Hul’qumi’num First Nations have always known that the colonial government made solemn promises to negotiate treaties with them and that these promises were broken. They have not forgotten the time when the Royal Navy bombarded their villages, took hostages and prisoners, tortured and hanged them—and the reason why. As Emily Rice recalls:
Mom was saying they attacked Kuper. Took the ladies away. Killed the men and the kids. They were just trying to get rid of the Indians so they could take their land.
Details are few—eradicated by generations of exposure to the residential school system which separated many young people from their elders and the natural flow of oral history. The colonial war of 1863 was also a “civil war” that pitted family against family, and people can be reluctant to talk about such conflicts for fear of renewing old feuds. “It’s best not to talk about it,” an elder said. “It brings back bad feelings.” Others recall with pride how a lone rifleman “held off the gunboat” at Lamalcha when the Forward attacked the village.
Land claims by First Nations have been an ongoing issue in British Columbia since colonial times but their origins and issues are not well understood by the majority of people in the province. On Salt Spring Island, the largest of the Gulf Islands, there is a belief persistent among the Hwunitum population that the island was only used occasionally by Hul’qumi’num First Nations, as if such limited use diminished their ownership. This myth, invented by the first Hwunitum settlers to justify their own claims to the land, reflected a Hwunitum point of view that hunter-gatherer societies represented an idle, wandering way of life when in fact the exploitation of seasonal resources owned by specific families were essential parts of the Hwulmuhw economy. Permanent settlements fluctuated over time, but there were few parts of Salt Spring Island that were not owned by a Hwulmuhw family, be they from Saanich, Cowichan, Halalt, Lamalcha, Penelakut or Lyacksen. As Roy Edwards explains:
Salt Spring Island was used by many different peoples because it was so full of food there. Ducks, black ducks, plants, oysters, clams. It was quite rich. It had all the food that the Indians wanted.
The land and the resources it provided were extremely valuable, and it was its loss that impoverished the people of the land.
Chapter One
Tthu tumuhw ‘i’ tthu Hwulmuhw ‘i’ tthu Hwunitum (The Land, the People of the Land, and the Hungry People)
Our interests are guided by the teachings of the elders. They have passed down a system of land tenure that emphasizes stewardship and harmony with the earth. The land and its resources are a gift from the Creator and therefore our traditional lands have a special and distinct place in our cultural, spiritual and economic well-being. The environment we lived in meant that we guarded our territory with our lives. The first traders who came to participate in our economy were there at our pleasure and had to conform to the environment we lived in for survival. Hul’qumi’num had and maintained a vibrant economy and a culture that was the bond to the land and the resources. This era in our history had little poverty, as the land supplied every element of our needs.
—Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, LANDS,
Opening Statement, March 30, 1998 1
The east coast of Vancouver Island is a rolling forested plain that narrows towards the south where the mountainous spine of the great island edges towards the sea, and two rivers, the Cowichan and Chemainus, drain the ancient forests through valleys and fertile deltas. Offshore, a maze of smaller islands forms a seemingly impassable wall along the Gulf of Georgia—the inland sea which separates Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands from the distant mountains of the continental mainland.
A rain shadow cast by the Olympic Peninsula provides the east coast of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands with a distinctive climate characterized by mild, wet winters and long, cool summers. Natural resources of the sea and land abound although they pale in comparison with those of a century ago. Throughout the year, intertidal shorelines harbour numerous species of shellfish. In winter, ducks by the thousands once flocked to wetlands and natural harbours. On the land, deer and elk flourished in the forests and meadows, which were filled with many species of edible and medicinal plants. In spring, the myriad herring spawn in sheltered waters, attracting chinook salmon followed by stellar sealions and human beings in search of them all. The cycle culminates each summer with the great migration of sockeye salmon to the Fraser River and the return of the chum salmon to the creeks and rivers of Vancouver island.
But it was not always so. In the shwi’em’ (time of the ancient stories) when the world was made “there was nothing on it—just ground and water.” 2
Then Heel’s, the Changer, “came down to the world to finish things … he went about fixing things, making lakes and rivers, and all things that grow, and then he made animals and all things like that.” 3 Heel’s dropped the first people from the sky to populate the land. A man named Syalutsa’ landed on a grassy field called Tsuqwulu on the southwest side of the mountain Swuqus overlooking the Cowichan Valley. 4 A little further north Stutsun fell from the sky and landed on the mountain Skwaakwnus above the Chemainus River. 5 Other people came out of the land itself. At Penelakut on Kuper Island two great cedar logs lay by the shore. Warmed by the rays of the sun, the bark on one of the logs cracked and out came the first man on the island. Within a short time he was joined by the first woman, who emerged from the sand between the two logs. 6 Syalutsa’, Stutsun, and the others who landed atop the mountains and hills of Vancouver Island or emerged from the driftwood and sands of Kuper Island are the ancestors of the Hul’qumi’num First Nations. 7
Heel’s created the resources used by the first people and introduced the snuw’uy’ul (the cultural teachings), which governed all manner of conduct and interaction with the spiritual and physical realm, including the use of specific places and resources by specific families. As Cowichan elder Angus Smith explains:
Where you dropped is where you belong … Particular areas were peculiar to certain groups or families, where our ancestors were dropped on earth. They were carrying the cultural teachings … Several peoples would go up the Cowichan River to the lake gathering their food. They knew where food was available. They gathered elk, deer and trout at the lake. Each place was designated to them. The cultural teachings were shown them, instructing them what was good for their life. It was showing the first people what they could use. It was only from the Elders; they would decide as they would go up to the Lake area. That’s the way it was with our ancestors; that’s why the Cowichan people carry this tradition. All the places have names. 8
Hwulmuhw place-names describe “either what grows there, or how the land was shaped, or what had happened to the land form.” 9 To give but a few examples: Hwaaqwum (merganser duck place) is the ancient name for Burgoyne Bay on Salt Spring Island and described the valued food resource found there at a certain time of the year; Prevost Island is called Hwes’hwum (place having hair seals), named for the seals sought for meat, oil and skins; Stsath (halibut) was the name given Long Harbour on Salt Spring Island to indicate the fish found there; and, at the north end of the same island, Pqunup (white ground) described