From the Nanaimo News Bulletin: Land transferred to Snuneymuxw. Snuneymuxw First Nation received 877 hectares of land on Mount Benson as part of a reconciliation agreement announced Wednesday at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre. The agreement, announced by Ida Chong, aboriginal relations and reconciliation minister, between the province and the Snuneymuxw is designed to bring [...]
From the Snuneymuxw First Nation: Snuneymuxw First Nation Launches Planning for an Interpretive and Cultural Centre on Newcastle Island. The Snuneymuxw First Nation has launched a planning process for the eventual development of an Interpretive and Cultural Centre on Newcastle Island. It is expected that within the next six months a comprehensive plan for the [...]
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If you’re interested in the history of First Nations peoples, you’ll want to read this Globe and Mail article: When did the first people arrive in the Americas? It takes only a few minutes for Daryl Fedje and Quentin Mackie to go back in time more than 50 centuries. (Does the name Quentin Mackie ring [...]
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First Nations are losing their patience on treaties, reports Robert Barron in the Daily News. The part about the Snuneymuxw is at the end of the article: Much of the Snuneymuxw’s traditional territory is increasingly in private hands and developed, which makes it harder for governments to acquire traditional lands that would be part of [...]
There aren’t many events in Nanaimo that tempt me to take the ferry into town, but this Snuneymuxw event is one. From the Daily News: The Snuneymuxw First Nation is hosting an Aboriginal Day celebration at Swy-a-Lana Lagoon, adjacent to Maffeo-Sutton Park in Nanaimo on Thursday. The celebration takes place from noon to 5:30 p.m. [...]
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Not about Gabriola petroglyphs, but interesting nonetheless. From The Tyee: The Joy of Giving Back. For many years, I squinted at murky black and white photographs taken in 1926 showing a great petroglyph-covered rock as it was hauled away from the Fraser River somewhere in the interior. I despaired that we would ever know the [...]
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Here’s a reminder of what life was like on our coast before Europeans arrived: Cooking in a Bentwood Box. Prior to the trade of steel cookware on the Pacific Northwest, the Native Americans prepared many foods in wooden cooking boxes. Instead of putting the box on a heat source, red hot rocks were placed inside [...]
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If you’re interested in native plants, First Nations’ traditional diets, and health, this article is for you. From Indigenous Reporting: Uprooting diabetes: Riceroot grows again. Leigh Joseph squats down in the marshy estuary toward a grey, lifeless stem poking out of the grass. In the distance, the cliff-face of the Stawamus Chief, an iconic granite [...]
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Skunk cabbages (swamp lanterns) are in bloom all over Gabriola right now. Have you ever thought of eating them for dinner? I’ve mentioned that they’re edible, if you prepare them properly so that they don’t hurt your mouth. Here’s an account from a Washington State blogger who harvested and ate skunk cabbage: I have been [...]
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Feel like going into Nanaimo on Tuesday April 3rd? Here’s what will be happening that evening: 6:30 p.m. Snuneymuxw Chief Doug White will be discussing the Douglas Treaty of 1854 at the Nanaimo Harbourfront Library, 90 Commercial St. Prior to his discussion the Snuneymuxw dancers will perform in Diana Krall Square and then dance up [...]
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Every once in a while, Iain Lawrence’s blog comes to life again. I always notice; Iain’s writing is worth noticing. Tonight you should go look at his most recent blog post, The Fallen.
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From the Daily News: Snuneymuxw chief worried about effect of Enbridge Gateway pipeline. Snuneymuxw First Nation chief Doug White fears for the First Nations and other people along B.C.’s coast if the proposed Enbridge Gateway pipeline proceeds.(…) White said the possibility of a dramatic increase of an activity in the area that could have devastating [...]
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Did you know that there’s an official manual published by the BC government, explaining how to identify and describe culturally modified trees? (If you’re not sure what those are, see Gabriolan’s past post on the subject, Gabriola’s culturally modified trees.) You can download the guide (as a honking big pdf of more than 38 megs, [...]
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The University of York has published an article about the dog hair the Coast Salish used in weaving: Researchers from the University of York have produced the first clear evidence that textiles made by the indigenous population of the Pacific coast of North America contained dog hair. In recent years, scientists have hotly debated whether [...]
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It would be hard to ignore the presence of herring on Gabriola beaches, especially when the herring spawn. Now here’s an article on that important little fish from The Tyee: Behold! The Mighty Herring! It’s all about the herring, an anthropological researcher named Iain McKechnie said to me at a dinner party about a year [...]
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A while ago I came across the term diseases of civilization: those diseases that were not present in aboriginal populations before the arrival of European settlers and the introduction of European foods like flour and sugar. That got me thinking about the traditional diet of BC’s coastal First Nations — a diet that included fish [...]
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Gabriola Island is part of the Snuneymuxw First Nation‘s traditional territory; so is Nanaimo. And in Nanaimo, the Snuneymuxw news today is what some geocachers found. A group of geocachers found more than they were searching for on the weekend. Nanaimo RCMP confirmed Monday that a group of people on an afternoon geocaching foray discovered [...]
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Remember when you bought your Gabriola property, and your realtor or lawyer insisted on an archaeological record search? (Oh, what is the correct term for it?) The idea is that, before you buy land, you check to make sure that there’s no archaeological site on that land. Because if there is such a site on [...]
