Batchewana gets artifacts from retired steelworker

Retired steelworker Wayne McKeachnie has donated a major collection of native artifacts to Batchewana First Nation.

The 25,000-piece collection, accumulated by McKeachnie over 35 years as an amateur archeologist, was presented during a weekend gathering of eagle staffs at Sault College.

The artifacts will be held in trust by the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation in M'Chigeeng (formerly known as West Bay) until a suitable museum is built in Batchewana.

Ojibwe Cultural Foundation curator Michael Cywink (shown above with McKeachnie) tells SooToday.com that the collection is one of the most significant received by his institution.

The artifacts cover native history from the turn of the Ice Age until the arrival of Europeans in the early 1600s.

Musket parts and other European-era items are visible at the bottom centre of our photograph.

Also included are tools, arrowheads, pipe fragments and a wide variety of other artifacts.

Searching for diamonds

McKeachnie, a local Metis, retired from Algoma Steel earlier this year and is now enrolled in Sault College's native community worker program.

His interest began with childhood walks along local beaches with his parents and siblings.

McKeachnie's father searched for agates. His mother, perhaps knowing more about Precambrian geology than the experts of the day, said she was looking for diamonds.

After similar family excursions to Fort St. Joseph, Wayne began his lifelong habit of searching for native artifacts.

'I don't trust government'

Most of the donated items come from a former fishing village in the Gros Cap area, and are being donated to Batchewana as the closest First Nation.

McKeachnie refused to entrust the collection to any federal or provincial institution.

"I don't trust government on anything to do with this," he says.

McKeachnie expects there will be additional donations, because his collecting days are far from over.

"I'll find more," he promises.

We go deep

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