Hwlitsum
The Hwlitsum or Hwlitsum First Nation is one of the groups in the province of British Columbia that are not recognized as Indian tribes by the Canadian government . They are closely related to the Penelakut and culturally belong to the coastal Salish . The Hwlitsum go back to the Lamalchi.
history
The Lamalchi villages were on the Fraser River , the most important villages were on Hwlitsum (Canoe Pass), Lamalchi (Kuper Island), Saltspring Island and Galiano Island . Many of them now live on the Fraser River and Lake Coquitlam, as well as on Pitt Lake.
On April 20, 1863, the gunboat HMS Forward attacked the Lamalchi village on Penelakut Island (then Kuper Island). The captain believed he found the murderers of three Europeans there, but the Lamalchi successfully defended themselves and drove the boat away, a process known as the Lamalchi affair . This defeat was followed by one of the greatest military operations in British Columbia's history . In the end, four Indians were executed in Victoria , and the land on which the Lamalchi village had stood was confiscated.
In his report of February 15, 1877, the Indian Commissioner responsible Malcom Gilbert Sproat described his visit to Penelakut Island. He counted 17 members of the "Kivil-la-malth-sa sub-tribe", ie the Lamalchi. Only three men of the tribe had survived the following smallpox epidemic.
The Indian authorities united the Penelakut and the few Lamalchi into one tribe. From 1894 onwards, their children had to attend the Kuper Island Residential School under threat of imprisonment and fines against their parents, where they were alienated from their culture as part of an assimilation process and were no longer allowed to use their language.
But in 1904 and 1912 a dispute arose between the forcibly united, as a result of which some children had to attend the Tulalip Residential School across the border with the USA. There they were closer to relatives under the Lummi .
The Lamalchi / Hwlitsum band has been fighting for recognition for decades and has been a member of the Hul'qumi'num group since July 2005, even if it is still not recognized as a tribe under the Indian Act . This group includes the Chemainus , Cowichan , Halalt , Lake Cowichan , Lyackson and Penelakut tribes . It is also in the second of the six stages of the treaty process with the province, the so-called BC Treaty Process .
They are affected by the restrictions on fishing not only with regard to their subsistence economy, but also for cultural and health reasons.
literature
- Edmund Hope Verney, Allan Pritchard: Vancouver Island letters of Edmund Hope Verney 1862–65 , University of British Columbia Press 1996.
- Raymond (Rocky) Wilson: To Honor Our Ancestors. We become Visible Again , in: Bruce Granville Miller (ed.): Be of Good Mind: Essays on the Coast Salish , University of British Columbia Press 2007, pp. 131-137.