephanine, or the surgical
removal of bone plates from the skull for the purposes of brain

(52:14):
surgery or the surgical removal of tumors and the relief of
blunt force trauma was a reality.
It was very common. You find skulls and
archaeological sites here on thecoast and they've obviously done
trepanation and the person survived because there's been
healing around the scars of the bone.

(52:34):
In a survey of over 10,000 crania with evidence of trepani,
it is clear from the surgical practices that were conducted
that over 70% of the individualswho had suffered blunt force
trauma and then had the blunt force trauma relieved by virtue
of cranial trepani survived. You might say, well yes you have

(52:55):
of 70% of some 10,000 crania showing healing osteitis as we
call it. But what does that mean?
If you look at it from the perspective of forensics and
osteology, it was a practice engaged in when you were dealing
with the potential death of a casualty of blunt force trauma
or other illnesses. The Inca emperor would have the

(53:18):
equivalent of 6 physicians carryhis litter.
These physicians were known as Yayo and the yoyo were all
trained in skull surgery. We can no longer contend that
this practice does not have a medical correlation.
It wasn't witchcraft, it was medical innovation that came

(53:39):
into play thousands of years ago.
Head trauma wasn't the only serious injury treated
surgically by Indigenous medicalspecialists.
The Aztecs engaged in something that involved compound
fractures, for example to the arm or leg.
The individuals on the battlefield were often subjected
to this treatment. Individuals who had compound
fractures were likely to lose the limb unless something could

(54:01):
be done immediately, and so surgeries were conducted in
which, for example, the sutures would be made of hair, urine was
used to wash the wounds, and they would open up the arm or
the leg, and the long bones thatwere broken would actually be
reattached by virtue of an intramedular nail.
This is basically the equivalentof a spur of bone or wood that

(54:23):
would be inserted into the bone itself and they would be
reconnected, thereby allowing for the long bone to be healed
and eventually individual to fully recover.
That's a system that was only reintroduced in the 20th
century. These are traditions that appear
all over South America, Mesoamerica, North America, and

(54:46):
I would contend the fact that they exist, and they exist so
broadly and through such remote antiquity, would contend that
ancient Native Americans had an incredible grasp on science,
technology, and medicine well into the remote past.
In every part of the world, traditional medicines have been
the primary means of treating illnesses for thousands of

(55:07):
years. The medicines and treatments
used by practitioners are based on deep knowledge of plants and
healing skills that have been passed down from generation to
generation. Herbal medicines have been part
of Chinese traditional healing practices for several millennia.
In addition to using plants, theuse of acupuncture, massage, and

(55:30):
Tai chi are used to enhance well-being and prevent health
problems. A traditional practice called
mooty has been one of the primary means of healthcare for

(55:50):
people in Southern Africa for thousands of years.
The medicines made from trees and plants have therapeutic
properties that are used in maternal care and to treat
diseases. Indigenous peoples in every part

(56:11):
of the Americas use plants, trees, and other natural
materials as part of their traditional healing practices.
An essential part of this practice was the
interrelationship between physical, mental, emotional, and
spiritual well-being. Millions of people rely on
traditional medicine for their healthcare needs.

(56:33):
Many medicines developed by Indigenous peoples are still
used in alternative medicine. The oral histories of indigenous
peoples throughout the Americas include references to the sun,
moon, stars, and planets. Solar and lunar eclipses often
coincided with political and cultural events that continue to

(56:56):
be commemorated hundreds of years later.
In Mesoamerica, the planet Venuswas central to the development
of the world's most sophisticated ancient calendar
systems, while in Central North America, the Blackfoot and other
Plains nations relied on the stars and planets to time their
hunting and harvesting seasons and to interpret the forces of

(57:19):
nature. Ancient people had a lot of
knowledge about stars and the movement of stars and the night
sky. If it's clear skies, you go out
and you look at the stars. And people were able to make
sense out of all of this. And one of the things that I've
seen over and over again is how people used lunar calendars,

(57:40):
devised lunar calendars. Traditional calendars always had
13 moons that they recognized, and that would be equivalent to
months for us. You also have to calibrate your
lunar calendar with the solar year.
And people recognize that there is a certain number of moons
within a solar year. So how do we know when we've
left winter, the winter part of the calendar and into the

(58:03):
summer? Well, they use the the Pleiades
because there's only one season where the waxing Crescent moon
and the Pleiades will share the same part of the sky.
And when they see this, they know that that's the start of
this first moon of summer. So that this would be a way of
calibrating their their lunar calendars.

(58:26):
These lunar calendars were vitalfor predicting the shifting of
the seasons, the migrations of herd animals, and the emergence
of berries and plants that indigenous peoples harvested.
Or, if you know that a certain constellation is only visible in
the winter time, you can then make plans about when this

(58:47):
constellation disappears. We're moving to a new season by
knowing the relative position ofthe stars, the seven siblings,
in relation to the North Star. They can determine, you know,
things such as travelling, navigation or using them for
calendrics. So knowing these types of

(59:09):
movements of the stars, they're able to develop star lore about
it. And in this way they can make
plans. They can avoid travelling at
certain times or maybe using certain seasons.
Lunar calendars are so common, you know everywhere you go in
the world, you'll find lunar calendars.

(59:30):
That's the most common form of calendar that people devise.
Because if you have a if you have devised lunar calendar,
then you can start making plans several moons in advance.
The Blackfoot weren't the only Indigenous people to depend on
the night sky for guidance in the far north during the

(59:53):
darkness of winter, the stars provided clues to the passage of
time. Any of people who have to deal
with the fact that parts of the season there is no sun, How do
you know morning from night or afternoon from morning if you
have no sun in the sky? Well, they recognize that

(01:00:16):
certain stars parallel the sun, so even if the sun is not in the
sky, they can distinguish whether they're in the AM hours
or in the afternoon hours by being able to make the
association between a certain star and where the position of
the sun is. The most advanced calendar

(01:00:36):
systems developed in ancient times had their origins in
Mesoamerica. Believed to have been developed
first by the Olmec, it was laterrefined by the Maya and Aztecs.
With Subtle village life, you have a demand for produce,
agriculture. All of these things have to be
set on a calendar. The Maya did that to a level of

(01:00:57):
accuracy that's almost unheard of.
They were able to calculate the solar year to 365.252 days.
They were able to do this by virtue of the so-called Metonic
calendar Calendario Metonico. This system was used by very few
world civilizations and those who did did were able to

(01:01:18):
calibrate the solar year by using the lunar cycle in order
to record time. The Maya went one step further.
They had a Venusian calendar or a Venus based calendar.
They had a lunar calendar, they had the Tonal Pawali, which is
essentially the agricultural or sacred Almanac and then they had
the solar year. Each of these was being

(01:01:38):
calibrated and in looking at these different systems, what
they were able to do was they took a fixed point in time and
having set that point in time, August 13th of of 3114 BC, they
began counting forward in time. Every day from that point

(01:01:58):
constituted the beginnings of what we might call the long
count. Besides being central to their
calendar system, Venus played a prominent role in the cosmology
and spiritual world of the Maya culture.
It was often for the Maya referred to as the wasp star.
It was this creature and it's often identified with war and
conflict. And if you we've ever traveled

(01:02:19):
in areas like Guatemala or the Yucatan Peninsula, at night, the
stars come out and what you see cresting the the canopy of the
sky is this massive Kawil visionserpent.
It is literally, if you look at it carefully, the Milky Way
looks like it has an open Mott one end and a tail at the other.
And that is what they saw. And every so often the planet

(01:02:40):
Venus, as the morning and evening star as we call it, will
appear at one point and that goes into retrograde motion and
disappeared below the horizon and then it reappears in another
place. So it was deemed the divine
twin. So the the twins appear in in
the mythologies of virtually allMesoamerican peoples.

(01:03:01):
The Maya are recognized for morethan their advanced calendar.
They were the first civilizationin the world to use the #0 in
their counting system. There was an early finding back
in the 1930s of a monument that dated back to about 150 AD.
Once the fragments were brought together and other glyphs were

(01:03:22):
found, they realized that they had a bar and dot numeral system
and what made it or completed itas a system that was something
more than just finger counting was the concept of the 0.
They invented the zero and the zero allowed to create numerals
that extended well beyond the billions at a time when we have
to wonder why they would be counting into the billions and

(01:03:45):
the trillions and even beyond. It was invented independently in
the New World by the American Indian, by either the Maya or
other Mesoamerican peoples. It extends well before the
Common Era, so at least three centuries prior.
So we're looking at about 2300 years ago.
This system, if not at that point perhaps earlier, had

(01:04:07):
already been invented. The zero, the barn dot numerals,
and the founding of the calendrical system.
The Aztec civilization developedtheir own dual calendar system.
Their lunar calendar had 1320 day months and was used for
agricultural purposes. The Aztec also had a sacred
solar based calendar. The solar year was also charted

(01:04:30):
and that solar year consisted of18 months of 20 days and so for
360 days, with five days that the Aztecs referred to as
Nemodemi. The Aztec day count calendar and
the Maya short count calendar each had 260 day cycles.
The short count is is really something that developed after
the long count. Those are two systems that we
know from contact with the Aztecs, but we also know that

(01:04:53):
the Maya were able to introduce a level of precision that we
don't see in the later systems. By studying the sun, moon,
stars, and planets, our ancestors developed advanced
calendar systems and planned their lives around the changing
seasons. The origins of a written
language in Mesoamerica can be traced to a 3000 year old Olmec

(01:05:17):
stone tablet found in eastern Mexico.
Hundreds of years later, the Maya developed a complex writing
system that used symbols to represent sounds and words found
in the Maya spoken language. Most indigenous peoples in the
Americas recorded their history by passing it down orally from
one generation to the next. Mesoamerica had the only written

(01:05:40):
language and it was recorded using 800 unique hieroglyphs.
The glyph system is an amazing contribution.
Bear in mind that there were only 5 world civilizations that
produced literate traditions, and contrary to what one of my
professors used to tell me in Graduate School, that the Maya
did not write histories. The Americas were placed non

(01:06:03):
literate and prehistoric. The reality is the Maya
completely dispensed with that whole thing.
And it wasn't so much that the Maya were a non literate
tradition, it was that we western scholars were incapable
of understanding this literate tradition.
We couldn't read it and therefore it was irrelevant.
Maya writing was painted on walls and pottery, carved in

(01:06:23):
stone, and written down on bark paper in books known as codices.
While many of these books were destroyed by the Spanish after
1491, some murals and sculpturesstill exist that describe
day-to-day life and important events like battles and
conquests. The language used to record the
Maya world reveals A culturally rich, storied civilization that

(01:06:47):
placed a significant value on preserving its history for
future generations. We now know it to have been a
fully literate tradition with over 800 characters, and it was
not only logographic, but it wasalso phonetic.
Just as we write in block letters and italics.
They had more fonts than you canimagine.

(01:07:09):
Today, close to 90% of Maya glyphs have been deciphered,
revealing a wealth of knowledge about this civilization.
The development of writing systems took place independently
in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 5000 years ago.
Other societies that had writingsystems since ancient times are

(01:07:32):
the Olmec and Maya in Mesoamerica and the Chinese in
Asia. The earliest Mesopotamian
writing was carried out with a blunt instrument that made wedge
shape marks on clay tablets. This inspired other nearby
societies to use pictograms as the basis for their writing

(01:07:53):
systems. The Rosetta Stone was created
more than 2000 years ago and features the Egyptian and Greek
languages written in three different scripts.
The message on the stone was recorded by priests to honor the

(01:08:16):
Egyptian pharaoh. Maya writing evolved from a
system that was developed earlier by the Olmec Society of
Mesoamerica. Using more than 800 symbols,
Maya scribes recorded significant political and

(01:08:37):
religious events, unfolding books called codices.
The evolution of early writing systems in Mesoamerica, Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East. We offer a window into the
worlds of ancient people dating back thousands of years.

(01:08:58):
About 2000 years before the birth of a written language in
Mesoamerica, a unique system of information storage was invented
in South America. The discovery of a knotted
string device called a Kippu in the 5000 year old city of Caral
makes it one of the oldest record keeping instruments in
the world. Tipu was a coded accounting

(01:09:19):
system for both small and large societies in South America.
Information and data was recorded using multiple strands
of knotted string or rope strungtogether along a main chord.
It's accountability device. It's it's it's an artifact for
to get numbers for recording quantities and qualities of

(01:09:42):
products. It's.
Like a. Computer, because the society is
so complex as karate, needs to have organization about the work
that you need to build a pyramid.
You need to have an organizationof the numbers of the people and
the products that you are. Taking or sharing?

(01:10:06):
Almost 4000 years after Kippu was used by the people of
Karate, they were still an important record keeping tool in
Andean cultures, including the Inca Empire.
One of the main functions of Kippu was to record numbers such
as population tributes and levels of crop and art

(01:10:27):
production. The encontramos UN quipu de Los
Angeles de de cientos de Puerto de cristo A proxima ament
entonces the hemos El quipunes cinca porque Estes UN quipu
preview Y tene di ferentes characteristicas que quipu Inca.
But another Quipu sample found at the Carral site proved to be

(01:10:47):
far older. Ecuando en contramos en carral
El quipu ET eregual omue parecido El quipu de la guacas
San Marcos entonces nocaria Dudaqueer en quipo con Los no dos Y
de mas Y acurimos ES especialistas para que Enos
dijeran SE estamos en lo baradero queer en quipo entonces

(01:11:09):
espues ES simos ES a camos dos pequena cuerras Y Las en viemos
aguilaratorio beta estados unidos perel fechamiento Y Los
echado dieron que tenia do mil SE cientos do mil quinientos SE
centa ochenta maso meno sante decristo joseia coincidia con El
periodo de la epoca de caralno entonce SE cayos inventaro El

(01:11:32):
quipo que luego SE EI so ma sofistiquado trabe El tiempo Y
ES ES ES ego so mucho la epoca incano.
The oldest kippu from Caral weremade from cotton, while those
from the Inca period were usually made from alpaca wool.
Information was recorded on the device through variations in the
chord color, length, type of knot, location on the string,

(01:11:56):
and even how the chord was twisted.
The Kippu had a base 10 numeric system.
The knots were made at specific intervals to indicate groups of
10s, hundreds, and thousands. The Inca had highly trained
information keepers who recordedthe data and also memorized the

(01:12:16):
stories connected to it. Some researchers have suggested
that the Kippu was also used to record oral histories and
genealogies, but if this is true, it would be challenging to
decipher these stories today. Enge Las pepto del organizacion
social El Sistema tambienes biencomplejo coma autoridades

(01:12:38):
sociales de politicas he sentaroLas vas ES de lo queseria
organization El Sistema traves de Los Andes asta la epoca Inca.
The fact that Quipu was in use in South America for several
thousand years demonstrates the important economic and record
keeping role this device had in successive Andean societies.

(01:13:05):
In ancient societies, the need to keep track of crops,
materials and populations led tothe development of recording
instruments that ranged from beaded counting tablets to
string counting devices. The Abacus is a counting device
that uses sliding beads on a frame to perform math

(01:13:27):
calculations. It was used by many ancient
societies, including China, Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia and
Egypt. A.
Bone tool found in a cave in South Africa is one of the

(01:13:49):
oldest examples of a record keeping instrument ever
discovered. The animal bone has 29 notches
cut into it and may have been used to count objects or track
the cycle of the moon. Kippu, also known as talking

(01:14:14):
knots, were made from colored cords that were knotted in a
specific order to signify numbers.
They recorded important civic information like crop yields,
population, and tax payments. Record keeping is an important
part of every society, and some of these ancient innovations are

(01:14:35):
the models for the calculators and computers that we use today.
The ancestors of today's Inui people have lived in the Arctic
region for about 5000 years. To adapt to one of the world's
harshest climates, Northern peoples developed a wide range
of innovations for hunting, shelter and clothing that

(01:14:56):
ensured their survival. We lived in igloos and S huts,
you know, all winter long. And we would travel mostly out
on the sea ice. We were hunting seals all winter
because that's what we lived on,Seals we would travel and when
we stopped we would build an igloo and we would, you know,

(01:15:17):
spend the night and go travelling the next day.
Or if the hunting was good, we would stay for a while.
But mostly in the winter we lived on the sea ice.

(01:16:14):
Seals were the staple food source of the Inuit, but Caribou
and other game were haunted for meat and hide.
In the winter we wore coats thatwere made of Caribou skins.
We the inner coat we wore with the fur on the inside right up

(01:16:36):
against our skins. And on top of that, if we were
going to be outside for long periods, we wore another coat,
Polita, which is coat with the fur on the outside sealskin.
These coats were made in a very special way so that, you know,

(01:17:01):
they weren't too bulky under your arms and they gave you, you
know, free movement. And they've been designed, you
know, a long, long time ago. And then they're still used that
way today. One of the necessities of Arctic
survival was a dependable sourceof transportation, which
included sled dogs. We made all our sleds, we made

(01:17:23):
all our own harnesses for the dogs and even the little booties
in the spring when the ice was really sharp, they would, you
know, cut the pads on their on their feet.
The origins of domesticated dogsin the Arctic dates back more
than 4000 years. Historically, their primary role
was to work with hunters to track seals and other prey.

(01:17:46):
The earliest archaeological evidence of sleds with dog
harnesses dates back about 800 years.
When we had regular sleds, you know, which are maybe 12/14/16
feet long, we would have about 8-9 ten dogs to pull a sled.
A lot of the runners of our sleds used to have Caribou

(01:18:09):
antler that was shaped to be thin and and flat and that's
what we would use on our little sleds.
You know little sleds about thisbig.
To protect their eyes from the harsh glare of the sun and snow,
the Inuit devised a unique type of snow goggles.
They're mostly made of bone, like Caribou antler, you know,

(01:18:32):
and with a little slit. And the nice thing about them is
that they don't fog up, you know, unlike regular sunglasses,
you know, they don't fog up because they're just slits.
And they're, they're really goodfor, you know, getting rid of
the glare because in the spring,where we come from, you know,
the sun is up all the time in the summer and we get glare off

(01:18:54):
the ice and snow. Neil.

(01:19:51):
Me. I.

(01:20:54):
None. None.

(01:22:53):
In the summer months, when the Arctic ice would melt, dog sleds
were replaced by small skin boats.
We built kayaks and the kayak was invented because we have so
little wood. You know, where I grew up and
where I come from, we don't haveany trees.
So wood was very, very scarce. To build an eagle haya, you use

(01:23:16):
very little wood. You know, the ribs are made out
of wood, of course, usually. And, and I suppose in the old
days, you know, they were built,a lot of them were built out of
bone. You know that.
Well, bone and seal bones and Caribou bones, Caribou antlers
and that kind of thing. I think it's absolutely amazing

(01:23:39):
how people can survive, you know, in this very harsh land
for thousands of years to live. We have invented all these
amazing things. You know, we have invented the
kayak, we invented sleds, and weinvented this incredible
structure called an igloo and skin tents and all the stuff and

(01:24:03):
sod huts. And we survived because we
learned how to get along with each other.
We have a great camaraderie withall the other Arctic peoples of
the world because, you know, we were nomads.
Like we traveled, you know, to Alaska, Greenland, all over the
North. And then we have all these

(01:24:25):
stories, you know, these incredible legends that teach us
how to live with each other. A lot of us really don't think
of it as surviving that. We think of it as living, you
know, because even though it's really cold, it's the most
incredible part of the world. In every part of the world,

(01:24:51):
people develop calendars to markthe passage of days, weeks,
months and years. The moon, sun and planets were
the basis for most of these calendar systems.
A piece of bone found in France may be the oldest lunar calendar

(01:25:11):
in existence. Marks on the bone appear to show
the phases of the moon. Calendars used during the Middle

(01:25:31):
Ages in Ethiopia were based on cycles of 532 years.
These calendars set the date of biblical creation as the
starting point. The Maya developed an accurate

(01:25:59):
calendar system more than 2500 years ago that used the cycles
of the moon, sun, and the planetVenus to measure time.
Since ancient times, people haveused calendars to plan their
religious, agricultural and hunting practices.

(01:26:21):
Tracking the passage of time is 1 of mankind's greatest
achievements. Archaeological evidence and the
oral histories of indigenous peoples confirm that the
earliest inhabitants of the Americas were seafarers with
extensive knowledge of ocean navigation and marine

(01:26:42):
lifestyles. Over the millennia, our
ancestors developed different styles of boats to to travel and
fish the rivers, lakes and coastlines of North and South
America. Water travel offer greater
access to fishing and hunting and to trade with distant
nations. These are people who may have

(01:27:04):
been able to travel on the open ocean without much compunction.
It's quite clear that plenty of people along the coast had
perfectly good boat technology. In fact, the Onan or Elliot
people have some of the most extraordinary tradition of
boating skills in tiny, incredibly fragile little craft

(01:27:27):
made out of nothing but skin anddriftwood.
And yet they would travel hundreds of kilometers over some
of the world's most dangerous and difficult water, routinely
going from island to island justto visit family.
The coast off of Washington and Oregon has no sheltering
islands, so without the Inside Passage, they must have been
travelling out on the open water.

(01:27:47):
Yet there was nothing wrong withthat.
Likewise, Klinkit folks in recorded history have travelled
extraordinary different distances in open canoes.
Indigenous people developed a range of seafaring skills to
safely journey along coastlines,including celestial navigation
and the use of landmarks in the Pacific Northwest.

(01:28:10):
The Klingit devised a unique system of open ocean navigation
that included an understanding of waves, tides and winds.
In fact, Klingit culture has a story of Kakuk, a man who with
his nephews was blown out in a terrible storm out into the open
ocean and he washed up with his nephews on apparently a tropical

(01:28:33):
island. Because Klinkit maintains the
word kaneshka for bamboo. And it's in this story that it's
described how there wasn't any water on the island because
there was no rivers. But they figured out that
rainwater was caught in the broken off stems of bamboo.
And that's what they used to survive on while they killed

(01:28:54):
seals and then filled their the the seal stomachs up with more
water for their journey. So oral history even tells us
that these folks not only travelto some very remote island where
bamboo grows, which could be midway or further South, but
still quite far out in the open ocean, but then made it back
using traditional navigation techniques, laying in the bottom

(01:29:17):
of the boat to detect the rippling patterns of the North
Pacific storms bouncing off of the islands.
And each of these storms has itsown pattern of waves that hit
the shore and bounce back. And by studying how those waves
crossover each other, you can use them to triangulate in the
direction of the shore. And so this was a technique that

(01:29:39):
that the this the seal hunters and and whale hunters out of
Yakatat would would use wheneverthey got blown so far off off of
shore that they couldn't find their way back.
Studying the patterns of storm waves wasn't the only
navigational tool that Klingit and other seafarers used for
ocean travel. Watching the birds and we see

(01:30:00):
the same story coming from the Polynesians, the birds that
travel out during the day and always go back to shore at
night. If you know what time of day it
is, you know what direction the shore is because of the
direction that they're traveling.
By applying their intimate understanding of boat technology
and the ocean itself, these ancient Mariners mastered

(01:30:21):
navigation over some of the mostchallenging waters in the world.
From navigation to brain surgery, from snow goggles to
accounting systems, the indigenous peoples of the
Americas are responsible for countless discoveries in science
and technology. Innovations like the first use

(01:30:43):
of the #0 and life saving medicines are still in use
today. These legacies are a tribute to
our ancestors ingenuity and remind us that their
accomplishments were as significant as those made by
other societies in the world before 1491.

(01:31:44):
The creative spirit is at the heart of every indigenous
culture in the Americas. The artistic genius of our
ancestors was evident in every aspect of life, from traditional
ceremonies to the creation of everyday objects.
Our histories were carefully passed down from generation to
generation through stories, songs and dances.

(01:32:07):
Perhaps the most visible reminders of our past are the
works of art that our ancestors left for us.
Through ceramic, metal, wood, and woven materials, we've
discovered the very essence of our cultures before 1491.
For thousands of years, Indigenous people have been
creating tools and art from gold, silver, copper and bronze.

(01:32:32):
The technology of metallurgy in the Americas before 1491 was
possibly the most advanced in the world.
The mining and manufacturing of metals was an established
technology in western South America around 2000 years ago.
Evidence of simple gold beads was discovered near Lake
Titicaca that dates back 4000 years.

(01:32:57):
The Inca are often credited withdeveloping the metallurgy
traditions in South America. They were, after all, the
dominant society when gold production was at its peak 600
years ago, but the extraction and purification of metals and
the creation of metal alloys waspracticed by indigenous cultures
in the Andes 1000 years or more before the Inca civilization

(01:33:20):
existed. Gold objects were a status
symbol reserved for the Sapa Inca and the elite commoners
only wore gold during religious and state ceremonies.

(01:33:47):
They were the most advanced civilization in the processing
of metallurgy in the American continent.
They live in an area where the ore was abandoned and with
techniques that perhaps were superior to the European ones.

(01:34:10):
Skilled artisans throughout the Inca Empire were conscripted to
produce jewelry and ceremonial objects for the Sapa Inca and
his extended family. The artisans were often required
to move from their own cities towork in the Inca capital of
Cusco. There was a cosmology, an
ideology identified with the metals.

(01:34:33):
Gold was identified with the sunand silver was identified with
the moon. And the Tumbagas, which were
mixtures are alloys of gold. And silver and copper were
identified with kind of the androgynous being of the metals,
such that they represented both the male and female element, the
heavens and the earth and a whole host of other things that
were sacred to the people that worked in those metals.

(01:34:56):
Inca Goldsmiths used a variety of different smelting techniques
to produce alloys. There is one element more than
gold or silver. There is one element that the
Incas had in abundance, Mercury.Why mercury?
Because you need mercury to basically remove impurities in

(01:35:20):
the ore and obtain only pure silver and pure gold.
I've. Identified over 50 metallurgical
traditions, from the electrochemical plating of gold

(01:35:43):
onto less precious metals, all the way through to gilding
processes and even the production of platinum, which is
among the first uses of platinumin the world.
These 50 traditions have often been identified with things like
Sheffield plating. The last I recall, Sheffield is
in England, and yet we have the earlier precedence for this

(01:36:03):
innovation and technology in Peru.
A. Region as rich in resources and
people as the Inca Empire required an efficient Rd. system

(01:36:24):
for transportation. Many of the products used by the
ruling family, such as precious stones, woven material and
feathers, were transported alongthis vast Rd. system.
The Inca Empire stretched from Colombia to the southern tip of
Chile. Connecting the millions of
people living in this region wasthe Great Inca Rd., a 40,000

(01:36:49):
kilometer highway that crisscrossed mountains, deserts
and forests. The Chesky was a long distance
relay runner who travelled the Great Road to deliver packages
to the rulers and the artisans who created works of art for the
Sapa Incas family. The chassis handed his packages

(01:38:15):
of precious materials to the next runner out of tambos for
resting house. OK.

(01:39:10):
The jewelry and other objects that the Inca artisans created
from gold and silver were part of a complex cultural dynamic
that connected the ruling Sapa Inca and his family to the
important deities like the sun God Inti.
Although they were highly regarded in society, creating
the metal objects for ceremonies, artisans perform

(01:39:32):
their work at the pleasure of the Sapa, Inca and the elite
class. Perhaps we lost many other
possible paths that perhaps we're better, perhaps we're more
efficient, perhaps we're more beautiful, Perhaps we're even,
like, more sustainable. At the peak of the Inca

(01:39:58):
civilization, the Goldsmiths andartisans were masters of
metallurgy techniques and the creation of brilliant works of
art. One of mankind's greatest

(01:40:47):
achievements was developing technologies to extract metals
from rock. This led to the invention of
bronze and iron tools and weapons and the creation of gold
and silver jewelry and art. The earliest manufactured gold
in the world was discovered at an ancient cemetery on the

(01:41:09):
western shores of the Black Sea.More than 3000 pieces of gold
jewelry and artifacts were foundat this site.
The Egyptians were among the first civilizations to mine and

(01:41:32):
use gold. It was an important part of the
ceremonies associated with the burials of the Pharaohs and
their families. The first evidence of metal art

(01:41:57):
in the Americas was found in theform of gold foil beads near
Lake Titicaca. Later methods of metal
extraction and processing were developed in northern Peru and
Colombia. Today, gold continues to be as
powerful a symbol of wealth and status as it was in ancient

(01:42:20):
times. While story is at the core of
every art form, oral storytelling has preserved the
cultural identity of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.
Stories are the memories of our ancestors, and through them they
ensure that the values, rituals,knowledge and ways of life are

(01:42:42):
kept alive. Those stories are what are held
as being the foundation of an understanding of where you have
come, where you are, and where you may go in the future.
Every indigenous culture has a story about their origins as a
people. These creation stories tell us
how they came to be in northwestNorth America.

(01:43:06):
A Haida creation story tells of a Raven discovering first people
as they emerged from a clamshellon a beach.
That Simpson people have a storyabout the origins of the killer
whale. A white wolf longed to tell the
history of the world through song.
He left the land and went undersea, where he transformed

(01:43:30):
into a killer whale. Today, he calls out to his Wolf
family, who still live on the land.
There is a journey through a storied landscape and so as as
you begin to hear descriptions of this journey, the people will
usually say that they stopped indifferent places.

(01:43:55):
The Inuit and their ancestors have lived in the Arctic for
thousands of years. A rich storytelling tradition
evolved over countless generations through the sharing
of legends between elders and children.
We have a great camaraderie withall the other Arctic peoples of

(01:44:19):
the world because, you know, we were nomads.
Like we travel, you know, to Alaska, Greenland, all over the
north, and we all speak the samelanguage with many different
dialects. So I can talk to people from
Alaska in Institute, I can talk to people from Greenland and we
can understand each other prettywell.

(01:44:39):
So we had all these stories, these traditional legends, and
they were told right across the North.
As you listen to the stories, you know, you fall asleep to
them every night and, and they teach you a lesson and you
dream, you know, about these characters and, and they become
your heroes. The most famous person that you

(01:45:01):
know, I can think of is a man called Kibio.
My grandmother said Kibio, he was born so long ago that he was
the very first person. The beginning of the Kivio
stories actually talks about a little boy who's also an orphan.
He was being bullied by all these kids in the community and

(01:45:23):
that his grandmother made him clothing out of young seal.
And she said, I would like you to go down to the beach and when
you get to the water sedge, I would like you to take the
sealskin and pull it over your head and jump into the water and
go for a swim and come up right in front of all your mean
friends were playing on the beach.

(01:45:44):
And sure enough all the mean boys were playing on the beach.
The little boy took the sealskin.
He pulled it over his head so that it fit nicely and he looked
like a little seal. And then he took a deep breath
and he jumped into the water, and he came up right in front of
all the mean boys who were playing on the beach.

(01:46:04):
They thought he was a little seal.
They grabbed their kayaks and all their long skinny skin
boats, and they started paddling, following the little
seal. The little seal would go down in
the water and he would swim a little bit farther out, and then
he would come up again. And then he would go down and he
would swim a little bit farther out, and then he would come up
again. And when they were way out at

(01:46:25):
sea, when the little seal came up, he would lift up his arm and
his leg and he would sing. Where's my wind?
I want my wind. People say the weather that was

(01:46:45):
on the day you were born is yourvery own weather.
And this little boy was born on a very, very windy day and he
was calling the weather that wason the day he was born.
The wind heard him and it started to come.
It caught windier and windier and windier and before long

(01:47:08):
there were huge waves in the water and the kayaks with all
the mean boys were going up and down, up and down in the big
waves. And every now and then a giant
wave would come and he would threat the kayaks over.
And before long there was only one person left.
That person was Kivio. Kivio landed his kayak over on

(01:47:32):
the other side of the ocean. And so he started travelling,
trying to find his way home. And while he was trying to find
his way home, it seems like he travelled through every part of
the north because there are stories about him everywhere.
He travelled across this ocean and ended up on the other side
in this very strange place, and he got homesick.

(01:47:54):
So he started travelling, tryingto find his way home.
What people say about Kivio is that he was the first person,
but he's still alive today. He is so old, his body is
turning to stone. And someday, when his heart
turns completely to stone and stops, that will be the end of
the universe. In the Finnish language they

(01:48:16):
have a word which sounds just like you view, and it means
stone man. So if you go back far enough and
finish history, you might find stories about this very same
person. Of all the indigenous forms of
art, storytelling remains the most essential to the teaching
of culture, our relationship with others, and our connection

(01:48:37):
to the environment. We have all these stories, you
know, these incredible legends that teach us how to care for
the young and to help the more disadvantaged people in our
world and teach us how to live with each other.
Because, you know, nobody survives if they don't have a

(01:49:01):
structure like that. They came to know something
about themselves, something about relationship and
responsibility, and they carriedthat knowledge and that
perspective to the next place that they journeyed to.
The stories mirror, you know, the deepest longings, the

(01:49:23):
deepest understandings, the mostprofound thoughts, if you will,
of other people. And they're guiding thoughts.
They're the thoughts that guide through generations.
Rock art is one of the oldest art forms in the world.
By carving or scraping the surface of rocks with stone or

(01:49:47):
bone tools, indigenous people inthe Americas created visual
stories called petroglyphs. Many of the images carry deep
cultural meaning and provide us with a connection to our past.
There are many petroglyph sites that tend to be concentrated at

(01:50:08):
really interesting locations on the landscape.
Why the rock art is there is of great interest to
archaeologists. However, we cannot fully
understand these sites without considering the cultural
knowledge associated with them. Petroglyphs had many functions

(01:50:29):
to mark a trail, record an important event, or tell a
story. For me as an Indigenous
archaeologist, but I do use the science aspect of trying to find
and locate sites. But we can also look at our oral
histories and our place names and our traditions.
We can come to understand landscapes from a cultural

(01:50:51):
perspective and a scientific perspective, but when we layer
those two together, we only enhance our understanding of the
past. The mountains haven't changed
since the days of our ancestors we see.
Paths of their travels, prehistoric trails that they've
taken. And yes, definitely the
petroglyphs, you know, the symbols and designs that remind

(01:51:14):
us of our traditional religious practices, our ceremony, our
rituals, all those things are evidence of their presence and
their use of this landscape. They're etched in the stone
because they wanted them to survive those messages to
survive. They wanted those symbols,
designs to be recognized and utilized by the people.

(01:51:38):
These are messages or reminders to all.
There are some people you know to continue our way of life.

(01:52:00):
Today, we find petroglyphs in every part of the Western
Hemisphere. They offer us a glimpse into the
way of life and dream worlds of our ancestors.

(01:52:20):
On cave walls, Cliff faces, and rock overhangs throughout the
Americas, indigenous people painted images that represented
the world around them. Pictographs were drawn, painted,
or stained on the rock surface using organic materials like
ochre and charcoal. One of the oldest pictograph
sites in the Americas is The Cave of Hans site in Argentina.

(01:52:45):
The ancestors of the people of Patagonia covered the ceilings
and walls with hundreds of handprints.
Artists filled hollow bird boneswith pigment, then placed their
hand against the wall or ceilingby blowing the pigment through
the tube. The paint left the outline of a
hand. Painted over the course of

(01:53:09):
several thousand years, the illustrations on the walls of
this site reveal the hunting practices of the people of the
region. Pictographs are also found
throughout North America, with the largest concentrations in
the Great Lakes region, the Southwest, and along the West
Coast. Like those in South America,

(01:53:32):
most of the pictographs of NorthAmerica were painted with ochre.
Ochre, being very rich, dark red, really symbolizes life and
power, and it provides a way to spiritually connect with your
ancestors and of course the landscape and the resources that
surround you. In Squamish culture we refer to
this as tummeth and it translates as paint.

(01:53:55):
The images portrayed in pictographs are more than
storyboards of ancient times. The ochre itself offers a
valuable insight into the lives of the people who used it as
paint. One of the ways that I've
researched Thomas Ochre is by doing some non destructive
analysis called X-ray fluorescence.

(01:54:17):
This gives me an elemental signature of the ochre, so I can
then go and find natural outcrops of the ochre and try
and match the signature from thepictograph to a geological
deposit where that material was gathered.
And so that gives us a little more understanding on how people
use their landscape and the way they associated those paintings

(01:54:39):
with what surrounds those sites.One of the mysteries of rock art
is its frequent similarity with artistic styles in different
regions of the Americas. Many researchers have noted that
the styles and patterns of certain rock art images are the
same. And early on in archaeological
research, many people said, well, maybe this was a

(01:55:01):
widespread tradition, or maybe it was a certain group of people
who who moved around. Really, this is just a
reflection of what is in the local environment and of course,
a shared human nature. Storytelling through petroglyphs
and pictographs is one of the earliest forms of creative
expression. Collectively, rock art stands as

(01:55:23):
a visual library of natural and human history throughout the
Americas before 1491. Rock art is one of the earliest
forms of creative expressions inhuman history.

(01:55:44):
The oldest pictographs have survived 10s of thousands of
years in the shelter of rocky landscapes where they were
painted. Australia is home to more rock
art than any continent on Earth.Detailed drawings of birds,
wildlife and plants and pictographs found in the

(01:56:06):
Northern Territories offer a glimpse of ancient flora and
fauna in the region. The ancient caves of southern
France are home to a remarkable collection of rock art.

(01:56:28):
Horses, bears and bison, some aslarge as 5 meters, adorn the
walls of these caves. Argentina's Cave of Hands was

(01:56:49):
created over a span of several thousand years.
The illustrations on the walls of this site reveal the hunting
practices of Indigenous people over 10,000 years ago.
The artwork at pictograph sites and the detailed depictions of
vegetation, animals and humans make rock paintings a visual

(01:57:10):
library of natural and human history around the world.
The. Art of weaving natural fibers
into baskets, clothing, and bedding has been part of
indigenous cultures in the Americas for thousands of years.

(01:57:33):
The techniques used to create these materials vary from nation
to nation. Iroquois and Algonquin basket
makers used pounded ash bark andbraided sweet grass for their
baskets. The Cherokee made baskets out of

(01:57:56):
bundled pine needles, coiled sumac and Willow.
Danish Nabe and Denny made Birchbark baskets in Northern
California. My Do women develop basket
weaving to a high art form. Their baskets were so tightly
woven they could be used to carry water and cook food.

(01:58:17):
In many indigenous cultures, skilled basket makers blended
dyes and a variety of materials to weave their baskets.
Some things were decorated with beautiful geometric designs and
you could tell that somebody took the time to make those
patterns to make it. Beautiful.

(01:58:38):
In the Pacific Northwest, cedar bark, roots and grasses were the
materials used to make a wide range of woven products.
There's traditional basketry that goes on all the way from
Alaska all the way down the coast.
And there are some similarities.And there's, you know, a lot of

(01:58:59):
differences as well, you know, from tribe to tribe.
The Nuchanov and Macaw nations were among the finest basket
weavers in the Americas. When the 400 year old ozed
village site was discovered longburied beneath A mudslide, it
gave contemporary weavers a rarelook at the traditional forms of

(01:59:22):
weaving of the macaw people. Underneath the mud was a whole
houses filled with everything a person needed in those days to
survive. And so you could see, you know,
how advanced it and the knowledge was that these folks
had in the things that they made.

(01:59:43):
For the macaw, as with other Indigenous peoples, the art of
weaving wasn't limited to makingbaskets.
They had mats that could be folded up and then rolled up and
stored, capes to keep you warm, rain hats to keep the rain off,
baskets to store your fish and your ceremonial items.

(02:00:07):
And beautifully made too. They were artfully created.
Both men and women in those erashad to make their own items.
Some of the turn downs and weedsare very complicated and you
think, man, how did somebody youknow come up with how to execute

(02:00:28):
making a knob top hat and keeping it at a certain pitch,
gathering all these different materials and learning how to
create a weed to make these things.
Who figured it out how to pull bark from the tree and take the
outer bark off and to pound it, make it really, really soft

(02:00:49):
enough to make a diaper for a baby?
The materials used in basketry depended on the natural
resources available in each territory for the new channels,
and the macaw of the Northwest cedar proved to be the ideal
material for weaving. With the cedar tree, there was

(02:01:14):
cedar boughs that were used for making Kawitz baskets, which are
packed baskets in in our language.
People would use them to carry heavy, heavy loads such as
firewood or clams and things like that.
And then the cedar root was usedas the tension weavers that go

(02:01:36):
around the basket. And then also cedar bark or what
we call pizza. Oop, just a cedar tree alone was
utilized for everything. Basketry, with its many forms,
styles, and distinct patterns, provides insight into the

(02:01:57):
resources, cultures, and traditions of indigenous peoples
throughout the North American continent.
While the earliest pottery was used for cooking, over the

(02:02:20):
centuries the technology evolvedinto an art form.
The distinct materials, designs,and colors used in pottery
provides clues to the cultural origins of its maker.
The earliest pottery in the Americas was produced in the
lower Amazon Basin about 7500 years ago.

(02:02:42):
Around 6000 years ago, pottery emerged in other regions of
South America. The people of North America
began their own pottery traditions about 4000 years ago.
In the American Southwest, pottery played a utilitarian and
spiritual role. The Pueblo developed traditions

(02:03:06):
for molding, firing and decorating clay.
Artists use brushes made from Yucca leaves to paint their
pottery. They also use tools to create
designs on the wet clay. After firing the pottery, smooth
stones were rubbed over the surface to create a polished
finish, just as stories were woven into baskets, capes and

(02:03:31):
blankets. The story was part of each piece
of pottery. We have representations of
Buffalo, of of deer, of turkeys,of all of the different animals
that are part of our landscape. And you see an ecological
tapestry, that tapestry of interrelationship, of connection
to plants, to animals, to the natural forces of the world,

(02:03:54):
those things that sustain the people through time, through
generations. There's a whole process that
that parallels the creative process in that every stage of
the creation of, of, of a pot becomes a, a, a way to meditate

(02:04:14):
and to think about some of thoseideas, those primal ideas that
are part of our stories. Relationship to the land in
terms of leaving offerings and thanking the Earth mother for
her gift of clay, to thinking about the kinds of designs and

(02:04:36):
symbols that one will place on one's pottery represent, which
is another stage of thinking andlearning about the story and
learning through the story to the actual, you know, the
creation of the pot, the polishing of the pot, the firing
of the pot, and then finally thegifting of the pot.
All of which in many ways incorporate indigenous core

(02:04:58):
values of of respect, responsibility of relationship.
These are the principles, these are the essences of thought that
still remain as being the threadthat holds us together.
The community is the holder of culture, language, tradition.
And so through time, the community becomes the real

(02:05:20):
vessel that that you try to sustain.

(02:05:47):
Ancient peoples in every part ofthe world developed pottery
traditions. The earliest pieces were bowls
and pots used for storage and cooking.
Later, clay was molded into ceremonial items, masks, pipes
and even musical instruments. The first pottery makers in
Japan coiled ropes of clay to form round bowls.

(02:06:11):
After smoothing the surface withtools, they baked the clay in
fire pits to produce ceramic pots that could be used for
cooking. The oldest pottery tradition in

(02:06:32):
the world had its origins in Southeast China.
Their pots and bowls were made from clay mixed with ground,
quartz, sand and feldspar. The earliest Potters in the

(02:06:58):
Americas lived in the lower Amazon basin.
They made red and black clay pots, often decorated with
paint, that were used to store and cook food.
While the first pottery in the world was used for cooking, Over
the centuries the technology evolved into an art form as well

(02:07:19):
as an important expression of cultural identity.
Masks have been a part of indigenous culture in the
Americas for thousands of years.Some of the earliest masks were
carved in ivory by the Dorset people.
Later, Inuit of the Arctic used masks for storytelling and

(02:07:40):
ceremonies. The Hopi and Pueblo cultures
used Kachina masks in traditional dance ceremonies.
In Northwest North America, artists carve intricate masks
from Cedar you and Alder using distinct form lines that can be
seen on 5000 year old petroglyphs.

(02:08:01):
West Coast nations created masksdepicting humans, animals, and
supernatural beings for ceremonies called potlatches.
The families who host potlatchesbring out their masks, songs and
dances to record their family lineage, display wealth and
honor a birth, marriage or death.

(02:08:24):
Carver started their training asyoung boys, often learning from
an uncle or grandfather. When the apprenticeship was
completed, they would spend their lives carving masks and
poles for their family and community.
A mask can be a very powerful thing amongst our people.

(02:08:45):
A mask means so much more than just a an art piece for our
people even today, but especially before contact.
It means connections to our stories.
We don't just make it up and andcarve any old masks that we
want. We have to have that right in
order to wear that mask. The masks are created in order

(02:09:08):
to retell origin stories and oldstories.
And it's a way of, of bringing those old legends to life in our
in our ceremonies, in the light of a big house, reflective
properties. Are.
Really crucial. And so we like to decorate our
masks and frontlets with reflective shell in order to

(02:09:30):
cast light back to the viewer. And for us, light, you know, in
the darkness of the of the winter months, light is so
important and that reflection has a, has a spiritual quality
to it. Presented together at
potlatches, carved masks, dancesand songs told stories owned by

(02:09:52):
the host families. And we believe that our our
ancestors were able to take off their animal clothes and they
were human underneath. And so there's a time of
transformation when they can go back and forth between being
human or animal. Creature.

(02:10:13):
We create masks in order to tellthose stories.
While potlatches bonded familiesand communities through
ceremony, they also played a central role in establishing
relationships with neighboring nations.
During the winter time is when we held our most important
ceremonies when we invite other villages to come to our

(02:10:35):
communities to witness our dances and listen to the songs
that are owned by the host family.
We invite other people to witness what we have to show and
and share and they validate the ownership of of those rights and
prerogatives by attending potlatches or winter

(02:10:55):
ceremonials. One of the most important things
that that we create to this day are items that are used in
ceremonial context. It reminds us of our role in the
community, a role that's continued through countless

(02:11:18):
generations and connects us to the artists that we're creating
the exact same pieces. It connects us to those same
people that did the exact same thing for the exact same reason.
When we see one of our masks being used in the big house or
one of our frontlets being danced, it shows that connection

(02:11:39):
to the past and connection to our culture and and really gives
us as artists a reason for for being.
And it's about that connection to culture and place and our
ancestors. Totem poles are wooden monuments

(02:11:59):
created by artists in many nations in the Northwest.
They were raised in prominent locations like the entrance to a
big house or along the shorelineto a village.
Animal crests and supernatural beings carved on the poles
represented the stories that belong to a family.

(02:12:21):
When we look at totem poles, it's often telling those same
stories as well, because you look at them and you see those
same animals and sometimes you'll see the the human
ancestor figure depicted as well.
So it's showing that prehistory for our people, the very first
histories during the time of transformation.

(02:12:42):
It's about that connection to culture and place and our
ancestors. Art sculpted from stonewood,
clay and fiber are reminders of the artistic genius of our
ancestors. But art was not the only
cultural expression of Indigenous peoples before 1491.

(02:13:09):
Ancient peoples in every part ofthe world used masks for
rituals, celebrations and storytelling.
The earliest evidence of masks can be found in rock paintings
that date back more than 30,000 years.
The oldest masks in the world were discovered in the Judean

(02:13:31):
hills near Jerusalem. They were created at a time when
agriculture was first developingin Mesopotamia and people were
establishing permanent towns throughout the region.

(02:13:52):
Mycenae was an important center of power and trade in ancient
Greece. Some of the earliest gold masks
from this area were found in burials of people who had high
social status in the community. The earliest masks in the Arctic

(02:14:21):
were made of ivory by the Dorsetpeoples.
Later, the Inuit made and used masks for storytelling and
ceremonies. Masks continue to be used
throughout the world in traditional ceremonies that

(02:14:42):
honor ancestors and preserve cultures.
Music, dance and storytelling are a part of every nation in
the Americas. These diverse cultural
expressions bring us together through sacred ceremonies and

(02:15:04):
community celebrations. In many ways, art is the
expression of Indigenous people's relationship with the
natural and spirit worlds. We have come to know our
ancestors on a deeper level through their artistic

(02:15:24):
traditions before 1491. Passed down from generation to
generation, these traditions continue in our communities to
this day. In 1491, indigenous people were

(02:16:07):
living in every part of the Americas.
From the high Arctic to the southern tip of South America,
there were countless indigenous nations, each with its own
distinct language and ways of life.
This didn't happen overnight. It took close to 20,000 years to

(02:16:28):
build this diverse world from a very small founding population.
In 1492, in another world acrossthe Atlantic Ocean, an Italian
navigator named Christopher Columbus set out in 3 Spanish
ships in search of a faster trade route to Asia.
The ships arrived on October 12th on an island in the Bahamas

(02:16:51):
inhabited by indigenous people. Columbus did not know it at the
time, but he had reached the Western Hemisphere, a vast
territory inhabited by as many as 100 million people.
Within 100 years of the arrival of Columbus, it's estimated that
90% of the Indigenous populationhad died from imported diseases

(02:17:13):
and in battles protecting their territory from the newcomers.
From the 16th through the 20th centuries, colonial governments
orchestrated a campaign of genocide against Indigenous
peoples. Massacres, forced removal from
ancestral lands, residential schools, land allotment, and the

(02:17:36):
outlawing of traditional practices further eroded the
social and cultural fabric of Indigenous nations.
Against all odds, there are now close to 70 million Indigenous
people living in the Americas. We are the direct descendants of
those resilient ancestors who survived the first 100 years of

(02:17:58):
colonization. Today, the legacy of our
ancestors continues through the stories, languages, material,
culture and heritage sites that they left behind.
Throughout much of the history of research in archaeology,

(02:18:19):
burials were dug up, artifacts were taken away and placed in
museums, sometimes not even analyzed.
The way it was investigated by archaeologists was very
unethical. However, throughout the 1960s,
seventies, all the way up into modern day, archaeologists have
become more aware and much more ethical in the way they practice

(02:18:41):
our discipline. And it's really shifted in the
last 20 years with the growth and emergence of what we now
call Indigenous archaeology. It's archaeology done for, with
and by Indigenous communities. So we're moving away from just
doing strictly academic researchto building partnerships and
full collaborations with Indigenous communities and

(02:19:04):
really giving them the power of what kind of research should be
done within their territories and within their sights.
And this will only grow the discipline of archaeology and
have it be much more ethical than it has been in the past.
I think Indigenous archaeologists are much more
adept at thinking about The Who of the past and the why of the

(02:19:28):
past, rather than just the what of the material culture.
I think that's one of the most important things about being an
Indigenous person involved in archaeology is knowing the
importance of story, the importance of the individual,
and knowing how these all fit within who we are today.
My name is Elvira White. I am an archaeologist of

(02:19:50):
Helsinki descent and I've been here for about 10 years, and I
have a strong cultural background that I use whenever I
conduct my own archaeological investigations and surveys or
collaborate with others who havetheir own projects in the
territory. 14,000 years ago Indigenous people were fishing,

(02:20:12):
harvesting sea mammals and living year round on a group of
islands off the West Coast of Canada.
The discovery of the Trichet Island village site confirms
that Indigenous people have had a marine based diet for
thousands of years. Initially, my involvement with
the Trichet Island project was to help field direct site

(02:20:33):
inventory around Calvert Island and areas north of Calvert
Island. Archaeologists like time
periods. They like putting dates on
things. That's that keeps driving
archaeologists to find earlier sites.
And indeed we are. So this is where we keep some of
the stone tools and other lithicmaterial that we've recovered

(02:20:56):
from Trickett Island. And here on this tray are the
remnants of the stone tool cachefrom the lowest layer at the
site. And these were associated with
the hearth feature that we datedto about 14,000 years ago.
What we didn't know was how old it was because no real
excavation project had ever beenconducted there.

(02:21:17):
Cricket is a really unique site.It's on a small island located
next to the ocean in a protectedBay, sandy beach and has
differing elevations that start from the top and then it starts
getting lower and terrace and lower.
And as you're getting lower, each layer level has a different
age of occupation. We didn't understand why it was

(02:21:40):
a continuous occupational site until we understood the sea
level history. Because we have to remember this
part of the continent was covered by glaciers that were in
some parts of the landscape, 2 kilometers thick.
A lot of the water that is required to form all that ice
would have came out of the ocean.
So we have this dynamic going ona fluctuating sea levels.

(02:22:03):
The glaciers advance over all ofBC and the only exposed areas
where the outer island tricking.It was revealed as the 14,000
year old continuous occupationalsite, suggesting they were
living there spring, summer, fall and winter.

(02:22:26):
Discovery of a village site on Trickett Island supports the
theory that people arrived by boat a few thousand years before
the melting glaciers allowed people to walk S into the
Americas from Beringia. The discovery and excavation of
this site was done through a collaboration of the Helsinki
First Nation, the University of Victoria and the Hawkeye

(02:22:49):
Institute. Not only are there stone tools
that date to about 14,000 years ago, but there are many, many
other stone tools that have beenrecovered from the upper layers
that show that this site was notonly important back then, but
that it remained important for millennia, which is actually

(02:23:10):
kind of rare on the coast. There are often sites that are
occupied for 1000 years or 2000 years or maybe just a couple 100
years, but to have 14,000 years of continuous human occupation
is pretty, pretty significant. One of the really incredible
components of the site at Trickett Island is that there
are peak deposits here. We have preserved wooden

(02:23:30):
artifacts which are really, really cool because typically
these decay pretty quickly. But here the wooden tools have
been preserved for up to 7000 years.
So this is an adilateral throwing board.
It's to extend the length of your arm and you hold it back
like this and you attach your spear to that and it gives you
just incredible range of precision.
So this would have been very likely used for sea mammal

(02:23:52):
hunting as well. When a project is being
conducted from one perspective, usually an outsider's
perspective, it has its own biasand they will take something
like oral history as like a secondary source to help fill in

(02:24:14):
some gaps. First Nation people, they feel
like they should take those stories and another approach and
put them together and use that collaboratively.
It's based on respect. You know, the people who know
more about their history are thepeople who live there.
In the Pacific Northwest, stories often tell of the Great

(02:24:35):
Flood, of the time of creation, and even of the time when the
islands had ocean on one side and glaciers on the other.
The heltsuk have a story about the first human to live in their
territory at a time when the glaciers still cover the
landscape. This story has been passed down
from generation to generation for thousands of years.

(02:24:58):
There's a chief named Humasbot from the go quite, who had a
very told, a very lengthier story.
I think he summarized it when hetold it, the first thing he saw
was nothing but ice, rock and sea.
And because he was all alone, hewent to sleep.

(02:25:18):
And then he woke up and then there was forests, rivers, all
the landscapes started to appear.
He's still alone. So he went to sleep, woke up and
there's people seafood, while everything that we have today.
What I've learned from my my research is that the passing on

(02:25:38):
of all is knowledge from one generation to the other.
They were finally saying that oral history just valid as
science. Our territory, the Hellsic
territory, was the site of the refugia that's of the last Ice
Age, and specifically it's like the Oyeli people of the outside

(02:25:59):
of the Haltic, one of the Haltictribes.
Now, it's extremely important that Indigenous groups have the
authenticity, the authority, andthe right to present the history
as they know it. Because the more stories we can
tell about the past, the easier it is for people to understand

(02:26:21):
how all those stories interconnect to create a a pass.
Because there is no single pass.There are so many multiple pass.
But we can also look at our place names and our traditions
and because we do have evidence for multiple communities across
the continent that our peoples, our communities did experience

(02:26:45):
dramatic changes. And if we see this in the
archaeological, the physical anthropological record, bringing
that those lines of evidence together only gives us a better
understanding of the past. Everyone has to be in line and
work together to make that happen.
I think it's not only an ethicalnecessity, but it's also just

(02:27:05):
the people that we work with have such a wealth of
information and deep connection to this landscape.
They are very knowledgeable about the material types of
resources in this area. They have deep, deep knowledge
of what their grandparents did and their grandparents
grandparents did. That can help really bring these
artifacts to life and help us weave together the stories, the

(02:27:28):
narratives of what people were doing on this landscape for
millennia. And also to better understand
why people would keep going out to this very remote location.
What? Why was it so important?
We have all these sites that occur all across North America
and each one gives us information about what that

(02:27:49):
extremely complex history of people moving into North America
and, and each one tells us just a different part of the story.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, museums and
universities sent archaeologistsout to excavate ancient caves,

(02:28:10):
burial mounds, villages and cities in every part of the
Americas. Over the past 100 years,
archaeologists have uncovered thousands of ancestral remains,
often without the permission of indigenous peoples.
Death and burial are fundamentalto the human condition, and
there is no place on earth wherepeople don't bury their dead.

(02:28:32):
You know, there's no place for people.
You know, somebody dies and theyjust walk away from that person.
You know, they put a great deal of ritual.
They put a great deal of reverence into that final act,
that final rite of passage for people.
Human remains and archaeology have been historically A

(02:28:53):
contentious issue. Mostly this goes back to the
history of research in archaeology, where many of the
excavations and discoveries of these remains, these burials,
sometimes multiple individuals, was done without the consent of
local First Nations communities.The discussion on ethics has

(02:29:14):
become very prominent in research communities.
It's no longer the case where native people were just
considered a deep well of information that researchers
could just dip into at their convenience.
Now native people want some benefit from that research.
They also want to know that the research is not going to create

(02:29:36):
harms. And sometimes they want to be
the researchers, you know, they want to be the ones who are
collecting the data and interpreting it.
As the field of archaeology expanded, so did the need to
store and study the ancestral remains and artifacts found in
excavations. The proliferation of museums in
the 19th and 20th centuries was partly the result of countless

(02:29:59):
archaeological projects and the growing practice of collecting
art made by indigenous peoples around the world.
When museums started collecting our our treasures, that was at a
time of duress, when cultures were changing, Christianity was
really taking over and people being sent to residential school
and learning English. It was a big change.

(02:30:23):
And museums are right there to, you know, be scooping up
whatever they they could at the time, collectors, missionaries,
whoever they they probably were thinking, oh, wait, we should
capture a bit of that before it is all gone.
And there was, there was quite atrade of human remains, museums

(02:30:47):
wanting to have a bit of everything from the whole world.
So there is a lot of trade humanremains.
And that's how they ended up in museums all over the world.
This has changed in recent decades, where many of these
remains have been returned back to their ancestral homelands.

(02:31:08):
One of the most interesting innovations, of course, that
goes along with this is the study of ancient DNA.
And what's really compelling is that the DNA that's found in
those ancient skeletons is matching very closely to the
local communities in those territories in which they were
found. This really illustrates the deep

(02:31:29):
history that these different groups across the continents
have those ties to their ancientterritories.
And really it's it's indisputable.
The evidence doesn't lie. The Hida were one of the first
Indigenous nations to pursue therepatriation of their ancestors.
Since the early 1990s, Lucy Belland others from her nation have

(02:31:53):
succeeded in bringing home more than 500 Hida ancestors from
museums around the world. I was an intern 21 years ago at
the Royal BC Museum. I think that's where my passion
for repatriation for museum workstarted.
When I was an intern, I learned about the ancestors that are in

(02:32:14):
this museum and in museums all over the world.
So that's the first time I I'd heard about Aboriginal ancestors
being stored in museums and it just just really hurt me.
I just felt like I couldn't go home without doing something
about it. In 1992, the Assembly of First
Nations and the Canadian MuseumsAssociation released a report

(02:32:38):
that encouraged museums to return ancestors and sacred
objects to Indigenous communities on a case by case
basis. We went to the museums in BC
that had our ancestors and then we started to go further,
further out. So Canadian museums, private
institutions, universities. I think we were strategic in in

(02:33:01):
starting in BC and then going out.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
is a federal law in the United States that was passed in 1990.
NAGPRA provided a mechanism to repatriate ancestral remains,
funerary and sacred objects to Indigenous communities.

(02:33:23):
In the states we brought home, Ithink about 150 ancestors from
the Chicago Field Museum, around40 to 50 from the American
Museum of Natural History, and then some smaller institutions
throughout. NAGPRA was the whole other world

(02:33:45):
for for us as Canadians, the American museums were not
obligated to to repatriate to us.
Museum people were worried, Theywere already feeling the
pressure. It was a tough time for them.
But we were persistent and because the law didn't affect
us, nobody was obligated. But it really called on museums

(02:34:07):
to be collaborative, to be working with us in friendship
and to be working with us with amutual respect.
Since it was enacted, more than 30,000 individuals and hundreds
of thousands of sacred objects have been repatriated to
indigenous communities. All of our our treasures are,

(02:34:30):
are just such an important part of of who we are and who our
ancestors were. I think all our treasures have
that sacred aspect to them, a bentwood box you might that
doesn't have human remains in it, but has food that you're
storing to feed your family that's sacred.

(02:34:51):
So many times we've been called up to help other nations and
we've travelled all over Canada talking about Hyder repatriation
and they've they took our adviceand ran with it and did their
own, did it in their own way. So just sharing our stories and
holding each other up. I did that for 20 years of my

(02:35:15):
life and repatriated my my ancestors to the best of my
ability. It took over 20 years, but we
did it. Repatriations can be the most
rewarding thing that I do as an archaeologist because as a
Native American, it's, it's the sense of making things right and

(02:35:40):
having a connection back to those ancestors.
And, you know, being able to say, I, I can take care of you.
I can, I can look after you and I can, you know, see that your
journey continues in the way that you wanted it to.

(02:36:04):
As Indigenous nations continue to repatriate their ancestors
and sacred objects from museums,there's a growing need to build
facilities to house the materials and train community
members to operate them. When I first started the job, we
held a a symposium and brought 200 Aboriginal people from BC

(02:36:24):
together and asked what their vision was for repatriation and
for museums. Not just our museum, but museums
in the world. What?
How could we better serve the Aboriginal communities?
Lumista is an internationally known Cultural Center and
education facility and research art and language programs.

(02:36:49):
A. Lot of people come here to
research and look at these masksand from the masks you can tell
it may be. Just a Crest, but it could tell
you a. Whole story about a whole clan.
Like just from one single mask. If you know if you know the
history. And the origin stories of it.

(02:37:10):
One of the first successful repatriations in Canada led to
the creation of two cultural centers in British Columbia to
house a large collection of masks and regalia.
There was a time where our culture and things were starting
to be less valued for sure, and that was a lot to do with the
Polish prohibition and a lot to do with the residential school

(02:37:31):
Christianity. Between 1884 and 1951, the
Indian Act in Canada made it illegal for Indigenous people to
hold traditional ceremonies suchas potlatches and sundances.
The penalties for breaking this law included arrest, jail and
confiscation of regalia and masks.

(02:37:53):
A lot of our people are very, very resistant against this
prohibition that came down on our people.
In 1921, the Government of Canada sent an Indian agent to
shut down a potlatch on Village Island.
He confiscated dozens of masks being used as part of the
ceremony. 20 community members were jailed for dancing, giving

(02:38:15):
speeches and receiving gifts. And some people were so severely
punished, like some of the people that went to Ocala, they
came home and some people never continued after that.
The masks and regalia were sent to the Royal Ontario Museum in
Toronto, the British Museum, andto other institutions.

(02:38:37):
When the masks were repatriated in the 1970's, the Government of
Canada provided funding to two Indigenous communities to build
cultural centers to house the materials.
The Kwagiuth Museum and the Umista Cultural Center are two
of the first in Canada. When the artifacts all came back
at the time or Cranmer Webster was a big driving force on that.

(02:38:59):
I know there's a lot of the chiefs and chief and elected
chief and counsel here that helped move that forward.
And I think when the pieces camehome.
What it symbolized? Was that there was There was
hope again, you know that, you know our people could win
battles and victories in the modern world.
We need more people in museums that are there to work on

(02:39:21):
repatriation to there to work onmaking access easier.
Museums and culture centers are important to archive the history
of a First Nation people, and I would prefer to see a trained,
qualified First Nation staff running one from their

(02:39:42):
perspective. In 1491, there were thousands of
distinct indigenous languages. Today, there are less than 1000
languages still spoken in North and South America.
Some languages, like Quechua andMayan have millions of speakers.

(02:40:02):
Other languages like Tahltan andSeneca are considered critically
endangered, with less than 100 fluent speakers each.
We've lost a large number of languages in a very short time,
just in a couple 100 years. There's precipitous declines in
language all across the continent, less so in Central
America, but even there quite a quite a huge number of languages

(02:40:24):
have disappeared. And in fact the number of
language language deaths as it'scalled, is accelerating even
now. So if we're just beginning to
turn things around in some communities.
There's been a a number of things that have interrupted our
languages, but residential schools and the policy around

(02:40:46):
taking the Indian out of the Indian child I think did the
most damage to our languages. Residential schools operated in
Canada from the late 1800s until1996.
During that time, close to 150,000 Indigenous children were
taken from their families and communities and forced to attend

(02:41:09):
distant boarding schools operated by churches.
Children were not allowed to speak their Indigenous
languages. They'd be punished for speaking
the language. So, you know, they could come
home and their parents would tryto speak to them and they
wouldn't want to respond becausethere was all this shame around

(02:41:29):
speaking their language. They basically took children
that were speakers away from their families and separated
them for a really long time and taught them that their languages
were bad and they shouldn't be speaking them.
There are some languages that have more speakers, but they're
not being transmitted in the home.

(02:41:53):
And so I would say all Canada's languages are endangered.
Language programs have been developed in every province and
territory in Canada to revitalize endangered languages
and teach community members how to regain fluency.
Language nests in school programs, immersion camps and

(02:42:13):
adult learning classes are some ways that languages are taught
in Indigenous communities. The Taltan First Nation in
northern British Columbia has created a multi generation
campaign to teach their endangered language.

(02:42:40):
It's so awesome because the kidsreally started to pick up a lot
of the things that we were doingto say that early learning years
are from zero to 8, and that's why it's so important.
To work with them when they're young, if you want to take that
step where you're going to have that available to babies and

(02:43:04):
their families or even toddlers and their families, it's it
paves the way to language learning.
It's really hot, so that's not going to happen.

(02:43:24):
My role in the classroom is to teach language.
First of all, teach the beginners level language to the
students. And this is based on my
experience as a second language learner and all of the very
first things I wanted to know asa second language learner
because I didn't grow up speaking the language.

(02:43:46):
My belief is that our language is the language of the heart.
This is where you speak. It from and.
It's a gift that's given to us from the creator through our
ancestors, and I believe it's something that we should cherish
because it's part of our identity.

(02:44:07):
I feel that it's a giant step that we made when we decided to
make that create the language authority, because with that in
place, there's a lot of things that we can do now to revitalize
our language. The Taltan language is a member
of the Danny language family. And in in North America that's

(02:44:29):
like the second biggest languagefamily.
There's approximately say 4000 Taltans all over.
But in terms of speakers, we, weprobably have at the most 30
fluent speakers. So right now we have young
children, you know, toddlers, babies starting to learn the
language they're immersed in it with, with fluent speakers.
So I'm thinking maybe we'll eventually move out of that

(02:44:51):
endangered status because of that.
So I feel very hopeful we can hear all the sad stories about
our language is becoming extinctand all of the stories of having
the evening sessions and no one will show up and all of that.

(02:45:14):
But when you're here in the classroom, it's really
inspiring. And I can see that the elder
fluent speakers are also really happy that this is happening.
They're happy when they meet into someone at the store and
then they speak language to thembecause that hasn't happened
before. This is something that's really

(02:45:34):
creating a new path for adult language learners and adult
language teaching because some of these students who are going
to come out of this course are actually, it's my hope that
they're going to teach adult language as well or teach
children. S Duggar, S Escalina Estaga and

(02:46:08):
Ed My husband cooked for me because this has come about, I
think in, you know, probably five years, we'll have probably
quite a few people that will be fluent in the language.
That was my mom's dream was young people to learn the
language. And she used to say the only way
they're going to learn is to take them and put them in a camp

(02:46:28):
somewhere where that's all they have to learn is to speak the
language. And she's right, you know, she
was right because it it's betterto just keep hearing it over and
over and over again. This is something that's
becoming really fulfilling for me and my job is that we have
speakers that are up and coming,speakers of Tal Tan language.

(02:46:51):
And that's really inspiring to me.
I hear other nations speaking their language and that's that's
very important. They know who they are.
Like we have our own government,we have our own language, we
have our own history. I think it's very important that
we're to revitalize our language.

(02:47:13):
You know, we must know who we are.
I think this Taltan language revitalization is really going
to bring our our people togetherand our youth, and it's going to
grow. And once it grows and gets

(02:47:36):
stronger, we get stronger as people.
I think our language in our culture is what makes us unique.
It's what makes each nation strong.
It's given us hope, eh? It's given us hope of who we are
as a people. You know, when, when you see
we're trying to retain our language, retain our culture and
every day of our lives, you know, we're, we're on the land,

(02:47:59):
eh? And it's, and it's coming back
and it's a good feeling. I love it.
Of the more than 70 Indigenous languages in Canada, only three
are considered thriving Inuktitut, Kree and Ojibwe.
Professionals will say, well, the other languages are, you
know, going to be extinct. And what what we say and in

(02:48:23):
response to that is that First Nations themselves will
determine whether or not their languages are passed on to the
next generation. And it's not for outsiders to
determine whose language is valuable and whose language
should be invested in. Every single language in Canada
is sacred and is beautiful and needs to continue to exist.

(02:48:49):
In Gonna Wage in Eastern Canada,a group of parents wanted their
children to learn about their Mohawk language, culture and
philosophy. They set up their own private
Mohawk immersion school. I was one of the first students
that came to school here. So my heart and my soul is here.
So it's almost like my second home.

(02:49:09):
That's how we feel. It's like a big family home.
My future dreams. What I love to see is to be, you
know, to even have a high school, you know, that's Mohawk
immersion, making our language become a first language.
And I think you know this. That's why I feel so strong and

(02:49:30):
supportive of this school. The school operates with parent
involvement and is not funded bythe government because it does
not teach the history of Canada from an English or French
perspective. Because the way we put that out,
we're not following their criteria.
So we haven't been able to fit in right.
We don't have English programming, we don't have
French programming, we don't have Canadian history.

(02:49:52):
It's completely in going again. So we have to work on that to.
Order to keep our language aliveand we need to develop in in as
far as we can go. We have a whole generation of
people like my age who don't speak the language at all.
And I think that the government needs to take responsibility,
responsibility and to make sure that we have the means and, you

(02:50:16):
know, the teachers and the toolsto be able to get our language
back. And I really believe in our

(02:50:39):
language that it's most important.
And we cannot lose it. Our languages are really
unifying and they bring us together.
And I think a lot of the issues that we're facing as Indigenous
people and our communities are related to the fact that we've
lost our languages. We need more opportunities to to
learn that and, and to fulfill our responsibilities as

(02:51:00):
Indigenous people because the languages tell us how to be on
the land and how to take care ofthe land and take care of each
other and, and our histories as well.
So we know who we are and where we come from, and that's all
really important and we deserve to know that.

(02:51:20):
That means the ones that uphold the laws of our ancestors, the
way we have always wanted to maintain and manage our our
resources and including the salmon has been reflective of
the way our ancestors have managed and that's been passed

(02:51:40):
on to us from generation to generation.
Historically, we were salmon people, can you builders, people
who were regular users of of theocean and its resources.

(02:52:15):
How sick as the people are. We're very tied to the lands and
waters. They've spread across a huge
territory and interacted very intimately with the resources
within those territories. We have a generation of people
growing up in our community thathave an opportunity to be
connected in a strong way to community and to the values that
guide our relationship to place.We've had many tools and

(02:52:42):
practices that were developed over millennia to manage all of
the species we harvested that werelied on.
One of the important tasks that we're faced with right now is
recreating those connections. We have a responsibility as
stewards of our land and cultureand resources to be the voice of

(02:53:04):
the place that we come from. Bella Bella is located in the
Central Coast of British Columbia, about smack head
center in between Port Hardy andPrince Rupert, OH, I've known
for years that we really needed to get a handle on managing our

(02:53:27):
own stocks of of salmon, in particular the sockeye salmon,
which is a very high value to help the people.
For in terms of food. We have to.
Develop a strong mountain monitoring programs because.
That Department of Fisheries know since doesn't have the
resources to be able to to deal with everything that we want to.

(02:53:53):
We are trying to figure out exactly how much salmon we have
in our systems so that we know how much salmon we can take for
the next season and know that westill have.
Enough salmon making it up the river systems to continue on our
harvesting. Kuai is one of the highly valued

(02:54:14):
areas that we do fish a lot for our sockeye salmon.
The way we connect with our ancestors here in Kuai, we do

(02:54:36):
cultural events like singing anddancing.
That's the really big thing thatthat our kids learn.
Listen to stories. We're really excited about the
opportunity for capacity building and staying focused on
training our people to understand the the old ways.

(02:55:12):
And we've always looked at the balance of traditional
knowledge, traditional ways of management and emerging science
into decision making. So one of the functions of Cox
as an organization is to help create opportunities for people
to be out on the landscape, learning in place and building a
stronger sense of place based cultural identity that ties them
to the places that are importantto us as a people.

(02:55:35):
What we're doing is working to try to build the capacity within
the community, both through Cox and through the Healthsick
Integrated Resource Management Department, to monitor many of
the important populations of salmon that sustain food fishing
opportunities for people here. On the Coast, Cox as an

(02:55:55):
organization was founded in 1999.
We have 3 program areas, Youth Culture and Environment, which
we consider to be 3 intrinsic parts of a holistic approach to
building cultural and natural stewardship capacity in the host
of community. You know, hearing the birds,

(02:56:21):
hearing that fish jumping on thewater it.
Made you feel less insignificant.

(02:56:50):
It is critical that right now weraise an emerging generation of
stewards that will carry on the work that we're doing now, long
after we're gone. We'll continue to make sure that
our people can continue to live the haste of culture.

(02:57:33):
The. For me, I think I wanted to do

(02:58:00):
this so that my daughter and hergeneration wouldn't have to do
this. This is difficult work.
So to me, it's a freeing, freeing up for the rest of the
generations to come to do even more amazing things and not have
to worry about that that heavy burden.

(02:58:20):
I hope that it inspires younger people from Indigenous
communities to think about archaeology, anthropology as a
potential career, because there are many things that you can do.
And for people like myself, I'm now getting a little older.
I'd like to see some younger andemerging Indigenous
archaeologists come out of various communities, not only

(02:58:42):
here in British Columbia, but all across Turtle Island.
It's gratifying to see the youthbeing very enthusiastic about
embracing their culture. So the first thing I tell them
is that don't be, don't, don't be ashamed that you're First
Nation. Strengthen yourself by knowing

(02:59:03):
that who you are, your healthy identity, and that we need to
for you to take on this new role.
Because I can't be an archaeologist forever.
At one point, I'd love for one of you to become an
archaeologist or some kind of researcher with a strong
identity of who you are. I don't find the real history of

(02:59:28):
stories of what our people went through in history books.
You won't find it there. You won't find it on the
Internet, you know. But today, maybe in this new age
of consciousness, I think thingsare coming to the surface.
We're lucky in the sense that there were those who maintained
this oral tradition, maintained our history, maintained our

(02:59:52):
medicines and maintained our identity.
So I'm grateful myself that I have that and it's something
that I can share now. The journey of Indigenous people

(03:00:22):
in the Americas is preserved in the languages, stories,
innovation, technology, architecture, and material
culture that they left behind. We are discovering the story of
our ancestors through oral histories and scientific
research. As Indigenous people, we are

(03:00:45):
committed to preserving the languages, traditions and
systems of governance that our ancestors left for us in 1491.
Yeah.