Gabriolan.ca » First Nations

Cooking in a bentwood box

Gabriolan — Thu, 10 May 2012 05:18:48 +0000

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 of the cooking box to cook food. As you can imagine, some knowledge and specialized equipment are needed to safely heat cooking rocks and build a cooking box that doesn’t leak. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Uprooting diabetes: riceroot grows again

Gabriolan — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:14:33 +0000

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 dome, stands witness as Joseph digs around the base of the plant. She pulls out a clump of sandy bulblets clustered together like thick white scales and holds it up.

This is it, she says. She loosens the bulblets and scatters them into freshly-tilled earth behind her, taking care to ensure that each tiny piece is covered.

These riceroot bulbs once fed the members of the Squamish Nation and other Aboriginal groups all along the northern Pacific Rim. They are known as Lhásem in the language of Joseph’s father, a hereditary chief of the Squamish Nation. Joseph, a University of Victoria grad student hopes the plant — nearly lost from the Squamish collective memory — will catch on as a healthy alternative to starches imported by Europeans. She believes riceroot can help to reduce the obesity and diabetes that burden this Aboriginal community with disabilities and early death. [continue]

Do we have Fritiallaria camschatcensis on Gabriola? I know we have a related plant, Fritiallaria lanceolata, which is also sometimes called rice root, according to some of the sources I found online. (See this Fritillaria lanceolata page at the Washington Native Plant Society website.)

Anyway, back to the health aspect of the story. If you’re interested in that, check out the My big fat diet post from last summer. That story starts with Dr Jay Wortman: how he lost weight and reversed diabetes by switching to a diet that resembles a traditional First Nations diet. And then he got a whole community to switch to a similar diet, with striking results.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Eating skunk cabbages

Gabriolan — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:12:05 +0000

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 curious about the edibility of this plant ever since 1994 when my friend Owen fed me some Skunk Cabbage roots that badly burned my tongue and left me with sores for a week. I learned the hard way that raw Skunk Cabbage is NOT edible. However, Erna Gunther wrote in Ethnobotany of Western WA that the Skokomish steamed and ate the young leaves and the Quinault roasted the white part of the [leaf] stalks. The Quileute and Chinook also ate the roots (although I am inclined to believe that the white leaf stalks, which extend through the soil for several inches, may have been mistaken by ethnographers for the roots). (…)

I have experimented with both steaming and boiling the leaf stalks and found that boiling does a better job of rendering the stalks harmless. All parts of Skunk Cabbage contain long crystals of calcium oxalate called raphide that painfully embed in mucous tissues. Boiling cannot destroy raphides but it may fix the crystals into a starch matrix that prevent the sharp points from damaging our soft tissues. Leslie Haskin wrote in her 1934 publication, Wild Flowers of the Pacific, that Native Americans in Western Washington cooked Skunk Cabbage roots with hemlock cambium and it is interesting to speculate if the starchy cambium provided additional substrate for binding raphides. Another matter of speculatation is that raphides are most concentrated in the perennial roots and least concentrated in the new leaf growth, which may explain why the young leaf shoots were traditionally eaten. After boiling for about ½ hour in two changes of water, I only noticed a slight tingle on the sides of my tongue. The leaves have a mild flavor and substantial quality that is very similar to cabbage. [continue]

See? Now you know what vegetable to have with your steak tonight. See you in the swamp!

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Snuneymuxw Chief to discuss the Douglas Treaty of 1854

Gabriolan — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:27:08 +0000

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 to the mezzanine level of the library to start off the discussion. For information, call Quinn Fletcher 250-753-1154.

Source: this list of upcoming events in the Nanaimo Daily News.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The Fallen

Gabriolan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:18:00 +0000

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.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Snuneymuxw chief worried about Enbridge Gateway pipeline

Gabriolan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:51:58 +0000

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 environmental consequences is a serious concern for everyone connected to the coast, including the Snuneymuxw.[continue]

Is there anybody who lives on the coast who isn’t worried about this? I haven’t met anybody on Gabriola who thinks the pipeline is a great idea, but maybe I just don’t get out enough.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Culturally modified trees

Anon E. Mouse — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:20:30 +0000

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, or in eight slightly more manageable chunks) at http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/mr/mr091.htm, or go to the same site to find out how to get a hard copy.

When I found this I thought, I bet there’s a database somewhere. And there is. The locations, descriptions, etc. of the trees are included in the Provincial Heritage Register (.pdf).

But sadly, we can’t just go and look at a map of Gabriola and see where modified trees have been reported. As they say on the site,

Archaeological site information is sensitive as releasing this information into the public domain may result in looting and destruction of a site.

Therefore, the Archaeology Branch releases information on a need to know basis…where it can be shown that distribution of the records will benefit the management or conservation of these sites.

Okay, I get that.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Dog hair used in Coast Salish weaving

Gabriolan — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 05:25:44 +0000

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 textiles such as blankets and robes made by the skilful Coast Salish weavers before contact with Europeans were made of dog hair as oral histories have claimed.

Coast Salish oral tradition refers to a special dog which was bred locally until the mid 19th century for its woolly hair or fleece for use in the textile industry.

Yes, the little wooly dog. I blogged about Snuneymuxw dogs a couple of years ago.

Using highly sensitive equipment at the University’s Centre for Excellence in Mass Spectrometry, York researchers from BioArCh (Departments of Biology, Archaeology and Chemistry) analysed the protein composition of 11 textiles in different locations, representing 25 samples in total.

The samples were taken from artefacts in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of the American Indian collections and included blankets, a sash and a robe of fur. Some of the textiles were collected during the American expeditions to the West Coast, including the Lewis and Clark (1803-1806) and Wilkes (1838-1842) expeditions. The samples dated mainly from early to mid 19th century.

Researchers found evidence of dog hair in the robe of fur and six of the woven textiles, primarily in a blend with goat hair.

However, the results published in the journal Antiquity, show there is no real proof of a preference for dog hair in high status fabrics and the researchers did not find any textiles made entirely of dog hair. Instead, researchers conclude that dog hair appears to have been used to supplement mountain goat hair, possibly as a bulking material. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Behold! The Mighty Herring!

Gabriolan — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:41:05 +0000

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 and a half ago.

I scoffed. Herring?

Like most fish-swilling West Coasties, I was a devotee of salmon, British Columbia’s iconic wildlife symbol. I was there every year for the running of the salmon, at whichever spawning stream was handy. I consulted my wallet-sized card and bought the salmon approved by Ocean Wise. I ate salmon grilled, baked, cured and smoked. I was even embarking on a book about the relationship between people and salmon.

Why should I care about the herring, that little silver bulldog of a fish that didn’t have the grace to die after spawning? Sure, it had high Omega-3s like salmon, but really! Herring?

Little did I know that I was about to enter the opposing camp, the herring camp. For McKechnie was only the first of a growing crowd of researchers, environmentalists and First Nations activists who wanted me to shut-up, already, about the damn salmon. What was emerging from the scientific record, they said, was a past world much richer, more diverse, and decidedly less salmon-centric than most people suspected — a world that had something to teach us about living in balance. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

My Big Fat Diet

Gabriolan — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:17:40 +0000

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 and seafood, lots of fat (like oolichan grease), and berries. A few other things, too, of course, but it was a protein-and-fat type of diet.

Most First Nations people don’t follow that traditional diet anymore. And now, among First Nations communities, there are problems with obesity, diabetes, and related diseases.

Reading up on these matters led me to a fascinating story.

Dr Jay Wortman is a Métis physician who made some surprising discoveries when he changed his own diet. He set up My Big, Fat Diet: a one year study in Alert Bay with the Namgis First Nation. Study participants switched to a diet that resembles their traditional diet for a year. The video about the community’s experience is described as:

Supersize Me meets Northern Exposure in My Big, Fat Diet when the Namgis First Nation of Alert Bay gives up sugar and junk food, returning to a traditional style of eating for a year to fight obesity and diabetes. (…)

Directed by Mary Bissell, My Big, Fat Diet chronicles how the Namgis First Nation goes cold turkey and gives up sugar and junk food for a year in a diet study sponsored by Health Canada and the University of British Columbia. Through the stories of six people, it documents a medical and cultural experiment that may be the first of its kind in North America.

My Big Fat Diet, like Super Size Me, looks at the problem of obesity, through the eyes of a man who straddles two cultures, Western and First Nations. It also looks at the history and present-day status of traditional food gathering, and the link between individual health and that of the immediate environment. [continue]

There’s more at CBC’s My Big, Fat Diet page, and in the My Big Fat Diet FAQ at Jay Wortman’s blog. Youtube has the introduction to the My Big Fat Diet video, and My Big Fat Diet: Challenge from the Chief.

Want to watch the whole one-hour show? The Gabriola Library has a copy of the My Big, Fat Diet video.

What if it’s all been a big fat lie? (Award-winning science journalist Gary Taubes says that the diet advice most of us have grown up hearing is just plain wrong.)
Uprooting diabetes: Riceroot grows again (Could rice-root, part of the traditional native diet, be a healthy alternative to the starches introduced by Europeans?)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Snuneymuxw burial site found

Gabriolan — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:36:27 +0000

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 what appears to be a First Nation burial site. [continue]

There are (at least) several burial sites on Gabriola; I wonder how similar the Nanaimo one is to the ones here.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Archaeological site on your land? Uh-oh!

Gabriolan — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 19:11:40 +0000

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 property you buy, and that comes to light later, it could be a huge problem.

You probably wouldn’t want to find one of Gabriola’s petroglyphs under the moss in your back yard.

Here’s a story that illustrates what sort of problem can arise. From the Times Colonist: Oak Bay homeowner stuck with $600,000 archeology bill.

An Oak Bay woman who built a house on an unregistered aboriginal midden has had her bid to recoup $600,000 from the provincial Archeology Branch struck down.

[Source: sorry, Times Colonist article no longer available.]

Update: if you’re interested in this story, you must go see Willows Beach Site Controversy blog post at the Northwest Coast Archaeology blog.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Fish traps almost 1400 years old

Gabriolan — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:04:30 +0000

Here’s archeological news from a site not too far from Gabriola. From the Comox Valley Echo: Fish traps ‘almost 1400 years old’.

Some of the ancient fish traps in the Courtenay Estuary are way older than first imagined.

Radiocarbon dating of the remains of wooden stakes pounded in to the mud has revealed some date back almost 1400 years. (…)

Archaeologist Nancy Greene and her husband, geologist David McGee, have been investigating the mystery of the fish traps for years.

They estimate there are the remains of perhaps 150,000 stakes in the estuary, although many are not immediately obvious as the remnants are below the mud.

But at low tide, the remains of huge numbers are visible, and careful mapping of 14,000 of them using GPS equipment has exposed intricate patterns. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Rescuing native languages

Anon E. Mouse — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:10:38 +0000

Following on from some earlier conversations on this blog about disappearing languages (not just native ones), I recommend this article to those interested in learning more about the subject.

About BC’s native languages, the article says:

Carried out by the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council, a provincial agency that provides funding for language and cultural projects (and also advised Quebec’s Yawenda project), the survey found that of the 32 indigenous languages in B.C., three have no known living speakers. It also revealed that a meagre five percent of the 100,000 aboriginal people in B.C. are fluent in an ancestral tongue, and most of them are over 65.

Elsewhere in the article:

Reviving a dead language is a daunting task, says Louis-Jacques Dorais, an anthropologist at nearby Université Laval and the lead researcher in the project. But there is a lot of effort and desire among the Huron to make this project succeed.

Similar sentiments are driving several language revitalization projects in aboriginal communities across Canada, and a small but growing number of academics from various fields are playing major roles in many of them. At stake, experts say, is the fate of the 52 distinct indigenous languages that help to make Canada one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world.

The article gives what seems to me a good overview of a number of projects underway across the country.

I wish them all the best in their task.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Saved by Oregon Grape

Gabriolan — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 18:10:52 +0000

Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning is in the news again. That reminded me of this story from October 1888. It’s from the Gabriola Edition of the Nanaimo Free Press:

Charlie Peters, a Penelecut Indian, sworn, deposed:

"Last Friday, I and my klootchman, Tsameston, and another Indian eat a kettleful of mussels. When we had done so our fingers got numbed and the numbness spread up our arms. Our lips swelled, and our eyes became dizzy. We could hardly see. My klootchman and the other Indian was very ill.

I got some of this (producing a sprig of Oregon grape vine) and got them to chew some of the leaves and drink warm water. I did the same. We vomited the mussels and got all right again.

(If you’d like to read the whole story, see the Coroner’s Inquest article from October 17th, 1888. It’s on this Gabriola Museum page.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The Lekwungen summer of many years ago

Gabriolan — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:16:00 +0000

The Songhees Nation isn’t far from Gabriola, so many of their traditions were probably ones practiced on Gabriola, too. On their website you can read about the Lekwungen summer of many years ago:

This is a time when the bountiful crops of the year (including the sweet camas bulbs and clams) have been gathered from choice, often family owned sites, and are waiting to be properly prepared for winter.

The fall harvests for shellfish and chum salmon have already begun. Though before turning attention wholly to this work, the land will be fired to cleanse and clear it for winter’s sleep.

The broad scale fires are purposely lit near the water and allowed to burn toward the hills. The flames move rapidly consuming only the driest and finest of fuels, dancing in eddies behind oaks and crackling through the open, wind-swept prairies. The blackened earth captures the sun’s rays during the day and keeps the soil warm. Together with the fall rains, the underground world of roots, bulbs, and seeds begin to reallocate their reserves and renew their structures. The earth is reclaiming the impacts of intensive human efforts. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Archaeology students sift for Coast Salish relics

Gabriolan — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:31:11 +0000

Sidney Spit isn’t too far from Gabriola, and has a Coast Salish heritage similar to ours. So perhaps you’d like to read about archaeology students sifting for Coast Salish relics at Sidney Spit. From the Times Colonist:

Along a spit of sand on Sidney Island, archeologists are racing rising tides and the wear of the modern world to peer into the lives of Coast Salish people who built their homes there 1,500 years before the time of Socrates.

Late Wednesday morning, Erin Gregg shaved fine layers of black and tan soil from a square hole in the beach. The fourth-year University of Victoria student sat under a baking sun, her eyes fixed on the surface of the finger-length-deep excavation.

It took more than a day’s work to get this deep, to uncover what looks like a millenniums-old hearth. The painstaking work moves by millimetres to protect each ancient detail. (…)

What the team knows so far is that radio imaging has turned up the rectangular imprint of at least five longhouses that were built partially into the ground to stave off drafts for the 100 to 150 people they housed in this winter village.

Link found at Northwest Coast Archaeology, which is one of my very favourite blogs.

[Update: the article quoted above is no longer available on the newspaper's website, so I've removed the link to that article.]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Gabriola’s clam gardens

Gabriolan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:29:28 +0000

A year ago I blogged about clam gardens, and asked Were there clam gardens on Gabriola beaches? Now we have the answer: yes. From the Daily News: Ancient clam gardens a window on the past.

The Snuneymuxw First Nation hopes to conduct aerial surveys that could provide more insight on ancient clam gardens that have been uncovered in the region.

First Nations people all along the coast used these structures to harvest seafood more efficiently. These long mounds of rocks may not seem like much to the layman, but for ancient aboriginals, they were a vital resource in gathering food. The garden are fenced in with rings of rocks around the tide line to increase the intertidal area. This prevents sand from eroding away and creates a garden for such seafood to flourish.

Clam gardens on Gabriola Island near Gabriola Passage were discovered about a month ago, while other clam gardens were previously found in the Dodd Narrows area. However, archeologists suspect that there are far more along the Nanaimo coastline that haven’t been documented.

[The article quoted above is no longer available on the newspaper's website.]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Salish weaving

Anon E. Mouse — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 09:42:57 +0000

I came across this wiki on Salish weaving while looking for information on nettles. This is what the article had to say about their use of nettles:

Twine made from the bark of nettle stems was used extensively in the manufacture of items requiring strength through a firm, sturdy warp strand. Dried nettles were damped to make the bark sufficiently flexible, while the pith of the stem remained dry and brittle. By splitting the stem and rubbing it over a blunt edge, the bark would separate from the pith. This bark was then beaten and combed, or carded into a soft tissue which could be spun with the use of a spindle similar to the spinning of wool. Twine produced from nettle fiber was of great strength and utilized in the making of nets and fishing line, as well as for a warp in weaving.

Did you know the Salish weavers also made twine from milkweed fibre, and blankets from a mixture of milkweed fluff, dog hair, and wool from mountain goats? Such creative people, and I bet the objects they made from these materials were both beautiful and functional.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Protecting native plants

Gabriolan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:17:18 +0000

From Canadian Geographic: Protecting our natives.

For Cheryl Bryce, the month of June has become a time to interact closely with her ancestral lands. She spends many of her early summer days kneeling on cool black soil, surrounded by a picturesque carpet of wildflowers and shaded under a canopy of craggy Garry oak branches.

She uses her hands to pull the round bulb from the native purple lily and turns the soil over itself, replanting the loosened seeds for the following year’s harvest. The edible bulb of a camas plant resembles an onion but tastes like a potato, becoming sweeter as it cooks slowly in a traditional earth oven or over a modern stove.

As lands manager for the Songhees First Nations, an urban band in British Columbia, Bryce is encouraging a revitalization of traditional food-gathering practices and a return to relating more closely with the landscape. [continue]

(The Songhees First Nation are in the Victoria area, so not too far from Gabriola.)

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Fire for meadow management

Gabriolan — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:39:58 +0000

Did the Snuneymuxw use fire as a land management technique on Gabriola? I wonder about that when I read things like this Garry Oak meadows page:

Garry Oak meadows were once common throughout southeastern Vancouver Island. They take the form of open stands of stately gnarled oak trees, often carpeted with billowing drifts of wildflowers. This natural parkland enthralled European colonists, and in part led Sir James Douglas to choose Victoria Harbour as the main port for the new city, in 1843. What the Europeans may not have understood is that many of these meadows were not altogether natural. Rather, the Vancouver Island Coast Salish people deliberately managed the land and periodically used prescribed burning to keep the meadows clear of underbrush, so as to cultivate Camas. This beautiful blue wildflower grows from bulbs that provided a most important food staple rich in carbohydrates. Bulbs were cooked in large steaming pits and eaten soon after for feasts, or dried for trade or storage.

Prescribed fire was necessary to prevent the encroachment of shrubs and other large trees, in areas with deep soil. However, in sites with shallow soil, such as among rocky outcroppings, Garry Oak meadows can dominate without human assistance. Natural forest fires were also an important part of these ecosystems, as oak trees are resistant to damage by fire and the herbaceous plants quickly re-sprout in burned areas. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

The writing of Hul’q’umín’um’

John Hudson — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:28:57 +0000

[Let me begin by thanking Gabriolan for the invitation to contribute to this blog. I expect any future contributions will likely follow the model of this one: infrequent but fairly lengthy coverage of a specific topic related to some human cultural aspect of Gabriola and nearby areas. I claim no expertise in most of these topics: only curiosity, good research skills, and a healthy dose of dilettantism.]

The area comprising the lower mainland of British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon, and Vancouver Island, along with the islands of what is now called the Salish Sea, is one of the most linguistically diverse places on our planet. The various reasons for this might be discussed at another time, but for now consider the apparent conjunction of human ethnic and linguistic diversity with natural biodiversity. Compare the great diversity of animal and plant life—both on the land and in the sea—in this coastal rainforest region with the corresponding concentration of different native peoples and languages, and contrast with the relatively sparse distribution of both across the great prairies. This is dramatically illustrated in this map, which shows the distribution of native peoples in Canada, c.1823, categorised by linguistic family.

The Coast Salish peoples who live around the Salish Sea, and in-land from it, occupy a geographic region that straddles today’s international border. Coast Salish is primarily a linguistic identification, and the native languages of this region form a subgroup of Salishan (exceptionally, the Nuxalk people of Bella Coola are geographically and ethnographically Coast Salish but speak a distinct Salishan language closer to Interior Salish). There are more than fifty Coast Salish tribes or nations. Their languages are all related but in various ways distinct and not mutually intelligible.

The Snuneymuxw First Nation are reckoned to have lived along the east coast of central Vancouver Island for about five thousand years, and are now concentrated around the Nanaimo area, including a small reserve on Gabriola, near Degnen Bay. Their native language is Hul’q’umín’um’ (sometimes written Hul’q’umi’num’ or Hul’qumi’num), part of a language group with Halq’eméylem, spoken on the mainland in the upper reaches of the Fraser River near Harrison Lake, and Hǝn̓q̓ǝmin̓ǝm̓ (or Hun’qumi’num’), spoken around the mouth of the Fraser. Together, these dialects are sometimes known by the anglicised name Halkomelem. Like thousands of minority languages around the world, Halkomelem is considered close to extinction.

When I think about the extinction of languages, I’m reminded of two things. One is a statement by Rush Rhees, the Welsh philosopher and student of Wittgenstein, who wrote in his book Without Answers (1969), ‘We speak as others have spoken before us. And a sense of language is also a feeling for ways of living that have meant something.’

The other is a poem by John Burnside about the death of Tevfik Esenç, ‘the last man to speak Ubykh’, and the linguist Ole Stig Andersen who arrived just a few hours too late to record this lonely speaker’s words.

Traditional means of passing culture and language from one generation to the next tend to break down under the financial and social pressures of dominant regional cultures, modern media and imposed educational programmes. The residential school programme had a particularly devastating effect on the aboriginal languages of Canada. ‘Ways of living’ that have been sufficient to transmit and preserve language and literature in an oral medium over thousands of years are found to be fragile and capable of falling apart within just a couple of generations. In their place, writing provides one of the few means to safeguard the living legacy of language or, at least, to record how a particular group of people have thought about themselves and the world they inhabit. Along with sound recordings, writing is a key tool of language preservation and revitalisation.

Prior to European contact, none of the aboriginal languages of Canada were written, so all the alphabets and other writing systems now in use were later introductions, many devised by missionaries or by linguists. The history of some of these writing systems is fascinating and, despite in various ways being ‘imposed’ on the languages, they have often been wholeheartedly embraced by the speakers and become a distinctive aspect of their culture. The writing of aboriginal languages tends to be very systematic, with much more regular correspondence of symbols to sounds than has evolved in the long and messy history of written English. Some aboriginal writing systems, notably those developed in the 19th Century for Ojibwe, Cree and Inuktitut, represent complete syllables with individual signs, while others are alphabets, representing individual phonemes with letters or combinations of letters. The writing of Hul’q’umín’um’ is alphabetic, and is based on an extension of the Roman alphabet used to write English and other western and central European languages.

The image below shows the opening of passage from ‘Seagull steals the sun’, a Hul’q’umín’um’ story. This is set in typeface called Huronia, a pan-Canadian aboriginal font designed by my colleague Ross Mills.

Compared to many aboriginal orthographies, the writing of Hul’q’umín’um’ is typographically simple, using combinations of letters (digraphs, trigraphs, etc.) to indicate distinct sounds rather than diacritic letters. Contrast an example of a much more complex sign system, this piece of text in Hǝn̓q̓ǝmin̓ǝm̓.

A language is considered dead if it has no native speakers; that is, if people are not learning the language as their mother tongue. Some dead languages actually have quite large numbers of ‘users’, and may even be official languages in some capacities—the use of Latin in the Roman Catholic Church is an obvious example—, but none of those users have learned the dead language as their native tongue, as infants and young children. I would say that a language is truly extinct if it lacks even the social prestige, cultural significance or institutional recognition to support continuous study and the creation of new utterances, new statements in that language about those ‘ways of living that have meant something’. This is the fate of many of the world’s languages, known only, if at all, to a handful of specialised linguists who have made a study of them, and who may be more interested in the structural characteristics of languages—their phonology, morphology, syntax—than what they have to report of the human beings who once spoke them.

Can a language be rescued from the brink of extinction? Can a language be brought back from the dead? Demonstrably, yes. The most famous case of a dead language being resurrected is probably that of Hebrew: a long dead language of religion and study being brought back to life as one of the official and everyday languages of a modern state. In the UK, efforts are underway to revive Cornish, a Celtic language only recently dead and whose local cultural importance was suddenly felt by its absence. I grew up in south Wales, and have seen on visits over the past thirty years, how a long neglected language has gained rather than lost speakers through education programmes, bilingual sign laws, and other regional government action.

I don’t know enough about the circumstances of Hul’q’umín’um’ language use among the Snuneymuxw First Nation to comment on its likely future, whether it will become extinct with the death of its last, older native speakers, or will see a resurgence among younger people. In 2000, it was estimated that fewer than a dozen speakers of Halkomelem may be fluent, yet it remains culturally important as a language of ceremony. Like many other aboriginal groups around the world, the Snuneymuxw are making an effort to encourage use of their native language, including using the Internet to create online language courses, dictionaries and other tools. In these efforts, they are assisted by linguists and anthropoligists at local universities.

Links

Gulf of Georgia language map
Map showing distribution of aboriginal languages in the northern part of the Salish Sea; language names presented in native orthographies.

Halkomelem language
Better than average Wikipedia page about the language, including basic discussion of aspects of morphology, syntax, etc.

Hul’q’umi’num’—Hǝn̓q̓ǝmin̓ǝm̓—Halq’eméylem (Halkomelem)
Good introduction to Halkomelem orthographies, from the excellent Language Geek website.

Halkomelem
Basic introduction to Halkomelem language and dialects from the UBC Language Education Research Centre.

Visual dictionaries
Interactive visual introduction to some basic Hul’q’umín’um’ vocabulary. [Snuneymuxw First Nation website.]

Introduction to Hul’q’umi’num’
Beginner language learning materials, arranged in nine lessons with vocabulary and grammar.

Hul’qumi’num language revitalisation
Paper recording ‘themes, thoughts, and theories on strategic planning’ for language revitalisation. [University of Victoria and Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group.]

Bibliography of materials on the Halkomelem language
General bibliography of Halkomelem lniguistics.

Halkomelem links and references
Bibliographical information on books and journal articles relating to Halkomelem, usefully categorised by dialect and by subject.

Halkomelem educational materials
A bibliography of mostly print materials relating to Halkomelem vocabulary, phonic, etc.

Coast Salish bibliography
Extensive bibliography of Coast Salish language, culture, stories, etc.. Not organised by language or nation.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Herring roe and hemlock

Gabriolan — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:42:38 +0000

Did you see herring roe sparkling on seaweed last week? Did you watch Gabriola’s birds and wildlife feeding on the herring? If so, maybe you’ll be interested in the way First Nations people harvested herring roe.

Almost everywhere along the British Columbia coast where herring are known to spawn — from Coast Tsimshian territory in the north to the Nuu-chah-nulth territory on the coast of Vancouver Island, hemlock boughs, or sometimes entire trees, are immersed in the waters of inlets and river estuaries, or tied onto floating logs anchored close to the shore, to collect herring spawn, which was and still is a valued food. The herring spawning season is usually around April. Certain marine algae, such as giant kelp, eelgrass, and the boughs of some other evergreen trees, were also employed to collect the spawn, but hemlock was considered one of the best matrials because it has flexible, easily handled boughs and the needles impart a mild, pleasantly resinous flavour to the spawn. They are not actully eaten with the spawn, but the spawn was often cooked still attached to the needles and these were then removed by the people eating it. The spawn was also dried while attached to the boughs; today it is perserved by drying, salting, or freezing.

That’s from Traditional plant foods of Canadian indigenous peoples: nutrition, botany and use, by Harriet V. Kuhnlein and Nancy J. Turner.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Adams on Gabriola Petroglyphs

Gabriolan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:43:22 +0000

Those who love Gabriola petroglyphs had best head over to Northwest Coast Archaeology to read qmackie’s latest blog post: Adams on Gabriola Petroglyphs. It begins:

One recent M.A. thesis I was really looking forward to reading is by Amanda Adams entitled Visions cast on stone : a stylistic analysis of the petroglyphs of Gabriola Island, B.C., from UBC Anthropology 2003, and available for free download here.

I was particularly interested to read the instructions she received on proper deportment when visiting the rock art:

Sites were visited in a manner and with a personal code of conduct adhering to Snuneymuxw wishes. Petroglyph sites were not visited at either dawn or dusk. A respectful demeanor was expected as was an open heart and mind (Bill Seward, Snuneymuxw elder, personal communication 2002). I was asked to give my full attention to the petroglyphs and their sacredness, not allowing daily distractions to interfere with my concentration on the ancient imagery. These expectations were met to the best of my ability. (18-19)

While many archaeologists are under the impression that there is little to no ethnographic information about petroglyphs, I have long felt that more likely such knowledge is private or highly privileged and not readily shareable. In this self-serving sense, it was gratifying to see that Adams was able to record some such information: [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Petroglyph preview

Gabriolan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:16:35 +0000

Oh my, I’ve got lots more petroglyphs to show you! And other things too. No time tonight, though, but I thought I’d at least post a preview photo for you before going off to bed.

I’ll try to post more petroglyph photos soon, as well as blog entries for all the things I’ve been meaning to tell you or ask you.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Another Gabriola petroglyph

Gabriolan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:51:44 +0000

Here’s another one of Gabriola’s petroglyphs. What animal do you think it represents?

It looks like a cheery dog to me, and I know that the Snuneymuxw did keep dogs… so?

On the other hand, it’s not like I know much about Snuneymuxw rock art, so somebody else is bound to have a better answer.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

A revival of First Nations’ staple foods

Gabriolan — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:27:51 +0000

Here’s an article from The Tyee about a revival of First Nations’ staple foods. The article summary: Women are leading a revival of First Nations’ staple foods. To get lucky, you have to get mucky. I’ve never heard of wapato (it’s mentioned in the article) before — have you? But the article does mention a plant that grows on Gabriola: camas. Here’s part of what the article says about camas:

Among First Nations on southern Vancouver Island and throughout the U.S. Pacific Northwest, women traditionally cared for the camas fields. Harvested bulbs were steamed in pits between layers of plants like salal, skunk cabbage and ferns. The bulbs could also be dried, pounded into flour and mixed with other foods, such as black tree lichen.

The longer you cook it, the better it is and the sweeter it gets, explains Sinclair Philip of the Sooke Harbour House, where camas bulbs sometimes feature on the menu. Camas bulbs, like onions, contain inulin fibres, so that they sweeten with cooking but have a minimal impact on blood sugar levels. Pit cooking adds a smoked flavour, and is especially good if you add salal and fern. No matter what you do in the kitchen, you’ll never achieve the same results as with pit cooking.

Camas are found only in the extreme coastal southwest of the province and southern Columbia Valley. There are two varieties, each with pale to dark blue, star-shaped flowers: common camas (Camassia quamash), and the great camas (Camassia Leichtlinii), which is a deep-soil variety. Then there is the meadow death-camas, a lethally poisonous plant that is easy to tell from the others when in bloom — it has white, clustered flowers — but has bulbs virtually identical to those of edible camas. Harvesting is recommended only when the plants are in flower. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Northwest Coast Archaeology on Gabriola’s petroglyphs

Gabriolan — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:54:53 +0000

Recently I happened across a few posts about Gabriola on the Northwest Coast Archaeology blog. In this post about Gabriola petroglyphs the writer notes:

I must comment on the destructive practice of rubbing, not so much through cloth but the scraping of the lines to remove weathering patina and lichen in order to take clearer photographs. This is a very unfortunate practice which hastens the disintegration of the rock art. [continue]

Well, that’s good to know.

In another post, Petroglyphs are not lifestyle amenities, the writer has some strong things to say about the Legends of Spirit Rock development:

This is so crass I can’t even begin to express it. Desecrating one of the most significant rock art sites in the Province does not allow you to claim there is significant spiritual, healing energy of the First Nations history. Have you no shame, Legends at Spirit Rock developers? [read the whole post, and comments]

I like bloggers who express strong views (and righteous anger!) when they judge that to be appropriate. What a refreshing read.

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Snuneymuxw

Gabriolan — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:25:51 +0000

Gabriola is part of the traditional lands of the Snuneymuxw First Nation (Nanaimo Coast Salish), so I’m always interested when the Snuneymuxw are mentioned in the press. The most recent news article is this one from the Nanaimo Daily News. It quotes the new Snuneymuxw chief, Doug White:

White said Dec. 23 marks the 155th anniversary of the Snuneymuxw signing the Douglas Treaty, but many of the agreements, including guarantees of native governance rights and aboriginal title to lands, have never been adhered to, despite decades of negotiations.

The Snuneymuxw, the province and Ottawa have been unsuccessfully negotiating a final treaty for the band for years, with no substantial talks since 2003.

It’s important for the Crown and all Canadians to understand that the Snuneymuxw and all First Nations have real rights and they need to be recognized, White said from his new Nanaimo office on Wednesday.

We seem to be in a constant battle with the government and nothing meaningful has yet to develop, and that has led to deep frustrations among many First Nations, including the Snuneymuxw. [continue]

(From Gabriolan.ca.)

Rose hips

Gabriolan — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:13:38 +0000

On Gabriola, what can compare to rose hips for cheery winter colour?

Rose hips are useful as food, too. They’re very high in vitamin C, and can be used in all kinds of recipes.

Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples notes that the Vancouver Island Salish ate the outer rind of rose hips. Edible and Medicinal Plants of Canada points out that

The hips remain on the branches throughout winter, so they are available when most other fruits are gone. Hips can be eaten fresh or dried or used in tea, jam, jelly, syrup, and wine.

Almost every source I consulted has a warning about the seeds in the middle of rose hips. From Edible and Medicinal Plants of Canada:

The dry inner seeds (achenes) are not palatable, and their silver-like hairs can irritate the digestive tract and cause itchy bum. All members of the Rosa genus have cyanide-like compounds in their seeds that can be destroyed by drying or cooking.

Well. That’s good to know.

More about rose hips

Rose hip – Wikipedia
Rose-hip ‘remedy’ for arthritis – BBC
Rosehip ‘better than glucosamine’ for osteoarthritis – Telegraph
Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of native Rosa sp. from British Columbia, Canada – informahealthcare.com

(From Gabriolan.ca.)