It is now generally accepted and recognized that we should be grateful to those who first occupied this land — the Indigenous peoples who have lived in Canada “since time immemorial” and who bequeathed us the environments that sustain our lives.

“Time immemorial” could be interpreted as a past of which we have no knowledge. Yet, stories, oral history, archaeology, and DNA technologies provide evidence of the movements and activities of the first peoples of Turtle Island.

Interpreting this evidence is controversial.

One theory is that before the maximum extent of the last ice age, a few thousand people had migrated from Siberia to an area known as Beringia that includes portions of the Russian far east, Alaska, and the Yukon east to the Mackenzie River. Although they were essentially trapped for nearly 15,000 years, these people survived by hunting the large mammals (many now extinct) that were supported by Beringia’s productive grassland ecosystems.

When the glaciers began their retreat around 16,500 years ago, these people rapidly spread throughout the Americas, aided by their hunting skills, crafting of “Clovis” spear points, and use of tools such as “atlatls” to achieve high velocities and penetrations in spear-throwing.

However, there is increasing evidence – albeit disputed – that these “Clovis people” were not the first to arrive in the Americas. University of Alberta emeritus professor Ruth Gruhn, in An anthropological conception of the initial peopling of the Americas, discusses the evidence that humans already occupied both North and South America at low population densities before the last glacial........

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