Indigenous Languages

The rich storytelling traditions of Salish-speaking peoples in the Pacific Northwest of North America are showcased in this anthology of story, legend, song, and oratory. From the Bitterroot Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, Salish-speaking communities such as the Bella Coola, Shuswap, Tillamook, Quinault, Colville-Okanagan, Coeur d'Alene, and Flathead have always been guided and inspired by the stories of previous generations. Many of the most influential and powerful of those tales appear in this volume.

This dissertation is about the history of my people, the Secwépemc. I treat the concept of history here as more than a chronological ordering of events in the lives of our people; my purpose is to construe the sense of history, or historical consciousness, of my people as it emerged during the last 10,000 years.

These poems, stories, and personal and journalistic essays penned by students, academics, and professional writers emanate from several university courses and were compiled to mark the tenth anniversary of the Institute’s partnership with Simon Fraser University. The inclusion of black and white photos and such historical documents as “The Laurier Memorial”, a letter sent in 1910 to Sir Wilfrid Laurier by area chiefs, add an important dimension to the collection.

Early in their ethnographic work, Randy Bouchard and Dorothy Kennedy were privileged to meet Charlie Mack. Born on the Mount Currie Reserve in 1899, he was a fascinating character and a font of wisdom, exemplifying by his way of life, his skills in trapping and canoe-making, and his knowledge of the history of his people, the living world of the Lil’wat, which the young ethnologists were able to record on tape and in their notes and photographs. Most important among what Charlie Mack gave them was a wide corpus of stories; he was a master storyteller, holding his listeners spellbound with his animated and dramatic delivery in both Lil’wat and English.

Collected in this book are the personal life histories of four female St’at’imc elders: Beverley Frank, Gertrude Ned, Laura Thevarge, and Rose Agnes Whitley. These elders are among the last remaining fluent speakers of St’at’imcets, a severely imperilled Northern Interior Salish language, also known as Lillooet and spoken in the southwest interior of British Columbia. Their stories are presented in the original St’at’imcets as well as in English translation. A morpheme-by-morpheme gloss is provided for the purposes of linguistic analysis. These texts are among the longest oral narratives of the Salish language to be grammatically analyzed.

Early hunter/gatherer societies have traditionally been considered basically egalitarian in nature. This assumption, however, has been challenged by contemporary archaeological and anthropological research,which has demonstrated that many of these societies had complex social,economic, and political structures. This volume considers two British Columbia Native communities -- the Lillooet and Shuswap communities of Fountain and Pavilion - and traces their development into complexsocieties

The Musqueam peoples' territory includes much of the Fraser Delta and the city of Vancouver. Halkomelem, one of the twenty-three languages that belong to the Salish Family, is spoken in three distinct forms: Upriver, by the Stó:lo' of the Fraser Valley; Downriver, of which Musqueam is the only surviving representative; and Island, spoken by the Nanaimo and Cowichan of Vancouver Island. Suttles, an anthropologist, worked with elders, eliciting traditional stories, personal narratives, and ethnographic accounts. The grammar covers phonology, morphology, and syntax, illustrated by numerous sentences selected for their cultural relevance that provide insight into traditional practices, social relations, and sense of humour.

Spectacular imagery adorns this fascinating anthology of the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations stories and legends.

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