[intro music]
Presenter: You can see it's quite a team, and congratulations to all.
[applause]
Dean Anderson: We're here today for the annual Governor's Awards for Histooric Preservation in Michigan.
Every year, here in the rotunda of the Capitol building,
the State Historic Preservation Office, in conjunction with the Governor's Office,
reviews a whole batch of projects that have been done across the state in the preceding year
and chooses projects that really exemplify preservation and
efforts to preserve history across the state.
Jonnie Sam: We're here today were to do because we received the Governor's Award
for Hisoric Preservation for a very important work in consulting with the
Michigan Department of Transportation on their project for the Grand Haven bypass,
the M-231 project - a new bridge over Grand River.
Lorraine Shananaquet: Which is very significant to me personally
because it consulted our people with the knowledge to identify some of those
sacred things that we consider that were, are part of the earth now.
We know we have to take them out to make that bypass, but it was done with such respect
Jim Robertson: We partnered with six sovereign Indian nations in Michigan
because it's really, it's their story that we're learning about
in doing the excavations on this site.
Jonnie Sam: And they kept us involved in every step of the way.
I think that could be the model for future consulting from both state and federal agencies.
Mike Hambacher: It really set in when we moved to the testing phase on
the big site. And I took a slightly different path and came down over this
big terrace, and I stopped and realized that I was standing
in amongst a large number of small surface depressions
and the lightbulb went off on my head and said
this is a site that's loaded with cache pits.
This is a place where they were storing food.
We have not seen a site like this before in southern Michigan.
Wesley Andrews: Again, a reminder of how we are tied to the landscape,
and how we are tied to the land, to the water. The spirits and the creatures beneath the water
and those spirits and creatures in the sky.
Mike Hambacher: As archaeologists, we are really working on their history.
Having their perspective is really important and helps us understand
more what we're finding and how better to interpret the information
that we're finding and they bring a very different perspective to
what their traditions are and such that we often don't get from just the artifacts alone.
We probably know more about what was going on in that area 2,000 years ago
then we know what was going on 1,000 to 500 years ago
and that's one of the reasons why this project is so important because it
really fills in one of those gaps in our knowledge.
[music]
