Edmonton wants your stories

Page 4

The history of Aboriginal people at Rossdale Flats in Edmonton, the site of the Epcor plant, is being collected from people throughout the province. The Rossdale Flats Aboriginal Oral Histories Project, funded by the City of Edmonton and Alberta Heritage Resources Foundation, is to be completed by December 2003.

The stories being taped concern the time before and during the fur trade when Aboriginal people made encampments along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River and traded with the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Northwest Company.

The committee running the project is looking for about 50 interviews, which will be made available to the public to hear at the City of Edmonton Archives.

A recent archaeological study of the area shows the remains of 91 people at the site. Pamela Cunningham is a volunteer with the Edmonton Aboriginal Urban Affairs Committee and the project manager of the Rossdale Flats Aboriginal Oral Histories Project. She said that there were probably more people than that buried on the grounds.

"Through this project we are hoping to find out who some of these people might be. It is a site that carried a lot of significance for a number of years. Even after Epcor went up it was still a meeting place for the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people."

In 2000, Epcor's plans to expand its operation on the site led to an uproar in the Aboriginal community and to the discovery of the remains. Cunningham said the interviews the committee would hope to collect might be valuable for the city when it is examining the question of whether or not to close down a portion of the road.

"It will give the city more information, so they can decide the outcome of the cemetery area because a portion of the road is going to be closed next year and part of the site will be turned into a park. Documents only say so much and what people say is sometimes more expanded or completely different, so by talking to people we hope to get an idea of the actual importance of this site historically, and what it means today," she said.

Once the stories have been compiled, Cunningham will write a report for the city about the findings. In a few years, if the committee is able to get additional funding, it would like to publish the stories in a book.

The committee has a team of individuals who are available to do interviews. Members of the team will go out and meet the interviewees in their homes or at a mutually agreed-upon place, said Cunningham. The interviews will be taped and then transcribed and taken back to the person whose story it is. Together the interviewer and the storyteller will go over the material to ensure that the story is clear and correct.

Cunningham said the team has completed six interviews, with a few more scheduled for the near future. She said the storytellers can remain anonymous.

"We do have people on the team who are fluent in Blackfoot, in Cree or in French for the people who want to be interviewed in their language," she said.