Murray Wood: Drought or deluge, it's Saskatchewan weather
Murray Wood notes that while we have seen years with "perfect" weather in the province, they aren't that commo...
Road construction through a potentially sensitive archeological site is being halted after Saskatchewan First Nations groups called on the provincial government to explain why the work was allowed to proceed in the first place.
“We will do anything we can and all that we can to put an immediate halt to this,” Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) Chief Bobby Cameron said of the plans to widen a grid road on a plot of land in the Rural Municipality of Winslow.
In 2018, artifacts were discovered during preliminary work related to building the road.
A statement from the RM of Winslow on Thursday afternoon said that construction will be halted for at least the rest of the month.
“The municipality has received some concerns regarding a widening on an existing road that the municipality owns,” the statement read. “No road construction is planned to take place in the month of June. Council will take this month to review how to move ahead in an appropriate manner with the development of the existing municipal road.”
The statement went on to say that all provincial requirements are being followed.
Jim and Mitzi Gilroy, the owners of the farmland where the site was located, reached out to Sheldon Wuttunee, a former chief of the Red Pheasant First Nation.
“It’s enlightening to see that a farmer has reached out directly to our First Nations people to determine how to move forward, or what to do in this situation and hasn’t necessarily felt the support that’s required from the RM or the province,” Wuttunee said.
Wuttunee said the artifacts included some pottery in a layer believed to be a few hundred years old. But below that, pieces of volcanic obsidian believed to be as much as 10,000 years old were also found.
An undated photo of a dig site where Indigenous artifacts were found in the Rural Municipality of Winslow, about 180 kilometres west of Saskatoon. (Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations)
The site also contained a cairn — a pile of stones that could signify a number of possibilities, including that the area was a regular camping spot, or potentially a burial ground.
Wuttunee said work wasn’t scheduled to begin on the road until this coming Monday. However, even as First Nations were in contact with the Rural Municipality of Winslow and the provincial government, a grader from the RM came through and cleared a firebreak right over the sites where the artifacts were found.
“I think that there’s a real strong feeling of disrespect there, a little bit of prematurity, because it went right over the areas that were dug,” Wuttunee said.
Current provincial law doesn’t require First Nations to be informed in situations where artifacts are discovered. Both Cameron and Wuttunee suggested the law ought to be changed.
