- Note: I am thrilled to be a TA for this course and look forward to working with you all during the term. I will be "following" you in your course Blogs and occasionally offering comments, so keep on posting! Remember to check through the blogs of your classmates - it's a great opportunity to see whether your ideas/insights align and to get to know one another outside of the class room.
It all began in 2002, as an undergrad here at UVic. During my course in Forensic Osteology, the instructor (the incomparable Dr. Donaldson) announced that the RCMP needed people who were trained in this material to assist on the Pickton Farm crime scene. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this case, it was the largest crime scene in Canada. For what it's worth, here is a Wiki link (not leak!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton. It isn't obviously the 'best site' for this case, but it gives you a sense of it. After a rigorous security clearance and numerous interviews, I was accepted by the Major Crime Section, Missing Women's Task Force, and moved to Vancouver to join the team.
Hard for words to encapsulate that first day, never mind every day... the whole experience was truly incredible and life changing. And, also highly challenging, in ways one doesn't expect and has not been prepared for. Never did I anticipate that my training at UVic would help me to fulfill a passion: the recovery of persons missing and/or disappeared. Working to recover forensic evidence pertaining to missing persons is... insert multitude of emotional responses/cerebral insights... and despite working nearly a year on the case, I can't talk about it (due to a confidentiality agreement, aka 'gag order') other than in very general terms.
Following the Pickton Farm, I needed to work with something living for a while! and took a contract in a remote wildlife preserve in Costa Rica as a research assistant working with severely endangered giant sea turtles. Documenting and protecting the turtles from poachers and watching babies hatch from the sand nests was another unforgettable experience. However, many of the baby turtles sadly died in their nests (which is in part why they are so endangered), which we had to exhume and then rebury after conducting some analysis - a mortuary experience of a different kind.
Later, I continued intensive training programs in forensic anthropology, training at the "Body Farm" in Tennessee (for those of you who don't know it, here's another Wiki description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Tennessee_Anthropological_Research_Facility )
and participating in processing a few forensic/homicide cases in the States. Then, off for studies in international human rights law in England, genocide studies and BC Indigenous rights courses in Canada, and now back here at UVic completing my MA.
My studies center on an issue that is highly sensitive - the issue of missing children from former Residential Schools in Canada who are believed to be buried in unmarked graves. This issue is of special consideration for Canada's currently running Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Many Truth and Reconciliation Commissions involve the recovery of persons missing/disappeared, a practice that has limitless challenges and difficulties. ...More to come on this later....
Lastly, am a consulting archaeologist and for years have been contracted out over the province of BC. As part of this role, I have had the special honor of excavating ancient Indigenous human remains, working alongside First Nation community members and participating in longhouse and outdoor ceremonies which honor these ancient ancestral remains. Also through volunteer work I have come to witness and help document the diverse and significant mortuary practices on the dynamic landscape of southern Vancouver Island.
No comments:
Post a Comment