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“Ancient Greece is kind of academic and far away and a different place,” said school district superintendent Rod Allen, standing in the shade of trees near the creek. “This is right in your backyard, and we live here. That’s what makes it so totally amazing.”

t's a much more enabling, open-ended curriculum now which allows for place-based learning like this, which is just unbelievably authentic

Even though the once thriving settlement is currently covered with soil and tall grasses, the story of what lies beneath the ground and its connection to history and people of today provides realistic experiences for students, he said.

“It’s a much more enabling, open-ended curriculum now which allows for place-based learning like this, which is just unbelievably authentic,” said Allen. “Kids buy into that. It’s not library work. It’s out in the community and it’s work that matters.”

Dianne Hinkley, the land research director for the Cowichan Tribes, said the ground at the Ye’yumnuts settlement had been the subject of almost 25 years of struggle between private developers, governments and the Cowichan people who wanted the burial area protected.

The land was finally protected in a deal involving the B.C. and federal governments, but it wasn’t until about two years ago when Hinkley started talking with Brian Thom, an Indigenous culture anthropology professor at the University of Victoria, that the idea formed to use the site as an education tool.

“Our boys were in the same class together and we went for the parent-teacher conference thing and Brian got hold of me afterwards and said, ‘Did you see that, they were studying Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt,’ ” said Hinkley.