These Wabanaki artifacts at UNB have sparked archeological collaboration and innovation

In a quiet room in the University of New Brunswick's library, Ramona Nicholas gives a small laugh when asked what it's like to be part of an archeological project involving her ancestors.

"I wanna say, it's about time," said Nicholas, the Wabanaki Heritage Lead at the University of New Brunswick.

Nicholas is one of the co-leads in this project, a collaboration between university researchers and the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick.

Their shared goal lies in the plain banker-style boxes housed in the university's Archives and Special Collections Department. Each one is labelled "Bailey Indian Artifact Collection," and contains a rich history of Wabanaki heritage. While the contents of these boxes were collected in the late 19th and early 20th century, they've never before been thoroughly studied or even catalogued.

Until a few years ago, the Wolastoqey Nation didn't even know most of it existed.

Neither did a few archeologists, who began poking around at the collection in 2023, as part of a separate research project. What they thought were perhaps 25 artifacts total in the Bailey collection — turned out to be 25 boxes.

"Immediately, the scope of this kind of grew, and we were like, 'oh, wow, that's pretty significant,'" said Ken Holyoke, another of the project's co-leads and assistant professor of archeology at the University of Lethbridge.

The archeologists weren't entirely surprised there were more objects than initially thought.

The titular Bailey of the collection is Loring Woart Bailey, a scientist and long-time professor at the University of New Brunswick, teaching from 1861 to 1907. A side interest of his was collecting artifacts, most from along the Wolostoq or in and around Maquapit Lake, some of which he displayed in an on-campus museum at the time.

"The work that Bailey did wouldn't be what we would call archaeology," said Holyoke. "In fact, a lot of what he did was, you know, really would be considered looting by today's standards."

Bailey collected objects without consent, said Holyoke, and in doing so disturbed archeological sites, removing belongings from their context. That context — where the object was found, what it was near, and other factors — is a key tool archeologists use to understand the past.

"Folks... who were out there collecting at the time, were sort of collecting indiscriminately," said project co-lead Trevor Dow, who also teaches archeology at UNB. "They didn't really seem to give much thought, or care, to where they were collecting from."

As Dow began opening up the boxes, the trove that lay inside prompted an idea. Dow found objects associated with burials, including some beads that — according to Bailey's notes — came from the burial of a child in the Tobique region.

"We hit pause immediately," said Holyoke.