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c economist suntribune saturday sept 7 2002 3 natives urge protection for aboriginal sites york region developers not interested in ancient remains says archeologist the second of a tivopart series on york regions aboriginal heritage by mike adler staff writer imagine your grandparents are dead and you are eating at swiss chalet you glance over at a couple nearby and recognize the jewelry your grandmother was buried with and your grandfathers gold watch thats how david grey eagle sanford a mohawk from toronto describes the way aboriginal peo ple feel about archeologists who remove artifacts and stick them in museums where other people have to pay to look at them as development continues in york region more and more abo riginal sites are being disturbed leaving them undisturbed for future generations should be important to all of us mr sanford said recently its a greater feeling when you are there and you can see history all over the ground archeology in york region is often salvage work done on a tight schedule the iast thing developers want to hear is to hear some arche ologist say were going to hold you back a season said jo holden executive director of the richmond hillbased ontario archeological society theyre going to say no youve got six weeks to get it done the society is excavating a wendat huron village on some land the town of richmond hill bought from a developer the 15thcentury mcgaw site was supposed to be covered in new homes but was determined to be so significant it couldnt be just sal vageexcavated said the societys field director rob pihl donna reznick an oas inter pretive guide from richmond hill said there is much to learn at the site where mr pihl believes about 400 people lived in as many as 10 lpnghouses the society supervises digging at mcgaw by public school stu dents in the spring and fall and offers a summer excavation pro gram for interested adults you have to know where you came from to know where youre going ms reznick suggested i personally think its impor tant we know what went on on the land were taking over there are hundreds of known archeological sites in the region inhabited for thousands of years and part of an aboriginal trade staff photomike barrett rob pihl of the york regionbased ontario archeological society holds up an assembled artifact discovered at a richmond hill dig this summer behind him student norangie carballo sifts for more items route called the carrying place trail although provincial law now protects aboriginal artifacts many local sites have been stripped ahead of development and many were destroyed without any inves tigation some towns have lists of their known sites but some do not one of these is whitchurch- stouffville where recently a prop erty owner clearing brush discov ered what may be a village site on an old portage corridor between the holland and rouge rivers said mark carroll a town councillor were relying on property own ers and developers to identify these things if human remains are found archeologists tend to contact the nearest first nation with apparent kinship to the bones often remains are left in place or moved and reburied said mr pihl a senior archeologist at archeological services inc still suspicions remain that unmarked aboriginal graves are being quietly destroyed last year asi found material deposited on a scarborough prop erty had human remains in it that can happen that can be an option a builder or a developer will take get rid of the evidence mr pihl acknowledged the chippewas of georgina island believe they have many ancestral graves scattered around lake simcoe said andrew big canoe mr big canoe is a band coun cillor who has warned the ontario government a proposed road link between hwys 404 and 400 is going to go over some of our bur ial grounds in holland landing like other aboriginal groups with history in the region the chippewa are growing more inter ested in protecting their past the more we dig into our his tory and look through the paper work the more were finding out mr big canoe said there are calls to establish a native canadian cultural centre on the rouge a new ganatsek- wyagon named for a seneca vil lage that once stood on the river driven from southern ontario three centuries ago the wendat who believe a spirit stays to protect a body after burial are again tak ing an active interest in their cen turies of habitation here in 1999 they sawbones of hun dreds of their ancestors reburied at sainte marie among the hurons a wendat village recreated in midland ont but the bones of the fairty ossuary a burial pit in markham which yielded up the remains of 512 human beings in the late 1950s have not been reburied after being studied they were handed decades ago to the university of toronto which still has them the wendat are patiently wait ing for a reburial according to rebekah tanner a woman of wendat heritage from schenectady ny we just want the right to wor ship at the places where our ances tors are buried and not have any more of them dug up she said looking for links here are some websites that can provide more on york regions aboriginal heritage vmwwendakecom the home page of the huron wendat nation in wendake que wwwnewcreditfirstnationcom home page of the mississaugas of the new credit first nation httpaboriginalcollectionsicgccasim- coecommunitygeorgina for a history of the georgina island first nation wwwrivemenca a site run by harvey kirsch with an extensive record of aboriginal life in the rouge river system ridgie un t ftal mm6 8911 woodbine avenue markham ontario l3r 5g1 3 blocks north ofhwy 7 90s 30585q8 email infochapelridgefli com wwwchapelridgefhcom toll free 18778898808 a mnngpan oj- iyuy community