The city's oldest and most controversial graveyard now has its own epitaph.
The last book local historian Kent Sedgwick wrote before his death last December was unveiled on Wednesday by CNC Press. Lheidli T'enneh Cemetery, Prince George: A Documented History tells the most comprehensive story ever compiled on the aboriginal burial ground in what is today Fort George Park.
CNC board chair Bob Murray called the graveyard a "unique historic site in Prince George" that Sedgwick had been actively studying from 2006 until his final days. He used GPS technology cross-referenced with data dating back to the Devereaux survey of 1894, along with many interviews and oral accounts, plus an exhaustive search through newspaper records and archival files.
CNC's library and press director Kathy Plett said Sedgwick's work was a revelation.
"It is interesting, for example, that he could give us an estimate of the number of burials that took place - approximately 285 from 1875 to 1913 when the cemetery stopped being used," she said. A few more burials happened there as recently as the 1970s.
The book was launched at CNC's Aboriginal Resource Centre. The centre's senior policy advisor and aboriginal education manager Marlene Erickson said the book was valuable to all in the local area, First Nations and non-aboriginal alike.
"We all enjoy Fort George Park but we don't necessarily know its tragic history - the way its original inhabitants were removed from that area. For elders especially, it was very hard to see that graveyard in a park," she said. "It is important for all of us for that story to be told. It is an important part of Prince George's history."
She said this was the first time that all known sources of information about the cemetery had been gathered together.
The book even includes a separate section written by Dr. Bill Poser, whose doctorate is in linguistics. He is a research consultant to the Yinka Dene Language Institute. He translated the Carrier language on the eight remaining gravestones in the cemetery, and added some useful information about them.
The book is available for purchase at the CNC Bookstore, at Books And Company, and is expected to soon be in other area bookstores.
