Using ancient DNA to infer impacts of European colonization on first nations populations in coastal British Columbia, Canada

• Main Author: Owings, Amanda C.
• Other Authors: Malhi, Ripan S., Heath, Katy D., Ambrose, Stanley H., Paige, Ken N.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: archeo; hist; Canada; British Columbia; The ''Y''; Rupert; Prince Rupert; Metlakatla; Prince Rupert Harbour; First Nations; tlingit; Tsimshian; Tsimshian*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105220

More than 270 individuals from about the last 6000 years have been unearthed from the Prince Rupert Harbour (PRH) archaeological sites in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Their descendants, the Coast Tsimshian, still reside in BC and partnered with the Malhi lab to explore their population history and the genetic effects of colonization on BC First Nations populations. In this dissertation, I sequenced the hypervariable segment (HVS1) of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of 61 ancient PRH individuals and compared them to the descendant groups, the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation and Metlakatla First Nation. For context, I also compared the PRH individuals to the Nisga’a First Nation, the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, and the Splatsin First Nation. There were haplotypes shared between these ancient and present-day individuals, and with the exception of the Metlakatla, genetic diversity in the present-day populations was less than that of the ancient population. This suggests a detrimental effect of European colonization, which would be expected given several factors including the spread of diseases by Europeans, forced migrations, and the stress of colonization. Additionally, the PRH population is not only related to these present-day coastal BC First Nations groups, but also to Alaskan Haida and Tlingit Indigenous groups as well. The Y-chromosome population history was also explored using high-resolution Y-STR data sets and SNPs. No STR haplotypes were shared between any present-day and ancient population, and the majority of present-day Y-chromosome haplogroups belong to those commonly found today in European populations. Since the mtDNA of present-day individuals exhibited a very low frequency of haplogroups commonly found in Europe, this indicates a sex-biased effect of colonization where the majority of the Indigenous Y-chromosome variation appears to have been replaced with European Y-chromosome variation. Since the whole mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) provides more information than the HVS1, I sequenced the ...