A Squamish Nation/Coast Salish Sense of Time

Summary

The foundation of understanding time and the past lays in the realm of constructing cultural historical chronologies through the use of radiocarbon dating and the determination of temporally sensitive artifacts. Along the shores of the Salish Sea of the southern Northwest Coast of North America the long established cultural historical sequence has been questioned and critiqued for its utility in modern day archaeological frameworks. Yet, the foundation of many regional interpretations regarding changes in lithic technology, subsistence and cultural complexity still rely on an entrenched sense of time from a western scientific perspective. While useful, regional researchers need to broaden the understanding of the past. This paper presents an Indigenous view of the past through the lens of Squamish Nation oral history, archaeology and the paleoenvironmental record. It offers an alternative sense of time that is culturally meaningful and pushes regional research to consider this perspective as a means of decolonizing the past, present and future for Indigenous communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Applying Indigenous Frameworks for Archaeological Analysis and Interpretation

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15160