The Peopling of Canada The First People

Aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people have different understandings about the origins of the first people to occupy North America.

Aboriginal people look to their traditional creation stories for the explanations of their origins. Every First Nations group has a creation story The stories differ, but one characteristic they share is that they present the first people as having originated here in North America, not has having come from somewhere else.

Non-aboriginal scientists and archaeologists have a different explanation for the origins of human life in America. They believe that the earliest Americans entered this continent from Siberia about 30,000 years ago. The theory is that at the time the world was experiencing and ice age and water levels in the oceans were lower because much of the moisture was frozen in vast glaciers.

Beringia (land bridge) The uncovered land bridge connecting Asia and North America across the Bering Strait and creating an ideal path along which Siberian hunters followed game animals into the ‘New World’

Extra: Challenges to the Land Bridge Theory! The Beringia theory has widely been challenged in recent years! Radiocarbon dating objects in the Monte Verde, Chile area has shown findings of evidence of human settlement that pre-date North America evidence by at least 1000 years! Some scientists argue that these findings must have arrived in the region not by migration from the North, but by some other means!....

Despite these different explanations, there is no disagreement that the ancestors of the Aboriginal people were the original occupants of America and were here many thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived. During this time they penetrated every corner of the continent, adapting their lives to the resources that they found there.

In the Northern regions, most of the ancient people were hunters and gatherers, making use of a wide range of plant and animal life. **Some were nomadic, moving from place to place in search of game, others were sedentary, living for the most part in one spot, where resources could support them. In either case they relied on wild food, which they gathered rather than grew themselves.

In the South, a new way of life developed when groups began to plant and harvest their own crops. Agriculture was first practiced in Mexico and spread slowly northward. By about 800 A.D., it had spread into what is now southern Ontario and the valley of the St. Lawrence River. The main crops were corn, beans, squash and tobacco.

DNA Testing Read page 28 in the Shaping Canada text. Discuss the Ethical Dimension aspect