Stones and bones: The life’s work of Dr. Ernie Walker

Before he became one of Canada’s most respected archaeologists, Ernie Walker was a boy with full pockets.

They bulged with small bones, rocks and whatever else had caught his attention while exploring the sand hills west of Saskatoon’s Riversdale neighbourhood. Long before Holiday Park Golf Course covered the landscape, those dunes were his playground. He treated every walk as an expedition. By the time he wandered home, his pockets were always full.

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Walker said his father would greet him every evening with the same question: “What did you bring home today?”

His parents never discouraged his fascination with the natural world, even if they couldn’t quite imagine where it might lead. Looking back, Walker laughs.

“I think they mostly wondered ‘What are they going to do with this kid?'” he said.

It turns out no one, not even Walker himself, could have predicted the answer.

Because of the rare skill set he holds, there is currently no one in the province set to take over the many roles Dr. Ernie Walker fills. He said he intends to continue working for as long as he is able. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

Following curiosity wherever it led

Walker was expected to pursue a very different career. Medical science was the logical path. A stable, respected career. Instead, his curiosity won out.

“I decided I was going to try to make a career in archaeology,” he said.

That decision would shape not just one career, but three.

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Walker likes to joke that he’s lived three professional lives simultaneously: university professor, archaeologist and forensic anthropologist working alongside law enforcement.

He said the different hats he wears are more closely connected than people may assume. Whether the evidence is a 6,000-year-old stone tool or human remains discovered during a criminal investigation, the question is always the same: What story does this tell?

To most of us, a petroglyph is a mere stone. To Dr. Ernie Walker, it’s a story preserved in time. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

The stories hidden in the ground

People often imagine archaeology as a search for spectacular discoveries. Lost treasure. Golden artifacts. Objects destined for display beneath glass in a museum. Walker smiles at the misconception.

The archaeology of the northern plains is, as he likes to put it, “stones and bones.”

He said the best discoveries aren’t found in the objects themselves, but in what those objects reveal. His favourite example isn’t a spear point or a piece of pottery. It’s part of a bison’s lower jaw.

Dr. Ernie Walker’s favourite archaeological find has nothing to do with gold or jewels. It’s a fragment of a bison’s jaw. He said modern scientific methods allowed researchers to trace the animal’s eating habits and movements across the prairie. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

“We can drill into the enamel of that tooth and tell you what kind of grass that animal was eating,” he explained. “If it changes from year to year, you’re following the animal moving, even though it could be 5,000 years old.”

Then comes the lesson he hopes people remember.

“It’s not the artifact at all. It’s the story the artifact tells.”

A classroom without walls

Becoming a university professor wasn’t a simple career goal for Walker. It was one of the reasons he chose archaeology.

“I was interested more in the academic life,” he said. “The goal was to become a professor.”

He taught archaeology to generations of students at the University of Saskatchewan, but he’ll tell you proudly that his most important lessons weren’t delivered in lecture halls. They happened outdoors.

One of his greatest classrooms would eventually become Wanuskewin Heritage Park.

Thanks in part to Dr. Ernie Walker’s dedication, Wanuskewin Heritage Park is home to the longest-running archaeological dig in Canada. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

When Walker first visited in the late 1970s, it was a working cattle ranch overlooking the Opimihaw Creek valley north of Saskatoon.

He said he immediately recognized the significance of what lay beneath the prairie grass. Thousands of years of Indigenous history preserved in bison jumps, stone tools and ceremonial sites.

“There was too much stuff here,” he recalled. “We’ve got to save this. We’ve got to preserve this for future generations.”

Walker befriended the ranch’s owner and spent years advocating to protect the land before expanding developments reached it.

“The only way we can save this is we’ve got to make a park out of this,” he recalled.

Dr. Ernie Walker has spent countless days at Wanuskewin overseeing archaeological digs with students. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

From the beginning, Walker insisted Indigenous communities had to help shape its future. He worked alongside elders to build trust and transform the vision into reality. Research began on the site in the early 1980s and continued for nearly four decades, becoming the longest continuously running archaeological research project in Canadian history.

It also became Walker’s favourite classroom.

“You can’t do that yourself,” he said. “All of my undergraduate students would take a field school here. All of my graduate students were doing research and writing their theses.”

Walker’s students learned archaeology not just from books, but from real world experience. Looking back, he still seems a little amazed by all that unfolded at Wanuskewin.

“I’m not a young man anymore,” he said. “I have my moments where I look back, and what a miraculous story.”

When Dr. Ernie Walker first explored this land, it was a simple cattle field. Today, it is a national heritage site that celebrates Métis and Plains First Nations cultures. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

An unexpected calling

Archaeology helps tell the stories of ancient lives, but forensic anthropology helps tell the stories of lives that ended far too soon.

Walker never imagined it would become part of his career path.

While studying at the University of Texas, state police approached the university looking for someone who could assist with identifying skeletal remains, and faculty at the school nominated Walker.

“I never set out to be a forensic scientist,” he said. “It just happened.”

Dr. Ernie Walker carries a very rare set of skills. Aside from his impressive career in archaeology, he also works with law enforcement as a forensic anthropologist, sometimes working to identify remains that have been damaged beyond recognition to the untrained eye. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

When he returned to Saskatchewan in 1980, the RCMP started calling.

“Could you look at this?” they’d ask. “Could you tell us about that?”

By 2000, the RCMP asked Walker to become a special constable.

“I’ve been with them ever since,” he said. “It just mushroomed.”

Over the years, Walker has assisted in hundreds of investigations across the country. He has testified as an expert witness, trained police officers, taught forensic recovery techniques and performed more than 1,000 autopsies.

“What I do is involved in the forensic identification of human remains,” he said. “Whether they’re burned up, decomposed, skeletonized, car wrecks… anything where you can’t identify the individual. That’s what I do.”

It is work few people could imagine doing, and work that Walker himself never expected he could do.

“It’s not an easy job,” he said. “It’s somebody’s misery.”

For him, the purpose isn’t the investigation itself. It’s helping provide answers when families have none.

“Hopefully something good comes out of it,” he said. “There’s some closure for somebody.”

In 2021, 1,000-year-old petroglyphs and the tool used to carve them were discovered at Wanuskewin. The artifacts were unearthed by bison that had recently returned to the site. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

Despite the demands, Walker has never treated his forensic work as a job in the traditional sense.

“I never charged the RCMP a dime for 38 years,” he said.

He says the same is true of his decades of work at Wanuskewin. His salary came from the University of Saskatchewan. Everything else, he simply believed needed doing.

Seeing what others miss

Walker has spent a lifetime seeing things other people overlook. In his eyes, the prairie has never been empty. Even as a child watching westerns, he wasn’t paying much attention to the cowboys.

“I wasn’t actually watching the story,” he recalled. “I was trying to figure out where it was shot based on the vegetation and the geology.”

Walker says he often thinks back on a Grade 6 art assignment when he and his fellow students were asked to draw a landscape.

Most of his classmates drew a single line across the page. Blue above for the sky, green or brown below for the ground. To Walker, that wasn’t a landscape at all.

He said the prairie has shape. It has sweeping valleys, winding creeks and horizons that seem to stretch forever.

“It’s the largest biome in North America,” he said. “We dismiss the Great Plains. We think it’s the big empty. Couldn’t be further from the truth.”

That point of view has shaped his entire life.

Where others saw an ordinary ranch, Walker saw Wanuskewin. Where others saw a fragment of bison jaw, he saw 5,000 years of migration. Where others saw bones, he saw answers.

Dr. Ernie Walker has spent decades proving that Saskatchewan is far more than “the big empty.” (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

Still picking things up

After all these years, Walker admitted he doesn’t actively search for artifacts the way he once did. But every now and then, something still catches his eye.

“I’ve become a bit jaded,” he said with a laugh. “But yes, I’m still forever picking things up if I’m in a suitable spot.”

One memory still makes him smile.

During an excavation at Wanuskewin several years ago, one of his students uncovered a 6,000-year-old dart point. Standing nearby was a couple visiting from New York.

Walker took the artifact from his student and carefully handed it to the woman.

“You’re the third person to touch that in 6,000 years,” he told her.

Thousands of University of Saskatchewan students have gained archaeological experience under the close supervision of Dr. Ernie Walker. (Wanuskewin/Submitted)

The student had found it. Walker had held it. Now it rested in her hand. She passed it to her husband.

“You’re the fourth.”

For a moment, 6,000 years of separation disappeared.

That’s what Dr. Ernie Walker has spent a lifetime doing. Not simply collecting artifacts, but helping people connect to the stories hidden inside them.

The little boy who wandered Saskatoon’s sand hills with bulging pockets never really stopped looking down.

Over the years, he simply invited the rest of us to look a little closer, too.

Archaeologist. Professor. Forensic anthropologist. Saskatoon’s Dr. Ernie Walker built three remarkable careers around one simple question: What story does this tell? (Wanuskewin/Submitted)