In September 2016, I stood on a promontory overlooking the North Thompson Valley in Kamloops, contemplating the view with two other archeologists.
Below us was a golf course built where people had told me about artifact hunting, dust flying around two new housing developments underway and, right beneath our feet, the crumbled soil of a 7,000-year-old archeological site that had just been bulldozed.
That was the moment we realized the need for this column.
We saw that, like many growing communities engrossed in the day-to-day challenges of development and expansion, heritage was being lost to neglect, disinterest and the rush to remake the world.
To help preserve the heritage in our midst, we aimed to open a dialogue with this community about history, archeology and Indigenous heritage.
We began the Dig It column to bring awareness to the importance of heritage to our community as a whole.
And we’re happy with how the conversation is going with you, the public.
To those of us who know, Kamloops is an archeological and historical wonderland, a rich timescape of more than 500 generations of human experience inscribed on the land.
Sharing that with KTW readers has been an engaging and eye-opening experience as we learn how to write and understand history together.
We are so grateful you are reading, happy you are learning, and delighted with all the positive emails and letters from interested and enthusiastic readers.
We see the columns pinned to bulletin boards in workplaces and shared with friends and colleagues and we know we’re going in the right direction.
However, as citizens, we can only do so much of this work.
At some point — and that point is now — we need our municipal leaders to learn, too.
We need our city to promote the value of heritage and to take up in earnest the recognition, preservation and education surrounding heritage.
Heritage is a public trust. Our governments are responsible for caring for it on our behalf and on behalf of our kids and grandkids.
In the present, lack of sustained, direct and meaningful support for heritage in our city is eroding the legacy we’re leaving to the Kamloops of the future.
Saving and savouring the unique and irreplaceable heritage of our region is at the heart of the Dig It column.
The way our past is remembered and preserved helps shape our society in the present and acts as an anchor for the society we wish to become.
As readers of this column, you’re becoming ambassadors of that heritage.
We hope you’re empowered by what you read here and we want you to share with others what you learn from Dig It.
Tell your friends and relatives, your classmates and your teammates what you’ve come to know.
And be sure to tell your elected representatives, too, because that’s how we spread the word that heritage matters.
Dig in — and continue the conversation.