Jennifer Pighin address crowd from atop pit house. 250 News photo

Prince George, B.C. – The first pit house built in the traditional territory of the Lheidli T’enneh was officially unveiled along the Greenway trail near the University of Northern BC on Saturday.

A sizeable crowd from the First Nations community, the university, City Council and the general population made the trek in to the site of the traditional winter dwelling which is called Frog House. The name was selected because while the pit house was being built during the summer, great masses of frogs were at the site as the builders arrived each morning.

The pit house was constructed in July by fifteen students from the university and the Lheidli T’enneh nation who had enrolled in an experimental learning course. And it was built without the use of modern conveniences and implements, utilizing only ropes, skids, rollers and plenty of muscle. The participating students earned school credit while learning about aboriginal culture.

Jennifer Pighin, who amongst other things is a teaching assistant with the course and a Lheidli T’enneh band member, says the pit house construction was instructed by Vince Prince, who had built a pit house at his own house about ten years ago “so we knew he knew how to do it.” Pighin says the project involved a lot of hard work in the summer heat. “We had to dig 4.2 tons of dirt out of the ground and then put it back on top after we had cut all the wood and built the structure.” The pit house is actually partly above the ground and dug out inside to be partly below ground level. “The reason it’s dug into the ground is it’s very helpful in not only creating the structure, but it keeps it cool in the summer and it keeps it really warm in the winter as the easrth does that for us.”

Pighin says “we took three-and-a-half weeks for the course and we spent long days and lots of hard work with our shovels and pickaxes. Everything that created this was from the area around us. They had to fall some trees they considered danger trees so we used the danger trees and we pretty much built it out of natural objects.”

She says some of the students who took part had never been involved with an experimental learning course “so it was really a change for them going from the academic setting and coming into learning about this. And as we built we learned about the culture and shared knowledge. We had many visitors, elders and just passers-by that shared their knowledge and their histories and were able to contribute to the class as well. “

Pighin noted that “this course wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for Vice Prince and the Aboriginal Business Development and Community Centre, as well as a grant from UNBC, the University of Northern BC Undergraduate Experiential Learning Grant. And we also had support from the Greenway Trail Society to be able to do this so it takes a lot of partnerships to be able to do something of this nature.”

She says “it was a lot of hard work, I remember every day doing eight hours of hard work and just being exhausted when I got home. Shovel, shovel, shovel it was an endless job but it was so rewarding and it was so great because the students, we all created sort of a community and got to know each other better than we would in any normal classroom, so we became sort of like a family.”

“And I felt the same with the last experiential course we did when we did the canoes. We became a community and a family and everybody worked together and we all had roles to play. Maybe we weren’t all the strongest diggers so people would be out stripping bark or gathering more wood, we shared the work.”

One spinoff that came along out of this project as associated with UNBC turning 25 years old this coming year. “So they’ve contributed to the hiring of some of the students to be able to do university tours and bring people to the pit house and explain that as part of the university tour. So that created a little bit of light employment for students and they’ll of course need that for going to school.”

Pighin says “also for the Canada Winter Games, we were thinking of them too as we built this because as winter comes, we built a pit house that is predominantly used in the winter. During the summer First Nations people would be out doing their rounds and getting their berries and going to different locations within their territory. They would live in lighter structures than this, but in winter this is home, warmth, a central base for everybody.”

It was pointed out that there were many hurdles at the university and at City Hall which had to be overcome to get the project completed. A building permit had to be obtained and the group was told it would have to get a structural engineer.   Simon Yew came forward, looked at a rudimentary drawing and knew that people have been living in these pit houses for 10-thousand years and thought it was kind of a “weird thing” to have a structural engineer involved. In any event, he stamped the corresponding paperwork and allowed the project to move forward.

Pit houses are used as winter dwellings by many indigenous peoples around the world. Pighin says “the question everybody asks is, “are you building more?” You’ve got to ask the right people. I don’t know, I sure hope so.”