In the 1880s, as Stanley Park was being established, Natives used sites all over the peninsula for a variety of uses and there were at least seven Native settlements in the park area, the biggest being Xwayxway (Whai-Whai)—near Lumberman’s Arch where eleven families lived:
You know the Lumberman’s Arch (Whoi-Whoi) in Stanley Park. Well, the big house was about 200 feet long, and 60 feet wide…. That was the “real” pow-wow house. The name of it was “Stah-hay”; no meaning, just name, and six families lived in it.
Then to the west of it, was a smaller house, about 24 by 16 feet deep; one family lived in that, and on the extreme west was another pow-wow house—it was measured once—and I think the measurement was 94 feet front by about 40 feet deep; the front was about 20 feet high; the back was about 12 feet. Here two families lived. All these houses stood in a row above the beach, facing the water; all were cedar slabs and big posts; all built by the Indians long ago.11
The settlement was razed for Park Road. The eagerness to create the park meant that communities and homes were just in the way. Road workers chopped away part of an occupied Native house that was impeding the surveyors at the village of Chaythoos near Prospect Point. City of Vancouver historian J.S. Matthews interviewed August Jack Khatsahlano, who was a child in the house at the time.
“We was inside this house when the surveyors come along and they chop the corner of our house when we was eating inside,” Khatsahlano said in that 1934 conversation at city hall.
“We all get up and go outside see what was the matter. My sister Louise, she was only one talk a little English; she goes out ask whiteman what’s he doing that for. The man say, ‘We’re surveying the road.’
“My sister ask him, ‘Whose road? Is it whiteman’s?’
“Whiteman says, ‘Someday you’ll find good road around, it’s going around.’ Of course whiteman did not say park; they did not call it park then.” 12
Most of the Native inhabitants at Chaythoos left and went to live on the reserve at Kitsilano Point, which was later transferred by the province into the posession of the federal government and eventually sold.13
It’s not entirely true to say that Vancouver’s colonialist effort has attempted to erase Native peoples from this territory, but we want only very specific, very limited renditions of Native life to remain. There is now, for example, a tasteful little brass plaque at the site where the Chaytoos settlement once stood.
Some of the most iconic symbols of Stanley Park are the totem poles, which are prominently profiled in endless tourist publications and grace the cover of books and thousands of postcards. The Brockton Point totems are now the “most visited tourist attraction in all of British Columbia”14 and are intended to symbolize and “honor” the area’s indigenous population. But the Coast Salish did not traditionally carve totems and the poles that now inhabit the park were imported from all over the Northwest Coast, brought in from Alert Bay, Haida Gwai’i, Skeena River, and elsewhere.
The poles are a replacement for what was originally planned as a full-scale “Indian Village” tourist attraction, which was proposed to be built by the Vancouver Arts, Historical and Scientific Society who presented a plan to the Park Board.
They proposed a “model Indian village” that would “suitably house and preserve historic relics and curios relating to the Indians.” The idea was to purchase “some old, deserted village,” transplant it to the proposed site, and reassemble it there. The Board gave vigorous assent to the proposal.15
The plan was also to transplant some Native folks who would “make permanent quarters there, carrying on their Native life.”16 The Society then began purchasing totem poles from various parts of British Columbia and erecting them in the park. In 1925, the Squamish Indian Council objected to the whole plan because neither the planned “village” nor the poles had much to do with local Native culture or peoples. The Society, concerned about controversy, quickly turned the whole project over to the Park Board who reluctantly abandoned the village project, but the totems stayed.
The Park Board has just now been taking some first steps to ameliorate this weird situation. In June of 2008, Susan Point, an excellent and renowned Musqueum artist, installed three traditional House Posts—often called portals or gateways—titled People Amongst the People, that now sit alongside the existing totems and are the Coast Salish people’s welcome to visitors of Stanley Park. At the opening ceremony, Larry Grant welcomed people to the unceded land of the Halkomelem-speaking people. “We are finally being acknowledged as the Salish people of this territory. The rain you see coming down is very much like the tears of our ancestors who inhabited this land many years ago prior to the city making this into a park.”17 I spoke to Susan about six months after the installation:
I was granted the commission in May 2005. It took over two and a half years to complete these three “gateway” sculptures, and I have to say that this project was the most challenging of all projects I’ve done and encountered as a Coast Salish artist over the last three decades. I wanted to ensure that the end result would make my people proud. It’s something that I hope will always be recognized and appreciated for what it is: Coast Salish art. When my artwork is located in public spaces, it is my hope that the artwork will both reaffirm the Salish “footprint” upon the land, and most importantly, that it will speak to the viewer in a universal language.
These art pieces are a gift to our grandchildren, from my elder’s teachings and their ancestors that taught them. I am only the messenger and I did my best. I only hope that I did justice to the legacy of my ancestors. I wanted to honor them, and to create artwork which represented both traditional and contemporary Coast Salish art, reflecting our past and the living culture of our people.
Telling more honest stories about Stanley Park’s past also suggests something about what it might look like in the future. To get some ideas I went and talked to Cease Whyss who is a local artist, herbalist, and healer.
There was a village at Whai Whai which is now Lumberman’s Arch. That whole flatland area of the park was where people lived and people would take canoes back and forth from the village in North Van where I’m from, Eslahan, across from Crab Park. Now my mother lives at Homalchasin which is right across from Stanley Park. It’s really easy to see how easily our ancestors would travel back forth.
Many of my relatives lived at Coal Harbour and at Whai Whai and I feel that sense when I go to Stanley Park: I feel like I have had a centuries-old dialogue with the landscape there. My earliest memories as a child are of going to the park at Whai Whai and because my aunts and uncles knew it used to be a village site we’d have huge picnics there, practically every week, hanging out with all my cousins.
I think the visibility of our people there is really important. Every time I meet down there with young people or groups who want to learn about the plants, I always get out my drum and sing a song from a relative who lived there. No matter what other people are doing, I am going to stand there and drum. That’s my inherent right and they can deal with it. I’ve never had a complaint, but people really do stop. It’s a dialogue, an intervention in a public space,