Tsleil-Waututh Nation's History, Culture and Aboriginal Interests in Eastern Burrard Inlet prepared by Jesse Morin for Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP (Gowlings) on behalf of Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Published May 25, 2015, public version, 477 pages (twnsacredtrust.ca/trans-mountain-assessment-report/).
Tucked away at the tail end of the Tsleil-Waututh's Trans Mountain Assessment Report online is a compendium of research that serves as nothing less than a primer for all things Tsleil-Waututh.
Through no fault of their own the word 'Tsleil-Waututh' has often been absent from official documentation for much of recorded history in the post-colonial era. They've been called Squamish, Musqueam, Burrard and other ancillary names but up until recent decades have rarely been identified by who they actually are. Jesse Morin's Expert Report, Tsleil-Waututh Nation's History, Culture and Aboriginal Interests in Eastern Burrard Inlet, commissioned by the Gowlings law firm as part of the fight against the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal, goes a long way towards correcting this oversight with statistics and maps backing up the encyclopedic tour of the Tsleil-Waututh's world.
Morin has been involved with the First Nations culture for quite some time, says Tsleil-Waututh Nation coun. Charlene Aleck. "Jesse's done quite a few reports on the Burrard Inlet and he's been working with us since the '90s. His report discovers and rediscovers a lot of the areas we inhabited many years ago and along with that he's followed our oral histories. A lot of the stories were fitting into the places that he was researching up along Indian Arm and Indian River. Going up the arm with us and linking village sites to some of our stories. They were shared through the traditional-use study we did in the '90s and that led to the writing of this report. A lot of that oral history - that's us - we've had our culture handed down orally but through the process with the NEB (National Energy Board) we had to write it down."
Early on in the landmark study Morin states, "after a superficial reading of the available literature, including major works on the Coast Salish (e.g., Barnett 1955; Suttles 1951), one could wrongly conclude that eastern Burrard Inlet had no permanent inhabitants in the early contact era." And then he spends the next 400-plus pages showing why this is not the case.
Archaeological research suggests that the Tsleil-Waututh have lived in their present location and the surrounding area for at least three millennia. At one time, prior to contact in the late 18th century and before smallpox decimated up to 90 percent of the population, the First Nations tribe numbered in the thousands in seven to 14 villages situated along Burrard Inlet, up Indian Arm and Indian River.
Through intensive and regular resource harvesting the Pacific Northwest supported some of the largest indigenous populations in the pre-contact Americas. The Tsleil-Waututh in particular had ready access to abundant supplies in their own area and were also part of a larger Coast Salish network. Morin says in his report that they "made use of all aspects of their territory and the Fraser River by harvesting resources in the vicinity of their villages, called a foraging radius, and by relocating to other villages or temporary camps as part of a seasonal round ... resource harvesting sites allowed Tsleil-Waututh people to sequentially make full use of the extent of their territory from mountain top to open ocean." The People of the Inlet shared a language, Downriver Halkomelem, with their resource partners the Musqueam, Tsawwassen, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, Kwikwetlem and Katzie. Exogamous marriage customs further bound the groups together with familial ties.
"Our family in Tsleil-waututh has a creation story that is unique from our Musqueam relatives but we hold a tight kinship and connection," says Aleck. "Our traditional tongue was very similar to the Musqueam dialect. My late-great grandfather had a seasonal longhouse at the mouth of the Fraser River and our family in Musqueam had a longhouse at the mouth of Indian River, which is at the head of Burrard Inlet."
They lived and worked in tandem for centuries. "I still remember the stories about my grandfather and his brothers building a lean-to up Indian River," says Aleck. "My mom was just little but she was looking after her little brother, Leonard George, and she said our relatives from Squamish and Musqueam would come and fish and collect clams. It was that type of abundance that we always shared."
Kinship with the Squamish goes back to pre-colonial times. "We have worked together and inter-married for many generations," says Aleck. "Tsleil-Waututh is part of the Coast Salish peoples and traditionally most Salish peoples spoke two or three languages. For our family we have a lineage and history of speaking Squamish, too."
At one point in the modern era Halkomelem was close to dying out but there are now thousands of people currently studying one of its three dialects.
"My grandpa (Chief Dan George) used to tell me we had our own language," Aleck says. "My uncles and my aunties used to talk Squamish because our grandmothers were Squamish. My mom still does and my dad is Halkomelem-speaking from up the Fraser Valley near Chilliwack. With our language revitalization I find myself swapping back and forth knowing in my head that was what was taught to me when I was little. The Halkomelem that I'm learning now is a little bit different again."
Researcher Wayne Suttles makes almost no distinction in his writing between the Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam cultures. In otherwise authoritative works, such as the Coast Salish Essays (1987) and the Musqueam Reference Grammar (2004), Suttles goes into great detail about cultural practices without ever once mentioning the name Tsleil-Waututh even though he is writing about them. The groups were so close-knit they could seem one and the same to the outside observer.
"In our language there's no translation (between brother and sister and close cousins)," says Aleck. "So my grandfather's brother that married into the Musqueam didn't have a distinction between brother's kids and cousin's kids. I would say, 'How is she my auntie when she is over in Musqueam?' and it would be because she was related through my grandfather's brother. There was no distinction made and I know that draws a lot of confusion. In Western culture you have first cousin, second cousin, third cousin - ours is just our younger brother, older brother.
"I also remember my mom telling me that my grandfather Henry Jack had five villages that we always stayed at moving around Stanley Park. I can see how that could be confusing to the outside eye that these people are here and there and they are all together." The basis for much of Morin's research draws on the oral histories that the Tsleil-Waututh have shared over the centuries. Aleck was very small when she listened to her grandfather tell his stories but her Uncle Len has a similar knack as an orator.
"He would tell you about Tsleil-Waututh going into the land and hunting and a simple story like that had so much cultural meaning and teachings about the land and appreciation about who we are. I remember him saying something about how many houses were on either side of the inlet and it would take you days and days to get up there. Now I know what he meant: you'd stop and stay with relatives a couple of days and travel on and then you'd stop again - just having that knowledge of an action put into a story of the place of where we are is so rich in meaning."
In the 1920s the Tsleil-Waututh rejected political proposals to amalgamate with other groups which for all intents and purposes would have erased their identity. Divisive Western notions of government were not appropriate or appreciated by the First Nations.
"My descendants said, 'We have lived up and down the inlet since time out of mind,'" says Aleck. "'We are small (we were down to something like 300 members at the time) but we are Tsleil-Waututh.'"
John Goodman Top 10 Reads
1. Tsleil-Waututh Nation's History, Culture and Aboriginal Interests in Eastern Burrard Inlet prepared by Jesse Morin for Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP (Gowlings) on behalf of Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
(Not actually a book but essential reading nonetheless. Access online at twnsacredtrust.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Morin-Expert-Report-PUBLIC-VERSION-sm.pdf).
2. Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind by Josh Karp
(Fantastic read about the making of Welles' final film which has yet to be released. Research includes source material from Robert Aiken's article "Citizen Welles" first published in the North Shore News in 1999. Aiken lived in L.A. at the time and worked on the film with his buddy Gary Graver).
3. The Other Paris by Luc Sante
(The flâneurs of Paris bohemia (Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord) inform Sante's reading of the city's underground history).
4. The World Before Us by Aislinn Hunter
(North Vancouver writer's tour-de-force novel rolls out like a gothic film made in the shadows).
5. Girl at War by Sara Novic
(The before and after of a collapsing world).
6. Stanley Kubrick: New Perspectives edited by Tatjana Ljujic, Peter Krämer, and RIchard Daniels
(Collection of essays spanning filmmaker's career with access to the Kubrick Archives in London).
7. Dust Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting by Eilon Paz
(The vinyl obsession).
8. Destruction was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the 20th Century by Jed Rasula
(Dada in context).
9. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (A French connection in revolutionary times).
10. 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded by Jon Savage
(Brilliant prequel to England's Dreaming).
