Book Launch: Kwädąy Dän Ts'ìnchį

On a late summer day, many years ago, a young man set out on a voyage through the mountains. He never reached his destination. When his remains were discovered by three British Columbia hunters, roughly three hundred years after he was caught by a storm or other accident and became frozen in a glacier, his story had faded from even the long memory of the region’s people. First Nations elders decided to call the discovery Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį—Long Ago Person Found. 

Please join us as we launch the Royal BC Museum's newest publication, Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį: Teachings from Long Ago Person Found, with readings from two of its three volume co-editors, Richard J. Hebda and Alexander P. Mackie, who will discuss how this comprehensive and collaborative account interweaves scientific analysis and cultural knowledge to describe a life that ended just as Europeans were about to arrive in the northwest.

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Richard J. Hebda, PhD, is a botanist who studies the vegetation and climate history of British Columbia, the ethnobotany of First Nations in BC, climate change and its impacts, ecology and origins of Garry Oak and alpine ecosystems, and the botany of grasses. Recently retired, he was curator at the Royal British Columbia Museum for more than 37 years and has been an adjunct faculty member at the University of Victoria for more than 33 years. Richard has served as BC’s expert advisor on Burns Bog and as science advisor in paleontology. In 2013 he received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee medal for his services to paleontology and in 2015 the Canada-wide Bruce Naylor Award for curatorship in natural history.

Alexander P. Mackie has worked as an archaeologist on the west coast for 40 years. He spent 20 years with the BC Archaeology Branch, including 14 years as a member of the Kwädąy Dän Ts'ìnchį Management Group with responsibility for liaison between the government of BC, the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations and the scientific research team. In 2013 Al returned to the private sector as a consultant and researcher.