Essays on the Coast Salish – Edited by Bruce Granville Miller – UBC Press (Chapter 4)
To Honour Our Ancestors
We Become Visible Again
Raymond (Rocky) Wilson
Our ancestry is Hul’qumi’num and comes down from the Lamalchi people, a tribe with village sites on the east coast of Vancouver Island and on the lower Fraser River at Hwlitsum, also known as Canoe Pass. Our oral histories tell us that the way of life of the Lamalchi people, the way they survived, was based on what some call a “seasonal cycle,” where the people gain their sustenance starting in the spring of the year at the mouth of the Fraser River. In the Lamalchi case, our people would fish for eulachon, spring salmon, and those types of fish as well as pick berries and plants at Hwlitsum and further up the river.
As spring turned into summer, the main sustenance of our people would always be the sockeye salmon. The sockeye salmon was caught and preserved, and our people, because they would catch a lot of salmon for their year-round purposes, would sometimes not return to Lamalchi Bay but would stay year-round on the Fraser River. There were many large village sites all along the banks of the Fraser, a river properly named the “Ka-way-chin” prior to contact with the newcomers. As summer turned to fall and the fishing progressed, the later runs of salmon would come in – the coho salmon and the dog salmon. Some of the people would move back to Lamalchi Bay and finish out the yearly gathering of sustenance in and around their winter village. Our people would also hunt for various animals, including deer and elk. From the late fall until early spring, our people would engage in winter ceremonies, where they would potlatch with their fellow tribes and conduct winter dances and rituals and move around and visit other Coast Salish people. It is important to note that, besides the winter ceremonies and dances, the Coast Salish network would engage in tribal and intertribal marriages. It was customary for the spouses of our people to be chosen by their parents. Marriages were arranged to protect important ownership rights (which were spiritual in essence) and warrior alliances. The linguistic groups consist of Hul’qumi’num (spoken by the Cowichan, Penelakut, Chemainus, Lyackson, Halalt, Lake Cowichan, and Hwlitsum/ Lamalchi tribes) and Hun’qumi’num (spoken by the Musqueam, Tsawwassen, Coquitlam, Katzie, and Kwantlen tribes). There is also the Upriver Halq’emey’lem, spoken by Sto:lo people. There are dialectical differences within these larger linguistic groups. The Island Hul’qumi’num dialect, the Downriver Hun’qumi’num, and the Upriver Halq’emey’lem are similar, but noticeably different in each individual group. All of these groups form part of what is known as the Halkomelem network and, together, make up the Coast Salish peoples.
That is the summary of the way of life of our people prior to the disruption of their lives brought about by the white man. This history has been passed down from generation to generation and was told to me by my father, Andrew John Wilson, who was born in 1899.
As far as our own personal history goes, a story about territory and protocol that has been passed down to me is important with regard to understanding the plight of the Hwlitsum/Lamalchi people. At the time of (and prior to) European contact, there were intertribal wars between the different nations along the coast, including, among others, the Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, and Yukwilhta. Language was very important in determining who was your friend and who was your enemy. The story says that Lamakhi warriors would approach an enemy canoe and speak to its occupants in the Hul’qumi’nwn language. If the canoe’s occupants did not answer, they would be harshly dealt with and kept from travelling in Hul’qumi’num waters. Our people still had these protocols in place after European contact and even after the colonial regime was set up.
The main turning point in our history came in 1863, when our village at Lamalchi was shelled by a British gunboat called the Forward. The incident stemmed from the reported murder of two newcomers, white settlers from Mayne Island, which is part of Lamalchi Hul’qumi’num territory. I would suggest that the newcomers breached First Nations protocol and that that is what led to these killings. Our people, the Lamalchi people, were ostracized for this act of violence: chiefs were hanged and villages vacated because of threats of retaliation on the part of the BC colonial government. Our people suffered from this tragedy, and descendants of our warriors were held in contempt. Since that time the whites have deemed us to be savages and murderers. We, however, view our ancestors as freedom fighters. In our eyes they were protecting their land and resources from being encroached upon by invaders, just as they did in the intertribal wars prior to and during the early stages of European contact.
From a social perspective, the Hwlitsum/Lamalchi intermarried with other Coast Salish peoples. Although there was no clan system among the Coast Salish peoples, there were arranged marriages within the different tribes throughout the Coast Salish network. For example, my greatgreat-grandfather Culuxtun (missionary name, Jim Wilson) had maternal ties with the Lummi, and he married a Lummi woman from what is now Washington State. This was before the Treaty of Washington resulted in international boundaries that carved up First Nations territories without our knowledge, never mind our consent. Our connections evolved and developed overtime, and we still have a very close connection to the Lummi Nation (my grand-uncle also married a Lummi woman) because they are our family. My grandfather married a woman from Musqueam and my great-grandmother is Musqueam, so we obviously have very close ties with our relatives there. My mother’s people are from Katzie, and my great grandmother is Tuliqviye, Sarah Pierre. Tuliqviye’s brother, Xa’xzultun’, Peter Pierre, was a famous spiritual leader in the Coast Salish world.
I am saying this to affirm that the Coast Salish network was, and is, very strong. The reality is that, prior to European contact, the Coast Salish people owned all of their territory. The land was given to them by the Creator to have stewardship over. The sense of ownership was different from that held by newcomers, and conflicts with the Canadian government have arisen as a result of these conflicting understandings. The newcomers’ notion of fee simple ownership and individual property rights was not present in the Coast Salish worldview and communities shared some territories. The existence of shared territories has become a problem in treaty negotiations because the government has required that land claims not overlap.
What is important is that we maintain our integrity as Coast Salish people. It is our culture and identity; it is who we are. It is also important that our community be recognized by the Crown so that we can have a voice in the important “rights” issues of our people, from the specific to the generic. We can then consider ourselves made “whole” again. By achieving this end, we will honour our ancestors, knowing that they lived and died for their beliefs.
The Department of Indian Affairs (DIA), in its wisdom, amalgamated the Penelakut and Lamalchi bands shortly after the Indian Act, 1876, was implemented in British Columbia. Epidemics of contagious diseases, mainly smallpox, combined with the aforementioned tragic events surrounding the shelling of Lamalchi Bay (an example of “gunboat diplomacy”), led to the depopulation of our community and probably contributed to the merger of the two tribes. My great-great-grandfather Culuxtun and his brother Culamunthut (missionary name, Charlie Wilson) were important Native spiritual healers, sometimes referred to as Indian doctors. Culamunthut became a subchief, and my great-grandfather Kuts-kana (John Andrew Wilson) became a constable (counsellor) for the newly formed band, representing Lamalchi interests. In 1904, Culamunthut was murdered by a Penelakut man. My grand-uncle’s inability, as a spiritual healer, to cope with smallpox and tuberculosis (plus an ever-present land dispute) led to his demise. This family tragedy caused a rift between the recently merged tribes. In 1884, the cultural genocide of our people was continued with Indian Act amendments that banned, among other things, the potlatch, the spirit dance, and our language. In 1894, the act was amended again, this time to allow for residential/industrial schools for Indian children. Failure to comply with section 137 by refusing or neglecting to send children to these schools resulted in punishment for the parents or guardians. This punishment could consist of a fine and/or imprisonment. My father and his siblings were sent to the Kuper Island Residential School. Our oral histories tell us that the children at these schools were sexually and physically abused. In 1912, there was an incident involving my father’s brother. This incident created enough havoc to have our families’ children removed from the school. The children were sent to be near the other side of our family, the Lummi, and entered the Tulalip Residential School. When they came back from their stay at Tulalip, which was not a pleasant one, my father and some of his siblings lived on the Musqueam reserve until 1927, when they left because of a dispute (probably over land and maternal rights). The struggle continued for the descendants of the Lamalchi warriors, who were living in a rapidly changing world, where Christianity had displaced the great spiritual healers and where assimilation had displaced the traditional way of life.
In 1927, the Indian Act was amended yet again. This time the iron fist of assimilation would tighten its nasty grip on our people. Indian people were denied their ancestral rights and were now forbidden to hire non-Native legal help to advance their rights. The penalty for assisting Indian people with their rights grievances was a fine and/or prison time, as specified in section 141. In 1951, the Indian Act was amended once more. In the post Second World War era, human rights were becoming a global concern. The infamous section 141, a large part of the iron fist, was not repealed: it just sort of went away. It would take a number of years to organize a movement that would focus on recognizing our rights from a legal perspective. Our people were dehumanized through the Indian Act, forced to live under horrible social and economic conditions.
My father joined my grandfather, Henry Wilson, and great-grandfather, John Andrew Wilson, who had maintained residence at and around our ancestral village sites at Hwlitsum. Although never deemed “reserve” land, it was our families’ home. However, with no legal recourse (due to the strict Indian Act amendments), my father told me that they sort of “melted into the system.” Yet, through these troubled times, my father and the rest of the family remained strong leaders and supporters of the Native Brotherhood and its Ladies Auxiliary. This organization was started in 1931 by commercial fishers and continued the ideals of the Allied Tribes of British Columbia, an earlier group that had been devoted to land claims and that, in 1927, had been prohibited by the aforementioned amendments to the Indian Act.
In 1985, after the 1982 repatriation of the Constitution Act, a window of opportunity presented itself through the DIA registration program embodied in Bill C-31. We started to pursue our rights to be registered under section 6 of the new Indian Act and to regain our position in the Coast Salish community. It seemed that this shouldn’t be much of a problem and should occur within a very short period of time. We were wrong: it turned out to be a very slow, incremental process. During that time we were a commercial fishing family. We were occupied with our business, with raising our families, and did not have the academic knowledge to pursue the actions that we needed to take. In 1996, after repeated letters had gone back and forth between us and the DIA – protests, appeals, and so on – we decided that we had exhausted every avenue. We decided to file a statement of claim in the courts against the registrar of the DIA. We stated our position very clearly. In the lower court in Victoria, the judge sent a message to the registrar to deal with this matter in a “timely fashion” because; it appeared to him that it had gone on for too long. The “timely fashion” never ·materialized, and more and more letters went back and forth. So back to court we went, and, in 1999, we went to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The Supreme Court judge decided, after all these years, that the registrar had erred in her decision, and again she was ordered to review the issues and the situation. In April 2000, the registrar, in her wisdom, decided, upon doing her research, that yes, indeed, our ancestral status as Lamalchi/Penelakut/Hwlitsum people did exist. She ruled that we were indeed full members of the Coast Salish community.
At that point there were approximately 225 “status” Lamalchi/Hwlitsum members who were eligible to rejoin the Coast Salish network of communities. Some of the children were not eligible under the provisions of section 6 of the Indian Act, so, counting spouses and children, our membership was in the vicinity of four hundred people. We were still invisible, in a sense, because we didn’t have band status or a reserve base. We continued with our mission to honour our ancestors, who, as my father said, were very visible at one – time a large, powerful tribe in the Coast Salish world. Through the disruption of our way of life, the impact of the white man, and early government malfeasance (in the form of failed systems and policies), we were rendered invisible. Our quest now is to become visible again.
We persisted. We applied to the then Indian affairs minister Robert Nault for our band status as Lamalchi/Hwlitsum people. The application was filed on 1 May 2000, and that process is still ongoing. It is indeed a slow-moving process, but since that time we have also applied to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for the., right to fish for food as well as for ceremonial and social purposes. We were denied in 2001, so again, after exhausting every possible avenue, back to the court system we went, this time to the Federal Court of Appeal. Although we didn’t actually win the court case, in the year 2003 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans called us into its office. It informed us that it had looked very closely at all of our records and had decided that, yes indeed, in some capacity we were entitled to fish for social, food, and ceremonial purposes. We were given an allocation of five thousand sockeye in 2003, which we successfully caught. Along the way we have worked with the Squamish Nation and have supplied fish for the Penelakut First Nation, our brothers and sisters through history.
In 2003, we held social meetings with the elders of the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group (HTG). After initial negotiations with the chief negotiator of the HTG, Robert Morales, we met with the elders and chiefs of the communities. They all came into our community, and we provided a salmon feast and a tour of their ancient homelands on the lower Fraser River. On 16 January 2004, we were asked to meet with the elders advisory board, a committee of the HTG. This committee was made up of powerful community elders, ex-chiefs, and ex-counsellors, and I was deeply honoured to be in their presence. The elders unanimously passed a motion to accept us into the HTG. On 5 October 2004, the six chiefs of the HTG, who comprised the board of directors, also unanimously passed a motion to accept us into the HTG.
It is still a complex situation, with the HGT now in Stage Four of the six stage BC Treaty Process. They are almost set to move into the Agreement in Principle stage. In July 2004, we received a letter from the BC Treaty Commission stating that it would supply us with money through the HTG, which is ultimately responsible for funding. On 25 July 2005, a resolution was passed by the HTG board of directors accepting us into the group, pending completion of the Terms of Union. The big question still to be resolved is whether we come in as an independent seventh member or as part of the Penelakut. We are still working through this sensitive issue. We have been meeting with the BC Treaty Commission for a number of years, and it does agree that we have a right to treaty as ancestral First Nations people. This is another step in a long process.
We fully believe that we are going to attain our place at the treaty table. The bottom line for us is that, in doing this, we will be honouring our ancestors and becoming visible again.