The first Coffee and Conversation of the new season at the Prince Albert Historical Museum tied together with a conference in Prince Albert.
Karin Steuber, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society, substituted for original speaker Sarah Pocha-Tait on Sunday.
Pocha-Tait, a Master of Arts (MA) student at the University of Saskatchewan was supposed to present ‘More Than a Fort: Metis Archaeology at Fort Carlton’.
“My graduate student, Sarah Pocha-Tait, was supposed to give the presentation, but she’s been called away to do field work,” Steuber said.
“It’s her job while she’s doing her degree. She’s a student, so she needs money for tuition.”
The presentation did still talk about recent archaeological excavations that took place at Fort Carlton Provincial Park between 2021 and 2023. She also gave some background on the organization.
“We were approached by Saskatchewan Provincial Parks just prior to COVID about potentially doing an archaeological excavation at the park,” Steuber explained.
“They wanted to redo the interpretive centre at the time and include more Indigenous history. Earlier excavations done in the ’60s uncovered the 1885 fort and stuff like that, but the whole western edge of that fort, there’s a big open field where nothing had been done,” Steuber said.
She said the presentation showed that there were many things to be uncovered in that area.
“The earlier phases of the fort are supposed to be over there. We came in and thought, ‘sure, we do public and school excavations on a fairly regular basis,’” she said.
At the time they did not have anything planned for the summer and jumped at the chance.
“The Department of Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan, they were looking for a new location to have their archaeology field school for undergraduate students. Since they used to do Wanuskewin, but Wanuskewin has halted excavations as they’re going for (a) UNESCO (Heritage Site),” Steuber said.
The two joined forces and the project carried on from 2021 until 2022.
“We hosted a field school there for university students and the public for two years. The final year in 2023 was just the university field school,” Steuber said.
During this time Pocha-Tait discovered her family was connected to Fort Carlton.
“Sarah was one of those students the first year,” Steuber said. “(She) learned about her familial connection to Fort Carlton and decided to pursue a master’s degree at the university.”
Steuber did not present fully on the subject that Pocha-Tait would have but instead gave an overview and some parts of Pocha-Tait’s research.
“I’ve read her thesis many, many times, so that’s why she was hoping to come up and present some of the preliminary results of her research. But she will be coming back at a later date to do a full presentation,” Steuber said,
“I’m doing a little bit of her stuff, but mostly the background,” she added.
Steuber described her presentation as the appetizer for when Pocha-Tait can return to Prince Albert for her presentation.
“Eventually she’ll come back. She’s hoping to defend her thesis this fall or early winter, so maybe in the new year is what we’re hoping,” Steuber said.
The Coffee and Conversation was also earlier than originally planned because the 62nd Annual Gathering of the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society was in Prince Albert. The Annual Gathering was hosted from Sept. 19 to Sept. 21 with the main gathering at the Carlton Park Community Club.
“We host an annual gathering or an annual conference every year in different locations across Saskatchewan,” Steuber explained. “The last time we were in Prince Albert was 15 years ago, so it was time to come back. The Prince Albert Historical Society is one of our chapters.”
The Historical Society is autonomous, but receives support from the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society.
They also partner with the Prince Albert Historical Society.
“We’ll have our gathering in the city and because it’s Culture Days, we decided to host two free Culture Days events for the public,” she explained.
She said the Coffee and Conversation was like another Culture Days event. On Friday evening there was a talk by Dr. Glenn Stuart called “Prince Albert: An Archaeological Focus” at the John M Cuelenaere Public Library.
“We had Dr. Glenn Stuart talking about his work with Sturgeon Lake First Nation on that really, really old site on the North Saskatchewan River,” Steuber said.
On Saturday at the Carlton Park Community Club was the main gathering with a day of presentations.
“We did a silent auction and we had student presentations and the students kind of compete for an award for best presentation,” Steuber said.
Students competed for the Keith Lewis Memorial Presentation Award. The award is offered to both graduates ($100) and undergraduates ($75) with an opportunity to publish the presentation in an upcoming issue of the Saskatchewan Archaeology Quarterly.
The second public event was a screening at the library of Tasha Hubbard’s “Singing Back the Buffalo.”
Steuber said that there were around 50 people in attendance for the presentations as they were in a come-and-go format.
“We posted the presentation lineup earlier this week and we get some registered. We had also invited all the surrounding Indigenous communities if they wanted to, their members definitely come in because it’s all about sharing information,” Steuber said.
On Friday, Steuber and some volunteers also presented an Archeo-Caravan at Wahpeton School. The caravan is an interactive learning program about archaeology for Kindergarten to Grade 8 classes.
Steuber said that public exposure events are great for the organization.
“We love going out and talking to people and letting them know that there’s literally archaeology in their backyards, especially because Prince Albert has so much in recent years, and the city’s been doing such great things with reconciliation with Indigenous groups,” she said.
On Sunday before the presentation they did a walk in Little Red River Park with Dr. Leo Omani and a tour of the Historical Museum.
“I’ve worked with him in the past, and that was part of the reason we did the Archeo-Caravan at Wahpeton School,” Steuber said. “I’ve been promising to come up and do it for years. I’m like, ‘we’re going to do it. Our gathering’s here. Let’s put it all together,’” Steuber said.
Steuber encouraged people to get in touch with the organization.
“If anybody has questions about archaeology, feel free to contact the Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. We’re located in Saskatoon, but we serve the entire province,” she said.
The next Coffee and Conversation at the Historical Museum on Sunday, Oct. 19 at 2 p.m. with Barb Gustafson entitled “Mapping the Hudson Bay Company into our Family Tree.”
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
