Thoughts From a "Lost Canadian" About Canadian History - the First Nations Peoples

I've written a few times how I learned this past April I am a "Lost Canadian", and it matters to me to learn about Canada. (I have fifteen ancestors born in Canada since 1800 - from Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia and according to Canada's new law Bill C-3, this makes me a Canadian!) Growing up in Michigan, I knew about Canada - they are our dear neighbors, friends, and now they are my family as well, so learning about them matters to me.

While I know some things about Canada, there are many things I do not know, this is why I've decided to learn, really learn about Canada. I'm going to start at the beginning (as we all know this is a very good place to start!) and learn about the First Nations Peoples who migrated to Canada - most scientists believe this happened possibly as long as 16,000 years or so ago (and some believe this happened possibly as many as 25,000 years ago) - there is much for me to learn and I am very happy to share with you the things I am learning about Canada!

• While it is believed by most archeologists and geneticists the First Nations Peoples arrived in Canada 16,000 years ago or so (or even longer), the very first people began in Africa 300,000 years ago.
• These people developed/evolved and eventually, about 60,000 years ago, they began to migrate from Africa to Europe, Asia, and beyond.
• We know from geological evidence, thick glaciers blocked the land route from the Bering Land Bridge into North America until the glaciers started melting and retreating around 15,000 to 14,000 years ago.
• Remains have been found throughout North and South America which indicate people arrived in these places before the glaciers melted, so how did people get to those places? It is believed they may have crossed the Bering Land Bridge, and then used boats to sail along the West Coast so they could move across the land when they passed the areas covered in ice.
• We do not have any remains older than 16,000 years old on the West side of North America, but we do have older remains on the East side - which leads to the theory of people arriving in North America from Europe. We do have evidence of Vikings reaching Newfoundland in 1021, and I will write about them tomorrow.

So, archeologists have found evidence of First Nations Peoples who traveled from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge - Beringia, which was a grassland where they found plants they could gather and animals (like woolly mammoths and bison) they could hunt. It is believed they lived there for thousands of years, but eventually as the ice melted, they moved south - some as far south as South America and east all the way to the East Coast of North America.

Can you imagine what it must have been like for your family to live as hunter gathers on Beringia for thousands of years and then as the ice melted and water levels rose, the land disappeared? Can you imagine what it was like to see the amazing mountains, valleys, lakes, plains, and forests which make the incredible place of Canada? I wonder what they thought when they saw all the animals and experienced the seasons which come with living in Canada. I'm sure the loved the Northern Lights! The First Nations Peoples moved East to find places where they could live and became the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples of Canada. As they found land where they could live, some stayed, and others continued to move.

Archeological evidence shows these people found a variety of animals in Canada, including Woolly Mammoths, American Mastodons, Ice Age Horses, Steppe Bison (much larger than the Bison we see today), Giant Beavers (the size of a bear and did not build dams),  Yukon Camels (quite large single hump versions of camels we know today), Giant Short-Faced Bears (the largest land carnivorous mammal to ever live in North America), Beringian Wolves, Steppe Lions (larger than today's African Lions), Scimitar Cats, Caribou,  Muskoxen, Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, Arctic Ground Squirrels, 

Moose

, E

lk

, Saiga Antelope, Arctic hares, lemmings, voles, and ptarmigans. As these animals moved back and forth across Beringia and then into North America, the First Nations People moved with them, eventually moving throughout Canada, North America, Central America, and South America.

Along with archeological evidence of how the First Nations Peoples arrived in Canada and lived in this new land, we have oral history which has carefully been passed down through the generations. These oral histories have accurately described big events, such as earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis which we know happened thousands of years ago and also show us how the First Nations Peoples valued education, science, history, structure, social responsibility, and being a good steward of the land on which they lived. These things have successfully been handed down to the First Nations Peoples of today as they still value these same things.

First Nations Peoples have lived in Canada for thousands of years. They had complex societies, strong cultures, and successfully developed trade networks among themselves before anyone arrived from Europe. If we want to know about the strength of Canada, then we need to see the First Nations Peoples because they are truly the core reason Canada is a strong Nation.