Community Partnership Project
The Stz’uminus Origins Project
Completed in 2020, Stz’uminus Origins was a major community partnership project and one of the largest ancestral human remains studies undertaken in BC.
Overview
A sanitary sewer line constructed between 2003-2005 disturbed hundreds of ancestral human remains, hundreds of thousands of faunal remains, and thousands of ancient artifacts. This study located the collections, repatriated them back to Stz’uminus territory, and completed detailed studies and documentation. This was completed in advance of community reinterment that occurred in 2015 where 448 Ancestors and their belongings were laid to rest.
A six volume study report is available at Stz’uminus First Nation:
- Volume I details the cultural and archaeological histories of Kulleet Bay.
- The osteobiographies along with high resolution 3D scans of the Ancestors comprise Volume II.
- A study of the mass cremation grave found at Kulleet Bay (also the subject of Colleen’s Master’s thesis) is the subject of Volume III.
- The paleodemographics of the ancient Kulleet Bay population is described and compared to other Coast Salish populations from archaeological contexts in Volume IV.
- The recovered ancient artifacts from Kulleet Bay are documented in Volume V.
- The trench excavated fauna, fauna from the mortuary contexts and those from the column samples are found in Volume VI with significant contributions from Laura Termes, Gay Frederick, Becky Wigen and Bill Merilees.
