Six Nations Lands and Resources provided an archaeological update to Six Nations Elected Council (SNEC) on the work done during 2022, as well as how many artifacts have been found and talked plans on where the artifacts will be stored. The update was presented to SNEC during the April 24 Political Liaison meeting.

Tanya Hill, Supervisor for Six Nations Lands and Resources, says the archaeology team had representatives at 220 different archaeological sites in 2022; the representatives monitor the work and construction sites for Indigenous artifacts.

Hill says the team recently concluded their work at the Fischer-Hallman site where she says around 120,000 artifacts were found in the last year, adding that the discovered artifacts have been sent to labs for analysis. The team believes some of the artifacts date back 1,100 years.

Moving forward, the team will now shift their focus to another Kitchener site: Huron South. The new site is just 1.4 km away from the Fischer Hallman site, and Hill says she believes the two sites are connected. She added that more work will be done in the surrounding areas which included work in Simcoe, Hagersville, Mississauga and Brantford.

Hill stressed she believes it's important to have Indigenous communities and Indigenous voices being heard at these different work projects throughout the planning process.

"Those are significant important areas that Indigenous communities need to be sitting at, we need to be sitting at the table when they are discussing stage 1 or even planning of these projects so we don't have any disgruntled archaeological companies writing off on stage 1 and stage 2s," she said.

Currently, the Ministry of the Environment does not make communication with Indigenous communities mandatory on work projects, Hill says.

When these artifacts are found, sometimes they are stored in the basements of these consulting firms. Hill says she would like to be able to store the artifacts within Six Nations.

"Currently, our artifacts, our heritage, is basically housed in, unfortunately in sometimes, the basement of consulting archaeology companies. I advocate in my role to have them put into a facility," she said. "That way, they are actually somewhere and documented into a housing facility."

SNEC CEO Darrin Jamieson says that a plan is in place for a facility to house all the artifacts but needs to be updated and submitted to council for review.

"There was a design drawn a few years back, there would be a records building combined with a library plus an archival. So the whole notion of a museum element could be added," Jamieson said.

SNEC accepted the archaeological update as information during the April 24 Political Liasion meeting.

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