Wanuskewin Heritage Park one step closer to world heritage site designation

The Wanuskewin Heritage Park got one step closer to their goal of becoming a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Heritage Site on Friday.

Minister of Highways and Infrastructure, Greg Ottenbreit and Minister of Parks, Culture and Sport, Gene Makowsky, were on hand at the park today to sign a memorandum of understanding that agrees to provide the park with access to additional land.

The park will have access to any land that isn’t used by the government in their future freeway project. The Ministry of Highways has allocated 40 acres of land to the park already with the potential for more when there are more specifics on how much land the freeway will use.

“There is over 250 acres that was purchased by highways for the future freeway project. As we are getting more towards aligning where that project will eventually be, we find that there is land that won’t be needed for the highway project,” said Ottenbreit.

“So it’s a great partnership signing the memorandum of understanding to allocate those lands for their purposes through heritage conservation, through history of course celebrating First Nations Heritage and also through environmental conservation.”

According to Makowsky, supporting Wanuskewin on their application to UNESCO was a priority in their recently released growth plan.

“The designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site will demonstrate to the world what Saskatchewan has long known,” he said.

“Wanuskewin is not only a place of important history, it’s also a centre of excellence in education, science and culture.”

Receiving government support was just one step in what CEO of the park, Darlene Brander said is a long and complicated application process that is focused on the archaeological records that exist in the park’s Opimihaw Creek Valley.

“We’re in a conga line of sorts. There are two other parks ahead of us that are going through the UNESCO process as well, and with that process if for whatever reason they get stopped, our process stops as well. But to ensure that we have the best shot for our date that we are going for, which is 2022 then we need to have all our steps in place,” she said.

“It’s a really big task but we’re up for it and we believe it’s for the benefit of all people in Saskatchewan and the world as well.”

According to Brander they see around 40,000 visitors over their high months in the summer. With the completion of their building’s construction and the UNESCO designation, she is expecting the number of visitors to triple.