Elevate your local knowledge

Select Region

Selecting your primary region ensures you get the stories that matter to you first.

VANCOUVER – A collaborative exhibition looking at Vancouver’s indigenous roots is being celebrated for contributing to Canadian history.

“Casnaem, The City Before the City” has been named the winner of this year’s Governor General’s history award for excellence in museums.

The exhibit combines artifacts and new technologies such as 3-D printing at three different locations to tell the story of the ancient Musqueam villages and burial sites that Vancouver was built on.

Casnaem was founded about 5,000 years ago at what was then the mouth of the Fraser River, and today is the southern border of the Marpole neighbourhood.

Different aspects of the exhibition are being shown at the Museum of Vancouver, the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology and the Musqueam Cultural Centre through January 2016.

Museum of Vancouver CEO Nancy Noble says the exhibit has allowed the museum to confront its own colonial past and begin reconciling misconceptions about Musqueam people.

News from © The Canadian Press, . All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.