Countering Erasure: Seeing Indigenous Heritage through Art and Archaeology in the Salish Sea, British Columbia, Canada
by Dana Lepofsky (Simon Fraser University), Sean Markey (Simon Fraser University), and Julia Woldmo
The legacy of colonial ideologies, embedded in the North American education and political institutions, profoundly affects how settler society perceives and reframes Indigenous heritage. Such reframings include the outspoken denial of residential school brutality (e.g., Fraser 2024) or the denial of the genocide associated with Indigenous-colonial histories more broadly (e.g., Stanley 2021). Perhaps less obvious, but still insidious are the strongly held beliefs that colonial settlers moved into unoccupied land, without history. These sentiments, rooted in terra nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery (Assembly of First Nations 2018) appease settler guilt when confronted with the reality that settlers inhabit stolen land. Denying Indigenous long-term, place-based histories and the intimate relationships they had with their territories (e.g., Deur et al. 2013), contributes directly to the “invisibility” of Indigenous Peoples and affirms the myth that Indigenous Peoples were not and are not here. Erasure and invisibility are major forces inhibiting social justice for and the accurate representation of Indigenous Peoples in North America (Reclaiming Nation Truth 2018).
While there are many pathways to decolonizing thought and countering erasure, education about the Indigenous experience, including heritage and history, is foundational to breaking down harmful narratives and building meaningful allyship, beginning with truth and moving toward reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation Committee 2015). In our experience, many people want to decolonize their understandings of Indigenous history; however, they often do not have the knowledge or tools to do so. In the absence of such knowledge, feelings of guilt and uncertainty about “doing the wrong thing” inhibit inquiry and action that may facilitate change.
Here we recount how a cross-community team brought together art and archaeology to counter the erasure of Indigenous heritage by creating a public Welcome Mural installation (Figure 1) and a travelling exhibit. This educational and outreach work is embedded within the Xwe’etay/Lasqueti Archaeology Project (XLAP; Lepofsky et al. 2022) – whose goal is to explore ways to better honour and protect the archaeological heritage on the island of Xwe’etay (meaning yew tree in Northern Coast Salish languages) and to create a model for heritage protection elsewhere. The three of us are part of the core XLAP team[i], which is composed of academic and non-academic archaeologists and planners; representatives from five of the several neighboring Nations (Tla’amin, K’òmoks, Qualicum, Halalt, and Kwakwaka’wakw) who have historical connections to the island; and representatives from the island settler community, who have their own multi-generational connections to Xwe’etay.
Figure 1. The Welcome Mural. On the other side of the freight shed are the engraved cedar plaques by Jesse Recalma and Ocean Hyland that celebrate the island’s Indigenous origin story and welcome people to Indigenous lands. To their left is the audio button to press to listen to the name Xwe’etay spoken by Tla’amin Elder qaʔaχstaləs / Dr. Elsie Paul. (photo: Dana Lepofsky).
Located in the middle of the Salish Sea, Xwe’etay is separated by the ocean from the major urban centers of Vancouver to the east and Victoria to the west—giving it a reputation for being in the middle of nowhere. Beginning in the late 1800s and continuing to today, European settlers moved to the island for its many possibilities: resource extraction (ore, lumber, and fish), agriculture, and the opportunity to live somewhat removed from the trappings of mainstream society. Importantly, the settlers arrived to a landscape that had no Indigenous occupants, only the occasional visitor to fish or harvest clams, owing to decades of oppressive colonial policy and waves of introduced diseases that led to the spatial consolidation of Indigenous communities. The land was seen as terra nullius, and thus free for the taking and for creating histories on a blank page. The absence of descendant community members on Xwe’etay enabled the myth that Indigenous People never lived on Xwe’etay to be reaffirmed for decades—until XLAP reasserted a history that was nearly erased.
Over the last five years, the contributions of our First Nations partners have been foundational to shifts in thinking. Project team members provided ongoing guidance about how to behave safely and respectfully in spaces where the ancestors dwell (i.e., archaeological sites); they offered support and suggestions for how to contextualize any resistance to change we encountered, and they facilitated open and heartfelt discussions with settlers in formal and informal settings. They also generously conducted ceremonies for the ancestors on the island – the first of their kind in 100s of years on Xwe’etay and the first time for a largely non-Indigenous audience – and followed this up with written cultural explanations for the local island newsletter to help convey the depth and significance of these actions. Finally, and importantly, despite the logistical challenges of getting to Xwe’etay, First Nations from our core team communities were present and participated in countless events.
Our team used a multi-pronged approach to address the policies that uphold colonial myths about Indigenous history and prevent honouring their heritage. We worked with local Nations and planners to promote Indigenous heritage management policies and analyzed local policies that prevent First Nations from managing their own heritage (MacLean et al. 2025; Kelly et al. 2024). On the island, members of our team interviewed local islanders about their understandings of heritage laws and their responsibilities towards protecting and honouring Indigenous archaeological sites and belongings (artifacts) (Wilson et al 2025; Kluchinski 2025). These interviews laid the groundwork for ongoing discussions about the topics raised during the research.
A significant part of confronting the narrative of terra nullius and countering erasure involves helping people to see the landscape through “archaeology eyes”. The colonial narrative of a lightly occupied landscape was so pervasive that even some of our Indigenous partners, despite feeling a strong connection to Xwe’etay, questioned whether their ancestors had ever lived permanently on the island. However, through detailed archaeological investigations and collating private collections of belongings, we have shown that the island was densely occupied by Indigenous Peoples from at least 7000 years ago through to the early colonial period (Krakov et al. under review). We have shared this restorative narrative of Indigenous history in numerous public forums on Xwe’etay and in neighbouring First Nations and settler communities (newsletters, fairs, farmers’ markets, presentations), in presentations to policy actors and institutions, and in online presentations for wider audiences. People from diverse communities can now parse out the physical evidence of extensive, long-term Indigenous occupation on the island. Once shown, they can’t unsee a landscape with terraced slopes that were shaped over generations by Indigenous settlements and on which today settlers have built their homes. Nor can they unsee the fish traps and clam gardens that reflect the extensive engineering and management of the intertidal zone, or the shell middens lining the foreshore that embody layers of history. By making visible the generations of lives lived on the land, a new narrative can develop. As one island settler said of the project,
What an opening of my eyes to the extent of Native settlement on Lasqueti - and the whole coast. I could almost hear the clatter of the Victorian-patterned curtains on my eyes fall away to learn that the "middens," which the colonial narrative has regarded as the rubbish heaps, is actually carefully built house floor of excellent drainage materials. There goes another myth of the wild BC coast.
XLAP’s outreach efforts are impactful because they engage both the settler and Indigenous communities and allow for conversations that tackle head-on fears, misinformation, disinformation, and resistance. We have found that much of the settler community is interested in the history of the place they love, interested in the project as an act of reconciliation, and want greater clarity about how to protect Indigenous heritage sites on the island. For First Nations, the project offers the opportunity to understand a continuous line of living heritage that connects their ancestors to present generations. Following decades of oppression and cultural erasure, restoring connection to the island and documenting its archaeological heritage helps Nations to tell their own story.
Accepting these emerging truths about Indigenous connections to the land provides a foundation for moving forward to heal past wrongs and forge meaningful relationships. Prior to XLAP, many island settlers felt deep guilt about the history of settler abuse of Indigenous People in Canada. For some, these feelings were so oppressive that they prevented engagement in even small acts of social change for fear of “doing the wrong thing”. Mirroring the feelings of others, is one islander’s description of their transformative experience in the context of one of the ritual burnings for the ancestors:
I felt shame and guilt for my part in the relationship with Indigenous people… Burning a blanket and hearing that the ancestors wanted to be remembered, not a retaliation for the wrongs, opened the possibility for reconciliation for me.
Similar openings were created through the words of Elder Ogwi’low’gwa Kim Recalma-Clutesi, whose brother is the hereditary chief of the Qualicum Nation territory that includes Xwe’etay:
You know, we've been fighting for a long time. And we've been advocates for a long time…It's time for us to hear your kind words and your gestures. To hear it and embrace it. But it's also time for you to put the guilt down…our path forward is working together. We don't give you permission to [feel guilt]. We give you permission to move forward.
Arising from this permission to move forward, an island settler recently remarked, “I cannot change the past, [but] one resolution for me is that if I see discrimination, I can speak up.”
Recognizing the profound capacity of visual art to embody and communicate cultural values and to counter erasure, Coast Salish carver Jesse Recalma Xwulqsheynum collaborated with island-settler artists Julia Woldmo and Sophia Rosenberg to co-create a compelling multimedia mural installation. Central to this work is a large “Welcome Mural” prominently displayed on Xwe’etay’s main dock, where it stands as a focal point—its full resonance unfolding as people arrive by water, just as the ancestral Indigenous Peoples would have traveled (Figure 1). Created over many months, the imagery on the mural is informed by the archaeological results of the XLAP team (Krakov et al. under review), oral traditions (Bouchard and Kennedy 2002), and XLAP interviews with settlers and Indigenous people about their memories of the island’s eco-cultural history. In painted and carved imagery, the mural welcomes people to celebrate the ecological and cultural abundance of these Indigenous lands and waters, including its cultivated foods, ancestral beings, and large Indigenous settlements.
In addition to the carved and painted mural installation, the artists created a locally crafted cedar plaque that illustrates the Coast Salish origin narrative of Xwe’etay, as recorded in the late 1800s (Bouchard and Kennedy 2002; Figure 1). Coast Salish graphic artist Ocean Hyland shḵwen̓/ ts;simtelot collaborated with Jesse to develop this imagery. The plaque is accompanied by an explanation of the mural and a small solar-powered audio system where visitors can press a button and hear the name “Xwe’etay” spoken by Tla’amin Elder Elsie Paul.
The traveling exhibit, which highlights the community-centered work of XLAP, originated from a collaboration with the Canadian Agriculture and Food Museum (Ingenium) in Ottawa, where it was displayed for over a year. The exhibit showcases not only archaeological field methods but also, more importantly, the inter-community collaborations that form the XLAP’s foundation. Through stunning, on-the-ground and aerial photographs and video, accompanied by explanatory text, visitors learn how the ancestral peoples of Xwe’etay had lived across millennia. The exhibit is now travelling to communities throughout coastal British Columbia
Figure 2. Qualicum Elder Ogwi’low’gwa Kim Recalma-Clutesi blessing one of the panels of the travelling exhibit that was temporarily installed in the Community Hall, with Dana Lepofsky holding the eagle down (Photo: Alex MacKenzie).
Figure 3. People from neighbouring Coast Salish communities, city and regional governmental official, and local islanders gathered on May 3, 2025 on the Xwe’etay public dock to celebrate Indigenous heritage as represented in the mural installation and travelling exhibit (Photo: Chris Whiting).
In May 2025, approximately 180 people from local and regional settler communities, as well as neighbouring Coast Salish Nations, gathered on Xwe’etay to bless and celebrate the unveiling of the Welcome Mural installation and the traveling exhibit (Figures 2-3). By coming together to celebrate Indigenous heritage we created a context for exchanging ideas, addressing fears and shame, and ultimately for getting at the core of the systemic racism that continues to deny Indigenous people their history. Through the blending of art and archaeology, the mural installation and travelling exhibit promote a strong and enduring statement: Indigenous Peoples were here and are here.
Footnotes
[i] The three authors of this paper are settler researchers who are connected to Xwe’etay and its heritage in diverse and overlapping ways. Dana Lepofsky, along with Sean Markey, are the co-directors of the Xwe’etay/Lasqueti Archaeology Project.
Dana is an academic archaeologist who has been connected to Xwe’etay for over 35 years, as a part time and now a full-time resident. She is passionate about bringing communities together and recognizes the extraordinary privilege and responsibility that comes with working with Indigenous communities to document their heritage preserved in the archaeological and eco-cultural records. She has worked alongside Indigenous communities throughout Coastal BC. While not always easy, she is grateful that she gets to practice her archaeology craft on Xwe’etay as a path to deepening her own understanding of and connection to her home.
Sean Markey is a settler academic of mixed European ancestry, living in Vancouver, BC. He works with rural and Indigenous communities and strives to build collaborative relationships that are rooted in trust, reciprocity, and in service of community-defined goals. He sees the project’s engaged research as contributing to the process of reconciliation, as outlined in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to honour, surface, and share Indigenous ways of knowing. It is his hope that this research deepens our sense of responsibility and respect for one another and for the land and waters we inhabit.
Julia Woldmo is a multidisciplinary artist who has called Xwe’etay home for five years. She worked with the XLAP team as a lead artist on the Welcome Mural and contributes to the Layered Histories Project through archival research and eco-cultural history interviews. Rooted in relational and ecological inquiry, her practice explores how story shapes our relationship to place. She approaches this work as a reckoning with the complex histories of her home, embracing reconciliation as an ongoing, generative, and collective process.
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