The Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv people of British Columbia have long spoken of a time when most of Canada was entombed beneath glaciers, and their ancestors fished and foraged along the coastline that formed a thin green margin between open ocean and impenetrable ice.

Now an archaeological dig has unearthed physical evidence of ancient human presence: 29 footprints pressed into the shoreline of Calvert Island, part of the First Nations’ traditional territory. The prints represent at least three people — perhaps two adults and a child — and they date back more than 13,000 years, to the end of the last ice age.

“Just to know that it’s a place that our ancestors previously walked and now here we still are today, it’s really powerful for us,” said William Housty, a member of the Heiltsuk Nation.