Monitoring underway at N.W.T. archaeological sites threatened by climate change

As the impacts of climate change threaten vital historical sites across the Northwest Territories, the territory's climate change archaeologist is working with communities to mitigate the damage.

"Climate change is having a wide range of impacts," said Michael O'Rourke, who works for the N.W.T. government. "One of the big ones that really takes things out fairly quickly is coastal erosion."

"We're seeing that predominantly in the Beaufort Delta region, obviously with the coastal area there," he said, adding that in some areas, the shoreline is retreating at a rate of five to 10 metres per year.

"There's a number of other impacts that are taking place, some a little more insidious, like permafrost loss," O'Rourke said.

"As permafrost melts, the incredible archaeological record of the Northwest Territories, which is really well preserved in permafrost, gets exposed to more oxygen and water and bacteria, and they begin to break down a heck of a lot faster."

O'Rourke said that while there are about 7,000 known archaeological sites across the N.W.T., "there's probably a lot more out there that we don't know about, which [are] also, of course, imperiled," he said.

Currently, about 45 sites in the territory are being monitored with the help of archival air photos and satellite imagery, which is allowing for the creation of shoreline erosion models.

"That allows us to go into communities and discuss what should we do next, if there's anything that we should do," he said. "We're always adding to that list."

O'Rourke said community input is driving the process.

"What I consider is important isn't necessarily what a community member thinks is important," he said, adding that "mitigation, going in and doing something about these sites, isn't necessarily desired in all cases.

"Some people might want nature to take its course and I don't want to be the one to step in and say, 'but wait, it's the archaeology, we have to protect it.' This has to be done at the behest of the communities."

If a community is interested in mitigation, O'Rourke said, there are various steps that can be taken.

"The classic archaeological response is, 'let's dig it up,' so let's see what's in the ground before the ocean takes it away and try to learn from that site to get as much information as we can from it," he said. "But there's a whole lot of other ways we can go about doing it."

O'Rourke said archaeologists can visit sites with elders and youth, to have an "intergenerational exchange of knowledge."

"We can use it as an opportunity to talk about the past and document elders' perspectives on that way of living and on the sites that are still in the ground while they're still there," he said.

Darrel Nasogaluak, former mayor of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., and a member of the local Hunters and Trappers Committee and the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation boards, has worked with O'Rourke on identifying sites of concern that are in need of monitoring.

"There are many, many sites here," Nasogaluak said. "Our people were land-based. There were no big communities."

"Traditionally, we roamed the lands in our different areas every season, so almost every five kilometres or so, there's traditional land use areas where we spent a lot of time, and a lot of those traditional camps or small villages are on the shoreline. Some of them are being eroded away."

Nasogaluak said O'Rourke has been to the area a few times and is working with the community on monitoring and preserving the sites as much as possible.

"Our people have been here for a long time, so there's some gaps in different time periods that we want to ensure that we capture," Nasogaluak said. "Our oral history is really strong here, so we know where all the recent villages are, going back a couple hundred years — but past that, it's more storytelling that's passed on."

Nasogalauk said his community appreciates the work that's being done.

"There were a lot of things we were still learning about how our culture evolved," Nasogaluak said. 

The Trailbreaker10:00Interview with Michael O'Rourke, the territory's climate change archaeologist, about his study on archaeological sites threatened by climate change.

The artifacts archaeologists uncover often tell a story of what life was like hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago. There are thousands of archaeological sites spread out across the Northwest Territories, but some of those sites and the stories they tell are slowly disappearing. Michael O'Rourke is trying to stop that from happening at least before those sites can be studied. He is the territory's climate change archaeologist and the only one in the entire country. Hilary Bird spoke with him earlier about what he's seeing.