Wednesday, May 09, 2007

A project worth checking out: Building a fish weir


I came across my first fish weir last year while walking in the Boston Common. Fishweir.org is dedicated to making the rest of us aware of the artifacts and way of life of the city's Native American population going back 4,700 years. It's a pity that the city has not one landmark commemorating a way of life. As in the past, public school students will help build this year's fishweir on the Common. It will be on dsiplay for most of this month.
Buried under Boylston Street and the Green Line subway, fishweirs are direct evidence of the native communities that once occupied the area where urban Boston has grown.

In a city full of bronze sculptures of historical markers and memorials, there is no public display of information about the ancient fishweirs or the people who lived here 250 generations before the colonists arrived.

By engaging the imagination with the fishweir story, the Ancient Fishweir Project seeks to expand the timeframe of history told in Boston's public places and honor the memory of Boston's early Native inhabitants.
Here's a Globe story on the fishweir project from 2003.

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