A coming event is aimed at helping First Nations people find their family members from early British Columbia.
“Canadian Census: Finding Indigenous People in B.C.” will be the topic of the Feb. 1, Maple Ridge Family History Group meeting at 7 p.m.
Attendance is free, and those interested can email mrfamilyhistory@gmail.com for the Zoom link.
The first census of Canada that includes British Columbia is the 1881 census, after the province joined confederation. However, Indigenous people are under-represented in the census records, and can be challenging to find. Andrea Lister, a census expert, invites people to join her and explore techniques to help people find their ancestors, while researchers learn more about the community in which their ancestors lived.
Lister is an historian whose European ancestors settled in North America as early as 1620 and as recently as 1923. She was born and raised in the Lower Mainland on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish peoples.
This online event includes a content warning, that there will be mentions of residential schools, assimilation, colonialism, and racist language, and when reading the census it is important to keep in mind the terminology used by the enumerators does not reflect current usage.
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