Sugar Cane Archaeology will be awarded the Indigenous Business Award for Community-owned Business of the Year.
The award was announced on Sept. 12. Sugar Cane Archaeology (SCA), owned by Williams Lake First Nation (WLFN), first began operations in 2016. It is a First Nations enterprise led by a team of project managers, archaeologists, and natural resource experts. The company specializes in heritage management and natural resource stewardship in British Columbia, with a distinct focus on responsible industry practices.
“We are excited to win this award because it proves what we have been saying all along – First Nations are the rightful stewards of the land and its resources,” said Brittany Cleminson, SCA manager and archaeologist in a press release.
She said in B.C., First Nations have historically been sidelined in the management of their cultural heritage through colonial legislation and the dominance of non-local archaeological consulting companies. She said this recognition for SCA shows First Nations are at the table and driving change.
Two notable large-scale projects helped put the company on the map in their early days: the four-laning of Highway 97 through Williams Lake First Nation’s IR#1, and remediation of the 2017 wildfires in the central Cariboo.
Cleminson said while it is of critical importance to SCA and WLFN to be involved in large-scale ground-disturbing operations like these within WLFN territory, the passion for the team lies more within projects focused on fostering stewardship opportunities for WLFN and other Indigenous communities.
“To us, archaeology is one of the ways forward to true reconciliation. It could be economic reconciliation, social reconciliation, political reconciliation – people think it’s just about the past, but it’s about the community now, and about the future of the community,” said Cleminson.
SCA has completed archaeological inventory surveys of the Fraser River, Quesnel Lake, and the Bowron Lakes. What makes projects like these significant to the SCA team is that they are not just a small piece of some larger industrial project; they are purely for the sake of exploration and enlightenment, to take stock of the rich cultural heritage attached to the lands, and to affirm title and rights for a First Nation within a territory. Sites recorded during such surveys are often used to inform subsequent land claim cases launched by First Nations.
One project that did just that was a multi-year collaboration with Northern Secwepemc te Qelmucw (NStQ), performing an archaeological inventory survey on behalf of Stswecem’c Xget’tem First Nation, Canim Lake Band, Xatśūll First Nation and WLFN between 2018 and 2021. Cleminson notes, “that’s one of our proudest projects because we’ve always believed that while we are a WLFN-owned enterprise, what we really are is an Indigenous company doing archaeology. We want to grow, support, and build capacity together with other nations.”
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