The village of Quinhagak is preparing to receive a series of artifacts from an archeological dig conducted there over the last several years. The artifacts, tools, and weapons have been preserved by a team from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and will be repatriated to the village later this year.
Warren Jones works at Quinhagak’s local Native corporation and has been helping the process. He says that it’s important for these items to be on display in the village so people can understand where they come from and where they’re going.
“Everything we’ve learned has been passed on from our grandparents, our parents. So to see the tools they used back then, and we look at what we use, everything is just modernized," said Jones.
Jones says it's easily seen that the people of Quinhagak are basically using the same tools, like spears and fishhooks, that their ancestors used 700 years ago.
Even as the dig revealed hundreds of years of history, it showed something else as well:
“Archeologists, scientists have been measuring how much erosion we have," Jones said.
And they confirmed that erosion has been steadily shrinking Quinhagak. It is now reduced to a small island with little usable land, and the prospect of costly relocation has begun to loom. The artifacts are returning to a village that might have to pull up its roots in the near future.
The artifacts still make Warren Jones proud of his heritage, and he hopes it can be the same for his village's younger generation.
“I think it’s time to get back into the old ways," said Jones.