Reprinted from the Star Phoenix story by Nick Pearce, May 20, 2022
"The documentary is really attempting to show ... the landowners in Saskatchewan to not be afraid of the history that's tied to their land."
Reams of history are buried in the pastureland of a small Saskatchewan community.
Herschel, a village about 150 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon, is rich with sacred Indigenous sites, artifacts and ancient fossils, but Elder and former Chief of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation Harry Lafond is worried places like it are at risk.
"We're concerned about the loss of historic sites — the loss of those stories that are tied to the land through physical structures," he said.
Lafond is a producer on the documentary film Custodians: A Story of Ancient Echoes, which is screening at the Roxy Theatre on Saturday at 2 p.m.
The documentary tells the story of Herschel's Ancient Echoes Interpretive Centre, an educational hub for First Nations history, ecology and paleontology.
A committee from the Mennonite Church Saskatchewan commissioned the film, which Rebel Sky Media created. The Saskatoon Tribal Council, church groups and private donors also supported the production, a news release said.
Lafond points to petroglyphs and a buffalo harvesting site near Herschel as testaments to Indigenous presence on the land that deserve to be shared widely.
Collaborating with landowners and the local Mennonite community played a key role in preserving those stories, he said.
"The documentary is really attempting to show and challenge, to a certain extent, the landowners in Saskatchewan to not be afraid of the history that's tied to their land," Lafond said.
Without those landowners' cooperation, similar sites across the province are at risk of disappearing, he added. He wants the film to be shown in classrooms and across the province to encourage discussion on how "to preserve and to make accessible what that land is teaching us."
However, some landowners are worried they'll lose their properties if they're identified as historical sites, said David Neufeld, a current board member of the interpretive centre and former mayor of Herschel.
He said the documentary is "a wakeup call that there's nothing to be afraid of," and that embracing this history can be an avenue for peace-building in rural Saskatchewan.
"The idea is to communicate to (property owners) that they are custodians of this history," he said. "Some refer to (these places) as an incredible library of sites and history."
He said the documentary also charts how community members can play roles in protecting that history.
Preserving petroglyphs near his community worked because volunteers, farmers and the Rural Municipality of Mountain View partnered together to make it a functioning municipal heritage site, he said.
"If those three work together, there's some miracles that can happen."
Link to story:
https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/documentary-asks-rural-landowners-to-help-save-living-libraries
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