THUNDER BAY – The Ontario Archaeological Society’s (OAS) 2024 Annual Symposium featured presentations on the prehistoric copper culture around Lake Superior and residential schools as well as workshops and tours on Oct. 25-27 in Thunder Bay.
“I love prehistoric copper, the people that created it, the fact that not enough people know about it and it’s so hugely important,” says Robin Hammer Mueller, a researcher from Michigan. “That’s what started the first metalworking in North America and people aren’t aware of that.”
Mueller delivered a presentation on Oct. 27 during the Gitchigami’s Call: A Collaborative Approach to Native Copper of the Archaic in the Northern Lake Superior Basin session.
She says the copper in the Lake Superior region is 99.9 per cent pure and Indigenous people were creating tools with it 2,000 years before the pyramids were built in Egypt.
“One of the pieces I have is a one-eyed needle, so they were creating one-eyed needles out of pieces of copper,” Hammer Mueller says. “If they needed to scrape something, they made it; whatever tool they needed they just picked up a piece of copper, they thought about it and they created it,” said Mueller.
Jill Taylor-Hollings, co-chair of the symposium, president at the OAS and research associate at Lakehead University, also stressed how Indigenous people used copper to make tools for thousands of years during the symposium, which was held at Lakehead University and the Valhalla Hotel and Conference Centre.
“Indigenous people have been using copper to make their tools for thousands of years in this area, much earlier than even in European context, so that’s something we want to stress,” Taylor-Hollings says.
“People have lived here for so very long, 10,000 years, and there are a lot of archaeological sites in this area that need to be addressed and looked after and care-taking being done with communities in this area. So we’re talking about also how to work with communities and having more archaeological control of their own area.”
Scott Hamilton, anthropology professor at Lakehead University, delivered the Indian Residential Schools: Anthropology’s Pathway Towards Reconciliation presentation at the symposium on Oct. 26.
“The key point is that a lot of technical skills that are needed in the (residential school) searches involve disciplines like archeology but it’s very important to think of it as a kind of service to communities rather than an academic research inquiry,” Hamilton says.
Hamilton says it was nice to see a large turnout at the symposium, including a large contingent from the upper midwest.
“That speaks to the already existing relationships between the professionals and the avocationals in both the Thunder Bay area and in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan,” Hamilton says.
Clarence Surette, co-chair of the symposium, president of the Thunder Bay Chapter of the OAS and archeology technician and curator of the collections at Lakehead University, said they also did a tour of the Thunder Bay Museum, including the exhibit: A Journey Through Time: Archaeology of Northwestern Ontario and the Lake Superior Area.
That exhibit was presented by the Thunder Bay Chapter of the OAS in partnership with the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University, the Thunder Bay Museum and Woodland Heritage Northwest.
“Some of the key things (in the exhibit are) several belongings from the Thunder Bay area,” Surette said.
"We have a large biface (hand axe) that’s about (a foot) long. It’s made out of material from North Dakota called Knife River Flint, and basically it’s one of the largest of its kind," she said.
"One piece was found on Mission Island and the other piece was found in the East End. We have a lot of artifacts from the Paleo period so they’re basically 9,000 years old.”
A Journey Through Time: Archaeology of Northwestern Ontario and the Lake Superior Area runs at the Thunder Bay Museum until March 2025.
