Niagara’s annual Indigenous arts gathering has gone virtual this year! The event features musical performances, storytelling, and a series of great talks on the natural and Indigenous heritage of the Niagara region.
Our Managing Partner Dr. Robert MacDonald and Senior Archaeologist Martin Cooper will be speaking on Saturday afternoon between 3-4pm on “13,000 Years of Indigenous Navigation and Settlement in the Great Lakes Watershed.”
Even as the Laurentide ice sheet was withdrawing over 13,000 years ago, Indigenous peoples were exploring the newly available landscape as clearly shown by archaeological evidence. The locations of settlements and the tools and technology that make up the archaeological record demonstrate superb adaptation to an environment that changed significantly and continually for thousands of years. This presentation will highlight both the environmental changes and how Indigenous peoples responded to these changes in the Niagara Region and throughout the Great Lakes watershed, including the shift by some southern communities from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural economy over the last 2000 years.
This talk is free to all and will be livestreamed through the Celebration of Nations site, which can be found here: https://www.celebrationofnations.ca/2020-virtual-events/
