The long history of First Nations people isn’t one that can be found in books. Instead, it is a rich documentation detailed throughout time — a collective enterprise carried on by tradition and culture.
Oral tradition has often been discounted as just stories — but science is proving that the facts behind those stories certainly shouldn’t be discounted.
Last week, a study published in the journal Nature Communications linked the genomes of 25 Indigenous people who lived 1,000 to 6,000 years ago with 25 descendants in the Lax Kw'alaams and Metlakatla First Nation in British Columbia.
The ancient DNA was taken from archeological sites in the Prince Rupert area of B.C. that contain human remains. The researchers concluded that the genomes of the descendants were altered as a result of European colonization, making them more resistant to western viruses.
However, the other outcome of the DNA study was confirmation that the Metlakatla First Nation has been in the region for thousands of years — something the Metlakatla have long asserted through oral tradition.
The researchers also found that roughly 175 years ago, the population of Coast Tsimshian in the region declined by as much as 57 per cent. This coincides with colonization and the spread of diseases such as smallpox, the accounts of which have also been passed down in First Nations oral tradition.
“Science is starting to be used to basically corroborate what we’ve been saying all along,” said Barbara Petzelt, an archaeologist with the Metlakatla First Nation, one of the researchers in the study
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My favorite thing ever is how Ron just sent Charlie a random letter like “hey yo there’s an illegal dragon at hogwarts, could you come and smuggle it out of here, please?” and Charlie was just like “yeah sure, I’ll trespass into the castle and steal a dangerous magical creature, of course, lemme just hit up my friends”
Being a nature photographer seems great, maybe I should try…
1-9 notes: your post was seen 10-99 notes: your friends found your post good, possibly some of their friends too 100-999 notes: strangers in your broader circle find your post good, many people whose names you’ve never seen 1000-9999 notes: your post is popular and widely circulated in your subculture; it has circulated to people with wildly different worldviews who are still basically united by some interests 10000-99999 notes: people’s commentary on your post has started to become repetitive; people melt together into a samey mess; every possible misinterpretation of your post has happened a couple times 100000-999999 notes: your post is less and less seen as something written by you and more and more seen as “one of those things from the internet”. people openly talk about you in the notes as if your identity is a mystery, despite there being a link right there 1000000+ notes: people start to make pilgrimages to your blog to ask you if you are the source of the post; possibly someone writes an article on a news website about your post and how many notes it has
I did a very quick, sketchy comic because I was extremely inspired by this post. (Credit to @pinkdiamondprince for the original post.)
The entire analogy was just fantastic and so, so accurate, and I wanted to make a comic for it, even if it’s very sketchy because my attention span is nil.
Speaking of pretty flowers, may I present to you the “Eighteen Scholars”, the flower of my heart-a variation of Camellia japonica L. Its uniqueness lies in the layers and layers of petals-one flower can hold as much as 130 petals.
Named “Eighteen Scholars” in Chinese because at the most, one bush can have up to eighteen of these pretty darlings :3
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