Sliammon

Traditional Sliammon territory and major reserves

With Sliammon or Sliammon First Nation (also Tla'amin ) is a Canadian First Nation called, traditionally on both sides of the Strait of Georgia lives. It belongs to the Salish language family , culturally to the coastal Salish .

The tribe had exactly 970 state-recognized members in August 2009, of which 570 (a year earlier 601) lived within the reserve, 396 outside and 4 more in other reserves.

history

→ Main article : History of the coastal salish

Early history

The traditional area of ​​the Sliammon extends from the area near Stillwater and Texada Island northwards over Malaspina and Gilford Peninsula to the south of the Homfray Channel and partially Cortes Island. It covered a total of around 370 km². In this area they lived in about ten villages, plus many seasonal homes.

European contacts

According to oral tradition, 18 warriors of the Sliammon captured and sank a Spanish ship in the 1750s, but it has not yet been found in the mud. George Vancouver's people met the Sliammon on the coast of Harwood Island (Ah gyk'sen). Two other Spanish ships, the Sutil and the Mexicana are guaranteed. In 1838 the Beaver from the Hudson's Bay Company arrived at the Sliammon ("Tla'amin") in the north of Texada Island and sold muskets for furs.

Epidemics

George Vancouver estimated the population in Jervis Inlet at around 5,000 in the summer of 1780 . The total number of coastal Salish , estimated at 12,000 in 1835, had fallen to around 4,000 by 1915. They fell victim to epidemics such as smallpox , measles and flu.

Oblate Mission and the "Powell System"

The Sliammon were evangelized by the Oblates in the late 1860s, that is, by Father Eugène-Casimir Chirouse , who held services in Powell Lake and Grace Harbor. Thanks to his help, 400 Tulalip were vaccinated during the smallpox epidemic of 1862, and by August 1862 only three of them fell victim to the disease. On the other hand, in 1892, while serving the Snohomish Mission , he had an Indian girl flogged and was taken to court for it. In 1896 the first churches were built in Church House, Squirrel Cove and Sliammon. The Sliammon are induced to take Christian names. Few dared celebrate potlatches with their medicine men in Scuttle Bay .

By 1880 Indian Commissioner / Superintendent Israel W. Powell was also responsible for the Sliammon. As early as 1873, 2,775 acres of land acquired (lot 450) were given to RP Rithet, a close associate of Powell. The area stretches from today's Grief Point to Sliammon. With this, three permanently inhabited villages and numerous seasonal settlements were expropriated from the Sliammon. But the Sliammon resisted. By 1878 they were competing with the logging companies, and the Sliammon even confiscated logs that had been felled too close to their village.

In 1879 the Sliammon were given a tiny reserve of 20 hectares per family (Canadian average: 80). Commissioner Gilbert M. Sproat (since 1875) was attacked in 1880 for overly lavish land allocation, particularly by Powell. Powell was the Dominion Inspector of Indian Agents until 1889 - and Powell River still bears his name to this day. The previous year, on December 8th, the Sliammon had a meeting with Malcolm Gilbert Sproat of the Indian Reserve Commission two and a half kilometers from Harwood about the reservations, but were refused a reservation in their traditional area.

Forced Assimilation : Education and Schools

In 1903 the Sliammon asked for a school (Indian Boarding School) to be built, but it burned down in 1918. From 1920 residential schools were established with rigorous compulsory education. The children were distributed to St. Mary’s in Mission (1861–1984), Kamloops Indian Residential School (1890–1978) and St. Augustine's in Sechelt (1913–1975). They were not allowed to speak their mother tongue there and were supposed to be made Canadians - without any memory of their culture.

In 1960 only a third of the children were in public schools. The segregation policy in public institutions and means of transport also remained in use well into the 1960s.

Forced relocation, reservations, expropriations

As early as 1892, as a result of the Rivers and Streams Act , Arthur Milton of Vancouver received the right to remove obstacles on Powell Lake that were hindering his logging and other forestry activities. This probably meant the legacies of the Sliammon. The same thing happened to the artifacts on the Powell River when the Powell River Paper Co. was founded there in 1909 .

The McKenna-McBride Commission investigated the situation of the Indian reservations in 1912 and prepared far-reaching decisions. 1910–1915 the Sliammon were forcibly relocated to Indian Reserve 1 . They had to leave villages around Grief Point North, including Tees kwat (now the site of a sawmill) and other settlements in Lot 450. Some resisted the demolition of their homes in vain.

When the dam on the Powell River was built in 1912, numerous archaeological sites disappeared. This is especially true for the important place Tiskw'at . In September 1919, a major fire destroyed the Sliammon village and even endangered the Powell River.

Land was expropriated primarily from 1920 onwards for highways (such as the Lund Highway in 1927), telephone lines, sawmills, mining and logging - sometimes also for private roads, as in 1932 when 25 acres were expropriated for access to rancher John Wilde's farm .

The Sliammon, on the other hand, were not given any land rights, but were allowed to fish commercially from 1923. The joint fishing fleet of the Sliammon, Klahoose and Homalco comprised more than 100 boats before 1970.

Relatively late, namely from 1929 (in other places as early as 1875), the traditional chief system was replaced by an elected chief with advisory boards. The first chief elected was Tom Timothy (1929–1951). In the course of the 1940s, the Watchman system, which had been reinterpreted by the Church, disappeared, an original system of mediation and compensation that the Oblates had increasingly converted into a system of control and punishment.

Increasing self-determination

In 1949 all Indians were given the right to vote for the provincial parliament, in 1960 for the national parliament. From 1951, the Indian agent was increasingly ousted by the chief , especially Charles Peters (1951–54) and Jimmy Peters (1954–59). The Sliammon aimed at self-governance. Joseph Mitchell (1971–83) was particularly successful in this regard: in 1973 a new Band Office was established , in 1976 the Salish Center and a salmon farm . A construction campaign began in 1981, which resulted in around 190 new houses being built by 1996. In the 1990s, the first families dared to perform their traditional dances again (in public). In 1999 the Sliammon language was recognized as a second language in order to be able to start studying at universities.

The first stage of the treaty negotiations with British Columbia began on April 19, 1994, the second in 1996, but a first agreement in principle was rejected by the Indians in 2001 and a modified one was adopted in 2003. The right to vote for Indians not living on the reservation, which was permitted in 1999, first came into force in 2002 and brought the Sliammon 100 new voters.

In 2002, the City of Powell River built a coastal path that doubled as a nature trail. Initially, there was practically no evidence of relics of the Sliammon, on the contrary, several archaeological sites were damaged. Negotiations between the city and the Sliammon dragged on until 2004, as a result of which the city returned land for the first time on which an old Sliammon village called Tees Kwat had stood. In addition, the nature trail has been provided with explanations in the Sliammon language. Place names in Wildwood, Cranberry, Townsite and Westview were also given their Sliammon names, and a totem pole was built in Ajoomixw Park .

Documentation

Homer Barnett was the first anthropologist to study the Sliammon culture and language in the mid-1930s. He published his work The Coast Salish of British Columbia in 1955 .

Randy Bouchard and Dorothy Kennedy began their more than ten-year survey of the Elders of the Sliammon, Klahoose and Homalco in 1970. Their results led to the publication: "Sliammon Life, Sliammon Lands".

The Sliammon Treaty Society coordinator , Hew'kin (Joe) Mitchell, conducted numerous interviews with the Elders between 1970 and 1999 . Today, as part of the Sliammon Traditional Use Study, they are the basis for a GPS-based recording and mapping of the sites in their area that are important for the Sliammon. The preliminary map shows 17 villages alone, plus a large number of stone carvings and other historical sources.

Contract negotiations

In 2006 alone 57 First Nations were in contract negotiations with British Columbia and Canada. This is about contractual regulations within the traditional tribal areas. However, it is precisely these areas that often overlap, either because different rights were previously agreed in the areas concerned, or because of contentious cases. The Sliammon agreed on their claims with the Sechelt in 1995 , followed by the other neighbors, i.e. the Homalco , Klahoose , Comox (K'omoks), We Wai Kai , Wei Wai Kum and the Kwiakah First Nations. With the referendum of 2002 negotiations entered a new stage, with the Sliammon today being one of the tribes closest to a treaty.

The Naut'sa mawt Tribal Council (NmTC) represents the ten First Nations of Chemainus , Halalt , Homalco , Klahoose , Malahat , Nanoose , Sliammon, Snuneymuxw , Tsawwassen and Tsleil-Waututh .

The Kwuth Ta-ow Report (“Our Briefings ”), prepared by Melissa Louie in 2000, began the collection of historical information about the traditional system of rule that is now available to all tribal members. On June 26, 2004, the traditional villages of Teeskwat and Tla'amin were recognized along with various historically valuable sites (English heritage sites). Therefore a joint Culture and Heritage Committee will be set up.

At the end of 2004 a government-to-government relationship , a contractual agreement between two governments with equal rights, was concluded with the qathet Regional District . The city of Powell River recognized the Sliammon people as the original inhabitants of the country. The traditional territory was also recognized, as was the right to self-government. In return, the tribe recognized the rights of the city of Powell River as a British Columbia municipality . Walter Paul has been chief since 2004.

Reservations

The Sliammon live in six reserves, of which Sliammon 1 and Harwood Island 2 are by far the largest with 778.8 and 847.8 hectares, respectively. The former is located 2 km northwest of Powell River and is where most of the Sliammon live, while the latter is north of Texada Island. Toquana 4 (160.1 ha), Tokenatch 5 (21.4 ha) and Kahkaykay 6 (18.2 ha) are located on or near tributaries of Malaspina Inlet. Only Paukeanum 3 (80.9 ha) is no longer in the Westminster District , but in the Sayward District , more precisely on Cortes Island, on the west coast, north of Smelt Bay. The reserves cover a total of around 1927 hectares.

literature

• Homer Barnett: The Coast Salish of British Columbia , 1955
• Wayne Suttles (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Volume 7: Northwest Coast. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1990. ISBN 0-87474-187-4

Web links

• Website of the Tla'amin First Nation
• Naut'sa mawt Tribal Council
• The Powell River Community
• Sliammon contract , signed in 2014, ongoing evaluation, further negotiations are ongoing

See also

• History of the Coastal Salish
• History of British Columbia
• First Nations history
• List of Indian tribes recognized in Canada

Remarks

1. ↑ The church there burned down around 1900, but was rebuilt.
2. ↑ On the chiefs and the question of self-government cf. Sliammon Treaty Society. Governance - Political History ( Memento of the original dated November 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
3. ↑ See Laura K. Roddan: Sliammon First Nation Uses GIS to Map Traditional Values , in: Native Geography 2000 .
4. ↑ According to: Sliammon, Reserves ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .