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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 4/12/2021 7:42 PM via CAPILANO UNIVERSITY AN: 1288140 ; Charles R. Menzies.; People of the Saltwater : An Ethnography of Git Lax M'oon Account: s5672343

People of the Saltwater

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

P E O P L E O F T H E S A LT WAT E R

An Ethnography of Git lax m’oon

Charles R. Menzies

University of Nebraska Press · Lincoln and London

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

A portion of chapter 5 originally appeared as a part of a

longer essay, “The Indigenous Foundation of the Resource

Economy of BC’s North Coast,” Labour/Le Travail 61 (Spring):

131– 49. An earlier version of chapter 7 originally appeared

as “Dm sibilhaa’nm da laxyuubm gitxaała: Picking abalone

in gitxaała territory,” Human Organization 69, no. 3 (2010).

An earlier version of chapter 8 appeared as “The Disturbed

Environment: The Indigenous Cultivation of Salmon,” in

Keystone Nations: Indigenous Peoples and Salmon across the

North Pacific, edited by Benedict Colombi and James Brooks,

161– 82 (Santa Fe NM: School for Advanced Research).

All photographs in this volume are courtesy of the author.

of America

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Names: Menzies, Charles R., author.

Title: People of the saltwater: an ethnography of git lax

m’oon / Charles R. Menzies.

Other titles: People of the saltwater, an ethnography of

Gitxaala | Ethnography of git lax m’oon

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,

[2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016010580

ISBN 9780803288089 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 9780803291706 (pdf )

Subjects: LCSH: Tsimshian Indians— British Columbia—

Prince Rupert Forest Region. | Tsimshian Indians—

History. | Traditional fishing— British Columbia.

| Tsimshian Indians— Politics and government.

Classification: LCC E99.T8 .M45 2016

| DDC 971.1004/974128— dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016010580

Set in Charis by Rachel Gould.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

To the memory of Elizabeth Menzies née Gamble

and Annette Dell née Gamble: Tsimshian matriarchs

whose lives made an impact.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Introduction 1

Arriving Home 3

Organization of the Book 7

1. Git lax m’oon: Gitxaała and the Names

Anthropologists Have Given Us 11

What’s in a Name? 13

Writing Gitxaała 20

2. Smgigyet: Real People and Governance 27

Authority to Govern Rooted in Place 29

Governance: The Classical Model 34

Governance: In the Time of K’amksiwah 37

Continuity amid Change 45

3. Laxyuup: The Land and Ocean Territories of Gitxaała 47

Gitxaała Traditional Territories 47

Colonialism, Reserves, and Understanding the Laxyuup 49

The Land and Waters of the Gitxaała as Recorded

by Beynon in 1916 54

Experiencing a Gitxaała Social Landscape 59

Home 67

4. Adaawx: History and the Past 69

A Theory of History 69

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Three Stories of Oral History Research 74

Summary 84

5. Sihoon: Catching Fish 87

Respect and Gitxaała Fisheries 87

Gitxaała Fisheries in Historical Context 90

Trade and Gitxaała Fisheries 94

Gitxaała and the Contemporary Fishing Industry 97

6. Tskah, Xs’waanx: Herring, Herring Roe 107

Historical Utilization 108

Narrowing of Utilization 111

Contemporary Utilization 115

Summary 118

7. Bilhaa: Abalone 119

Bilhaa Harvesting, Processing, and Use 121

Adaawx, Ceremonial Practice, and Use of Bilhaa 122

Contemporary Academic Accounts 123

Contemporary Accounts of Long- standing Practice 124

Shutting Down the Fishery 127

Returning to a Sustainable Fishery 129

8. Hoon: Salmon 131

Fishing at K’moda 135

Streamscaping at Kxooyax 138

Kxenk’aa’wen (Place of Special Trap) 142

Laxyuup Gitxaała and the Cultivation of Salmon 146

Conclusion 151

Notes 155

References 161

Index 171

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Illustrations

Following page 86

PHOTOS

1. Visiting K’moda

2. Prince Rupert Harbor tour with Gitxaała

hereditary leadership

3. Gitxaała places and histories in the area

of Prince Rupert Harbor

4. Excavating hearth at Ks’waan

5. The author cleaning fish

MAPS

1. Gitxaała place- names

2. William Beynon’s 1916 map of Gitxaała

hunting territories

TABLE

1. Percent NISP of salmon, herring, and greenling

for nine Gitxaała villages 112

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

People of the Saltwater

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Introduction

Git lax m’oon— people of the saltwater— that’s who we are. We live on the

edge, in the extreme. We are the people of the saltwater. That’s who we are.

ELMER MOODY, 2008

Git lax m’oon, people of the saltwater, also known as Gitxaała, are an

ancient Indigenous people of the northwestern coast of North Ameri-

ca. The oral history of Gitxaała reach back to the time when ice cov-

ered the landscape and strange beings lived alongside humans. From

that time until the present Gitxaała have lived within our laxyuup (ter-

ritory) without interruption. We have welcomed newcomers, repulsed

invaders, and enjoyed the beautiful place that is our home.

Contemporary Lach Klan, the home village of Gitxaała, has been

continuously occupied for millennia, over ten thousand years accord-

ing to oral tradition, at least five thousand according to science. In the

past there were many other Gitxaała villages throughout our laxyuup.

However, the effects of colonialism, a significant population collapse

caused by the spread of foreign diseases brought by late eighteenth-

century European travelers, led us to gather our people together at

Lach Klan. Throughout our history Lach Klan has retained a special

significance as a culturally important gathering place, even while

Gitxaała lived spread throughout the laxyuup in many other villages.

This book tells one part of Gitxaała’s story. I make no claims to a de-

finitive account. My telling is steeped in my own memories and expe-

riences and rooted in interviews, conversations, and discussions with

other Gitxaała people. I also draw upon a rich archival record that

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

2 Introduction

documents the more recent story of Gitxaała over the past two centu-

ries. Ultimately this is my account of Gitxaała. Nonetheless it is also

an account that has been shaped by my family, friends, and colleagues.

No matter how individual a particular work is in its writing and con-

ception, what we produce as humans is ultimately a social product that

rests upon the goodwill, knowledge, and support of others.

While Gitxaała and this place have always been a part of my his-

tory and who I am, the formal research upon which this book is based

began in the late 1990s. I have always been intrigued by the develop-

ment of extractive resource industries such as fisheries and forestry.

This interest manifested in a series of projects documenting First Na-

tions’ involvement in forestry (Menzies and Butler 2001). As research

progressed, the focus shifted from a regional pan- Tsimshian perspec-

tive to a specific Gitxaała- based program. In 2001 a formal protocol

was adopted in a letter of intent from me and public affirmation from

Gitxaała through a series of luncheons and dinners (Menzies 2004).

The luncheons and dinners (hosted by me) are critical acts of acknowl-

edging community direction and input, taking advice, and returning

information and research products to community. While mail and elec-

tronic transfers of data might technically return information to com-

munity, it is only with the publicly witnessed act that one can say,

within a Gitxaała perspective, that one has done what one set out to

do and has fulfilled one’s intention to carry out respectful research.

The protocol essentially licensed my use of information gathered

through community- supported research and affirmed Gitxaała’s sov-

ereign rights over their own intellectual property. This is a living pro-

cess constantly reaffirmed, renegotiated, and enacted through a lifelong

process of public witnessing.

My late mother, Shirley Marie Menzies (née Naud), inspired in me

a thirst for stories about family and lives well lived. Though she was

not from Gitxaała, it was through her that I leaned to honor and value

my family and my family’s history. My great- aunt Annette (Nettie) Dell

(née Gamble) would talk about her father, Sm’ooygit Tsibassa (Edward

Gamble). Later my father would tell me more about the life of this

man. These three people— my mother, my aunt, and my father— shared

their memories with me in a way that has inspired my own search for

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Introduction 3

greater understanding of the history and place that I am from, laxyuup

Gitxaała on British Columbia’s north coast.

Marvin (Teddy) Gamble has been a like a brother and an uncle. Over

nearly two decades we drank gallons of coffee together as we talked

and joked. Our conversations have ranged from the mundane matters

of daily life to shared enthusiasm about our own family’s history. Lat-

er in this book I discuss more explicitly some of our shared experienc-

es and travels through laxyuup Gitxaała; for now I simply mention the

importance of friendship and family relations.

This journey has also been shaped by my cousin Merle Bolton (Ted-

dy’s sister) and her husband, Ernie Bolton. Each in their own way has

played an important role in this story. Merle has hosted me, and count-

less students, in her home over the years. Her advice and direction

have helped to clarify my perspective of my Gitxaała home. Ernie has

been a research associate and an uncle. We have worked together, gone

fishing once or twice, and had a lot of fun smoking fish in his sister Al-

berta’s smokehouse. Caroline Butler has been part of this research, first

as a student and now as an accomplished researcher in her own right.

Together Caroline, Ernie, and I have worked through many theoreti-

cal and methodological matters that underlie the account that follows.

These friendships and family relations give strength and depth to my

reflections on the world of Gitxaała. All of these people have, in their

own way, welcomed me home.

Arriving Home

The DeHavilland Beaver banks hard over. The pilot examines the wa-

ter below us before landing the small plane. I get my final aerial view

of Lach Klan, the village that many of my relatives live in, as the plane

touches down. Thirty miles to the southwest of Prince Rupert on Brit-

ish Columbia’s north coast, visitors could be forgiven for thinking this

is a remote and isolated place.

This is the first time that I have actually visited the village. Even

though I grew up on the north coast and spent much of my time on the

water working with my father on his commercial seine boat, I’ve nev-

er actually stepped ashore here. I have fished in the waters around

Lach Klan, but my knowledge of the village is what my family have

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

4 Introduction

told me. As I looked down from the floatplane I tried to imagine the

place as I had heard about it growing up: wooden boardwalks along

the shore, large plank houses, memorial poles, my grandfather’s store.

But from my vantage point in the air the village looks like almost any

other small coastal village: rows of houses, a cluster of what seem like

administrative buildings, and a small dock crowded with fishing boats

and small skiffs.

The purpose of this trip was to meet with the elected Band Council

and ask for their collaboration in a research project I was planning.

Ultimately more important to me, and to the subsequent work that I

have been doing with and on behalf of Gitxaała, was the introduction

to relatives, some of whom I had never met. The powerful thing about

coming home to Lach Klan was that even if I didn’t know who my peo-

ple were, they certainly seemed to know who I was.

My father tells a story of his mother’s funeral. He was twelve. He

stood beside his father in the receiving line. “I didn’t know I had so

many relatives,” he said. “They came up, spoke with my father, and

then would take my hand. They all seemed to know me. I had no idea

who they were.”

The sense of being known even if one doesn’t understand why or

how is a powerful part of Indigenous society, where one’s identity is

defined by relations and family. Like my father before me, I found that

my family in Lach Klan knew me.

Stepping from the plane onto the dock I wasn’t sure quite what to

do. Before I had much time to think a man named Vince Davis, whom

I later came to know, asked me if I was heading up to the school. “Okay,”

he said. “Meet me at the van.” Vince is one of a couple of informal taxi

services in the village. He knew to expect me and made sure to get me

to where I needed to go. From the moment he dropped me at the door

of a relative’s home the rest of my day was structured by a rapid- fire

series of visits and introductions to family members. While I vaguely

recall my meeting with the Band Council, I vividly remember each

meeting with family, especially the amazing oolichan dinner held at

Teddy Gamble’s house for me.

From this first visit in 1998 a productive stream of collaborative re-

search projects have developed, including the examination of First Na-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Introduction 5

tions involvement in forestry (Menzies and Butler 2001), selective

fishing gear (Menzies and Butler 2007), and traditional ecological

knowledge (Menzies 2006, 2010). This work has created opportunities

for students, colleagues, and community members and has expanded

to include archaeological research and documentary film production.

Throughout, this work has been linked by an overarching concern with

resource use, management, and harvesting. Out of all of this has

emerged the current book, which locates Gitxaała in history, place,

and practice.

When I started my research I didn’t explicitly set out to do “Indig-

enous research,” but then, neither did I set out to do “anthropology.”

I simply wanted to write about and explore the place where I am from.

Given the politics of research, one is compelled to be clear, to make

choices, or be pushed off the fence. I am not known to sit on fences.

That said, I have at times tried to balance incommensurate perspec-

tives when balance was not really feasible.

In the summer of 1990 media coverage of the Oka Crisis, a rights

battle between members of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake and

the Quebec town of Oka that erupted into an armed confrontation,

washed across Canada. In Prince Rupert white fishermen and their al-

lies rallied against aboriginal rights and title, and the Tsimshian Na-

tion and its allies demonstrated in support of the Mohawk and for First

Nations rights and title. As an aspiring researcher I eagerly attended

all of the rallies and protests.

I grew up in Prince Rupert. I knew, worked and went to school with,

and was related to people involved in the white anti- Indian protests

and the Tsimshian pro– aboriginal rights demonstrations. I learned of

the different events from networks of family and friends. At both events

I spoke with people I knew, listened to concerns, and took notes and

photos. For a neophyte researcher it was exciting: I felt in the middle

of things as I worked to record a balanced view.

On my way home from our boat a day or two after the protest and

demonstration I met a fisherman I had known for years.

“Hey,” he said. I stopped to talk. We were standing by a rail line be-

hind the now defunct and demolished Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co- op.

“I hear what you’ve been doing,” he said.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

6 Introduction

“What do you mean?”

“You were marching with those Indians.”

“I was also at the blockade in the morning. You saw me there.”

“There is only one side.” He raised his hand above my face, his fin-

gers held in the shape of a gun. He cocked the “gun” and touched the

muzzle to my forehead— BANG. Silenced, I watched him turn and walk

away. (See Menzies 1994 for a more detailed discussion of these events

and issues.)

In the face of the colonial expropriation of Indigenous peoples and

the associated social and physical violence enacted upon us there can

be only one reasonable outcome, only one reasonable approach to re-

search: to take on, as one takes on a name, the weight and responsibil-

ity of an Indigenous approach to decolonization (Coulthard 2014; Fanon

1963). The context in which my research takes place means that my work

is definitionally situated within that body of work inspired by a decolo-

nial methodology (Smith 1999) and rooted in an Indigenous perspective.

There is no fence to sit on here. Who I am shapes what I do. Memories

of family events— traumatic and joyous, our legacies of colonialism—

adhere to our sensibilities and result in sets of behaviors and decisions

that contribute to a way of engaging with relations and strangers; it’s

what I refer to as forming the basis to a method of respectful research.

My doctoral research in France was freeing in that I had been pre-

sented with what was essentially a blank slate, no history to either link

or ensnare me. Yet it was shallow and missed nuances that could come

to light only with years of experience or the intimacy of belonging.

The power of intimacy— in the sense of careful, close, empathetic, and

detailed comprehension— is that one becomes part of the story one is

writing. This is my approach to anthropological research.

I draw inspiration from Kevin Dwyer’s (1982) sense of anthropology

as dialogue, a conversation between people in which we all learn. I

have also found Max Gluckman’s (1958) analysis of social situations

instructive; with observations, conversations, and detailed background

knowledge, he was able to parse out the dynamics of social and racial

relations in 1930s southern Africa from a series of social situations or-

biting the opening of a new bridge. These are not specifically Indige-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Introduction 7

nous research methods (if such a thing can truly be said to exist).1 They

are, however, good tools that facilitate understanding and analysis.

Indigenous methodology, as articulated in a growing field of publi-

cations, purports to represent something new. I am not convinced. The

strength of books like Decolonizing Methodologies is that Linda Smith

(1999) calls out the fundamental problem of the imbalance of power

and control over and within the research process. Echoing her critique,

hereditary leaders from Gitxaała constantly remind Canada and Brit-

ish Columbia that the authority and jurisdiction to make decisions re-

lated to Gitxaała territory rests with the chiefs, not the crown. If there

is an Indigenous methodology, it is rooted in decolonizing contempo-

rary power structures of the state. It will require non- Indigenous re-

searchers stepping back, turning their gaze, and following rather than

directing (Menzies 2011).

Organization of the Book

This book is divided into two main parts. In the first I outline the so-

cial and political relations that constitute Gitxaała society and lay the

foundation of being Gitxaała. The second part focuses on the enact-

ment of cultural practices through Gitxaała fisheries.

Social and political relations within Gitxaała society are governed

by key social institutions of political leadership (social organization),

territory, and history. I explore in detail each of these key social insti-

tutions. Each chapter seeks to identify the underlying traditional forms

of these institutions and to also explore the ways they have changed

and persisted through the disruption of colonialism and the rise of an

industrial capitalist economy. Chapter 1 situates the story of Gitxaała

within the wider Tsimshianic world and the importance of naming our

Indigenous community with our own terms.

Taking inspiration from the title of the hereditary leadership,

smgigyet— real people— chapter 2 outlines the traditional organization

of Gitxaała society. In this chapter, however, I am not concerned sim-

ply with attempting to reconstruct an abstract model of what may have

been. Rather the chapter opens with a description of social organiza-

tion and then explores the points of continuity and change as Gitxaała

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

8 Introduction

people navigated the disruptions of the colonial period and the devel-

opment of industrial resource capitalism.

Political leadership and social organization are intimately linked to

place, to the laxyuup (territory) of Gitxaała; for example, a chief ’s

wealth lies within his laxyuup. Chapter 3 interrogates the ideas of ter-

ritoriality: how it emerged, developed, and altered through time and

how it applies to the place where Gitxaała people live. The traditional

accounts of laxyuup are explored in the context of the formation of

reserves created by the colonial government and more recent litiga-

tion between Gitxaała and Canada.

Chapter 4 outlines the ways Gitxaała historical knowledge is trans-

mitted within and between generations. We are a people steeped in

our adaawx, our history. Our society has persisted for millennia, but

beyond that Gitxaała is a society in which linking the present with the

past is of critical importance. Ideas of political leadership and terri-

tory, for example, are supported, taught, and reinforced through his-

torical knowledge. Knowledge required for the proper management of

the laxyuup (in both intangible and tangible ways) is passed intergen-

erationally through the medium of history.

The second part of the book turns from the nature of social institu-

tions to ways that Gitxaała enact critical cultural values through the

practice of fisheries. Fisheries and related natural resource harvesting

form a critical core of the cultural practices of Gitxaała. These are also

critical economic components of Gitxaała society. This part of the book

begins with an overview of Gitxaała fisheries (chapter 5) and then ex-

amines Gitxaała fisheries in relation to three culturally important spe-

cies: tskah and xs’waanx (herring and herring roe), bilhaa (abalone),

and hoon (salmon). Each of the case studies examines a fishery that

has ancient roots in Gitxaała history and an important contemporary

place in Gitxaała’s world.

Tskah and xs’waanx (chapter 6) provided a range of food resources

(roe in several forms plus the flesh; fresh, dried, or smoked) histori-

cally and into the present day. Gitxaała’s relationship with herring is

an example of how the process of colonization has contributed to a

narrowing of utilization. Bilhaa is a culturally important species; it is

also a species that has been devastated by ill- conceived bio- economic

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Introduction 9

management models. Chapter 7 examines the harvesting techniques

that maintained sustainable harvest levels for millennia and the grief

caused by the externally driven collapse of the fishery. Hoon (chapter

8) is the iconic species that most coastal Indigenous groups along the

north Pacific shore are identified with in popular imagination. Under-

standing the nature and importance of hoon and associated Gitxaała

harvesting practices tells us a great deal about the the relationship

between human interventions in our environment and the health and

well- being of hoon themselves. The capacity to maintain large har-

vests of hoon over millennia required a detailed and nuanced under-

standing of the ecology of Gitxaała’s own laxyuup and the behavior

of the hoon themselves.

The łagyigyet (old people) lived in a world of wonder and change at

the beginning of time. Modern Gitxaała are also living in a world of

wonder and change. This book is my account of the world brought into

being by the łagyigyet through the eyes of Gitxaała today. I open my

house to you, Reader. Come, sit down at the table, and take your place.

I have a story to tell.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon

Gitxaała and the Names Anthropologists Have Given Us

Gitxaała people live in a breathtakingly beautiful place on the north

coast of British Columbia. We call ourselves the Git lax m’oon— the

people of the saltwater— in recognition of where we have lived since

time immemorial: on the islands and inlets of this rugged piece of

coastline. Gitxaała people know this is a harsh place to live, but “we

choose to live here,” Chief Elmer Moody reminded people at a feast in

2008 to affirm and recognize Gitxaała territory in the presence of fed-

eral and provincial government representatives. This coastline is the

place Gitxaała people call home.

This book tells the story of Gitxaała, an ancient people living on the

saltwater. It is also a story being told from the perspective of someone

who is both a professional stranger (Agar 1996) and a community mem-

ber. I have grown up hearing about and living in this place. As a profes-

sional stranger, that is, a practicing anthropologist, I have conducted

anthropological research on the north coast of British Columbia since

1988 and with the Gitxaała Nation since 1998. My research has been

focused on the political economy of Indigenous societies and the sub-

sequent transition to an industrial capitalist economy based on natural

resources extraction (Menzies and Butler 2008). As part of this research

I have explored the relations between aboriginal and nonaboriginal

people (Menzies 1994, 1996) and written about Indigenous ecological

knowledge (Menzies 2010, 2012; Menzies and Butler 2007). I have also

written about nonaboriginal communities in the commercial fishing

industry (Menzies 1993). My love for and abiding interest in this place

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

12 Git lax m’oon

arises out of my family’s personal connection to it. Elsewhere (Menzies

1994) I explore in more detail my personal and familial ties to this place.

In the pages that follow I at times make reference to my place in this

work, but my focus is on the social and productive world of Gitxaała,

and thus my personal story is of note only insofar as is it gives passion

and direction to my inquiries, reflections, and commentary. Thus, while

in this book I draw upon all of my prior experience, my focus is on

Gitxaała, the people and our place in the world.

Gitxaała’s main village today, Lach Klan, is located on the edge of

Hecate Strait, about thirty miles to the southwest of the town of Prince

Rupert. The traditional territory, or laxyuup, of Gitxaała (see chapter

3) extends from about Prince Rupert south 150 miles to Aristazabal Is-

land, taking in most of the coastal islands and the adjoining mainland.

This is a rugged marine and terrestrial space. However, one should be

cautious in thinking it to be an isolated or pristine space.

Notions of isolation and remoteness are relative and situational. For

an urban- based audience the tales and descriptions of the Gitxaała

world may well elicit a strong sense of the pristine wilderness or may

even evoke a sense of danger or foreboding. It is indeed a hard place

to get to and to travel through if one does not own or have access to a

boat. Difficulty of access, however, does not make a place remote. It is

the lack of familiarity with the place that gives the laxyuup Gitxaała

an aura of isolation to those not from this area. A sense of familiarity

can also mask real material conditions of isolation and disconnection

from a wider social and economic world. Thus even as Gitxaała people

remain intimately familiar with our territory and home it is possible

that as the wider world globalizes, our connection to place may restrict

and then marginalize our capacity to continue living where and how

we want to. This is nonetheless the place within which Gitxaała people

have lived for millennia. Life is lived out here. Oral histories relate to

events and places here. Throughout the laxyuup one can find material

evidence of Gitxaała use and history: ancient villages, stone structures

built for fishing and the cultivation of bivalves in creeks and along the

foreshore, and contemporary camps, cabins, and anchorages.

This is not a strange or pristine place waiting to be found or discov-

ered. This is in fact the mundane everyday world through which Gitxaała

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 13

people travel as we return generation after generation to fishing camps,

hunting grounds, seaweed- picking spots, and fishing grounds far from

shore. This is a place within which people are living, shaping, and us-

ing on an everyday basis. While this may be a place removed from the

centers of today’s metropolitan world, for Gitxaała people this is home.

This book, in telling Gitxaała’s story, aims to bring forward our world,

a world that to us is familiar and friendly (though it is not without

peril and dangers). I discuss how Gitxaała society is organized, the na-

ture and extent of Gitxaała territory, and how knowledge is passed

along from one generation to the next. I explain how Gitxaała people

have made their livelihood from the bounty of the laxyuup historical-

ly and into the present. While this world may remain remote to your

daily life, I trust that it will have become more familiar and under-

standable by the end.

Gitxaała people have lived on this coast at least since the last ice age

ten thousand years ago. The oral history of Gitxaała contains traces of

the ancient past, when large islands existed to the west in the middle

of today’s Hecate Strait. Other histories tell of a time and place cov-

ered in snow and ice. Still other histories document the arrival and

emergence within Gitxaała territory of prominent chiefs and families.

Archaeological research that I have conducted reveals continuously

inhabited villages dating back many millennia. Stone tools and debris

from making these tools found along the foreshore in the southern

reaches of Gitxaała territory have been dated through comparison with

similar stone tool collections to at least six thousand years ago. Archae-

ologists working in adjoining territories have found evidence of human

occupation going back at least as long as the timeline within Gitxaała

territory (Mackie et al. 2011; Martindale et al. 2009; McLaren et al.

2011). This is an ancient place and these are an ancient people whose

traditions and society continue into the present.

What’s in a Name?

According to anthropologists and linguists, Gitxaała are a Tsimshianic

people. Academic researchers have historically used language as a key

attribute to classify different peoples. Since Gitxaała shares a common

language family, culture, and history with the Nisga’a (who live along

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

14 Git lax m’oon

the Nass River) and the Gitxsan (who live along the interior reaches

of the Skeena River and its tributaries), Gitxaała has been grouped

within the wider ethnographical category of Tsimshian. Gitxaała peo-

ple, however, have always understood ourselves to be a unique people

resident on the outer coastal islands, people of the saltwater, people

out to sea. We recognize a common connection with our cousins to the

north, east, and south, but Gitxaała are the original inhabitants of the

coast and thus see ourselves as a different people.

Gitxaała is a matrilineal society; that is, family group membership

and descent is reckoned through one’s mother. Yet a traditional system

of arranged marriage ensured that inheritance of key resources such

as hereditary names and associated property actually passed along

patrilineal lines from grandfather to grandson. This raises interesting

questions about the emergence of patrilineal inheritance in the mid-

twentieth century. Given the ancient practice of combining patrilin-

eality with matrilineality, it is likely that what started to occur in terms

of the shift to patrilineal inheritance in the early twentieth century

was actually rooted in the earlier system, which conserved lineage

property through an alternation of ownership between corporate groups

from one generation to the next. It may well be that ideas of patrilin-

eality in descent coexisted with ideas of matrilineality in corporate

group membership well before Christian missionaries began to attack

matrilineal kin groups within the Tsimshianic world.

The coastal Tsimshianic world includes several separate village-

based communities, of which Gitxaała is one. Gitxaała people under-

stand our place on the coast quite differently than did early academic

commentators or our more acculturated Indigenous cousins who live

in Port Simpson, for example. Gitxaała people proudly proclaim that

we have remained in our central village, Lach Klan, without interrup-

tion for millennia, while other coastal Tsimshianic villages deserted

their territories in the face of expanding industrial resource extraction

capitalism. Gitxaała people, however, found a way to hold on to tradi-

tion and participate in the capitalist economy.

Throughout this book I refer to the people now living in Lax Kw’alaams

(Port Simpson) and Metlakatla as Coast Tsimshian. This is a reference

to their genesis as a discrete Indigenous people following contact, when

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 15

they regrouped around the communities formed by the Hudson Bay

Company trading post and the Christian missionary William Duncan.

Ts’msyen is a term used to refer to those people who identify themselves

as living in connection to the Skeena River. Unless otherwise noted, I

refer to the people who are part of the Gitxaała Nation as Gitxaała. I

also make occasional reference to Tsimshianic peoples, which is a broad

anthropological designation that includes the Nisga’a and the Gitxsan

within the other coastal and in- river Tsimshianic peoples.

No terms are ever fixed firmly in time, nor are such terms immune

to the vicissitudes of political machinations. In recent years, partly in

response to ongoing litigation between Gitxaała and other Tsimshian

groups and between Gitxaała and the Canadian state, the terms Coast

Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian have become codified in a way that

deviates from much earlier anthropological work, in which the pri-

mary distinction highlighted was linguistic. The evolution of these

terms has also shifted away from a more ecological- political sense de-

ployed by Marsden (2002).

The early twentieth- century references to Coast Tsimshian essen-

tially include all of the Tsimshianic peoples from the Kitselas Canyon

on the Skeena River near the contemporary town of Terrace out to the

coast, including the communities of Port Simpson, Metlakatla, Kitkat-

la, Hartley Bay, and Klemtu (where some of the descendents of the

former Kitasoo Tsimshian community now reside).

The original anthropological terms for Tsimshianic peoples were

rooted in a linguistic and sociocultural system of categorization used

by early twentieth- century anthropologists. Three basic Tsimshianic

languages were identified: Nisga’a, Gitxsan, and Coast Tsimshian. This

linguistic approach allowed anthropologists to systematically compare

the various Indigenous peoples they encountered. Language was un-

derstood to be closely tied to cultural traits, and together they provid-

ed the backbone to a grand anthropological classificatory scheme of

Indigenous North Americans. However, this approach to labeling In-

digenous societies and peoples tended to ignore the ways local com-

munities self- identified.

The idea that there had been a fourth Tsimshianic language emerged

following John Dunn’s (1969, 1976) linguistic research with fluent Coast

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

16 Git lax m’oon

Tsimshian speakers in Lach Klan (Gitxaała’s primary nineteenth- and

twentieth- century village), Prince Rupert, and Hartley Bay in the late

1960s and early 1970s. Drawing upon his research in Gitxaała and with

speakers from Hartley Bay and Klemtu, Dunn suggested that there used

to be an older language, now essentially extinct, called Southern Tsim-

shian (Halpin and Seguin 1990; Miller 1984; Seguin 1984). For Dunn

this was a linguistic designation. However, by the time Halpin and Se-

guin (1990) published their overview essay on the Tsimshian in the

Handbook of North American Indians they were distinguishing between

Coast and Southern Tsimshian to unproblematically demarcate socio-

political and historical differences within the peoples formally labeled

Coast Tsimshian by anthropologists. It is worthwhile to explore the

history of Southern Tsimshian as an anthropological label in a bit more

detail as it encapsulates some of the serious difficulties inherent in so-

cial science classifications of Indigenous peoples.

In his ethnography, Tsimshian Culture: A Light through the Ages, Jay

Miller (1997, 16) says this about the term Southern Tsimshian: “Until

a few years ago, the existence of another language on the coast, now

called Southern Tsimshian, went unrecognized. It was spoken in three

or so villages on the islands and inlets south of the mouth of the Skee-

na.” Earlier Miller (1984, 31) was more circumspect about the geo-

graphical extent of the Southern Tsimshian:

The Southern Tsimshian consist of the villages of Klemtu, Hartley

Bay, and perhaps Kitkatla at an even earlier period. The major

criterion for establishing this grouping is the use of a hitherto un-

recognized language, sgüümk, sküüxs, still used by a handful of

speakers in Klemtu and Hartley Bay. Hartley Bay used the lan-

guage before members joined Duncan at Old Metlakatla for a short

time and switched to the coast language. It is not yet certain that

sküüxs was used in Kitkatla in the past, but the history of inter-

marriage and feasting among these villages strongly suggests that

Kitkatla should be included in the group.

Dunn (1969, 1976), the linguist whose work gave rise to the term

Southern Tsimshian, is clear in his initial account that his subject is a lin-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 17

guistic, not a sociopolitical designation. However, like Halpin, Seguin,

and others in the small cohort then studying coastal Tsimshianic peo-

ples, Miller came to use the term in a broader ethnographic fashion as he

sought to understand and describe ethnographically observable differ-

ences within and between the various coastal Tsimshianic communities.

Coastal Tsimshianic peoples did in fact have different experiences

of interaction following initial contact with Europeans. Village groups

based in the lower Skeena River consolidated around the Hudson Bay

trading post staring in the 1830s (Marsden and Galois 1995). Marsden

(2002) argues that the Coastal Tsimshian (she prefers the term North-

ern Tsimshian) were already an integrated regional alliance prior to

contact with Europeans and prior to regrouping at the Hudson Bay

fort. However, the evidence for Marsden’s conclusion is not definitive.

What is clear is that through the fur trading and early commercial fish-

ing period what was once an ecological- political integration became

a clear residential and political amalgamation in Port Simpson and

then a bit later in Metlakatla. Later still in the nineteenth century the

entire community of Hartley Bay pulled up stakes and relocated to the

mission town of Metlakatla near Prince Rupert. Then, toward the end

of the century, the Tsimshianic peoples living at the southern extent

of the region around Kitasoo Bay and Higgins Pass deserted their vil-

lages and regrouped with Xaisxais people to the south in the cannery

town of Klemtu (Miller 1981). Only the Gitxaała people stayed in their

primary village site of Lach Klan— though not without suffering the

depredation of the diseases that plagued nineteenth- century coastal

aboriginal communities (Boyd 1999).

Many of the late twentieth- century ethnographers and researchers

who came to this changed social landscape looked for ways to distin-

guish their particular communities of study from others and to reflect

the historical factors that resulted in a reduction to five coastal Tsim-

shian villages from more than fourteen only a century and a half pre-

viously. The five resulting villages are, from south to north, Klemtu,

Hartley Bay, Lach Klan, Metlakatla, and Port Simpson. Here we see the

central heuristic importance of Marsden’s (2002, 101– 2) tripartite mod-

el of Northern, Southern, and Interior Tsimshian. Marsden’s model

draws from the internal histories of the people themselves and then

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

18 Git lax m’oon

locates spheres of social and economic interaction and alliance within

functional ecological units such as unique watersheds. The tripartite

model tells us more about the historical attributes of interaction than

does the more politicized Coast/Southern model that emerged out of

struggles in the court system and contemporary political pronounce-

ments by today’s Coast Tsimshian leadership.

Not all ethnographers of the Tsimshianic peoples were focused on

highlighting internal differences. James McDonald (1984; writing in

the same volume as Miller 1984) uses the term Tsimshian to survey the

rich economic pattern of Tsimshianic involvement in the emerging

nineteenth- century capitalist economy. McDonald’s point is that rath-

er than “having been shunted off from the main track into reserves

[the Tsimshian] were often critical to the success of various industries”

(40; see also Menzies and Butler 2008). He refers to individual Tsim-

shian from a range of villages later labeled Coast (Port Simpson and

Metlakatla) and Southern (Lach Klan, Hartley Bay, and Klemtu) by

Miller, Seguin, Halpin, et al. McDonald’s point, I would argue, is that

the fundamental issue is not that of a reconstructed past but an exam-

ination of how Indigenous actors intervened in, accommodated, and

resisted the rise of industrial resource extraction capitalism. In this

context, using labels that highlighted internal ethnic differences would

have obscured the common processes acting upon these communities.

Both theoretical approaches— the political- economic followed by

McDonald and the structuralist- reconstructivist followed by Seguin,

Halpin, and Miller— have their roots in theories and philosophies es-

tablished outside of Indigenous communities. While these approaches

do have value and have contributed to our understanding of the world

of the Tsimshianic peoples, they often overshadow community- based

explanations and priorities. The way the term Southern Tsimshian has

emerged, first as a linguistic marker and then as a sociopolitical label,

is a case in point. In the context of recent research the unproblematic

adoption of this term has had profound real- time consequences for the

Indigenous peoples on the north coast. This book presents an Indige-

nous counterpoint rooted in Gitxaała history and practice.

Most research into Tsimshianic communities has been on reconstruc-

tions of culture, belief, and traditional practices, to the exclusion of

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 19

involvement in the contemporary economy. This has been driven, to a

certain extent, by litigation in which the legal profession and judicial

system ask for proof of cultural practices having existed prior to, at

the time of, and beyond the point of contact with Europeans. But it

still reflects the dominating interest of non- Indigenous researchers

seeking cultural laboratories to test their theories and models.

Returning to the emergence of the terms Coast and Southern Tsim-

shian, a consultant, Joan Lovisek, working on behalf of the Canadian

government in the case of the fishing rights and title of Allied Tsimshi-

an Tribes (most of whom now live in Port Simpson and Metlakatla),

picked up the terms Coast Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian in her

attempt to critique their claim of an aboriginal right to fish commer-

cially. Drawing upon an early twentieth- century model of acculturation

Lovisek suggested that contemporary peoples living in Port Simpson

and Metlakatla had a tenuous connection with the aboriginal customs

and practices of the people who had proceeded them and who had once

lived in Prince Rupert Harbor and adjoining areas. Drawing extensive-

ly upon the postmodernist archaeological writings of Andrew Martin-

dale (though misinterpreting his conclusions in several critical ways),

Lovisek constructed a Coastal Tsimshian society that emerged in the

aftermath of the dislocation and disruption caused by contact with the

European- based economy. Critically Lovisek located the origins of the

Coast Tsimshian in the proto- contact period, but not coming fully into

its own until well after the establishment of a new capitalist economy

in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Her argument is not totally

wrong; she does carefully detail how the colonial period disrupted the

Ts’msyen living at the mouth of the Skeena and how this disruption

transformed them into the Coast Tsimshian. However, she overstates

her case in terms of the nature of the discontinuity, and because she

misreads Martindale she misunderstands the extent of the continuity

between the earlier Ts’msyen and the contemporary Coast Tsimshian.1

Subsequently, in the context of inter- Tsimshianic ligation, consultants

working on behalf of Metlakatla and Lax Kw’alaams (including but not

restricted to George MacDonald, Joanne MacDonald, and Richard In-

glis)2 also used the terms to highlight their interpretation of Coast Tsim-

shian rights and title in opposition to any potential overlapping rights

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

20 Git lax m’oon

and title claims advanced by Gitxaała. Here we can see the life history

of the term Southern Tsimshian starting to take on a rather pernicious

quality. Far from being merely a linguistic designation or an ecological-

political descriptor, the terms have now risen to the status of ethnic

designations in which the frontier between Coast and Southern Tsim-

shian is expressed as a fixed and impermeable boundary. As we will see,

such a firmly fixed designation, while reflecting a grain of truth, is ul-

timately complicit with a colonial act of appropriation and disposition

enacted by renaming a people with an externally imposed name.

There are of course clear historical, social, and cultural distinctions

that have emerged over the long course of time. The recent designa-

tion of Coast versus Southern Tsimshian, however, is tied to conflicts

and struggles over control and access to scarce economic resources,

complicated by the intervention of a neoliberal state intent on limit-

ing aboriginal rights and title as much as possible. For governments

and their associated business partners the stakes are very high. Being

able to suppress aboriginal rights and title works to the advantage of

these corporate agents. Having complicit First Nations to partner with

and to act as proxies in conflicts with other First Nations allows a sort

of red- washing, whereby governments and corporations can proclaim

aboriginal- friendly projects while simultaneously restraining aborigi-

nal rights. It is in this particular context that the recent designations

of Coast Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian has emerged. With this in

mind I nonetheless refer to the people now living in Port Simpson (also

known as Lax Kw’alaams) and Metlakatla as Coast Tsimshian (since

this is the term they are actively deploying today) and call the other

communities by their village name (Gitxaała, Gitga’ata [Hartley Bay],

Kitasoo [Klemtu], Kitsumkalum, and Kitselas). As I noted, I use the

term Tsimshianic when speaking of the wider ethnographic commu-

nity, which includes the Nisga’a and Gitxsan. When speaking of the

traditional precontact lives of the Coast Tsimshian I use the term

Ts’msyen (people of the Skeena River).

Writing Gitxaała

There is a dearth of academic research that specifically addresses

Gitxaała as a subject of study separate from other Tsimshianic commu-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 21

nities. There are published academic and archival academic materials

that make reference to Gitxaała in the context of the wider Tsimshi-

anic world (Marsden 2002; Miller 1997; Roth 2008). There are histori-

cal records, such as ships’ logs and government documents, that make

specific reference to Gitxaała (for example, James Colnett in 1787 [pub-

lished in Galois 2004]; J. Caamano in 1792 [Wagner and Newcombe

1938]; Charles Bishop in 1795 [Roe 1967]). There is a living oral tradi-

tion in Gitxaała that maintains an active account of the past. While suf-

fering the depredations of colonialism, like other Indigenous peoples

in the Americas, Gitxaała has nonetheless maintained continuous hab-

itation and use within their core territories.

The anthropological literature is replete with descriptions of Gitxaała

as the most conservative of the Tsimshianic groups. Inglis et al. (1990,

288) comment, “At Port Simpson and Metlakatla, Kitkatla has the rep-

utation of being the ‘most Indian’ of the Tsimshian villages, which con-

curs with the assessment given by Dorsey (1897, 280).” William Beynon,

a Coast Tsimshian who worked as an ethnographer with Franz Boas

and Marius Barbeau (among others), writes in his 1916 field notes that

the Gitxaała people “have not advanced as much as the other people,

of other tribes in matters of education and still adhere to ancient cer-

emonies.”3 Beynon was not being complimentary— he was in fact com-

plaining that this adherence to ancient ceremonies was restricting his

ethnographic research— but his point highlights how Gitxaała have

endeavored to retain the old ways in the face of their neighbors’ adap-

tation to and taking on of Euro- Canadian ways. Gitxaała’s cultural con-

servatism can also be seen in the census of 1891, in which the names

of the people in Metlakatla are nearly 100 percent Anglo and in Fort

Simpson (later changed to Port Simpson) are mostly Anglo, while in

Gitxaała the names are nearly 100 percent sm’algyax (Tsimshianic lan-

guage). The continuing conservatism is reflected in the relatively small

number of researchers who have been able to work successfully in and

with Gitxaała over the twentieth century.

Beynon recorded details of contemporary hunting territories, the

oral history that explains ownership of these territories, records of

feasts and meetings that he directly observed (as well as those for which

he recorded oral histories), comments on changes in ownership pat-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

22 Git lax m’oon

terns, and the history of Indigenous fisheries. And this is only a partial

list. Beynon was particularly interested in succession and inheritance

of names. He himself used this knowledge to advance and secure his

own hereditary rank and made many comments in his field notes on

the range of practices and debates related to the taking on of heredi-

tary names. Thus the early ethnographic literature is based on a very

contemporary set of observations made by an ethnographer who was

both a member and an observer of Coast Tsimshian society.

Most, if not all, of the early and mid- twentieth- century ethnogra-

phers of the Tsimshian world either worked directly with Beynon or

used his massive collection of field notes, manuscripts, and commen-

taries. Celebrated early twentieth- century ethnographers Marius Bar-

beau, Franz Boas, Phillip Drucker, Homer Barnett, Viola Garfield, and

Amelia Sussman all worked directly with Beynon and based much (if

not all) of their subsequent Tsimshian- related published work on his

research.4 Beynon acted as both key informant (for example, with Gar-

field and Sussman) and lead researcher (for example, with Barbeau

and Boas). Garfield (1939), a student of Boas, relied heavily on Bey-

non’s research for her Tsimshian Clan and Society.

Subsequent ethnographers, such as Margaret Anderson (Seguin),

John Cove, Marjorie Halpin, Susan Marsden, Jay Miller, James Mc-

Donald, and Christopher Roth drew extensively on Beynon’s unpub-

lished notes.5 Of these late twentieth- century ethnographers, Mc Donald

stands out as one of the first to engage in research with contemporary

Tsimshianic people on topics of contemporary relevance, whereas most

of the others relied almost exclusively on Beynon’s work to study the

Tsimshianic world or to structure their interviews of elders and hered-

itary leaders.

Archaeologists who have ventured into reviews and comments on

oral history have also restricted themselves to consideration of previ-

ously published materials that are derivative of Beynon or have drawn

directly from Beynon’s unpublished notes. For example, while Kenneth

Ames, Gary Coupland, Richard Inglis, Andrew Martindale, George

MacDonald, and Paul Prince have written about or drawn inspiration

from oral history, they have done so by direct reference to secondary

literature or the unpublished notes of Beynon and have not engaged

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 23

in systematic research on oral history with Tsimshianic people them-

selves. Thus these archaeologists reproduce what is essentially a vision

of the Tsimshianic world inspired and structured by Beynon’s intellec-

tual work, in particular his unpublished 1950s multivolume work, “Eth-

nical and Geographical Study of the Tsimshian Nation.”6

In one of the few published works to attempt an evaluation of the

extent of Beynon’s corpus, Barbara Winter (1984) highlights the cer-

emonial and mythic aspects of his work over the more contemporary

or economic. However, Winter’s analysis of Beynon’s field notes was

restricted to those

texts recorded between 1937 and 1959, for Boas. These texts were

selected for statistical testing because they represent a total sam-

ple of Beynon’s work from a known period of time. A complete

sample from a known period is not possible for the books sent to

Barbeau as Barbeau removed the pages from the books and cut

them into sections, each filed by subject. In the Boas collection

are 256 narratives collected from 72 informants, as well as eye-

witness accounts written from Beynon’s personal experience. Bey-

non used three primary informants from whom he collected more

than ten narratives, and a larger number from whom he elicited

only one or two narratives. He relied on three informants to pro-

vide him with nearly twenty- five per cent of his data. These were

Mark Luther (age 77, status not given), Joseph Bradley (age 90,

chief ), and Ethel Musgrave (elderly, chief ). Of the twenty- four

informants who provided him with nearly ninety per cent of his

data, seven were chiefs, and between seven and eleven were coun-

cilors. Eighty- three per cent of his informants were men, and all

of his female informants were of high status and/or elderly. (284)

Winter’s analysis thus excludes all of the material that Beynon collected

between 1915 and 1937 as well as the hundreds of pages of materials he

collected in collaboration with Garfield, Sussman, Barbeau, Drucker,

and Barnett (to name only the most prominent scholars with whom Bey-

non worked during the period of Winter’s analysis). Winter makes very

clear the limitations of her analysis of Beynon’s collected materials.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

24 Git lax m’oon

Wilson Duff, who utilized Beynon’s materials in the 1960s as he pre-

pared an expert report for the Nisga’a Nation, documents that Beynon

did in fact record a fair bit of information that pertains to contempo-

rary, economic, and territorial questions.7 Having reviewed both Duff ’s

notes and those prepared by Halpin from Duff ’s notes and hundreds

of pages of notes collected directly by Beynon, I found that Beynon

collected significant data that pertain directly to a wide range of top-

ics, from traditional “salvage ethnography” to accounts of new types

of aboriginal organizations such as the native Brotherhood of BC, of

which he was an early member.

Beynon is the unsung hero of Tsimshianic research. Irrespective of

his situated location within the Tsimshianic world, his work stands

alone as a fundamentally important archive of knowledge. As I noted

earlier, most anthropologists working in this region have relied exten-

sively upon his work even though little of it has been published. In

particular Beynon’s “Ethnical and Geographical Study of the Tsimshi-

an Nation” establishes what has become orthodoxy among Tsimshi-

anic scholars: the stories of migration of the people now known as the

Coast Tsimshian. (Beynon himself did not use that label, preferring to

use the separate village or tribal names.)

McDonald extends and elaborates upon Beynon’s work in a decisive

fashion. Working primarily with Kitsumkalum, McDonald (1994) has fo-

cused on their involvement in wage labor, the economic relations in and

basis of traditional Kitsumkalum society, and the ways these underlying

forms have persisted and changed in the contemporary world. In his

seminal article in the American Ethnologist McDonald (1994) documents

the literal and figurative displacement of the Kitsumkalum from their

own territory through the intersection of economic and legal processes.

Drawing inspiration from dependency theory, he shows how the rise of

the industrial economy transformed Kitsumkalum from being a central

part of an integrated Indigenous regional economy to being set apart

and marginalized from the industrial economy and their own territory.

John Pritchard’s (1977) dissertation on the nearby Haisla is one of

the few works that, like James A. McDonald’s (1985), takes the role of

aboriginal peoples in the contemporary economy seriously. In the 1970s

anthropologists working along the northwest coast briefly flirted with

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Git lax m’oon 25

political economy. This led them to ask questions about social class

(see, for example, Kobrinsky 1975) and the rise of the industrial econ-

omy on the coast (Knight 1996; McDonald 1985; Pritchard 1977; Sewid

and Spradley 1969). It is unfortunate, however, that the majority of

researchers were more interested in reconstructing what had been than

in understanding what was right in front of them.

There is scant mention of Gitxaała among scholars of Tsimshianic so-

cieties. Prior to the research of Caroline Butler and myself only a hand-

ful of people had conducted research directly with Gitxaała. John Dunn,

a linguist, worked with Gitxaała people starting in the late 1960s. George

and Joanne MacDonald (archaeologist and ethnographic curator, re-

spectively) visited Lach Klan several times over the course of 1970s and

1980s.8 Joanne MacDonald (2015) conducted a brief project on the

Gitxaała stone masks (one of which is held by the Canadian Museum of

History and the other by the Louvre). Dianne Newell (1999) spent five

days onboard the Gitxaała fishing vessel Western Spirit in the early 1990s

studying the roe- on- kelp fishery. McDonald has visited with and inter-

viewed Gitxaała community members over the course of his three de-

cades of northern BC research, though his primary focus has been

Kitsumkalum, on the mid- reaches of the Skeena River.9 More recently

students working with Butler and me have conducted community re-

search projects in Gitxaała (Menzies 2011; Menzies and Butler 2011).

The relative silence in the published literature makes writing about

Gitxaała and Gitxaała’s world important: there is something to say that

has not been said publicly in writing. More than that, the silence on

Gitxaała in the written record has created an opportunity for other

voices to have a disproportionate weight in academic and legal debates.

This book thus tells the story of Gitxaała from a perspective situated

within the Gitxaała world. This is not, however, an authorized account,

or what Noel Dyck (1993) has called an official ethnography. This is

decidedly my perspective, my reading of the evidence and data that I

have gathered over the course of my life and as a professional anthro-

pologist. In some cases I will agree with colleagues writing from other

places; in some cases I will disagree. But in all cases I will be clear about

what the data I use and the various implications of the interpretations

I make and how they are different from previous commentators’.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet

Real People and Governance

Sm’ooygit, Sm’ooygit, Sm’ooygit He:l,

Smigigyet,

Lik’agyet,

Sigyidm hana’a,

K’abawaalksik

Thus do speeches and formal addresses in Gitxaała begin. These lines

contain the key idea of Gitxaała governance as a system structured by

social rank, connections to specific places through real people, and a

profound historical sense that simultaneously looks to the past while

asserting a living present and future.

Sm’ooygit means, literally, real (sm) people (git). The sm’ooygit (sin-

gular form) is the ranking hereditary leader. Other hereditary leaders

of equivalent social standing form the smgigyet (plural form). In de-

scending order of rank are the lik’agyet (councilors), sigyidm hana’a

(matriarchs), and those women and men next in line to inherit chiefly

names, k’abawaalksik.

In the invocation the leading sm’ooygit is directly acknowledged

and addressed, affirming the hierarchical nature of Gitxaała society.

Naming the leading sm’ooygit also locates Gitxaała geographically and

temporally because hereditary names are tied to specific places and

important events through lineage histories. Thus embedded in this

simple greeting are the core principles of Gitxaała governance: rank

and status, connections between place and person, and the presence

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

28 Smgigyet

of history and historical accounts in the actions of the present. Even

in the face of massive changes in the surrounding world these princi-

ples of governance have been maintained and demonstrated by Gitxaała

people time and time again, in formal feasts, weddings, community

meetings, and public consultations with government and industry.

Gitxaała concerns with governance are a contemporary concern with

ancient roots. Faced with growing demands from corporate develop-

ers, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to meet and

make decisions on social and economic development issues, Gitxaała’s

elected leadership organized a multiday community workshop and dis-

cussion on governance in 2008. Some leaders spoke on April 14:

Gitxaała’s claim. Who is responsible for advancing this claim? We

need to strengthen what our position is going to be; our govern-

ment structures; our governing structures. When we examine how

to move forward we need to ask what are our roles, as Smgigyet,

Sigyidm hana’a, Lik’agyet? What governance structures do we

need? We need to develop a process for development, a gover-

nance structure so that our words don’t just fall to the floor. (El-

mer Moody, Laxgibu hereditary leader and chief councilor)1

We can’t do anything without Smgigyet. I want to support the

speaker before me. We’re happy to see smgigyet, hereditary lead-

ers from Ganhada, Laskiik, Laxgibu. Happy what I’ve seen to-

day. . . . We have a big issue coming up— self- government. We

couldn’t do it ourselves. We had to ask all you hereditary leaders

to accomplish this. (Larry Bolton, Gispuwada hereditary leader)

That’s what my heart says— for what the previous speakers spoke.

This is coming alive— what our old people did. I know this is go-

ing to be good for us. Sisters and brothers, keep it up, for keeping

our village alive with the hereditary leaders. . . . Smgigyet, let us

work together, we can do it. Whatever you have on your mind so

that our village will run properly. My heart has been moved to

see the people of Gitxaała are coming to do good for our village.

Smgigyet of each clan, whatever you’ve got on your mind, don’t

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 29

take it home, it is time to let it out so that our village will run

properly. (Richard Spencer, Ganhada hereditary leader)

Communication is an important term. Our ancestors gathered to-

gether to communicate. Our laws are still here and in existence—

always there for us. We need to revisit them and see where it

would bring us. (Matthew Hill, Laskiik hereditary leader)

This is simultaneously culture in the making and culture in action. The

structure, the pattern of speech is traditional— that is, in form and

content— but it is also driven by a contemporary need to address gov-

ernance issues here and now.

Other Indigenous nations, such as the Nisga’a, adopted a more

Western- influenced system of governance that effectively set aside the

authority and jurisdiction of the hereditary leadership. Gitxaała people

have continuously rejected these accommodations even when an elect-

ed chief and council have been used. As is often said in Gitxaała discus-

sions, “The council runs the reserve, but the smgigyet have authority

over the laxyuup.”

This chapter follows the lead of those smgigyet and community

members who met in April 2008 to discuss and plan for a modern in-

tegrated system of Gitxaała governance. I begin with the historical au-

thority to govern— the link between hereditary names and places. Out

of this authority emerged the classical Gitxaała model of governance

(the system most typically discussed in anthropology). I then consider

how this system has been altered since the arrival of the K’amksiwah

(white people, and more generally non- Indigenous newcomers) and

what has remained central to Gitxaała’s systems and principles of gov-

ernance. Underlying this discussion is the fact that through changing

contexts Gitxaała’s system of governance has maintained an integral

core connected to the ancient past.

Authority to Govern Rooted in Place

The history of Gitxaała is told from the viewpoint of named people,

who are members of the hereditary leadership. The setting within

which these histories are told is public. Sometimes these people stand

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

30 Smgigyet

up alone to speak, but more often they stand in the company of a small

number of siblings or with larger groups of their extended family. Each

history focuses on the experiences of a particular named individual

who is located by kinship in a social world and by actions and travel

to a physical world. The social and physical worlds come together in

this individual’s history, providing the historical explanation for the

customs and laws governing Gitxaała society.

Names, especially the names of hereditary leaders, are a critical as-

pect of Gitxaała’s system of governance. Names are linked through

historical events and experiences to particular places and encounters

with human and nonhuman social beings. The authority and jurisdic-

tion held by named hereditary leaders are thus rooted in the history

of the ancestors who had the name previously.

According to the Gitxaała adaawx (oral record), the village of Lach

Klan has been continuously inhabited by the Gitxaała since long before

the arrival of Europeans on what is now known as the coast of British

Columbia.2 The following examples were recorded by William Beynon:

“Then these men departed, and Tsibasa returned to his central village

at Laxlan [Lach Klan]” (“The Origin of the Name He:l,” 1916); “The Kit-

katla had established a village at Laxklan for their feasts and winter

ceremonials” (“The Tlingit Attack the Kitkatla,” Nathan Shaw [Gitxaała],

1952); “The people went down to the water’s edge and they again moved,

and they found some other people at Laxklan, and here they remained

until the present day” (“The Sky Brothers,” Sam Lewis [Gitxaała], 1916).3

In the adaawx recorded by Beynon and in contemporary oral accounts

reference is made to the antiquity of the Gitxaała as an aboriginal com-

munity prior to the arrival of Europeans. Throughout my field research

with Gitxaała in various settings, ranging from public meetings to in-

formal conversations, Lach Klan has been clearly and consistently men-

tioned and discussed as the ancient center of Gitxaała.

In Beynon’s unpublished “Ethnical and Geographical Study of the

Tsimshian Nation” he contextually dates the existence of Lach Klan to

the time before Ts’ibasaa came down the Skeena River: “When T’sibaesae

and his Gispowudada group came down the Skeena from T’amlax’aem

they went to where there were already some of the laxsk’ik (Eagle)

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 31

group in Lax K’laen. . . . This was a gathering place where these people

had their elevation feasts and where they held their feasts.”4

The adaawx of the Sky Brothers documents a series of atrocities

and subsequent movements of one of the lineages of Gitxaała. In this

adaawx we learn of the trials and travels of Wudinuxs, a house leader

of the Gitxaała Ganhada clan. This account took place before a sig-

nificant flood event.

The “Flood” or “deluge,” so called by many of Beynon’s early respon-

dents and by Gitxaała today, was likely a major earthquake that oc-

curred several millennia ago. New archaeological evidence indicates a

large flood or tsunami prior to two thousand years ago. Andrew Mar-

tindale’s research team has found silt layers indicating a flood that, in

the absence of direct dating, is estimated to have occurred between

3,500 and 5,000 years ago.5 A similar silt layer has been found in a core

sample from Shawatlan Cove in Prince Rupert Harbor (Eldridge and

Parker 2007). These archaeological data corroborate accounts in the

adaawx of a significant flood and allow for the conclusion that adaawx

that reference the flood significantly predate European arrival.

After the flood Wudinuxs and his people “went down along the coast

farther south, until they reached Bank’s Island. Here they lived togeth-

er as one household. Later they went to another place, until they came

to the Kitkatla village at the end of Pitt Island known as Wilhahlgamilra-

medik (where the grizzly plays along the shore), and they lived there.6

While there, the waters began to rise and come into the houses. The

people anchored on a rock which the water had not covered. There

they stayed for a long time; until the water went away suddenly, and

they were on a mountain on Bank’s Island, Laxgyiyaks. The people

went down to the water’s edge and they again move, and they found

some other people at Laxklan, and here they remained until the pres-

ent day” (Beynon notebook, 1916, BF 419).

Evidence for the antiquity of Gitxaała can also be found in the ac-

counts of nonaboriginal merchants and traders who visited Gitxaała

territory in the late 1700s. James Colnett, skipper of the British mer-

chant ship Prince of Wales,7 is acknowledged to be the first European

to enter Gitxaała territory. Colnett and his crew met Seax (Shakes), a

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

32 Smgigyet

leading member of a Gispuwada house, and Sabaan, a house leader of

a Gitxaała Ganhada house, in 1787, at the south end of Banks Island,

a portion of the Gitxaała’s southern territory. Some time after this ini-

tial meeting Colnett was invited to a yaawk (feast) in the company of

Ts’ibasaa, the leading Gitxaała chief of the day, in accordance with

Gitxaała ayaawx (customary law) (Galois 2004; see also Brown 1992).

The yaawk or feast (variant potlatch) is a central social institution

among the Gitxaała; it is a public event linked to, among other things,

the passing of hereditary names, recognition of people, declarations

of ownership, and formalization of alliances and agreements.

In 1792 the Spanish skipper Jacinto Caamano participated in a

Gitxaała yaawk, as described by Susan Marsden (2007, 179– 80; for a

translation of the original journal of Don Jacinto Caamano, see Wag-

ner and Newcombe 1938):

Jacinto Caamano’s vessel, anchored near the south end of Pitt

Island, was approached by Homts’iit, a Raven clan chief of the

Kitkatla tribe who danced the peace dance for him. He and his

people were invited on board. Homts’iit gave Caamano the gift

of an otter skin and Caamano served refreshments, after which

Homts’iit exchanged names with Caamano, making them allies.

Three weeks later Caamano attended a feast at Tuwartz Inlet [Cit-

eyats].8 Caamano described a series of feasting events in consid-

erable detail, the first of which took place on August 28, when

Homts’iit visited the ship to invite Caamano to a feast. Since the

main elements in these ceremonial invitations are a peace dance

and a naxnox [supernatural being] demonstration, the feathers

to which Caamano refers were probably eagle down, the symbol

of peace, and his various masks probably represented his various

naxnox powers.

In 1795 the American skipper of the ship Ruby, Charles Bishop, de-

scribed his meetings with Gitxaała people. Most notable is his repeat-

ed reference to “Shakes” (Sm’ooygit Seax), the Gitxaała “Huen Smokett

(Great Chief )” (Roe 1967, 65– 72, 90– 93). Bishop notes the importance

of locating himself within Sm’ooygit Seax’s domains:

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 33

As Shake’s dominions are very Extensive and Contain many good

Harbours and inlets, the Principle business is to look out for one

near the residence of the Chief as in the Situation you are shure

of Procuring the Furs of the whole Tribe, and in this respect the

Season must be consulted, for they shift their Habitations often,

we having fell in with several evacuated villages. In the Spring and

Early in the Summer the natives are found near the outside coast

for taking halibut and other Ground fish, but when the Salmon go

up the Freshes to Spawn they shift to the narrows and falls for Pro-

curing their winters Stock of this delicious food. (Roe 1967, 72)

Throughout the early 1800s European fur traders and merchant sail-

ors referred to Gitxaała as Sebassa Indians, after the ranking Sm’ooygit

Ts’ibasaa (Dee 1945; Tolmie 1963). Gitxaała traders are recorded from

north of Port Simpson on the north coast to Fort McLaughlin (present-

day Bella Bella) to the south. Hudson Bay Company personnel describe

Gitxaała as the dominant force in this region.

These early visits by Europeans to Gitxaała territory occurred in the

context of a preexisting social order. The Gitxaała people were in place

and had long- established laws, protocols, rules of ownership, and rights

of use. In both Colnett’s (Galois 2004, 138– 66) and Caamano’s (Wag-

ner and Newcombe 1938, 269– 93) logbooks and the adaawx of the

Gitxaała can be found descriptions of the Europeans attempting to take

things from Gitxaała territory and being rebuffed by the Gitxaała. A

people well organized and confident in their authority and jurisdiction

met Europeans beginning in the late 1700s. They greeted these early

visitors with hospitality. European ships’ logs describe the ceremony

and festivities they encountered when they entered Indigenous terri-

tories. However, these European visitors did not fully appreciate— or

perhaps they consciously rejected— Gitxaała laws and protocols.

Near the ancient village of Ks’waan (located at the southeastern tip

of Banks Island), for example, Colnett and his crew were greeted by

Seaxs and Ts’ibasaa in what appears to be a traditional greeting. Col-

nett was welcomed to laxyuup Gitxaała and told who were the rightful

owners of the anchorage where he had secured his vessels and who

owned the fish, timber, wild game, berries, and other foods and mate-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

34 Smgigyet

rials that his crew was gathering as if all was to be freely taken. When

Colnett’s crew’s continued to harvest without paying compensation,

Gitxaała people began to extract compensation, as was their right ac-

cording to Gitxaała protocols.

Colnett further aggravated the situation by instructing his crew to

continue harvesting food, timber, and supplies and to take offensive

action when they felt under attack. In one particularly egregious act,

a longboat was dispatched to ambush a group of Gitxaała who were in

the act of preparing a meal. Colnett’s crew killed three people (two

men and one women) and then kidnapped and sexually assaulted the

surviving women of the ambushed group (Galois 2004, 158– 62). De-

spite (or perhaps because of ) Colnett’s continued aggressions, Gitxaała

insisted on their authority and jurisdiction with laxyuup Gitxaała.

This historical documentation of ancient and more recent Gitxaała

presence within the laxyuup defines the social organization of the clas-

sical model of governance.

Governance: The Classical Model

Indigenous governance systems are often studied and discussed as

though they emerged sui generis out of the primordial depths. Like-

wise change and history are seen as products of the maelstrom of co-

lonial intrusions and as representing decay and disruption. Obviously

the colonization of Gitxaała and adjoining Indigenous territories was

disruptive. However, it was not the moment that History began, nor

does it portend a necessary collapse.

Gitxaała is a kin- ordered society; that is, the primary and essential

social relations are defined in terms of who is related to whom and in

what manner. Property, social rights, and place of residence— all the

critical aspects of life— are governed by the nature of one’s kin rela-

tions. Among Gitxaała family group membership is defined matrilin-

eally; one belongs to a specific kin group called a walp (house group)

based on who one’s mother is. The father’s side too is important, as it

brings certain attributes and performs particular functions at key mo-

ments in life. But as Nees Ma’Outa states, “My concern lies more with

my nephews than my own children” (Menzies and Butler 2011, 235).

Individual walp membership exists within an interacting set of so-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 35

cial institutions: clan affiliation, social class, and village residence.

Each social institution, or way of organization, has specific and impor-

tant implications for being Gitxaała and for the governance of Gitxaała

society and territory.

Each individual (with the exception, in the past, of slaves) belongs to

one of four clans: Ganhada (raven), Gispuwada (blackfish), Laskiik (ea-

gle), or Laxgibu (wolf ). Clans do not exercise any specific political au-

thority. That authority rests with the sm’ooygit and house groups. Clan

affiliation, reckoned matrilineally, does inform who can marry whom

and, consequently, alliances between members of specific house groups.

Historically three or four classes can be identified: high- ranking title

holders and other title holders; freeborn commoners without rights to

hereditary names; and slaves, those born to slaves or captured in war.

Members of the title- holding classes formed the hereditary leader-

ship of Gitxaała. They are the smgigyet (“real people”) or chiefs with

rights and responsibility with respect to other community members.

The origins of a sm’ooygit’s right to governance can be found in the

adaawx and is often linked to an event in which an ancestor received

a gift or privilege from the spirit world, through political conquest, or

through an alliance with another community. These histories link names

to specific places, placing territories upon the house in the same way

that a blanket is placed upon a chief when he takes on a name. The

linkage between place, adaawx, and hereditary name is so important

that a chief whose land is diminished or destroyed by, say, industrial

logging or an oil spill becomes impoverished and loses status.

Titles, or hereditary names, are an important aspect of Gitxaała so-

cial organization. Hereditary names are passed along from one genera-

tion to the next through the feast system. Hereditary names are linked

to, among other things, histories, crest images, territory, rights, and re-

sponsibilities. Not every Gitxaała person has a hereditary name, nor are

all Gitxaała eligible to take on a hereditary name. Hereditary names ex-

ist throughout time, with different individuals having or taking on the

name. For example, from the time several millennia ago that the high-

ranking Gitxaała hereditary leader Sm’ooygit Ts’ibasaa left Temlax’am,

through to the Ts’ibasaa of the early twentieth century, this name has

existed as a social role that has been taken up by a line of successors.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

36 Smgigyet

Temlax’am (variant Temlaham; also Prairie Town) is an ancient vil-

lage in what is today Gitxsan territory. In the old times, long before

European contact, the people were dispersed from Temlax’am as a re-

sult of a series of disasters. Key Gispuwada houses and lineages, which

are now Gitxaała, had their origins in Temlax’am.

Ownership of, access to, and rights of use of resource- gathering lo-

cations were and largely are governed by the walp. Notwithstanding

the prominence of a paramount sm’ooygit or leader at the village lev-

el, the effective source of political power and authority with respect

to the territory rests with the house leaders. This social unit is the po-

litical building block of the Gitxaała and Ts’msyen villages. The walp

and the house territories, situated around natural ecosystem units such

as watersheds, form the backbone of each village’s collective territory.

Villages consist of groups of related and allied house groups who

traditionally wintered together at a common site. While there have

been some changes following the arrival of Europeans (for example,

Lax Kw’alaams consists of members of what were formerly nine sepa-

rate social groups with resource- harvesting territories along the Skee-

na River), the Gitxaała village of Lach Klan has been continuously

inhabited before and after Europeans first arrived in their territories.

Within the village there is a paramount sm’ooygit who is the house

leader of the most powerful house group in the dominant clan. This

person has traditionally wielded much power and economic wealth

within the village; nonetheless his authority resides in the power and

prestige of his house group.

In Gitxaała society the leading sm’ooygit, as elsewhere in the Tsim-

shianic world, “can expect constant and liberal economic support from

his tribesmen” (Garfield 1939, 182). As Halpin and Seguin (1990, 276)

note, “The village chief was the chief of the highest- ranking house in

the village, and the other houses, in all clans, were ranked under him

in descending order. . . . Traditional narratives report that the South-

ern Tsimshian [which would include Gitxaała] chiefs received tribute

in the form of the first sea otter and seal caught by each canoe of sea

hunters and other fur animals captured by land animals.”

The importance of paying respect to the leading sm’ooygit under-

scores the recognition that the highest ranked sm’ooygit had a special

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 37

place in the order of governance. This was not a position that entitled

the sm’ooygit unfettered control over others of lower rank; it was, how-

ever, a structure that highlights the social and political acceptance by

Gitxaała people that they were linked politically and socially through

history, geography, and relations to one another in a way that set them

apart from other Tsimshianic people. This structure also created the

potential for a more coherent form of political alliance, such as began

to emerge at or just prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in Gitxaała

territory at the end of the 1770s.

Governance: In the Time of K’amksiwah

When Colnett’s crew ambushed, raped, and kidnapped Gitxaała people

in 1787 he was setting in play a pattern that has shaped Indigenous-

K’amksiwah relations ever since. Though something of a different or-

der, the deleterious effects of European arrival also includes the waves

of disease that plagued the northwest coast from the 1700s to today.

From early epidemics of smallpox, measles, and flu (which devastated

coastal populations at near genocidal levels) to the modern diseases

of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease (which are products, in part, of

the colonial state’s criminalization of Gitxaała practices of resource

management),9 Gitxaała and other Indigenous communities have faced

enormous challenges maintaining their place and way in the world.

Despite the forces of direct and passive aggression, Gitxaała people

have persisted. As the Gitxaała world changed with the arrival of the

K’amksiwah the system of governance adapted to the new conditions,

embedding new practices within ancient traditions.

Eric Wolf (1999, 123, 130) explains how the dual impact of disease

and the penetration capitalist relations of production created a mo-

ment of cultural malaise in which the Kwakwaka’wakw’s cosmological

understanding of their world and their attendant system of governance

morphed from an ideology of chiefly power into an ethnic or cultural

identity. Wolf advances his argument by first outlining the extent and

context of anthropological research conducted with the Kwakiutl. He

takes care to caution his readers that “to think of the Kwakiutl as bear-

ers of a changeless cultural pattern is inappropriate, since their exis-

tential conditions have changed in many ways since the time of first

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

38 Smgigyet

contact on the coast in 1774” (74). Not least was the cataclysmic popu-

lation decline— a “demographic disaster” (77).

Population decline combined with the rise of a new capitalist econ-

omy that severed producers from the products of their labor and re-

warded individuals in ways that undermined Kwakwaka’wakw lineage

groups. “As epidemics killed off increasing numbers of legitimate in-

cumbents to political and ritual positions, the enhanced opportunities

and burdens of rank intensified pressure and tensions among the sur-

vivors” (Wolf 1999, 77). Participation in the capitalist economy cre-

ated opportunities for those without rank or standing to gain wealth

and thereby enter the competition for taking on the hereditary names

left empty. Hereditary leaders, for their part, tried to maintain their

position by elevating those who in other times would never have been

considered. As Wolf goes on to say, this led to an inherent contradic-

tion in the Kwakiutl system of governance that contributed to the cul-

tural malaise in which the cosmological underpinnings of the chiefly

order fell apart. From the ashes of the chiefly ideology emerged an

ethnic identity that allowed the survivors to claim a space within the

context of the modern pluralist state.

While I find aspects of this argument compelling and can see some

reflection in the contemporary practices and sentiments in Gitxaała,

it is to a certain extent an overstating of the case in the context of

Gitxaała. The depopulation of Gitxaała communities did have an im-

pact on how survivors of the onslaught of epidemics responded and

organized themselves. The archaeological record reveals changes in

regional use and occupation throughout Gitxaała laxyuup from around

the mid- 1800s. Community members recall to this day the effects of

these nineteenth- century epidemics and talk of mass burials of the vic-

tims. Throughout this time hereditary names were temporarily set

aside as those left alive consolidated the high- ranking names and house

groups to ensure their survival into the future.

Most of the population decline appears to have begun in the early

nineteenth century (but there are clear accounts of earlier waves of

death), just prior to the penetration of fully formed capitalist relations

of production through the development of the fish canning industry

and then forestry soon thereafter. Archaeological surveys that I have

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 39

conducted in Gitxaała territory show that most permanent year- round

abandonment of the major villages outside of Lach Klan occurred in

the early nineteenth century. We can tell this from the age of the second-

growth trees in these sites, from oral accounts of abandonment of

primary residential locations, from European records, and from the

use of archaeological dating techniques. Along with the changes to the

material and social landscape came changes to Gitxaała’s system of

governance, changes that melded old and new and sustained Gitxaała

as a unique people.

A new Gitxaała system of governance emerged out of the encoun-

ter with K’amksiwah. The fact that this encounter was a transforma-

tive moment is recorded in the oral history. In the context of meeting

with James Colnett, Ts’ibasaa held a feast to welcome this new chief

to Gitxaała laxyuup. After visiting Colnett’s ships the people returned

to their village.

When the Gitxaała people reached their village, Ts’ibasaa said, “I

will give a great feast [ne- amex, friendship- making ritual] and

these people shall be my guests.” When Ts’ibasaa gave this feast,

he gave away to the guests many valuable furs, and so greatly

pleased was the chief of these ghost people that among the pres-

ents they gave to the Gitxaała were guns and ammunition and

they taught them how to use these, so that the Gitxaała were the

first in the north to have guns and ammunition. They were the

first to use it to hunt the fur seal and sea otter and were much

dreaded by the other tribes. (Beynon notebook, 1953, interview

with James Lewis, Gitxaała, BF 40.3, no. 61, CMC)

It was at this historical moment that Ts’ibasaa took up the name

He:l, which persists today as the highest ranked Gitxaała name. In the

course of the feast put on for the Ghost People, he gave names to their

highly ranked people, the ship’s captain and officers. Names were tak-

en up from the Europeans as well.

He:l marks the early encounter between Gitxaała and the newcom-

ers. He:l was not, however, a totally new name. For that matter neither

was Sabaan, the chief who first saw the newcomers arriving, an ancient

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

40 Smgigyet

name but one that emerged out of this encounter as well.10 Galois (2004,

269) published an extract of George McCauley’s account of Sabaan re-

ceiving his name during a meeting with early K’amksiwah visitors. Ac-

cording to Galois, the original narrative was collected on February 9,

1916.11 Upon close review of a copy of Beynon’s 1916 Gitxaała field

notebooks (vols. 1– 6, BF 419– 24, box 24, CMC), it is apparent that the

pages with McCauley’s account were removed from the original note-

books and filed by Barbeau separately. Notes are included from Janu-

ary 31 through February 8 and then from February 10 until the end of

Beynon’s visit in Lach Klan. It is not clear what other associated ma-

terials may have been removed from the notebook or how, in remov-

ing the pages, Barbeau may have altered the material record of Beynon’s

field trip. Other interview notes with McCauley remain in Beynon’s

1916 field notebooks.

He:l was part of an older name, wiheld’m (underscore added), which

was itself part of a longer name of a high- ranking nephew of Ts’ibasaa.12

The earliest recorded account of the name He:l comes from Joshua Tsi-

bassa in a series of interviews with Beynon in 1916. It is important to

point out that the right to tell this account would have resided with

Joshua Tsibassa, who, at that time, was the highest ranked sm’ooygit

of Gitxaała and the head of the house of He:l which by the early twen-

tieth century had subsumed the houses of Seax and Ts’ibasaa both.

Joshua Tsibassa, and the other smgigyet interviewed by Beynon in

1916, refer to the house of He:l as the highest ranking royal house in

Gitxaała. As recorded by Beynon, the house of He:l contained five sub-

divisions: “Each of these subdivisions were made dependant houses in

former times but were all of the same origin and same myths and crests

as the head of the royal family He:l. When He:l came to Gitxaała the

chief at that time being Wisa’ag [Seax], Gispawudwada [Gispuwada

or Blackfish clan] a former brother of He:l at T’amlax’m and when He:l

and his brothers came to Gitxaała they amalgamated with Wisa’ag who

had the same names and crests having originally come from the same

place as He:l” (Beynon notebook, 1916, BF 423, CMC).

Here we see the name He:l being used to refer to an ancient ances-

tor who had first arrived on the coast several millennia before Euro-

peans and long before the short version of the name, He:l, came to be

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 41

associated with that personage of Tsibassa.13 Joshua Tsibassa would

have been cognizant that he was using the name He:l to refer to the

royal Gispuwada house, as would have been the other Gitxaała inter-

viewed by Beynon in 1916. This acknowledges the special role and place

of the name He:l in the transformation of Gitxaała politics and society

through the encounter with colonial processes. Joshua Tsibassa con-

tinues to explain to Beynon the importance of the name He:l and its

position in the contemporary context:

This name was first given to Tsiybɛsɛ [Tsibassa] by a white man

by the name of Capt. Hale. Capt. Hale upon visiting all of the oth-

er villages of Indians came until Tsiybɛsɛ and seeing the Gitxaała

was the largest of the different villages he had visited gave his

name to Tsiybɛsɛ who some time afterwards called a feast and ap-

plied the name Hale to wiheld’əm wildɛł nəkłəłstɔ’lt. The infor-

mant says that Capt. Hale was the first white man to see Gitxaała

and the name He:l is of recent origin having originated at this

event. Capt. Hale according to informant was an American (Bos-

ton) trader and explorer. The reason the name was applied to

wiheld’əm was that the name “Hale” bore a close resemblance to

wiheld’əm in sound and was applied in this case. (Beynon note-

book, Gitxaała, 1916, vol. 1, BF 419, box B29, CMC)

Over the course of the nineteenth century the name He:l came to

stand for the amalgamated high- ranked Gispuwada houses whose mem-

bers controlled the maritime fur trade. (For an account of the early

nineteenth- century Ts’ibasaa, see Mitchell 1981). By the end of the

nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth He:l was the unequiv-

ocal name used to refer to this group of Gispuwada. The rise of He:l as

synonymous with Ts’ibasaa is a critical act of transformation within

Gitxaała that simultaneously respects Indigenous history and law and

demonstrates Gitxaała’s recognition of the changing world. Encapsu-

lated within the transformation of the name from that of a high- ranked

nephew of the head chief to the top- ranked name is a demonstration

of active engagement with the newcomers and a testament to the con-

tinuity of traditional practices and intellectual frameworks. The value

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

42 Smgigyet

of the name was not simply in its being gifted from the Europeans; it

was also connected to property and history within Gitxaała in the form

of the nephew’s existing name and to his ultimate inheritance of the

territories held by the house of Ts’ibasaa and Seax. This historical ac-

count is part of an intellectual tradition of inquiry and classification

that seeks to locate Europeans— K’amksiwah— within a Gitxaała mod-

el of society and to connect Gitxaała to the new K’amksiwah world.

He:l thus marks the arrival of Europeans within Gitxaała’s world

and the transformation of He:l into a position of preeminence within

the hereditary system. Through the encounter with Europeans and

then through the affirmation of the feasting system He:l came to sub-

sume within it the prerogatives of the house of Ts’ibasaa and Seax—

the two high lineages of the Gispuwada. He:l becomes Ts’ibasaa and

Seax in a transformative act that holds history and territory together

so that one can maintain the ability to govern in the present. This is

the critical point here: even as the world changes, the hereditary sys-

tem of governance is simultaneously adapting to the changes.

It is useful to return briefly to Wolf ’s (1999) analysis of the

Kwakwaka’wakw through the lens of an earlier analysis of the Haisla

by Pritchard (1977). Following a line of argumentation that anticipates

Wolf ’s analysis, Pritchard suggests that in the transition to a modern

capitalist economy based in fisheries and forestry the economic power

and redistributional function played by lineage and house group chiefs

were undermined and the relevance of trying to strictly maintain tra-

ditional chiefly governance was diminished. Thus, says Pritchard, “the

time, effort, and feeling invested in the maintenance of clans and names

are, I believe, an instance of a system operating on emotional momen-

tum, divorced from the substantive underpinnings that once sustained

it” (281). The Haisla lacked the rich sockeye streams that the late

nineteenth- century commercial fishery was interested in. Their forest-

lands also lacked timber of sufficient economic value to sustain more

than hand logging in the early twentieth century. (Later in the twenti-

eth century the potential for hydroelectric generation and a deep sea

harbor led to the development of an aluminum smelter and electrical

power generation projects in Haisla territory.) This left the Haisla to

their traditional territories without significant competition from capi-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 43

talist firms; at the same time there were individual employment oppor-

tunities for Haisla people in Rivers Inlet to the south and the Skeena to

the north. This situation removed the economic power of the chiefs

while leaving the Haisla relatively unmolested on their land.

Gitxaała had a somewhat different situation. Here the chiefly pre-

rogatives remained linked to economically productive territories. First,

through their advantageous location on the outer coast and hence an

early and monopoly- like access to maritime fur traders, Gitxaała smgigy-

et, like Ts’ibasaa, were able to retain and strengthen their lineage au-

thority and the economic power on which their authority was based.

As the commercial fishery emerged, Gitxaała smgigyet maintained an

economic base to their power well into the early twentieth century

thanks to having traditional territories based on small to medium- size

sockeye watersheds, the relative isolation from the main commercial

fisheries on the Skeena, and the ability to assert authority over access

to these same fishing systems as a result of the power maintained

through the fur trade.

It is perhaps a quirk of fate that Gitxaała’s chiefly class retained an

economic base to their power well into the twentieth century. During

the early maritime fur trade (1787– 1832) Gitxaała was strategically lo-

cated and thus able to intercept trading vessels on their seaward coast-

line and simultaneously control the access to these traders by their

inland neighbors. This provided lineage heads like Ts’ibasaa with the

strategic advantage and material resources to hold onto power within

Gitxaała and over a wider geographical stretch of the coast. The nearby

Ts’msyen chiefly class (from the Skeena River), like the Kwakiutl to the

south, found the material basis to their power slipping away. Legaic, a

Ts’msyen sm’ooygit, held military control over access to the Hudson

Bay Company trading post of Fort Simpson from about 1832 to 1862

(Marsden and Galois 1995). However, his apparent control over produc-

tive property, such as the sockeye salmon creeks within the estuary of

the Skeena River, was quickly diminished when the industrial canners

and the accompanying Canadian fisheries laws penetrated this region.

The rise of the industrial salmon canning industry in the Skeena

River (circa 1877) served to undermine the economic power of the

Ts’msyen chiefs to the north of Gitxaała while simultaneously strength-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

44 Smgigyet

ening Gitxaała smgigyet power. Commercial canning efforts focused

on the Skeena River, the core of the Ts’msyen chief ’s territories. Con-

sequently Canadian fisheries regulations were targeted on this region

to ensure that the canners had untrammeled access to salmon. This

was accomplished by criminalizing aboriginal fisheries practices. Mean-

while Gitxaała smgigyet had managed to secure their primary sockeye

streams (sockeye being the species sought by the canners) through the

assignment of reserves, by gaining control over local seine permits,

and by the relative isolation of their sockeye streams.

While these small coastal sockeye systems were highly productive

under Gitxaała management, they were relatively small systems com-

pared to the millions of sockeye entering the Skeena River. The indus-

trial canners focused on high volume and economic efficiencies. Gitxaała

had sufficient labor power and capacity to operate their own fishing

operations to sell fish to the Skeena River canneries and to put up sup-

plies of non- commercially targeted salmon and other fish species. Un-

fortunately for the Ts’msyen, their fishing systems were right in the

path of the large sockeye runs and in sites that the industrial firms

wanted. With the help of the provincial and federal governments, these

firms were able to take effective control over the Ts’msyen fishing lo-

cations. Gitxaała smgigyet thus retained control over productive prop-

erty in the form of salmon creeks and the associated fishing permits

well into the 1960s. This economic foundation supported and main-

tained a system of governance that remained rooted in smgigyet’s con-

nection to the laxyuup of their walp.

In 1882 BC Indian Reserve Commissioner Peter O’Reilly came to

Lach Klan to meet with Gitxaała chiefs to set up reserves. O’Reilly met

with Seax but was able to set up only three reserves at this meeting

because Ts’ibasaa was not present. In Ts’ibasaa’s absence Seax would

not make any agreement over reserves beyond the village of Lach Klan,

a cemetery near the village, and K’moda (Ts’ibasaa’s own fishing sta-

tion). A decade later, in 1891, O’Reilly was finally able to meet with

Ts’ibasaa and a delegation of thirty chiefs when the balance of Gitxaała’s

reserves were established.

Over the course of the transition from the chiefly economy of an-

cient times to the industrial resource extraction capitalism of the late

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Smgigyet 45

nineteenth century the jurisdiction and authority of the smgigyet re-

mained a central component of Gitxaała governance. This is a critical

point and an aspect of Gitxaała governance that persists to this day,

even in the face of the government of Canada’s continued attempts to

mandate and enforce democratic individualism (the principle of one

person one vote and elected corporate- style councils). As Gitxaała’s

system of governance developed a division of responsibility has emerged

between the Band Council— which manages the reserve land base, in-

cluding water, sewer, and on- reserve social services— and the heredi-

tary leadership, who hold the authority and jurisdiction over the

laxyuup Gitxaała.

Continuity amid Change

A century and a bit after meeting with O’Reilly Gitxaała members still

insist on the importance of hereditary leadership. The linkage between

hereditary name, the laxyuup of the walp, and the authority of the

smgigyet remains strong. At the conclusion of the 2008 community

governance workshop community members in Lach Klan affirmed in

no uncertain terms that there were three foundational principles to

Gitxaała governance: (1) adaawx (history) and ayaawx (law); (2) a

well- functioning hereditary system; and (3) the council of smgigyet.

This is very much as it was in 1891, when Gitxaała met with O’Reilly,

and as it was in 1787, when Gitxaała met with Colnett. The world chang-

es, the system adapts, but the underlying core retains the linkage be-

tween the real people and the land. Without that connection the very

idea of Gitxaała might disappear.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup

The Land and Ocean Territories of Gitxaała

Without territory, a sm’ooygit has no power. Without the ability to

harvest, one does not have the ability to feast. Without the feast, names

cannot be passed on. While much has changed since James Colnett first

arrived in Gitxaała territory, one thing has remained strong: the im-

portance of place and territory in the modern Gitxaała identity and

way of life.

When people return to Lach Klan, family and friends say, “Welcome

home.” This is a sense of home that is more than just a reference to a

small village or a family house. A cousin once asked me, in reference

to a research project on poverty and homelessness in Gitxaała, “How

can people be homeless here? This is their home, all of Gitxaała terri-

tory.” Home is thus more than a physical place; it is a sentiment rooted

in a real social and physical connection to the laxyuup, the land and

ocean territories of Gitxaała. There are of course people with inadequate

housing and people who face impoverished living conditions, yet all

Gitxaała people have a home, the laxyuup Gitxaała. This chapter docu-

ments the extent of the laxyuup and how Gitxaała relations to and use

of the laxyuup have shifted over the course of the past two centuries.

Gitxaała Traditional Territories

The terrestrial and marine areas that compose laxyuup Gitxaała extend

from Ts’ibasaa’s oolichan fishing territory on the Nass River south to

the coastal islands just north of Kitasu Bay. This territory stretches sea-

ward to the marine territories of the Haida Nation. To the east Gitxaała

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

48 Laxyuup

territory extends to the mainland shore of Grenville Channel and abuts

the areas the Haisla and Hartley Bay communities now use.

Gitxaała’s use of their traditional territory has undergone a signifi-

cant centralization subsequent to the allocation of reserves by Peter

O’Reilly in the late 1800s. As Gitxaała sigyidm hana’a Thelma Hill

states, “There were so many little villages where the Gitxaała lived be-

fore they chose Lach Klan to live.”1 Gitxaała traditional territory is

wide and noncontiguous, reflecting the precontact movements of peo-

ple for harvesting, trading, and feasting and, later, the postcontact in-

tegration of new economic opportunities.

Gitxaała oral history emphasizes the primacy of the Gitxaała people

on the coast. They differentiate themselves from the people known as

Ts’msyen, who they believe arrived on the coast at a later time. While

linguists, anthropologists, and colonial governments have put the

Gitxaała in the general category of Tsimshian, the Gitxaała themselves

have emphasized their distinct identity and origins. Their territorial

claim throughout the north coast is linked to the nation’s antiquity.

“We were already occupying these areas,” says Gitxaała sm’ooygit Mat-

thew Hill, “and I think that is where we have to be very specific, be-

cause all the others just came and Gitxaała was always generous and

accommodating people, no matter where within our territory.”2

Gitxaała hereditary leaders and elders often describe their residence

on the coast as predating “the Flood” and indicate particular locations

where Gitxaała people anchored their vessels atop mountains. Beynon

also documented adaawx of floods in his early twentieth- century inter-

views of Gitxaała people. Traces of cataclysmic floods, tsunamis, and

other forms of localized inundations can be found in the archaeologi-

cal and geological records. Taken together the material and oral records

locate Gitxaała on the coast within the laxyuup many millennia ago.

Lach Klan has been continuously inhabited for over nine millennia

as a central Gitxaała village. Even so it has not always been the pri-

mary center of the Gitxaała world in the way that it became in the

postcontact period. Furthermore hereditary leaders and elders empha-

size that Lach Klan is a particular place, while Gitxaała refers to the

people and encompasses a much broader geography.

Gitxaała people had customary rights to and spent significant peri-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup 49

ods of time in places outside of the contemporary core territory asso-

ciated with the village of Lach Klan and the larger coastal islands of

Pitt, Banks, Campania, and the Estevan Group. Gitxaała oral history

and the Northwest Coast ethnographic record include references to

both close and distant sites to which Gitxaała lineages held rights

through various forms of social relations and alliances. Mitchell and

Donald (2001), discussing oolichan fishing sites on the BC coast, cite

McIlwraith (1948, 359, 360), who documented that Gitxaała people

traveled to the Kitlope to produce grease and that the high- ranking

Gitxaała leader Ts’ibasaa sometimes remained there for the entire sea-

son.3 The descendants of Ts’ibasaa and He:l continue to travel from

Lach Klan to Haisla territory to participate in the oolichan harvest.

The yearly movement of Gitxaała and Ts’msyen to sites on the Nass

River for oolichan harvesting and grease making is also documented

(see Mitchell and Donald 2001, 25).

Gitxaała territory can be thought of as the sum of the individual

house territories plus the use areas that Gitxaała people access through

their lineage groups that extend beyond the village polity. Lineages,

rooted in common origin histories, irrespective of whether or not the

specific house groups lived in the same primary village, shared rights

to use their lineage relatives’ territories. House territories and use ar-

eas of houses in the same lineages come together like a patchwork quilt

that blankets the physical landscape in story, memory, and communi-

ties of shared practice. Taken in its entirety laxyuup Gitxaała is an ex-

pansive place that occupies much of what now constitutes the north

coast of British Columbia.

Colonialism, Reserves, and

Understanding the Laxyuup

The territorial boundaries used more recently by twentieth- century co-

lonial governing structures (for example, the Department of Fisheries

and Oceans) reflect significant changes in seasonal movements of

Gitxaała people and a process of residential centralization forced upon

the Gitxaała by colonial economic and political pressures. Representa-

tions of Gitxaała’s territories by these agencies are tinged by contempo-

rary intentions, not historical accuracy. As was noted in chapter 1, even

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

50 Laxyuup

contemporary academic representations of the people and the laxyuup

have been unduly influenced by contemporary political conflicts. In par-

ticular the orthodoxy promulgated by archaeologists working in Prince

Rupert Harbor have unfortunately and inaccurately invented a North-

ern Coast– Tsimshian people living to the north of the mouth of the Skee-

na River, even though the archaeological evidence cannot support their

contention and the oral literature suggests an alternative understanding

(see chapter 1). This section explores the ways in which history, politi-

cal processes, and Indigenous agency have shaped contemporary usage

in the context of the creation of the reserve system.

The imposition of the Canadian Fisheries Act in the late 1800s (Lutz

2008; Newell 1993) and the British Columbia Wildlife Act (Lutz 2008,

147, 248) and the subsequent criminalization of aboriginal food har-

vesting and resource management practices have infringed upon the

capacity and practices of Gitxaała community members to access the

full extent of the laxyuup. This situation intensified over the last third

of the twentieth century following the cancelation of drag seine per-

mits operated by community members since the late 1800s at key

Gitxaała fishing locations.

For contemporary community members there is an intensive har-

vesting and use zone near the village (Butler 2004). This is a space that

many general- purpose harvesters access. Other, more specialized and

active harvesters continue to utilize the full extent of Gitxaała’s terri-

tory. However, government agencies and casual observers often mis-

interpret generalist use patterns as indicators of the extent of the

traditional territories without understanding the nature or the impor-

tance of the larger traditional territory in the ongoing practice of the

hereditary system. That system is linked to resource use but extends

far beyond material use to the use of the territory as a symbolic man-

ifestation of Gitxaała’s history, linked through named hereditary lead-

ers and their house territories.

Consultants hired to defend their clients’ legal incursions into

Gitxaała laxyuup have used reserve locations to demarcate tradition-

al territories. In litigation on behalf of the federal government and

their community allies, these consultants have attempted to construct

an argument that would constrain and restrict the territorial extent of

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup 51

Gitxaała’s laxyuup. Their contention is that the reserve allocations de-

fine a contiguous territory that best maps onto a customary idea of

the ancient territorial boundaries and aboriginal polity. This approach

ignores the relevance of the linkage between history, name, and ter-

ritory for Gitxaała, drawing instead from a Eurocentric perspective.

At the same time as this approach ignores the cultural protocols of

Gitxaała it also denies the agency of late nineteenth- century Gitxaała

smgigyet, who were actively making strategic economic decisions on

their community’s behalf.

For example, in the late 1880s and early 1890s Paul Sebassah (Sm’ooygit

Ts’ibasaa) was pivotal in establishing reserves for Gitxaała, Hartley

Bay (Gitga’ata), and Metlakatla. Sebassah was a prominent leader of

William Duncan’s Christian community at Metlakatla. Duncan was

concerned that settlers were usurping aboriginal fishing rights and

convinced Indian Reserve Commissioner O’Reilly to visit the north

coast. According to Duncan, “Indian fisheries were being taken pos-

session of by whites for cannery purposes, and . . . if steps were not

taken to secure to the Indians their fisheries, they would suffer great

injustice” (Inglis 2011, 5). O’Reilly visited in 1881 and returned to “the

North Coast in 1882, 1888, 1891, and 1893 to continue the allotment of

Indian Reserves” (5).

In order to understand Sebassah’s role one needs to appreciate that

as Sm’ooygit Ts’ibasaa he was not only the ranking hereditary leader

among Gitxaała but the unrivaled hereditary leader of the coastal Tsim-

shianic peoples. Thus he played a central role in negotiating reserves

not only for Gitxaała but also for Metlakatla and Gitga’ata. Sebassah

drew from his local position of power in Metlakatla and his role as

sm’ooygit in Gitxaała to ensure that Gitxaała prerogatives were main-

tained as he negotiated.

Only three reserves were set during O’Reilly’s first meeting with

Gitxaała: Lach Klan (Indian Reserve [IR] 1), Grassy Island, a graveyard

(IR 2), and Sebassah’s own house territory, K’moda (IR 3). O’Reilly ar-

rived while Sebassah was out of the community. Not until O’Reilly was

able to meet with Sebassah in person— at K’moda, Sebassah’s tradi-

tional fishing site, in 1891— was O’Reilly able to discuss setting up ad-

dition reserves for Gitxaała.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

52 Laxyuup

I held a long conference with “She- aks” [Seax] the 2nd Chief,

and some of the tribe, the principal Chief “Sebassa” and many

of his people being absent, engaged in sea otter hunting. “She-

aks” stated that the tribe had held several meetings to consider

what land would be necessary for them, and gave me the names

of the numerous places they wished for, many of which were on

Islands far out at sea, and which could not be visited at that time

of year, without the aid of a Steamer, and as it was impracticable

for me to engage one for this service, I was reluctantly compelled

to abandon the idea of completing the Reserves for this tribe un-

til some future opportunity. The following plots were however,

subsequently allotted after the usual conversation with the Indi-

ans present.

No. 1. Dolphin Island, on which the winter village of Kitlathla

stands contains about two thousand seven hundred (2700) acres,

and is situated in an exposed position on Hecate Channel, between

Queen Charlotte Islands, and the mainland. This is a bleak barren

tract of country, stocked with scrub timber which is only fit for

fuel. . . . The village is very conveniently situated to some of the

best halibut and herring fisheries and is within easy reach of the

waters most frequented by the fur seal and sea otter. Nowhere on

the Coast is game more abundant, deer, bear, and wildfowl being

especially numerous. . . .

No. 2. Grassy Islet lying one mile North of the Village, contains

one (1) acre, and is used only as a burial ground.

No. 3. “Kum- o- wa- dah” situated at the No. 3 waterfall at the

head of Lowe Inlet, contains one hundred and ninety (190) acres;

this is perhaps one of the most valuable Salmon fisheries that I

have met with on the Coast.4

When O’Reilly eventually met with Sebassah, on July 10, 1891 the

final reserves (described by O’Reilly as fishing stations) were set up.

O’Reilly met with Sebassah, Seax, and “over 30 Inds.” at the Lowe

Inlet Cannery (Inglis 2011, 8). Though O’Reilly does not name the

“over 30 Inds.” it is very likely they were the ranking hereditary lead-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup 53

ers and title holders responsible for the fishing stations that he as-

signed as reserves. The establishment of these reserves is clearly tied

to ensuring ongoing and legally guaranteed access to the salmon fish-

ery. This is not a process of establishing the customary boundaries or

the fullest extent of the traditional territory of Gitxaała. Furthermore

each of these fishing stations is also a sockeye salmon creek. At this

stage of the commercial cannery fishery sockeye was the prime spe-

cies of harvest. Thus Gitxaała fishers needed to protect and control

access to these sockeye streams. They could pursue fishing on dog,

pink, coho, and spring salmon streams relatively untrammeled by

Canadian government enforcement, which ignored all but sockeye

at that time. This further suggests that the establishment of these re-

serves was focused on access to the expanding commercial salmon

fishery, in which Gitxaała people were playing a critical role as labor

and fishermen; it was not about defining the extent of Gitxaała tra-

ditional territories.

The impact of European trading, settlement, and industrial develop-

ment in the region did alter Gitxaała and Tsimshian settlement and

harvesting patterns. In the areas surrounding what is now known as

Prince Rupert, changes to settlement patterns were immense. The con-

temporary village of Lax Kw’alaams is located at a Hudson Bay Com-

pany fort site established in 1834. Members of nine tribes whose

traditional territories were closer to the Skeena River settled this site

subsequent to the establishment of Fort Simpson. The village of Met-

lakatla, an older Gitxaała settlement site, was repopulated in 1862 by

Christian converts following the missionary William Duncan. Joshua

Tsibassa, a leading sm’ooygit at the turn of the nineteenth century,

identified Metlakatla as a Gitxaała site in a narrative collected by Bey-

non, titled “The Myth of the Adventures of Gom’asnext”: “Years ago

many people lived at Metlakatla and it was [where] Nagapt of Gitxala

lived. And this is why the Gitxala lived here.”5 Winter village sites such

as Lach Klan and postcontact villages such as Lax Kw’alaams have be-

come the focus of contemporary discussions of tribal territories, but

traditional, precontact territories included sites of occupation and use

much farther dispersed than the contemporary village polity.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

54 Laxyuup

The Land and Waters of the Gitxaała

as Recorded by Beynon in 1916

Beynon provides a unique glimpse into the nature and extent of

Gitxaała’s core territory in the early twentieth century. Beynon, who

had met the Canadian anthropologist Marius Barbeau at Port Simpson

in 1915, was a Tsimshian of the wolf clan. He had been educated in Vic-

toria and went north in 1915 to find work. Barbeau arrived in Port Simp-

son to conduct research and found in Beynon an able researcher; they

would go on to forge a lifelong working relationship.

Barbeau hired Beynon in 1916 to continue research on his behalf in

Gitxaała. Barbeau’s instructions to Beynon were to record the hunting

grounds of the Gitxaała: “You may first study the outlines of the tribe,

its geographic position on the map, its former stations, hunting grounds,

territory: the royal and councilors’ families, the individual names and

translations, the crests, and the related myths and the origins of fam-

ilies of the tribe.”6

Barbeau seems to have assumed that the hunting grounds were the

same as the totality of the laxyuup Gitxaała. However, that assump-

tion is not warranted. First, we can see from the historic record of a

century earlier that under Ts’ibasaa, Gitxaała’s jurisdiction, author-

ity, and political influence extended much farther to the south than

Beynon records in his 1916 notebooks. Additionally the origin his-

tory of an important and ancient Blackfish lineage locates their lin-

eage home on the Moore Islands off the coast of Aristazabal Island.

Furthermore Barbeau’s directions focus Beynon’s attention on a nar-

row range of uses of the territory: hunting and activities related there-

to. Yet despite Barbeau’s shortcomings, Beynon’s descriptions and

commentary from 1916 provide a useful look at the core Gitxaała ter-

ritory circa 1916.

Beynon describes the hunting territories of Gitxaała as reported to

him during his first visit to the village of Lach Klan, and he describes

the four Gitxaała clans (which he identifies as phratries):

A village situated on the extreme north west end of Dolphin Is-

land, having at present [1916] two hundred and fifty inhabitants.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup 55

The main industry of these people is fishing and trapping. They

have no divisions as to tribes. . . . They differ from the Port Simp-

son who are divided into tribes. . . . The Gitxala people are only

divided into phratrays Ganhada, Gispawudwada, Laxskiok, Laxk-

ibo each one having its royal chiefs and houses. But hEl of

Gispawudwada royal house is the recognized chief of the Gitxala

people who in former years held a position next to the Port Simp-

son . . . Tsimyen and were very powerful in war. . . . [Gitxaała]

still adhere to ancient ceremonies. (Beynon notebook, 1916, BF

419.1, CMC)

He also lists Gitxaała houses:

The Gitxala village was composed of the following houses in or-

der of rank.7 . . . Royal Gispawudwada . . . house of hEl which is

the head of the following subdivisions who all had independent

houses. The chief before hEl came to Gitxala was wis’aj gisp who

hEl on his arrival from Temlar’am became amalgamated to this

house and afterwards became chief and remained so up to the

present day but is divided into the following subdivisions

1. Tsiybese 2. Niesno’l 3. Nieswe’xs 4. Gunaxno’tk 5. Txagexs 6

Nieslkuxso’

II Royal house Gisp. of Gitxala seks who is subdivided into the

following who each were independent house (The former chief

name of this house was dxe’enk) 1. niesgamdxowe 2. ‘awe’sdi 3.

waxáit

The royal Ganhada 1. exlewels 2. wi’nemo’lk 3. wak .es (watsta)

4. dopxxen

These four were of one group of Ganhada chiefs another group

1. ladox 2. hamdxi 3. ados 4. nios’ayaim

The Laxskiok and Laxkibo have no royal houses. (Beynon note-

book, 1916, BF 419.1, CMC)

In the process of his research among the Gitxaała, Beynon docu-

mented “all their (Gitxaała) hunting territories before . . . most . . . in-

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

56 Laxyuup

formants go away” (1916, BF 422.10). He includes both a description

of the territories (land and water) and identification of whom the var-

ious locations belonged to. A map accompanies the written description

of the territories.

Beynon identified the individuals he spoke with as Joshua Tsibassa,

Samuel Lewis, Albert Argyle, and Job Spencer. What follows is his re-

cord of their identification of the significant territories of the Gitxaała:

The territory of the royal house of hel Gispawudwada was on Pitt

Island and I have marked 1. This was known as ktsim’alagam . . .

and here was gathered the salmon and berries and was also a

hunting grounds. It also extended onto the mainland and this was

the property of this royal house and all its subdivisions. Hel also

had another territory but this was used by all the Gitxala and here

in olden times was the village of wisa’ag at the north end of Pitt

Island marked 2 and was called wilhatga’amilga medi’k “where

the grizzly plays along the shore.” And next to this was the terri-

tory of nias’ois gispawadwuda marked 3. This place was known

as kta’ol . . . and here was the hunting grounds of this house and

next to this was the territory of the house of ‘nagap’t ganhada

marked 4. This place was known as k’tai and here was gathered

berries and salmon and on the mainland across from Pitt Island

was the property of the royal house of seks known as kmodo (Lowe

Inlet) marked 5 and the seks also had another place on Pitt Island

known as kne’mujam ba’alx. This was a berry picking ground . . .

marked 6 and next the territory of the seks was the territory be-

longing to the ganhada house of dxagamfishaitks known as gan’a’ol

(Bear pit hap.) marked 7 . . . This was on the end of Kennedy Is-

land marked 8. (Beynon notebook, Gitxaała, B- F- 422.10, CMC)

And the property of nagwitogem laxe ganhada had as his terri-

tory upon which this house gathered berries and fish in the river

and was also the hunting grounds known as sqaskin’is. . . . This

was marked 9. And this was the property of the Laxgibo house of

lebeksk and this was known as gaipol. . . . Marked 10. At the South

End of Pitt island was the village of ‘extewels royal ganhada and

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Laxyuup 57

was known as dxowenxtom galdzep (The village in the Point)

marked 11. And adjoining this was the territory known as dxim

wilu nek “. . . Inlet” This is marked 12. And then on Pitt Island

nias’ois had two places territories and the second one was known

as gal’atgao (wetsta word. Meaning?) marked 13. the Gitxala vil-

lage of Laxklen (present village) where all the people lived dur-

ing the winter marked 14. And then the territory of ayaigansk . . .

marked 15. (BF 423.1)

And on MacCauley Island there is the territory gushawel Gispawud-

wada and was known as ‘nisek’wat’se “Place where sling shots

were made,” marked as 16. And on this island was another terri-

tory belonging to the Gispawudwada house of watali known as

tkulaxlax “around falling” named on account of the steep sides of

the island and was the trap set for animals . . . marked, 17. And . . .

part of Porcher Island was the territory of wa’omxk Gispawud-

wada known as witunaxno’x. This place of supernatural beings

marked No. 18. and there the property of nioshalopas Laxskiok . . .

known as kspinale marked 19. (BF 423.1)

On Banks Island was the property of la’ol ganhada known as git-

giyeks “The people way out to sea,” marked 20. Adjoining this was

the property of gaiyemtkwe Gispawudwada known as nego’a’ks

(“water splashing against”) on account of the rough water splash-

ing against the steep cliffs and on this account was given this name,

marked 21. And then adjoining this was the territory of lutkudzem-

ti laxski’k known as laxsto’ltem dodzep “on Beaver Cliff.” This cliff

was a Fort and was made on a high cliff. 22. And on the south end

of Banks Island was the territory of the ganhada royal house of

‘wakés and it was known as k’manxata, so called because at the

extreme point was a sheltered bay and was always calm. Xata

means calm inlet. . . . Marked No. 23. (BF 423.1)

Campania Island was the territory of nias’oio and niaslo’s and on

the S.E. end of the Island was nugun’aks the island itself was known

as laxgitgiyeks “on the people of island at sea” 24. (BF 423.1)

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

58 Laxyuup

Territories of the Gitxala . . . Another territory which was used

by all the Gitxala people and was a place that they camped at

when on their way to the Nass River where in early part of the

year they would go and get the oolichan fish and they had camps

all the way up. This was one of them and was known as kso’naoks—

Long Point (Just south of the cannery known as Claxton), marked

25. (BF 423.1)

And at Porcher Island the Ganhada and Gispawudwada people

had all to themselves where they would always hunt. The gisp.

territory was known as k’pexl marked 26. And the Ganhada peo-

ples territory was known as gaswe’not tibon . . . marked 27. And

on the Nass River the people also had another place which all

used (Gitxala) and here they gathered grease and oolichan. It was

known as samq’le’ala (Real old seal). . . . Marked 28. (BF 423.1)

Gitxaała narratives (for example, the “Myth of Crest of gaiyemtk-

we”), as recorded by Beynon in 1916, refer to Banks Island:

Myth of Crest of gaiyemtkwe: the crest hagwiejem giyeks (The

monster a way out to sea). Told by A. Argyle. Feb. 14/16. This

house was a house of hunters and they hunted chiefly the sea ot-

ter (p’ton). . . . They went all the time to one place known as laxgi-

yeks (in sea away out) (a long way out from Bank’s Island). (BF

421.8)

I asked informant [A. Argyle, Feb. 14/16] if he could give me any

information on the house of ‘extewels royal ganhada. Informant

states that they have been extinct a long time but he heard his

grandmother state they were of the same group as having at one

time lived at gadu’ and were of gidaganitz origin and from these

they came on to the Gitxala after the flood. For in the songs of

this house they sing of how they were at gadu’ and how they drift-

ed out to sea and found a rock here they anchored and when the

waters receded they found they were on Banks Island. (BF 421.9)

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup 59

Beynon’s records of these hunting territories and associated Gitxaała

house groups provide an intriguing portrait of the use and occupancy of

Gitxaała a century and a half after Colnett and Caamano arrived at the

laxyuup. It is evident that the century of depopulation by disease and

the economic disruption caused by the newcomers had worked to con-

strain Gitxaała’s use of their traditional territory. Yet utilization re-

mained extensive, and oral history continued to link Gitxaała house

groups to the wider ancestral laxyuup irrespective of the colonial legacy.

Experiencing a Gitxaała Social Landscape

The laxyuup of Gitxaała is not simply a physical place. It is a place

through which stories and histories pass and are passed along. It is a

place that Gitxaała people live within, talk about, use, remember, and

long for when they are away. The linkage of place, history, and per-

sonal experience was present in the materials Beynon recorded in 1916

and lives today in the oral history of contemporary Gitxaała people.

Gitxaała consider the contemporary village of Lach Klan on Dolphin

Island (IR 1, assigned by O’Reilly on September 21, 1882) to be the lon-

gest continually inhabited community on the BC coast. Given the depth

and extent of the shell midden within the current village this is clear-

ly an ancient site. During a visit in June 2011 our field archaeology

research crew conducted an auger test and percussion- coring test ad-

joining the Church Army building in the center of what was the orig-

inal village site.8 A recent construction project had provided a fortuitous

opportunity to map and collect a detailed column sample from the

surface to bedrock, nearly four meters in depth. The revealed soil pro-

file clearly showed uninterrupted human use and occupancy. Today

Lach Klan is the primary village site of Gitxaała, with between 425

and 475 people living there. However, Lach Klan is not the only Gitxaała

village site. The oral history recounts many more villages throughout

Gitxaała territory.

Other Tsimshianic peoples on the coast deserted their traditional

territories and gathered around the Hudson Bay Company fort in the

early 1830s and the new Christian missionary community of Metlakat-

la in 1862. Gitxaała people focused on maintaining access to, use of,

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60 Laxyuup

and control over their core territory from the base of their long- standing

central winter village of Lach Klan.9

The villages described in the oral history remain important places

socially, culturally, and materially. The following describes specific lo-

cations that I have visited or that community members have told me

of throughout the course of my life. This is not an exhaustive list of

Gitxaała village sites; it does, however, provide a picture of the extent

and number of villages that once existed in Gitxaała territory and that

remain places of social, cultural, and economic importance today.

The physical experience of being at these places, traveling to them

and between them, is a critical aspect of how one comes to know them.

Each time I visit a place I find new experiences and paths becoming

entangled and woven into my memories and feelings about the place.

Traveling along the marine pathways and across the terrestrial trails

brings the places alive. It is, as Christopher Tilley (2010, 27) states, “a

dialogic relationship between person and landscape.”

On the south end of Banks Island, Ks’waan is a large village central

to the stories of the encounters with some of the first European visi-

tors (Colnett and his crew). During the course of archaeological re-

search we have determined that this large village site consists of three

distinct terraces of houses. In addition analysis of faunal samples show

extensive harvesting of abalone and sea urchin at this site.

Ks’waan is a storied place. It is near the harbor, Calamity Bay, where

Colnett beached his boats to repair them and replenish his supplies in

1787. It is a place of wonder, situated along the shore of a small cove.

The village is tucked just far enough behind a small headland to be

perfectly protected from the prevailing southeasterly storms, but it is

exposed enough to be able to see anyone coming in to shore. Tall spruce

and fir trees outline the back edges of the terraces growing on top of

former house posts and rafters.

The first time I stepped ashore there was in the midst of a late spring

southeaster. We were drenched by rain. Tim Innes (Ganhada), a mem-

ber of the boat crew that had brought us here, had described his mem-

ories of the place on our trip from Lach Klan. He had last been ashore

at Ks’waan as a child sixty years before. He remembered a small trap-

per’s cabin that he had stayed in.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Laxyuup 61

We left the main boat at anchor and ran through the narrow chan-

nel between rocks and small islands. Tim had provided detailed direc-

tions and a description. It took us twenty minutes to make the journey

in our open skiffs through the storm. Standing on the shore it was im-

mediately apparent that we had arrived at a large and ancient village.

The village stood about fifteen feet above the high- tide mark. White

clamshells could be seen spilling out of the small shore bank that rose

to the first terraced platform of the village. We scrambled up the front

of the old village and onto the first terrace. The outlines of the old

longhouses were plain to see. We saw a second and then a third ter-

race. We stood quietly listening to the rain pound the undercover. We

could see where the posts and beams of the old houses had been from

the square lines of two- hundred- year- old spruce and fir trees.

In subsequent years we have returned to systematically collect sam-

ples from the surface to the bottom of the anthropogenic soils created

by millennia of ancestors who have lived at Ks’waan. In the process

we realized that this ancient village has been used continuously for at

least five millennia, through the contact period and into the mid-

twentieth century.

This place is also special to us for the abalone shells found in the

village soils. Abalone is an invertebrate much cherished for food. Its

iridescent inner shell is considered a thing of beauty. Yet the dominant

scientific discourse has denied us abalone. Report after report claim

abalone became a food, a thing of importance to us, only after contact.

First it came as a trading good from California on Spanish ships. Then,

after the decimation of the sea otter, it was a ubiquitous shoreline crea-

ture that we opportunistically started to eat. Yet here at this special

place we can see that in fact our ancestors gathered abalone for mil-

lennia before the Spanish ever imagined our existence.

Across Principe Channel we find another cluster of villages tucked

in behind Wolf Point on the south end of Pitt Island. This place, which

has at least five distinct habitation sites, is called Will u sgket. Dur-

ing our archaeological research we identified an intertidal lithic

scatter— flaked stones produced in the construction of tools— that

included three bifacial points. The lithics recovered were reviewed

at UBC and identified as dating to about six thousand years ago. The

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62 Laxyuup

lithics were found in association with one of the five village sites in

this cluster.

Will u sgket is a complex setting, tucked in behind a small island, but

with one of the small living sites situated in such a manner that it has

a vantage point from which one can see south to Campania Island, to

the southwest toward the Estevan Group, and westerly toward Ks’waan.

This is a place nestled well out of sight of those passing by. If one doesn’t

know that there is a small island with a harbor behind it, one would

sail on by without suspecting there was more than just another stretch

of rain forest. The individual habitation sites at Will u sgket are each

smaller than the village at Ks’waan. However, taken together there were

as many people here as were living across the way at Ks’waan.

A bit to the east on Pitt Island, in behind the Cherry Islets, is Citey-

ats (IR 9, established by O’Reilly on July 10, 1891), another large vil-

lage site. Our archaeological research here has identified the surface

features of up to twenty- six house depressions, including at least five

large plank houses along the waterfront described by Caamano in his

1792 journal. It is interesting to note that of the reserves established

by O’Reilly, only two were primary village sites: Lach Klan and Citey-

ats. A third, Klapthon (IR 5 and 5A), was proposed as a new primary

village closer to the steamship route. The other reserves are all fisher-

ies stations, though at least three have middens or remains of middens

within their boundaries. The selection of these fishing stations as re-

serves reflects the active decisions of Gitxaała chiefs to maintain ac-

cess to critical fisheries as they ensured a future for their community

in the face of increased industrial and colonial encroachment.

The antiquity of this site has been determined by Carbon 14 dating

techniques using charcoal samples collected from the deepest portions

of the anthropogenic soils. From this we know that Citeyats has been

inhabited for at least four thousand years. The archaeological tech-

niques used, systematic grid pattern percussion coring and augering,

show clear evidence of continuous human occupation. We can tell this

by examining the samples taken from the surface of the village site

down to the sterile soil and bedrock, an average of three to four me-

ters below the surface. Careful examination of these samples shows no

evidence of breaks in the occupation of this amazing village.

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Laxyuup 63

The historical evidence of this village can be found in Caamano’s

detailed account of his month- long stay while stormbound off the vil-

lage and his visit ashore as a guest of honor of Gitxaała Sm’ooygit

Homstits in 1792. Caamano had a variety of adventures while at an-

chor, including an occasion on which a number of his crew found

themselves stranded, nude on the beach, as the local inhabitants made

off with their clothes:

I had allowed ten of our men to take my galley (the only boat then

remaining onboard), for the purpose of landing to wash their

clothes, as others had done previously. Half an hour after noon,

it was reported to me that one of these hands was seen in the wa-

ter trying to swim to the ship. I at once ordered a seaman to take

a grating and go to his assistance, fearing lest the swimmer should

become exhausted. The two men were soon again on board, when

I learnt that our washing party had been robbed of the clothes (of

which there happened to be a considerable quantity) by natives

who had come back to the place where these were, not only in

their canoes, but along the shore as well. The Indians were nu-

merous and carried weapons. Our people, alarmed by this, offered

no resistance, but thought only to save their lives by flight. Some

fled into the forest, others threw themselves on to logs in the wa-

ter, in an endeavour to reach the ship as the natives had seized

the galley and carried off the two boats’ keepers. (Wagner and

Newcombe 1938, 276– 77)

The crew did eventually get their clothing back, and Caamano received

an invitation to a feast in one of the longhouses in the village of Citeyats.

People lived at Citeyats well into the twentieth century. At some point

in the mid- 1800s occupation shifted from year- round to seasonal. Just

to the north of the main village site are the remains of a small trapping

cabin. People still continue to visit the old village. Small trails lead from

a house platform near the beach, used to pitch a tent on, through patch-

es of wooms, waakyil, and wüłeexs (harvestable shrubs and berries).

Farther up the shore, in Twartz Inlet, a commercial drag seine was

operated from the late nineteenth to the mid- twentieth century. Far-

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64 Laxyuup

ther to the east, in Union Pass, is another drag seine camp that oper-

ated over the same period of time. Both of these camps were located

on reserves that Ts’ibasaa had set up in meetings with O’Reilly in 1891

and were Gitxaała sockeye fishing sites. While people no longer use

these places to fish salmon as they did in the previous century, com-

munity members still find the time to visit.

To the south of Citeyats on Campania Island and within the Estevan

Group are more Gitxaała villages and places of social and cultural sig-

nificance. Old villages, like Citeyats and Ks’waan, stand along the shore

of Campania and on the exposed coastline of the Estevan Group. To

the south Gitxaała people have used habitation sites on Moore Islands

during their customary harvesting of fish, seals, and other marine re-

sources. These are tough places to get to, being on the extreme edge

of the interface between land and ocean. Locations like these are why

Gitxaała people say we are people of the saltwater, for not only is the

majority of our food gathered from the ocean, but Gitxaała live so close

to the ocean as to be essentially a part of the ocean itself.

The skipper Charles Bishop recorded meeting with Gitxaała people

in Waller Bay on the rugged exposed west coast of Banks Island in 1795:

The first place we came to was the butchery, where lay about 40

dead Seals, newly killed. Ten or 12 more, was on the Fire, Singing

the Hair off the Skins. A Women and a man where Stripping the

blubber and Skin together, off an other Quantity. Another women

was cutting up and Quartering the Flesh. Many Poles spread from

tree to tree about 6 feet over the Fire where Covered with Strips

of Blubber, and on bushes all round was hung the Flesh. Blood

Gutts and filth formed the comfortable foot Path to the Habita-

tion which lay about 10 yards from the butchery. This was no oth-

er than some Poles stretched from tree to tree about 7 feet from

the Ground and covered with the Rind of the Birch Tree. A large

fire right in the middle served as well to warm the inhabitants as

to dry their Fish, vast quantities of which were hung to the Poles

and spread around the Rocks near the Hutt: This Family consisted

of an old man, 3 of middle age and two young ones, and they had

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Laxyuup 65

Each a Wife seemingly Proportioned to their own ages, which with

4 small Children composed the group. (Roe 1967, 65)

To the north of Waller Bay our archaeological research has recorded

information on three habitation sites in Kxenk’aa’wen (Bonilla Arm).

All are sites that have been used from the ancient past (more than two

thousand years) to the contemporary period. As described in chapter

8, this is also the site of an impressive complex of stone fish traps that

extends for more than a kilometer along the shore.

To the east of Banks Island in Ktsm laagn (Curtis Inlet) is the village

established by Ts’ibasaa when he first chose his domains within Gitxaała

territory. This village was established long before the flood mentioned

in the ancient oral histories.

When Ts’ibassa and his Gispuwada group came down the Skeena

from Temlaxham they went to where there were already some of

the Laxskik group in Lach Klan. This was a gathering place where

these people had their elevation feasts. . . . Bu Ts’ibassa wanted

to have his own exclusive hunting territories so he set out, to find

an exclusive place for himself and his own family (matrilineal).

He found a long inlet and called it Kts’ml’aa’agn (crevice in moun-

tain). The entrance to this inlet being very narrow and between

two high bluffs gave it an appearance of being a crevice in a rock.

(Beynon notebook, 1916, BF 421.29, CMC)

In 1916 Beynon recorded the names of houses that Ts’ibasaa and his

brothers built at Ktsm laagn: “In Kts’ml’aa’agn, the hunting ground of

He:l (Ts’ibassa), he had also the following houses mijom welp. Shower

House. Mik— shower of rain. The front of this house was decorated as

having a shower of rain in front of it by painting. This was used by all

of the house of He:l. Maxaiam welp. Rainbow house. This was built by

Niaswexs at Kts’ml’aa’agn and was used by all the royal family” (Bey-

non notebook, 1916, BF 421.29, CMC).

Beynon describes all of the various houses that Ts’ibasaa had through-

out his territories, but these two are of special relevance given their

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66 Laxyuup

location at Ts’ibasaa’s first home within the Gitxaała laxyuup. During

several trips to Ktsm laagn I have had the opportunity to stand on the

house platforms that remain from the ancient village site. They have

a clear view of the seaward approach and allow for effective control

over entry to the inlet. At the head of the inlet and by the sockeye

salmon stream are the remains of several twentieth- century cabins

used during the drag seine period.

Our archaeological research has described a small village site and

a remnant midden patch of some antiquity. The faunal analysis of the

site shows a heavy reliance on salmon and herring. This place remains

a significant cultural location and resource- harvesting location.

K’moda (Lowe Inlet) is on the mainland shore of Grenville Channel

but is also directly accessible from Ktsm laagn if one were to follow

the sockeye stream and lake system located at the head of the inlet.

K’moda is one of the central cultural places within the Gitxaała laxyuup.

This is where the contemporary reserves were negotiated, but, more

important, this place marks the most southerly advance of northern

invaders, who were eventually repulsed by the Gitxaała. It is a key

fishing site for the royal Gispuwada house of Ts’ibasaa- He:l and an an-

cient village that figures prominently in Gitxaała adaawx (Menzies

and Butler 2007).

As I explain in chapters 4 and 8, K’moda figures prominently in my

own family history and personal experiences. It is a place I visited

many times with family members heading south to fish in the waters

near Citeyats, walking along the shores and trails on family trips, and

more recently as a researcher mapping the ancient village and collect-

ing soil samples to analyze for faunal remains as part of a larger proj-

ect reconstructing ancient Gitxaała harvesting practices.

All of these places exist in several temporal frames. They are ancient

sites ranging back in time from two to nearly ten millennia. Each has

a local history that is linked to named hereditary leaders and real in-

dividuals who spent their lives connected to these places. These are

contemporary places that Gitxaała people visit and know through di-

rect experience, memories, and stories. But these places also exist in

an abstract frame, almost out of time, as markers of social relations

that, while rooted in history, have direct meaning in the present.

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Laxyuup 67

Home

Ultimately one experiences the laxyuup directly and personally. It can

be described, as I have attempted to do, in terms of its geographical

extent. One can discuss the ways colonialism has constrained and in-

fringed upon Gitxaała practices and activities within the laxyuup. The

real meaning and experience of this place for Gitxaała people comes

from time spent on the water and land that form the laxyuup, listen-

ing to the sounds of the place and the stories of our history told while

one is within and upon it. This is the experience of coming home.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Adaawx

History and the Past

History is integral to Gitxaała identity. There is little about Gitxaała

that is not touched by historical references. In this chapter I focus on

the documentation of Gitxaała oral history. I do so in two steps: (1) I

outline a general theory of history drawing from my knowledge and

research within and on behalf of Gitxaała Nation, and (2) I offer three

stories of oral history research that exemplify a Gitxaała approach to

the documentation of oral history.

A Theory of History

This general theory of history draws from the intersection of my own

personal history and my professional practice. I grew up hearing about

my family history as a normal practice of everyday life. As a profes-

sional anthropologist I have been asked by the political leadership of

Gitxaała, over the course of more than a decade, to provide expert

opinions on the existence of Gitxaała as a people with a distinct his-

tory, culture, and system of governance. Since 1998 I have observed

and participated in a wide array of feasts, community meetings, inter-

community meetings, and public meetings as a professional anthro-

pologist. During these events Gitxaała people would, in the normal

course of their interventions and contributions, make statements about

the importance of their history and how it ought to be relayed. Public

statements reference historical processes and events, acknowledge

those present who have connections to the history, and then recount

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70 Adaawx

the particular history or acknowledge that the history heard was in

fact consistent with what they had been taught by their own elders.

In the course of conducting field research with Gitxaała people re-

lated to traditional territories and their use I was regularly advised

that the appropriate approach to research involved requesting permis-

sion of the named title holder to the territory in question and that any

conversation with community members should include groups of peo-

ple who held the rights to tell the history. The emphasis was that even

in direct communications, such as interviews and conversations, the

transmission of history and related information needed to take place

in a collective setting with appropriate individuals in place to acknowl-

edge and witness what was being said.

In conversations with my mentors I have had the opportunity to dis-

cuss and learn about the ways knowledge is transmitted. In these set-

tings, which parallel traditional approaches to the transmission of

knowledge, I have learned about the processes of learning. This in-

volves the learner listening, not questioning, observing and then do-

ing. Knowledge about history is transmitted in these settings through

direct instruction, demonstration, and practice.

Documentary sources also provide corroborating information on

oral history and its transmission. William Beynon recorded a great

many historical narratives; throughout his work can be found com-

ments and asides related to the nature of Tsimshian oral history

and the ways it can or should be related. In his 1916 notebooks of

observations of and interviews collected in the village of Lach Klan,

for example, Beynon records that his entire research project was

placed on hold until the leading hereditary leader, Joshua Tsibassa,

granted approval.

The people have not advanced as much as the other people of

other tribes in matters of education and still adhere to ancient

ceremonies. I had difficulty in getting started here on account of

this and on going to an informant to get information in the house

of Tsybɛsƹ I saw the informant [Sam Lewis, who then] took me

to the house of the chief and asked the necessary permission to

be able to give me the information and after I had paid him for

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his work, he handed all the money over to the chief and took only

what the chief allowed him for telling me what I wanted. (Bey-

non notebook, 1916, vol. 1, BF 419, box 29, CMC)

Then, midway through his research, a number of Beynon’s respon-

dents withdrew their participation; they were waiting for further per-

mission to be granted by hereditary leaders to answer Beynon’s

additional questions.

My informant upon being requested to translate other names re-

fused to do so until she had received the consent of the different

chiefs. . . .

Informant for the house of ‘nagap’t, ganhada. Mary ‘Ałaxsgɛłs

75 yrs of age. (Beynon notebook, 1916, vol. 1, BF 419, box 29, CMC)

This process of ensuring approval, proceeding, stopping, and reaffirm-

ing approval is a long- standing practice among Gitxaała people. It is

part of the internal mechanisms and protocols that ensure the main-

tenance and continuity of an oral history over time.

Oral history, in a Gitxaała sense, is usually referred to as adaawx,

lineage histories or “true tellings.” These narratives relate the origin

and central events of a lineage. Adaawx revolve around named hered-

itary leaders whose names are passed down through time. Adaawx

reference places, events, people, privileges (crests, songs, stories, etc.),

things (tangible and intangible) that form property, and rights within

Gitxaała society. Adaawx also contain references to traditions and laws

that govern social behavior and the relations between humans and be-

tween humans and all other social beings (animals, spirits, etc.).

The authority to relate these narratives rests in the idea of malsk

(literally, “telling”). The emphasis here is on the act of relating, the act

of telling. The authority to tell arises from an encounter with naxnox

(loosely translated as “supernatural being” or “supernatural”) where-

in certain rights, privileges, or property are granted to the named he-

reditary leader who is the protagonist of the history. Malsk signifies

ownership and thus the right to tell certain stories. It provides the au-

thority to named hereditary leaders and in so doing mirrors the struc-

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72 Adaawx

ture of authority and hierarchy that resides among the naxnox— which

is the ultimate source of authority and power.

History and tradition are linked through the idea and concept of

łagyigyet, which literally means “old people” or “people of the long

ago and tradition.” This is important as it highlights that tradition is

integral to the Gitxaała notion of history. Embedded in the telling of

history are ideas (values, principles, practices) that instruct people on

how to behave in the contemporary world. Thus ideas related to re-

source management and sharing, for example, are directly embedded

in the telling and learning of Gitxaała history.

The transmission of oral narratives occurs in a range of settings, in-

cluding but not limited to formal settings such as feasts and training

or instruction of heirs and youth.

Transmission of History in Formal Settings

The feast system is the primary formal setting within which oral nar-

ratives are recounted. Margaret Anderson and Marjorie Halpin (2000)

edited Beynon’s 1945 notebooks that detail the proceedings of a mul-

tiday traditional Tsimshian feast. The Spanish skipper J. Caamano pro-

vides one of the earliest European recordings of a feast during his

visit to Gitxaała territory in 1792 (Wagner and Newcombe 1938). Both

accounts describe similar processes wherein leading hereditary lead-

ers and hosts relate their lineage histories through song and dance,

and both describe how these tellings are witnessed by the observing

hereditary leaders.

The importance of public witnessing of events in this formal setting

is great. Among the Gitxaała to stand up and acknowledge a history is

to agree with it; public disagreement takes the form of silence. This

differs from Euro- American traditions of dissent. Drawing upon work

by Margaret Seguin (1984), Anderson and Halpin (2000, 34) have this

to say about silence as an expression of disagreement:

Silence indicates that you are in disagreement with what has been

said, and on a situation of any importance the speaker will re-

phrase in order to elicit an overt expression of agreement. This is

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precisely the strategy that was followed by “older thought” at

Gitsegukla [an inland Skeena River Tsimshianic community] when

they disagreed with the plans of the “younger thought” with re-

gard to a modernized style for the pole- raising and concomitant

ceremonies. They not only showed their disagreement by their

silence, but two of them moved out of the community, which was

correctly read by the “younger thought” as a strong and compel-

ling message.

Non- Indigenous observers often overlook the role of silence as an

act of dissent and disagreement. Within the Euro- American cultural

tradition silence is seen as passive acceptance or lack of knowledge

related to a subject under discussion. However, within Gitxaała and

related Tsimshian groups, silence is an active form of disagreement

and is understood as such. This has several serious implications in the

context of contemporary research.

Research that is not supported by hereditary leaders or community

members may not be overtly opposed. Rather community members

who are knowledgeable may simply exempt themselves from the pro-

cess by their absence (not being home when the researcher knocks,

missing prearranged appointments, leaving the community to go fish-

ing, etc.). Or, if these same members are approached directly by a re-

searcher they may politely demur and say they don’t really know much

about the subject. Unfortunately an inexperienced researcher may

conclude from this that there is no objection to his or her work and

that few people know much about the subject of the research.

Gitxaała oral accounts are replete with stories of visiting twentieth-

century researchers who came, visited matriarchs and house leaders,

sipped tea and ate cookies, and then left with none of the real history.

Yet these same researchers often go on to write and publish accounts

in which they profess expertise, even when the knowledge they sought

was withheld from them. From within the Gitxaała frame of reference

these researchers reveal their ineptitude (even when external agen-

cies, such as governments or university publishers, accept at face val-

ue the inept researcher’s findings).

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Transmission of Narratives in the Context

of Training and Education

In order for formal transmission of narratives to occur there needs be

an opportunity for community members to learn their history. Those

who are in line to inherit hereditary names are expected to learn their

history as part of the process of taking on their name; in addition all

members of a house are also expected to learn the general history of

their lineage. As this is a ranked society there are aspects of history

and tradition that are restricted, not only according to house group

but also according to one’s rank and position within a house group.

The training of those in line to inherit takes place in all manner of con-

texts, including but not limited to home, work, play, harvesting and

processing foods and materials, learning dances and songs within the

family and (in current times), and local dance and drum groups.

Three Stories of Oral History Research

These three stories illuminate a Gitxaała approach to the documenta-

tion of oral history, but they do so from three rather different aspects.

The first two are examples mandated and requested by Gitxaała Na-

tion leadership in the context of documenting community use and oc-

cupancy over a disputed area of Prince Rupert Harbor. Here the task

was to document knowledge related to places in response to a specific

contemporary legal dispute. Though linked to each other by a shared

purpose, these are stories of two different approaches to telling his-

tory and reflect differences in the gendered telling of history. Thus in

one location matriarchs spoke and engaged (around the table), but in

the other it was the smgigyet and lik’agyet (councilors) who partici-

pated and who were the primary speakers. More than gender, though,

these two stories of oral history research also document a trajectory

of learning with the researcher cast in the role of learner. That is, a

shift from sitting around a table— it could be a coffee table, a kitchen

table, or, as in this case, a classroom table— to traveling through and

to the places that one heard about when sitting around the table. This

is similar to the way place- based knowledge is typically transmitted

intergenerationally within Gitxaała. This approach to teaching history

is brought into closer focus by the third story, about my trips to K’moda

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with family and in my capacity as a professional researcher. Here my

personal and professional interests are entwined as I traveled with

family to learn more about a place that I have grown up hearing about

and have visited many times.

Under Canadian law aboriginal communities have to demonstrate

that they have used and have occupied the lands they claim title to and

claim they have rights to. An entire industry has been built up to doc-

ument use and occupancy that includes an abundance of technical

consultants and lawyers. The situation has been complicated by the

process of colonial displacement, such as the rise of missionary com-

munities like William Duncan’s Metlakatla, postcontact fur trading vil-

lages like Port Simpson, and industrial centers like Klemtu, each of

which has played a role in restructuring Indigenous memories of place

and belonging. For communities like Gitxaała that have retained a di-

rect connection to their traditional laxyuup, this is a doubly perplex-

ing matter, as they are defending their territory not only against the

Canadian state but also against those Indigenous neighbors who have

turned away from the customary laws and have adopted a more Euro-

centric approach to land and land rights. The first two stories of oral

history arose from the need to identify and defend the laxyuup Gitxaała.

Place- Names Workshop

About twenty hereditary leaders and matriarchs have gathered in a

classroom at the local college in Prince Rupert. I’ve prepared the room

by placing the tables together in the center with chairs circling them.

On the wall at the front of the class I have taped up a marine chart of

Gitxaała laxyuup. Post- it notes and felt pens are ready on the table. To

the side of the room is a coffee pot and baked goods from the local bak-

ery. Everyone is talking— sounds of English and sm’algyax intermingle.

I don’t speak sm’algyax (we have interpreters ready to help me), but I

do recognize some words and phrases. Most of the older folks, those

sixty or more, are more comfortable speaking in sm’algyax. More crit-

ically, the information most important to the discussion is spoken in

sm’algyax to ensure precision in what is said and recorded. After the

meeting the audio tapes are transcribed, translated, and checked against

my own notes of the meeting and the recollections of key participants.

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What follows is a condensed version of the workshop that highlights

a series of important narrative threads, encounters, and lessons. As

Walter Benjamin (1969, 86) explains, every real story “contains, open-

ly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, con-

sist of a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in a third, in a

proverb or maxim. In every case the storyteller is a man [in this case,

also a woman] who has counsel for his readers [in the oral context—

listeners]. . . . Counsel is less an answer to a question than a proposal

concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding.” Those

versed in modern reports and direct question- and- answer modes will

be frustrated by what they hear. The narrative seems to shift, jump,

return to the start, and then get deflected yet again. Benjamin writes,

“The storyteller takes what he tells from experience— his own or that

reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experience of those

who are listening to his tale” (87). The stories told to me during this

workshop drew from the gathered experience of those present and

were told so as to instruct me in my task.

I opened the meeting by pointing to the charts: “We are looking at

some charts on the wall from Banks Island up to Prince Rupert. I am

looking for direction: a place to start, a place and time to link Gitxaała

history to events, people, names within the laxyuup.”

Laxgibu sigyidm hana’a Janet Moody responds in sm’algyax (words

spoken in English at this meeting are italicized), “We go back before

the flood. To the old people [łagyigyet]. That’s what the old people

called it at the time of the flood— shla giget. There’s one thing that I

heard where our people anchored [during the flood]. One place where

our old people anchored. Oona River, but it wasn’t called Oona River

then. That’s another place where they anchored— Oona River: Kwi nax.

I have also heard that Metlakatla was originally Maach le Git xaala. I

heard that too. That’s why it’s called Metlakatla.”

Pointing to Prince Rupert on the marine chart, she says, “Tk’aan:

Prince Rupert. There is a story for this. The white people couldn’t trans-

late it. That’s why they call it Kaien Island.

“I want to call Samson to tell a story of another village, about this

supernatural [naxnox] creature that came up in this one area. Seal

Cove— I want you to show it to them. Sourdough Bay. The white man

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called it that. And he called it Wiil Luu Gyeben. A place where the su-

pernatural creature comes up.”

SAMSON COLLINSON (GANHADA): Maach le . . . What did they

call this place? There’s one place through that pass— Maachle

Sh’bee’shk’n. I think that’s what they call it. [This is a different

place they are referring to now.] There’s an opening there,

another channel.

JANET: What this Sh’bee’shk’n mean? Is it numbers?

RITA ROBINSON (GISPUWADA): Yes, Sh’bee’shk’n da’ goh’opsken?

How many is that?

RICHARD SPENCER (GANHADA): Ten [Sh’bee’shk’n means “ten”].

The only time you use this word is when you count trees. One,

two, three, and so forth. So you only use this set of numbers for

counting trees.

MATTHEW HILL (Laskiik): This is my comment of what I heard

Mason Brown say: “When we built a bird trap” [hap’ch jo’och.

Everyone giggles; “bird trap” is a double entendre].

The sighamana sing the bird trap song.

Ch’een juoth. Ch’een nawaaps nayanth. [Come in bird, come in

bird, come into your grandfather’s house.]

The song ends. Following a moment of cheerful silence Samson starts

to talk quietly from his seat near the back of the room: “A small island.

This island, where they hunt big deer on top of this mountain. And our

people went up there to hunt for them. That’s what my uncle Joseph

Shaw told me. My uncle said he had been able to walk up there too.

[He was likely fairly old by that time.] On top of this mountain on this

island, with all these big deer. These deer have short legs. This island—

that’s where there was a sea lion with no teeth, on that island. That’s

why they called it Lhaach kasch waan [literally, ‘The place of no teeth’].”

While Samson speaks Rita turns to Janet: “Isn’t that the place where

this humpback whale drifted ashore there, on that island? And this

whale had no teeth? Do you remember?”

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SAMSON: Those people [łagyigyet] knew the signs before the

oolichan would come to the Nass. This is what I don’t know. I

don’t know specifically what sign they were looking at. How

they knew when these oolichan were coming through there.

RICHARD: What is the name of that bird, when they first come

out?

UNIDENTIFIED: Sh’oh [robin]?

RICHARD: No, not that one.

UNIDENTIFIED: Le’eds [grouse].

RICHARD: When the grouse first comes, when they first heard the

grouse, that’s the first sign that the oolichans are coming. And

that’s when these oolichans came to Kl’ooh’xsm’s [Nass River].

And that’s a sign. When these grouse— when they hear them,

that’s the sign.

RITA: Violet told, there is a tunnel somewhere by Oona River. And

that’s where the oolichans go through, through this tunnel. And

those oolichans, they’re the ones that go to Skeena River. And

that’s why you see all these seagulls around that area, that’s

where the oolichans go through the tunnel to go to Skeena.

That’s what Violet told me. Did you hear about that as well,

Matt?

MATTHEW: Yes, I’ve heard. It was just like silver in that area in the

water.

LARRY BOLTON (GISPUWADA): There’s one place my dad showed

me where we fished. Where my dad told me that our people

lived there. It was called Tshl’oh (Slide). What did those white

people call that cannery?

UNIDENTIFIED: Inverness.

MATTHEW: My heart is getting stronger for what I am hearing

today. Ever since this issue came about. These white people had

nothing to do about this port. And the government broke a lot

of their own laws. So they can get what they want, it’s only

money that they are looking at. They really don’t care about

our territory. And what’s been coming out today, the world is

going to see it. We could show it to them so that they will step

back. They do not follow our laws and they did not consult us.

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They should have consulted us in the first place. And that’s why

this man [Charles Menzies] is trying to help us and to show us

the right direction to head to. I see that Charles was uplifted for

all the knowledge sharing that has happened. This man here is

trying to get us ready for where we’re at today. I can see that

Charles was very uplifted when he started hearing all the

adaawx [oral histories] that he heard from these people. And

also in this harbor here. It’s been two years that Charles has

been trying to help us [with the port issue]. We have gone quite

a ways now. . . . My heart is happy that he’s seen what is

happening now. For the discussions that we are making about

this port now, that’s what I want to say. That’s what I want to

say to Charles. [Says as an aside:] That’s what the old people

would call him— Chaales. [Everyone laughs].

Robins, double entendres, oolichans and underground tunnels, moun-

taintops, hunting, old people, and the topic at hand— the Prince Ru-

pert harbor and port: the workshop covered a lot of ground. These may

appear disconnected points. They clearly are not direct and explicit

answers to the question of who owns Prince Rupert Harbor. They are,

however, examples of the living history of Gitxaała and the many in-

terconnections that link people, place, and history in a woven blanket

that lies upon laxyuup Gitxaała.

Naming the Harbor

It’s an early May morning in Prince Rupert Harbor. The sky is clear

blue and the air is crisp. The Katrena Leslie, the Gitxaała Nation’s sixty-

foot fishing boat, is tied to the dock, its engine running, waiting for

the day’s work. Our task, documented in the film Naming the Harbour,

is to take a group of Gitxaała hereditary leaders on a tour of the har-

bor and to record their stories, memories, and histories of this place.

As the boat pulls away from the dock Deputy Chief Clarence In-

nis, a Gispuwada sm’ooygit, explains the purpose of the trip. I’m here

to write down what is said and later to prepare a written report. Er-

nie Bolton, a community interpreter, Jen Rashleigh, a filmmaker,

and my son Tristan, who is taking photographs, join me in this task.

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80 Adaawx

Clarence introduces the team to the hereditary leaders. He describes

the intended outcomes: a film, a report, and a photo essay. After he’s

done Ernie repeats everything in sm’algyax to ensure that everyone

has understood.

We’re all squeezed into the boat’s galley. Some folks are seated around

the galley table. The younger people stand, pressed close to the table.

We’re looking at a marine chart of the harbor.

Richard Spencer points to a place: “Kloya. That is named after a type

of berry. There’s crab apples there. It’s a sockeye creek. This is a place

Gitxaała people have lived. Kennedy Island, this is another important

place. I have a huge story to tell, an adaawx that lies on that place. A

story from way back, a story from the time of the old people.”

Alan Brown (Laskiik) says, “Nathan Shaw,1 he was a passenger on

our boat. He would tell us about places along our way from the village

to Prince Rupert.” Alan is pointing to places on the map as he describes

them. Others nod their heads. Occasionally people will murmur agree-

ment. Everyone is listening carefully as Alan continues.

“Y’asim [Grandfather] Nathan spoke about the Kinahan Islands [near

the mouth of Prince Rupert Harbor]. There was a village there. There

were fish traps for ground fish. Also, at the mouth of Delusion Bay there

is a fish trap there. There is an inlet on Smith Island that has spring

salmon traps. Casey Point. The shape of the shoreline was changed by

Gitxaała people. This is right by the port. [The site has now been com-

pletely destroyed by the port’s expansion.]”

Richard adds, “Behind Casey Point, this is where the port is expand-

ing. When they dig back they will find artifacts. They will flatten this.

Our history lives there.”

Alan agrees. “Y’asim Nathan told me the same story. There were so

many wars. On the sand bar that was there [he points toward Casey

Point on the map] the old people made a false village. When the war-

riors came, when the Haida came, they saw the houses there. On top

of the mountain the Gitxaała had built a structure of logs and gravel

and sand. It was a weapon. When the Haida came ashore to raid the

false village the Gitxaała released the logs and the side of the moun-

tain came down and buried the Haida warriors. Telling the story on

the spot. Telling adaawx on the spot. It brings the memories back.”

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Alan, Richard, and the others continue in this vein as the boat heads

out of the harbor. When we come up to Coast Island, outside Prince

Rupert Harbor and just off the industrial port on Ridley Island, the

boat is slowed to a stop. Everyone goes out on deck. Richard begins to

tell the story of two young Gitxaała children, guardians of a special

treasure, who had been kidnapped by the Haida: “The Haida attacked

a Gitxaała family that were living in Porpoise Harbor. The brother and

sister had been trained by their family so that they would know what

to do if they were attacked. The people were from Guniałwz [Moore

Island, a place to the far south of Gitxaała territory]. This was the same

family. It is where the story lives. The Haida people knew that these

people had a treasure. The family had a feeling that sooner or later

warriors were going to come. They instructed the children— to make

sure the treasure was safe— they showed them where the treasure was

and gave them instructions as what to do if the family was attacked.”

The boat is drifting just inside of Coast Island, incidentally the site

of a planned deep- sea loading dock that will go right over this cultur-

ally significant place and obliterate it. As Richard talks he points to

places in the water, on the island, back toward the harbor: he is illus-

trating his story. People nod their heads and murmur agreement in

English and sm’algyax as Richard continues.

“The boy and girl were taken captive by the Haida. Right here, close

to this rock here. Mason Brown [a late elder and hereditary leader]

told this. Inside this rock they dropped the bag. The story goes on. I

can stand here and say this place belongs to Gitxaała. We didn’t just

move here one hundred seventy- five years ago.2 We’ve been here be-

fore the flood.”

MATTHEW HILL: I have heard this story. Our family had a boat,

Quitonksa, we transported people. Our elders always shared

stories along the way. What we hear today I have heard many

times before on my family’s boat.

SAM LEWIS (GANHADA): I’m so grateful I’m here today. What

Richard is saying, I too have heard a lot of stories. People used

to row. They camped on the way as they traveled through our

territory. We have places up and down the coast.

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82 Adaawx

LARRY BOLTON: [speaking in sm’algyax] I too have heard these

stories. Thank you chiefs, matriarchs, for being here.

Everyone on board took a moment to speak, to acknowledge what

they had heard, and to add their own account of Gitxaała’s history of

use and occupancy in and around Prince Rupert’s harbor. While the

setting— the deck of a commercial fishing boat— was novel, the con-

text of place- based storytelling has a long history with Gitxaała and

other Indigenous societies (Basso 1996). As I go on to discuss, stories—

histories— of lineages and community are told and taught in a variety

of places, and one of the most important times for telling is while at

the place or places that factor strongly in the story.

Traveling to K’moda

Going to K’moda in March 2001 was both a personal and a profession-

al trip. Unlike in the first two oral histories, this trip was motivated by

my desire to learn more about my own family’s history. Joining me on

this trip was my father, Basso Menzies, my uncle Russell Gamble and

cousin Teddy Gamble; my two sons; and my colleague Caroline Butler.

This would not be the first time I had visited K’moda. While working

with my father on his commercial fishing boat for three decades we

had stopped here en route to the south or north countless times. This

is a storied place for me. I grew up hearing stories about my great-

grandfather Edward Gamble and his life and connections to this place.

What made this particular trip special was being able to go there in

the company of sm’ooygit H:el, Russell Gamble, and other members

of my family. It was thus an opportunity to learn through direct par-

ticipation and observation.

Understanding the importance of place is critical in comprehend-

ing history. In each of these examples the places become something

more than merely a setting, though they are of course a setting with-

in and against which people have lived, worked, played, and current-

ly engage in the context of struggles to assert aboriginal rights and

title. However, these places take on a presence of their own that fun-

damentally structures, shapes, and even enables human telling of events.

These places are mnemonic devices, memory aids, spurs to reminis-

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Adaawx 83

cences, and actors in history and memories in their own right. It is as

though these places have a form of agency in the telling and revealing

of their own histories.

The trip to K’moda began for earnest when I stepped onto the dock

at Lach Klan and was greeted by Teddy and Russell. My sons, my fa-

ther, my research colleague, and I had flown out from Prince Rupert

by float plane; we were now going to run south on Teddy’s thirty- eight-

foot fishing boat, the Gamble Lake (named for the large lake that feeds

K’moda). We loaded our gear onto the boat, let go the lines, and head-

ed toward K’moda. On the way down my father and Russell spoke about

their lives fishing and what they each remembered about K’moda.

Teddy ran the boat, and I watched my two young boys. We sat quietly,

for the most part, listening in on the galley conversation. Caroline

would occasionally ask a question, but mostly the two older men did

the talking. As we drew nearer to K’moda the conversation began to

wane as all eagerly turned toward what lay ahead.

We dropped anchor, set up the small skiff we were using to run

ashore, and then we were there! The tide was dropping as we landed

on the shore. We pulled the skiff up on a cleared patch of the beach,

what archaeologists call a canoe skid.

“This is where we hauled the drag seine skiff up,” Russell said as we

piled out of the skiff onto the beach. “It should be up there.” He point-

ed toward the trees a few dozen feet away. My sons took off in that di-

rection. It didn’t take long for them to find the remains of the old boat.

On the beach Russell began to describe the way the place looked

when he actively worked the drag seine in the middle years of the

twentieth century. “There were two houses up there. Beside this big

rock we had a clothesline.” He looked around. “I think the ground’s

washed away here. I don’t think the rocks were out like this.”

As we stood there listening and watching, Russell turned toward the

large half- moon- shaped fish trap. “See the hole there, where the rocks

are knocked away? That’s where the DFO [Department of Fisheries and

Oceans] knocked the wall down. They said it was killing fish.”

As the tide dropped, Russell, my father, and Teddy started to talk

about salmon fishing. Caroline and I measured and roughly mapped

in the size and shape of the stone trap. My boys ran back and forth

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84 Adaawx

across the beach, as young children are wont to do; their voices were

layered over the lower tones of my uncle, father, and cousin.

Since 2001 I have returned several times to K’moda with Teddy as

part of a Gitxaała- led archaeological research project. Our primary fo-

cus has been to document the nature and extent of the stone fish trap

(Menzies 2012; Menzies and Butler 2007; Smethurst 2014). Our crew

has been university students and community members.

Each visit brings a new and deeper sense of the place. At the core

of our learning is a twining of the oral history— both of lineage and of

the more recent past— with a growing understanding of the material

evidence of my family’s history in this place. Each subsequent trip has

found something more as we learn things that reverberate with the

oral history of K’moda.

From the fish trap to the mid- twentieth- century houses we have

started to learn about the ancient village site that is part of this place.

From the shoreline adjacent to the fish trap we have cast our gaze far-

ther out and have seen more traps and stone alignments. It is as though

the conversation we began that cold bright day in March a decade or

so ago continues as we grow in our knowledge of K’moda.

Summary

There are two phrases that I think best expresses the Gitxaała idea of

history: “History lives there” and “A story lies over this place.” In each

of the examples of oral history research we heard variations of these

two phrases. At the place- names workshop each place was linked to a

story, a person who told the story, and an event or character that fig-

ured prominently in the story. None of the places discussed existed

abstracted from history; it was the histories or stories that in fact gave

the places meaning and importance. On the boat trip the speakers ex-

plicitly spoke of stories living in particular areas and of the stories ly-

ing upon the physical landscape very much in the way a blanket is laid

upon a person at a feast. There is weight to these stories; they lie upon

the physical and social landscapes; they have consequence beyond the

simple moment of their telling. The act of visiting K’moda time and

time again brings forth new memories and understandings. Being in a

place also brings forth memories of the stories.

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Adaawx 85

Stories— more properly adaawx and malsk— lie upon and live in

places. These stories, like the people telling them and like the beings

the stories are about, are in and of themselves a type of living entity.

These stories are understood to exist in some sense independently of

people, yet they simultaneously rely upon people to tell and teach them.

Gitxaała’s conception of history has important consequences for re-

search. First, it suggests that histories of relevance to place are best told

in particular contexts. Second, the learning and comprehension of these

stories occur over long periods of time. Third, learners need to be ready

and open to hear the stories and to present themselves with patience.

These opening four chapters lay out the foundation of being Gitxaała:

names, governance, place, and history. These four dimensions of social

and political relations define a cultural framework and set of principles

for being Gitxaała. As we move forward in this story we encounter the

material processes of production and the social relations of food pro-

duction. Here the cultural practices of being Gitxaała are enacted in

the harvesting and processing of Gitxaała’s own foods.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Fig. 1. (top) Visiting K’moda with (left to right) one of the author’s sons, Sm’ooygit

He:l (Russell Gamble), Marvin “Teddy” Gamble, and Basso Menzies, March 2001.

Fig. 2. (bottom) A tour of Prince Rupert Harbor with Gitxaała hereditary

leadership, May 2008.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Fig. 3. (above) A chart showing Gitxaała places and histories in the area of

Prince Rupert Harbor, January 2008.

Fig. 5. (opposite bottom) The author cleaning fish onboard Marvin “Teddy”

Gamble’s gillnetter, the Gamble Lake, July 2012.

Fig. 4. (opposite top) Left to right: Russell Gamble, Jon Irons, and Naomi

Smethurst excavating a hearth at Ks’waan, June 2011.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Map 1. Gitxaała place- names. Cartography by Kenneth Campbell based on

information provided by the author.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Map 2. Based on a map prepared by William Beynon during research in

Lach Klan, 1916. The map is not an accurate reflection of laxyuup Gitxaała,

as Beynon did not personally survey or visit the places described on the

map, nor was he at that time familiar with the actual territory itself.

Numbers refer to hunting territories described by Beynon and discussed in

the text. Cartography by Kenneth Campbell.

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Sihoon

Catching Fish

Gitxaała are a marine people. Though mountains and valleys are im-

portant, fish and fishing is what defines the core of being Gitxaała.

Whether one is catching fish, cooking fish, sharing fish, or eating fish,

the Gitxaała world revolves around the marine places and practices

that provide a phenomenally rich and abundant source of marine foods.

“These are gourmet foods,” Matthew Hill said at a 2008 feast in Lach

Klan. “Anywhere else these are gourmet foods. In Gitxaała these are

everyday foods.” Community members fully understand the global im-

portance and value placed on Gitxaała’s food.

This chapter provides an overview of the social and economic impor-

tance of marine fisheries for Gitxaała. First I consider the doctrine of re-

spect that guides Gitxaała fisheries. Next I consider the thousands of

years of resource harvesting and the crucial role of trade and exchange

of marine resources, and finally I review of the transformation of

Gitxaała fisheries since the arrival of K’amksiwah. This chapter is fol-

lowed by three separate accounts of marine resources that hold a special

place in Gitxaała’s world: herring and herring roe, abalone, and salmon.

Respect and Gitxaała Fisheries

Gitxaała fisheries, as cultural practices, are framed in terms of rela-

tions between social beings. That is, one’s behavior is regulated through

social relations, which are understood as kin- like (see, for example,

Langdon 2006), with the animals one harvests and the people one har-

vests with. This implies and requires a structure of obligation and rec-

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88 Sihoon

iprocity. One learns this firsthand through experience on the water and

land. But these lessons are also heard and reinforced in the oral histo-

ries of Gitxaała people, some of which have been recorded over the

past century and a half.

John Tait (Gispaxloats, Tsimshian) recounted a sequence of stories

of Txemsum (Raven) to William Beynon in 1954. In his narrative Tait

talks about the time Txemsum married the princess of the Salmon Peo-

ple. Txemsum “had plenty of food. Whenever they were hungry they

would roast a salmon and the women [sic; Txemsum’s wife] would

carefully gather all the bones and the remnants and burn these and as

she done this they heard a happy cry in the waters of the stream. This

was the salmon they had just ate now restored again.” As long as Tx-

emsum respected his wife and her relatives, he had plenty of food.

Unfortunately for Txemsum he grew jealous of his wife and lost his

trust in her. His wife

became very angry. “I’ll go away back to my own people as I am

afraid you will do me injury.” So she went out of the house and

called out as she went out “Come my children, come with me.” She

went down into the stream, into the water and disappeared and

all of the dried salmon now became alive and all jumped into the

water and became live salmon and swam away after the woman,

who was the Princess of the Salmon. Txemsum’s supply of salmon

was all gone. . . . He was now very hungry with nothing to eat.

(Beynon notebook, 1954, “Txemsum and the Salmon” by John Tait

(Gispaxlaots), collected by Beynon for M. Barbeau, BF 134.4, CMC)

Jay Miller (1997) describes the results of people not respecting the

gifts of their nonhuman relations. In his account of the story of Tem-

laxham, an ancient Tsimshian community of origin, we learn of how

the people are punished for forgetting themselves, for disrespecting

their own animal relatives:

Everyone did as he or she pleased. Great chiefs would give feasts

and kill many slaves. They wasted food. The people had become

wicked. One day some children went across the Skeena to play by

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themselves. One of them went for a drink at a small stream. There

he saw many trout. He called to the others, and they began to fish

for trout even though they already had plenty of food. They abused

the trout. When they caught a fish, they would put urine in its

mouth and return it to the water to watch it writhe and die. They

laughed and mocked the fish in its agony. The trout had come to

spawn that fine spring day, but they died instead. Soon a black fog

began and a strong wind blew. Then it began to rain torrents. The

trout stream began to rise. The children drowned. (63– 64)

Marc Spencer (Ganhada, Gitxaała), in an interview with William

Beynon in 1953, described a similar Gitxaała account of a flood brought

about by children disrespecting salmon at a village on Banks Island

known as K’na’woow (Place of the Snares):

The salmon were very plentiful in all these creeks and the people

had plenty. It was then that some of the young people, now hav-

ing all of the salmon they required, began to abuse the salmon by

catching them in looped snares which they made from fine roots.

When the salmon’s head swam into the loop they would pull it

tight and then leave the salmon hanging by the neck half out of

water, then the eagles and other preying animals would come and

devour the salmon. The older people begged the young people to

stop their abuses to the salmon but these would not heed the

warnings of the older people and soon other children in the near-

by villages began doing the same. Their elders kept warning them

‘you will cause the anger of the chief of the Skies, because you

are abusing the valuable salmon,’ but they would pay no atten-

tion to their warnings. Soon the weather began to change and the

rain began to come down heavy and soon the rivers began to rise

and gradually the waters rose and soon the villages at the creeks

became submerged and still the waters rose and soon the small

islands became submerged and then the people who up till then

had kept moving up into the hills now got everything into their

large canoes and the high hills and mountains were now all sub-

merged only here and there were small portions of the hills to

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90 Sihoon

which the people were gathering to anchor their canoes and soon

these disappeared and the people that were saved began to drift

apart. The people knew that this was the revenge of the salmon

that caused the flood retaliating after the many abuses. (Beynon

notebook, n.d., interview with Mark Spencer, BF 132.5, CMC)

If the salmon or the trout are treated inappropriately, they will leave

or exact retribution. If respected, they will reward the harvester. His-

tory has taught us that catching too much salmon from a particular

location will result in a marked decline or total extirpation of the stock.

The same history has also shown that not taking enough seems to have

a similar effect. Thus the oral histories provide guidelines for behavior

that are reinforced by direct observations of the behavior of fish.

Gitxaała Fisheries in Historical Context

The social relations between people and our nonhuman brethren guid-

ed our millennia- long fisheries practices. There is no known time—

except during infrequent famines— during which Gitxaała have not

harvested marine resources. Archaeological research that we have un-

dertaken documents at least five millennia of harvesting.1

From that research we have identified faunal remains at Gitxaała vil-

lages and resource harvesting locations of more than one dozen unique

species of invertebrates and more than two dozen species of fish, plus

a multitude of marine mammals and terrestrial vertebrates and birds

(Wigen 2012). Using charcoal samples from the deepest parts of the an-

thropogenic soils we have dated these faunal remains to over five thou-

sand years old.2 Over Gitxaała’s long history, with rare exceptions,

harvest levels have remained remarkably consistent and productive.

Ancient Gitxaała harvesting techniques have included passive and

active gear types. Passive (or static) gears are set in place and use the

action of fish the or current to trap the target species. Active gears are

not fixed in place, and the fisher uses them to actively chase and trap

the fish. Passive gears, such as stone and wooden weirs, use tidal action

to harvest salmon, herring, and flatfish. Gill nets, originally made from

natural plant fibers but today made from nylon, were (and are) set along

shorelines or across creek mouths so that migrating fish become trapped

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within them. Active gears, such as dip nets, gaffs, spears, and drag

seines, were used to target fish and animals less likely to be caught by

passive techniques. All of these technologies rely upon a fine local un-

derstanding of fish behavior and environmental setting in order to work.

Salmon and herring are two of the most important fish harvested in

Gitxaała territory. For millennia Gitxaała people have fished herring

for their flesh and their roe. Our archaeological investigations in

Gitxaała territory since 2009 have revealed the presence of herring

bones in the majority of sites for which we have collected faunal sam-

ples (Smethurst 2014). As discussed in more detail in chapter 6, herring

roe has been harvested by using seaweed, kelp, and hemlock branches.

Elders and community members also describe the deliberate planting

of herring in certain areas by purposefully towing trees covered in

spawn from one area to another in order to seed it for future fishing.

Salmon have been, and continue to be, harvested in traditional house

territories that are owned and managed by ranking hereditary leaders.

Salmon harvesting techniques include gaffing and spearing, using stone

traps and wooden weirs, and using a range of net and hook and line

gear types (see chapter 8 for more detail). Salmon, along with herring,

constitute close to two- thirds of identifiable fish bones we have recov-

ered in our archaeological research in laxyuup Gitxaała.

Halibut and other bottom fish have been harvested since long before

the arrival of Europeans, as seen in early descriptions by Europeans.

(Sabaan was fishing halibut, for example, when James Colnett came

upon him.) Archaeological evidence indicates that Halibut and other

bottom fish, such as various species of rock cod, gray cod, black cod,

and lingcod, were a persistent and significant component of precon-

tact diets.3 Museum collections, such as at New York’s American Mu-

seum of Natural History, Chicago’s Field Museum, and Vancouver’s

Museum of Anthropology, contain many fine examples of hooks for

catching halibut and other bottom fish dating from prior to, at, or just

after European contact with Gitxaała.

Halibut was and is dried in thin pieces starting in the month of May.

This thin dried fish, called woks, is stored for household consumption

and also traded with people who either do not fish or do not have ac-

cess to halibut fishing grounds.

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92 Sihoon

Abalone, clams, cockles, mussels, snails, chitons, and other mollusks

as well as sea urchins are harvested throughout the year. Clams and

cockles are typically harvested in the winter months at low tide. Some

evidence exists of mariculture in the form of extending the intertidal

zone through use of rock terraces and thus creating “clam gardens.”

(See Eldridge and Parker 2007, 15– 16 for a description of what may be

a clam garden in Prince Rupert Harbor.) Several of the places that I

have visited within laxyuup Gitxaała seem more likely designed to fa-

cilitate clam and cockle production than the harvesting of fish. How-

ever, the two uses are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Site surveys

of favored clam and cockle beds within Gitxaała territory indicate the

possibility of direct human activity in shaping the beach zone prior to

and immediately after European contact.4 Of all these species abalone

retains a special cultural significance (see chapter 7).

Marine mammals are an important Gitxaała food. For those lineag-

es without access to either the Nass or Kemano runs of oolichan, seal

oil was their grease. A favored old food, hadda oola, is much talked

about by contemporary Gitxaała people. Only a few people still make

this delicacy of seal intestines stuffed with seal fat and slow- boiled.

Techniques for preserving seal and sea lion meat include drying, smok-

ing, jarring, and freezing. Prior to and at the time of European arrival

whales were also harvested for food and oil.

The British skipper Charles Bishop sailed from Bristol in 1794 in

search of his fortune in the sea otter trade. A year later he came upon

Gitxaała. His description of a seal- processing site is the earliest surviv-

ing European description of this long- standing Gitxaała harvesting

practice (see chapter 3).

Before turning to the changes wrought in Gitxaała’s fishery by the

arrival of Europeans, one further marine resources merits our atten-

tion: seaweed. Seaweed is a longtime and critical staple food of Gitxaała.

One of my first memories of food is the pickled kelp my aunt Nettie

(Annette Dell, née Gamble, daughter of Edward Gamble and Ellen

Gamble, née Denis) gave us. There were other foods, like the annual

delivery of oolichan, but the pickled kelp stood out. It is perhaps an

unusual example, but it is one that arises from a practice of diverse

seaweed harvesting hybridized with European pickling traditions.

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Nearly every public meal and feast that I have attended in Lach Klan

has had at least one type of food that involves or is based on seaweed.

The staple contemporary seaweed is of the Porphyra genus. This sea-

weed is harvested in May on the outer exposed rocks on the seaward

portions of Gitxaała’s territory. From just outside the village of Lach

Klan along the north and west coasts of Porcher Island across to the

west coast of Banks Island and then south toward the Estevan Group

one can find harvesting places belonging to various Gitxaała walps.

Seaweed is typically dried on the rocks where it is picked or trans-

ported back to Lach Klan— or, in earlier years, to one of the other main

village sites— for drying on special seaweed boards made from cedar

planks. Nancy Turner and Helen Clifton (2006) describe the process

as conducted by Gitga’ata, close neighbors to Gitxaała.

In my research with Caroline Butler over the past decade we have

interviewed several dozen community matriarchs who have explained

in detail seaweed harvesting, processing, and preparing for consump-

tion. Some of this research was focused on the specific ecological knowl-

edge of community members (Butler 2004). Other aspects of our

research examined issues of climate change (Ignas and Campbell 2009).

Through all of this Gitxaała people express deep pride and pleasure

when talking about, sharing, and eating seaweed.

All of these foods were (and are) harvested for domestic consump-

tion and to trade and exchange with people, at times far removed from

Gitxaała’s own territory. This is a critical aspect of Gitxaała harvests.

Community members become rightly incensed when outsiders refer

to their harvests as subsistence or mere food fisheries. For Gitxaała the

label “subsistence” sounds like an insult, an inference that one is only

barely eking out an existence, barely getting by from small numbers

of fish. This is quite far from the truth. Gitxaała is a society that values

wealth and is focused on a system of rank and prestige based in large

measure on the capacity to harvest surpluses. To be labeled a subsis-

tence harvester is to call one impoverished. It is tantamount to a repu-

diation of Gitxaała conceptions of authority and jurisdiction over the

laxyuup. Trade for economic benefit internally and with nations far

removed from the central areas of Gitxaała territory is a long- standing

critical component of Gitxaała culture and of the Gitxaała practice of

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94 Sihoon

fisheries. Without the capacity to harvest surpluses for trade, Gitxaała

hereditary leaders are in a real sense diminished.

Trade and Gitxaała Fisheries

Prior to and at the time of European contact, the practice of exchange

for benefit was an integral aspect of Gitxaała culture and society. Trade

and exchange of abalone, salmon, seaweed, herring roe, cockles, and

other items were critical to the function of Gitxaała practices such as

the yaawk (feast). The exchange of food and other items such as shells

among Gitxaała either at a yaawk or in more explicit trading contexts

is trade for economic benefit. It is in these practices that the critical

social values of the accumulation of wealth, prestige, and social rank

occur and are maintained.

Three types of evidence for trade exist: ethnographic data (including

adaawx and published reports), linguistic data (concerning words and

phrases used to identify trade items), and archaeological data (regard-

ing distribution of food products).Gitxaała adaawx describe the devel-

opment of trading relations with neighboring Ts’msyen and others. In

the adaawx “The Purchase of the Nauhulk,” for example, James Lewis

of Kitkatla describes the trading privileges of Ts’msyen and Gitxaała

people, as recorded by Beynon: “The Gilodza were privileged to trade

with the Haida of what is now Prince of Wales Island. The Gitlan trad-

ed with the Nass tribes; the Gitwilgoats, with the Haida of what is now

the Queen Charlotte Islands; the Gidzaxlahl and Gitsis with the Tlingit,

with whom their royal houses were related; the Gixpaxloats, with the

Upper Skeena; the Gitando with the Kitselas; and the Kitkatla with the

Kitimat and the Bella Bella. Thus all had exclusive trading areas.”5

Beynon himself describes the close relations between Gitxaała and

the Haida: “When the Gitxaała went fur seal hunting [fur sealing] they

frequently went very close to the Haida coast. And at times the rela-

tionship between some of the Gitxaała groups and the Haidas was very

friendly and often so, to this day there are some of the Gitxaała names

are still being used by the Skidigate Haidas such as niswexs, a chiefly

name of the T’sibaasa, Gispawudada group.”6

These adaawx, as discussed elsewhere in this book, include a his-

tory of alliances and conflicts.7 These accounts also document the var-

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ious types of goods traded between different First Nations and describe

who had rights to trade with whom and under what conditions.

Linguistic data (collected by John Dunn, Margaret Anderson, and

Bruce Rigsby, among others)8 can be used to identify terms for trade

and exchange and terms for varieties of food products in the Tsimshi-

anic languages. The first set of terms is important in establishing that

trade for economic benefit existed. If terms for trade and exchange ex-

ist in a language, then it can be inferred that a people were familiar

with and very likely engaged in trade. In sm’algyax at least four words

can be identified that imply some sort of exchange: diik (buy), ‘wa’at

(sell), gilam (give), and sagyook (trade). There are also numerous words

for specific types of presents, some obligatory and some repayable.9

The sm’algyax dictionary lists more than thirty words for various types

of exchanges, ranging from gift giving to trade and sale.10

The second set of terms (describing a variety of food items) is equal-

ly important for demonstrating the existence, or at least the possibil-

ity, of trade for economic benefit. For example, there are a variety of

terms that describe types of preserved fish (half- smoked, smoked, split

and dried, etc.), the run of a fish (early, late, etc.), and variations in

aesthetic qualities such as color, texture, and taste. The existence of

these terms and concepts indicates the existence of a finely tuned aes-

thetic appreciation of differences between fish products. Thus there is

not simply one type of salmon available to everyone everywhere; rath-

er there are a range of salmon products, some of which are recognized

as more desirable than others. This distinction in taste and quality ex-

tends to all manner of fish products, including abalone as food and as

ceremonial decoration. This form of product differentiation would be

important in the establishment of networks of trade in fish products

between different communities and households.

Data from archaeological studies also substantiate the significance

of fishing and the likelihood of trade prior to European contact. Aside

from the work that I have conducted in recent years, very little serious

archaeological research has been conducted within Gitxaała territory.

There has been some minor work on site identification for consultative

processes connected to logging and other development plans. Some

work is currently ongoing in the Prince Rupert Harbor area by consul-

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96 Sihoon

tants and university- based researchers. An earlier project, led by George

MacDonald, was instrumental in excavating sites along the Skeena

River (Coupland 1985) and Prince Rupert Harbor (Ames 2005). Works

by R. G. Matson and Gary Coupland (1995) and Kenneth Ames and

Herbert Maschner (1999) provide detailed overviews of the state of

archaeological knowledge of the Pacific Northwest. Both books de-

scribe trade and exchange (primarily as related to prestige items such

as obsidian, but other trade goods such as food products are also dis-

cussed). However, with the exception of some work by Phillip Druck-

er (1943) in 1938 and Bjorn Simonsen (1973) in 1969– 70, since 2009

the only extended archaeological work within the core Gitxaała terri-

tories has been my own.

To date our archaeological work in laxyuup Gitxaała has demon-

strated extensive marine harvests of more than forty different marine

species. As noted previously, the two most abundant fish identified in

our research are salmon and herring. One major village site has exten-

sive quantities of abalone shell, and at least one third of the sites we

have examined have significant quantities of sea urchin and chiton. In

terms of the material conditions for trade, we have found regional

variations in the faunal assemblages that create the potential for re-

gional exchange systems in which one community specializes in aba-

lone, for example, while another focuses on salmon and anchovies.

These three lines of evidence contribute to our conclusion that trade

was a core cultural aspect of Gitxaała society.

When the early European merchants ventured into Gitxaała terri-

tory starting in the late 1700s they found the Gitxaała more than able

negotiators who were not satisfied with mere trinkets. They also found

that the Gitxaała had a strong sense of proprietorship. (See chapter 2

on these early encounters between Europeans and Gitxaała.) When the

Europeans violated Gitxaała protocols by fishing, logging, or using

places without properly compensating their Gitxaała hosts, Gitxaała

retaliated either with direct physical attacks or with punitive actions

the Europeans considered theft. However, when the Europeans stood

face to face with Gitxaała and engaged in dialogue, both parties ben-

efited from the Gitxaała history and practice of trade.

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Sihoon 97

Gitxaała and the Contemporary Fishing Industry

Over the course of the late nineteenth through the twentieth century

Gitxaała people shifted their commercial fishing operations from trade

and exchange for benefit within a long- standing regional Indigenous

economic system to participation within an emerging industrial ex-

tractive fishing industry. In the early period of contact and during the

fur trade Gitxaała people licensed traders to harvest fish and also caught

and sold fish products to the visiting fur traders. However, it was with

the emergence of the salmon canning industry in the late nineteenth

century that Gitxaała involvement in the industrial extractive fishery

began in earnest. From the start the industrial fisheries combined with

Gitxaała traditional practices and, especially in terms of the drag seine

operations, occurred explicitly on and within traditional Gitxaała fish-

ing locations that were owned by named hereditary leaders. Gitxaała

fishers adapted to changes in the regulatory and technical structure of

the fisheries, yet at each moment of change more and more Gitxaała

people have found themselves pushed out of the industrial fishery and

restricted in their ability to make a livelihood from their own resourc-

es. Nonetheless Gitxaała people maintain an active resource harvest-

ing practice that supplies food internally to community members and

externally through a range of commercial practices (some through the

licensed industrial fishery, some under the authority and jurisdiction

of Gitxaała protocols).

During the late nineteenth century Port Essington, at the confluence

of the Ecstall and Skeena rivers, developed as the primary cannery and

steamship hub on the Skeena. Port Essington quickly supplanted the

Hudson Bay Company trading post in Fort Simpson ( just to the north

of present- day Prince Rupert) as the economic center of industrial de-

velopment on the northern BC coast. The extension of the Grand Trunk

Railroad to the coast in 1911 created the opportunity to develop Prince

Rupert as the commercial capital of the region. Shortly thereafter Prince

Rupert gained economic dominance over Port Essington and the ab-

original villages in the region.

These spatial transformations in settlement were only one aspect of

the changes wrought by industrial expansion on the north coast.

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98 Sihoon

Gitxaała and other Indigenous peoples provided the bulk of the labor

power for the fishing industry on the north coast until the middle de-

cades of the twentieth century. The early development of the fishery

was dependent on their participation as local knowledge holders, bro-

kers of labor power, independent producers, and wage laborers. The

reserve system and fisheries regulations contributed to a structure that

at first encouraged Indigenous production for these industries, and then

increasingly restricted Indigenous people from participating in them.

The northern canning industry was quite literally built on the tra-

ditional fisheries of the Gitxaała. Some canneries, such as the cannery

at K’moda (Lowe Inlet), were located at Gitxaała shore stations and

village sites. At other locations the canneries held the commercial fish-

ing permits from the federal government, but most of these permits

were actually fished by Gitxaała fishermen in accordance with tradi-

tional protocols. During the late nineteenth century the canneries re-

lied on supplies of fish from both their fleet of gillnetters and from the

traditional fish camps of Gitxaała chiefs.

Gitxaała fishers had developed an efficient yet sustainable method

of harvesting salmon as they returned to their creeks to spawn. Har-

vested fish were smoked and dried and later traded throughout large

commercial networks that extended far beyond the immediate net-

works of house group or village.

The stone traps were eventually replaced with drag seine nets. A

large net was set from a boat and winched into the beach. The drag

seine operations employed extended kin to harvest and process vari-

ous species of salmon. With the establishment of the canneries, the

hereditary chiefs, who organized production, integrated the sale of

salmon to the canneries into their established patterns of trade, sale,

and community consumption.

Gitxaała drag seine operations operated until 1964, when they were

officially shut down by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for

“conservation” reasons. However, long before this point the ownership

of the drag seine sites, and their associated fishing rights, had been

subtly undermined by industrial interests. The canneries obtained le-

gal land titles to many of the drag seine sites by the early years of the

twentieth century, even when customary control and ownership were

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Sihoon 99

recognized and practiced within the Gitxaała world. It became Depart-

ment of Fisheries and Oceans policy not to grant seine licenses to In-

dians, and this persisted until the 1920s (Newell 1993, 54). The

canneries continued, however, to recognize chiefly authority over these

operations, if only to ensure a reliable supply of fish and labor power.

A good example of this is a letter of agreement between Gitxaała chief

Paul Sebassah and C. S. Windsor in 1877, allowing Windsor restricted

rights to fish and to establish a cannery within Sebassah’s territory for

a fixed sum of money. These fishing sites were key to the integration

of the traditional economy with the capitalist economy, and chiefly

power with industrial interests. This general pattern is explored in

more detail in the account of K’moda (chapter 8).

While many chiefs and their families spent part of the fishing sea-

son at their drag seine operations, the majority of village members be-

gan to move to the canneries for fishing and processing employment.

The canneries used “village bosses” to recruit fishermen and process-

ing workers. Sometimes whole villages moved to one particular can-

nery. Elders today recall that Lach Klan was often empty in the summer,

with only one elderly man left behind as caretaker.

While the canneries used immigrant Chinese and Japanese workers,

who were organized under a labor contractor, they also required the

local, seasonal, and relatively inexpensive labor of First Nations wom-

en (and their children). Historical sociologist Alicja Muszynski (1996,

89) explains that the canneries could make use of Indians as cheap

wage labor because of the traditional subsistence economy’s effective

subsidy of their low cannery wages. Children’s labor was also essential

to the cannery system; older children provided child care for infant

siblings, and other children assisted their mothers and grandmothers,

increasing their income on the piece rate wage. Gitxaała women re-

member standing on boxes to pass their mothers cans in order to speed

up the process. Gitxaała boys stacked the cans and moved boxes for

their female kin.

The canneries were also sites for the reproduction of the traditional

economy. The canneries became the summertime centers of Indigenous

commerce. Families brought their surplus food to trade and sell. The

industry drew from both coastal and interior villages and thus provid-

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100 Sihoon

ed the opportunity to trade for the particular food specialties of each

community. Gitxaała women traded dried herring eggs, abalone, clams,

cockles, and seaweed with Gitsxan women for moose meat and berries

and with the Nisga’a for oolichan products.

The canneries provided a nexus for Indigenous trade and created

new avenues to maintain and develop ancient Indigenous networks in

the context of the emerging industrial economy. However, industrial

development on the north coast also disrupted and inhibited Gitxaała’s

economic system. The reserve system and natural resource regulations

worked in combination to expropriate Gitxaała land and resources and

to transform Gitxaała people into a dependent labor force for the de-

veloping industries. Later policy worked to exclude Gitxaała people

from the workforce and to replace them with white workers and re-

source producers.

The official expropriation of First Nations land began with the cre-

ation of the first reserve in Victoria Harbor prior to 1852 (see Harris

2002). The reserve system was essentially a tool for opening up land

for European settlement and development. In British Columbia the re-

serves were considerably smaller than in other parts of Canada. The

creation of many small reserves in British Columbia was intended to

encourage industry, thrift, and materialism and to provide cheap sea-

sonal labor to the industrial economy (Harris 2002, 65). The reserves

averaged five hectares per person, compared to allocations of up to

260 hectares in the western interior (Newell 1993, 56), and tended to

be placed on or near customary fishing sites. (This is especially the

case for coastal reserves.)

The reserve system appears designed to restrict First Nations’ access

to the resources of most of their traditional territories. In addition First

Nations were inhibited from using the resources located on their small

reserve holdings. Prior to 1916 the province’s reversionary interest in

reserve land (in conflict with the Dominion) stunted early development

of Indian resources. Until the McKenna- McBride Commission resolved

this dispute, the bands could not sell the timber on reserves because

the province continued to claim an interest in it (see Harris 2002, 274).

Even after the resolution of provincial claims to reserve timber, the

federal government restricted the sale of timber. There is a 1916 memo

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Sihoon 101

from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development that

suggests the need to restrict the cutting of timber on reserves in order

to protect it; later, Circular No. 030- 2 in 1934 proposes to restrict the

sale of reserve timber to conserve it for Indian use (Menzies and But-

ler 2001). However, where reserve timber was needed for non- Native

development, it could be readily harvested, with little compensation

for the band. McDonald (1990, 46) traces the use of Kitsumkalum tim-

ber from IR 1 and IR 3 between 1908 and 1910 for the Canadian Trans-

Pacific Railroad. The Kitsumkalum were paid 7 percent of the required

stumpage for harvesting over two thousand trees from their reserves.

The multiple small reserves allocated to First Nations in BC also re-

flected the assumption of continued access to fisheries (Newell 1993,

56). Commissioner Peter O’Reilly reserved fishing stations in 1881 for

every band he encountered, protecting traditional fishing stations and

summer village sites (Harris 2002, 202). Knight (1996, 306) suggests

that over half of the reserves in the province were intended for fisher-

ies. However, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was opposed to

exclusive Native fishing rights and instead restricted access to these

anticipated resources. The department discouraged the allocation of

coastal fishing stations as reserves and refused to allow exclusive Na-

tive fisheries access (Harris 2002, 202). Within Gitxaała territory the

majority of reserves allocated by O’Reilly were first and foremost fish-

ing or harvesting operations. As discussed earlier, the only general-

purpose village sites that were allocated to Gitxaała as reserves were

Dolphin Island (the site of Gitxaała’s main village, Lach Klan, IR 1) and

Citeyats (IR 9). Klapthlon (IR 5 and 5A) was set up as a possible new

main village site closer to the steamship routes running along Gren-

ville Channel. All the remaining reserves are near productive sockeye

salmon systems (or, in the case of Kul IR 18 on Bonilla Island, a seal

harvesting location). It is important to note that there are many other

resource harvesting sites that were used by, and remain in use by,

Gitxaała, but those assigned by O’Reilly are predominantly salmon

harvesting locations.

The most notorious fisheries regulation to limit Gitxaała access to fish

within their own territory was the creation of the food fishery under the

provisions of the Canadian Fisheries Act. This regulatory structure cre-

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102 Sihoon

ates a false distinction between subsistence and commercial fisheries.

It has inhibited Gitxaała exercise of their sovereign right to fish for a

livelihood in accordance with customary laws for over one hundred

years and has hastened their incorporation within the industrial fishery

as the primary labor force. In 1888 the Fisheries Act began to differen-

tiate between Indians’ right to fish for the purpose of food (which was

exempt from certain regulations) and the right to sale and barter. The

underlying assumption of this regulatory structure is that selling fish is

not an Indian tradition; this has been used to exclude First Nations har-

vesters from establishing our own aboriginal commercial fishery.

In addition to the legislation of Indian fishing as a subsistence activ-

ity, there were increasing restrictions on the access of First Nations to

fish. Restrictions on on the Skeena began within a year of the estab-

lishment of the first cannery on the river (McDonald 1994, 164); the

regulation worked to remove fish from the traditional economy in fa-

vor of the industrial economy. The provincial and federal governments

entered into a memorandum of understanding in 1912 to create a fish-

ery dominated by white settlers.11 Up until that time the large fish com-

panies on the north coast maintained exclusive control over federally

issued fishing permits, referred to as the “boat rating system.” Under

this system each of the established canneries worked out a distribu-

tion of fishing effort among themselves. The companies then distrib-

uted their permits to reliable fishermen in such a way as to control the

supply of fish to their canneries. On the north coast this meant that

the majority of fishermen remained First Nations, including many

Gitxaała fishers who specialized in drag seining and then, in later years,

in mobile seiners and gillnetters.

By the early twentieth century the gold rush period of the fishery

had come to an end. Those companies that survived and consolidated

during the turbulent early years found themselves in possession of a

virtual license to print money. The fact that they in effect controlled

harvesting capacity through the boat rating system made it next to im-

possible for emerging settler businessmen to break into the fishing in-

dustry. For the growing white settler electorate in the province of BC

the boat rating system, which placed control of fishing permits in the

hands of the established fish companies, posed a linked racial and eco-

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Sihoon 103

nomic problem. It is important to make very clear that the electorate

in BC throughout the period here described was primarily white, male,

and propertied. Thus the people who could vote were those who had

a direct economic stake in shaping the racial complexion of the fishing

industry. The established companies, however, were quite satisfied with

their reliance on First Nations fishers and women. This system served

to tie Indigenous fishers to the companies and solved the dual problems

of maintaining a seasonal labor force and a regular supply of fish.

From the perspective of the primarily white male propertied elec-

torate, however, the established canners’ system excluded them from

the economic opportunities of the fishery. For them the clearest path

to partaking in the riches of the fishery involved breaking the large

canneries’ monopoly over fishing opportunities by creating a class of

independent white fishermen. Thus the following clause in the memo-

randum of understanding: “It is eminently desirable to have the fish-

eries carried on by a suitable class of white fishermen. . . . The Fishery

Regulations and the policy of both Departments should have in view

hastening the time as much as possible when such will be the case.”12

The memorandum of understanding goes on to lament that while

desirable, the creation of a white- only fishery “will require some years.”

In the interval the memorandum of understanding set out the proce-

dures whereby a guaranteed number of independent licenses would

be held for “bona fide white fishermen.” The agreement further set up

the provision that “the reservation [of permits] will be sufficient to

cover all applications from bona fide white fishermen.” Explicit and

otherwise, the regulations, such as the 1912 memorandum of under-

standing, that governed the establishment of fishing during the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked to exclude Indigenous

peoples as full participants and owners in the market economy, rele-

gating them to sources of labor power to be extracted like the natural

resources of fish, trees, and minerals.

During the middle of the twentieth century Gitxaała people were

gradually being excluded from the fishing industry. Anthropologist

Michael Kew (1989) suggests that First Nations participation in the

fishing industry as owner- operators peaked around the time of World

War II. It is primarily the participation of northern Native fishermen

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104 Sihoon

that kept the numbers up; as on the Fraser River, aboriginal fishermen

were gradually displaced and replaced after 1900 (see Knight 1996).

The increasing capitalization of the fishing fleet put Gitxaała fishers

at a disadvantage. Unable to obtain credit based on property (due to

the reserve system), they were less able to keep up with the techno-

logical advances, including the shift to motorized boats in the early

twentieth century. Indigenous fishermen were thus kept closely tied

to the canneries for credit and for boats. Increasingly they were oper-

ating cannery- owned vessels. This prevented many from enjoying the

advantages offered by independent fishermen’s organizations such as

the Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co- operative (see Menzies 1993, 1996).

Their ability to effectively negotiate fish prices was also restricted. De-

pendence on the canneries as a source of credit and boats eventually

contributed to the decline in Native participation in the fishing indus-

try. As the canneries steadily consolidated and centralized after the

1930s, they offered less and less employment to First Nations. In the

north, cannery closures between 1944 and 1953 fired 50 percent of the

women processing fish (Muszynski 1996, 204).

In 1968 the Davis Plan, named after the minister of fisheries at the

time, restructured the commercial fishing industry in BC. License lim-

itation was introduced, which increased the value of salmon licenses

and resulted in heavy capitalization of the fleet. The policy shift also

prompted the rapid centralization of salmon processing. Women lost

their jobs, men lost their boats, and families lost their source of credit.

First Nations fishermen were forced out of the industry at higher

rates than non- Indigenous fishermen. Government programs to sup-

port First Nations fishermen during the 1970s failed to counteract the

losses. Their participation dropped to 29 percent by the early 1990s

(Gislason et al. 1996). Communities like Gitxaała, which had enjoyed

100 percent employment (although seasonal) until the 1960s, found

themselves without jobs for the first time.

The fishing industry underwent further restructuring in the late

1990s. License buybacks were initiated to reduce the fleet capacity.

First Nations fishermen who had persisted in the industry were vulner-

able, and many were forced to sell their licenses due to their debt load.

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Sihoon 105

Communities like Gitxaała lost up to 14 percent of their employment

during this latest policy shift.

Today a handful of community members hold Canadian commercial

fishing licenses and own or operate their own vessels. The band also

owns some licenses and its own fishing vessel. A number of community

members continue to work as crew members on fishing boats, and both

men and women work on a seasonal basis in the few fish plants that re-

main in Prince Rupert. However, fishing continues to be critical to

Gitxaała identity. Many community members retain access to small

skiffs and outboards and now use these as their primary basis of opera-

tions for fishing within their traditional territories. Proceeds of these

fishing and harvesting operations are distributed within the community

and are exchanged for benefits within and beyond the community in ac-

cord with the authority and jurisdiction of Gitxaała laws and history.

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107

Tskah, Xs’waanx

Herring, Herring Roe

My first memory of herring is seeing a photo of my infant self when I

was about eight years old. My father was holding me in his arms as he

stood in the middle of a deckload of herring. The seventy- foot seine

boat was plugged to the gunnels with fish. My father fished on a her-

ring seine boat during the 1960s. These large boats used seine nets to

catch herring from which was produced animal feed and fertilizer

(hard to imagine the waste of such a good fish). While it was a good

living for a young fisherman with a family, it was devastating to the

coastal herring stocks, which collapsed by the end of the 1960s.

A good friend of my father’s and a fellow fisherman, the late George

Wood, described the devastating effects of the reduction herring fish-

ery this way: “I joined the reduction herring fishery near the end of its

time, and fished for the last five years that fishing was open. The re-

duction herring fishery was eventually shut down on the coast because

it nearly wiped out the herring stocks in British Columbia. Part of the

reason for the herring collapse at that time was that we used lights to

fish for the herring. We would harvest whatever the boat could hold.

I personally saw hundreds and hundreds of tons of herring pulled from

the waters during the reduction fishery.”

Like my father, George fished on boats that were affiliated with the

Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co- op. I had first met George when he was

a crew member on the Brooks Bay (skippered by Tommy Mosley) in

the late 1970s, when I was a young man working on my father’s boat.

Later, when I was doing research in Lach Klan, I had many opportuni-

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108 Tskah, Xs’waanx

ties to speak with him informally and, on occasion, to conduct formal

interviews with him about his life in BC’s commercial fishery.

My father has described to me the amazing variation of herring from

inlet to inlet, cove to cove. In some locations all the fish were large; in

other places they were a mixture of sizes or small. The sheen of the

fish was also different from place to place: some were oilier, others

drier. The common theme of his stories, however, was that the fisher-

men loaded their boats as much as they could and took their catch to

port, where it was reduced to animal feed.

Indigenous peoples harvested herring for thousands of years prior

to the industrial herring fishery. In our archaeological research in

laxyuup Gitxaała we have found herring to be as important a constitu-

ent of the faunal assemblage as is salmon. For archaeologists and con-

temporary Gitxaała harvesters alike, this was a surprising result. Yet

prior to the reduction herring fishery era, herring were ubiquitous, ac-

cording to the historical documents and oral accounts, so we should

not be surprised (McKechnie et al. 2014). This chapter explores the

importance of herring for Gitxaała yesterday and today and examines

the intriguing narrowing of the utilization of this fish that has occurred

since the arrival of K’amksiwah.

Historical Utilization

Historical accounts clearly document the harvesting of herring through-

out British Columbian waters. Early travelers’ accounts include refer-

ences to herring, among other fish, being dried and smoked. Franz

Boas’s (1921) famous accounts of the Kwakwaka’wakw describe in fine

detail the range of harvesting and processing techniques.

Herring was harvested by using both passive and active gear. Inter-

tidal stone traps were built along shorelines herring frequented dur-

ing spawning season. Using the behavior of the fish (herring is a

schooling fish, and hundreds, if not thousands, of tons will congregate

in one school) and the action of tide, these stone traps would create

the conditions to trap fish for harvest. Active gears for herring includ-

ed a rake- like device that was armed with sharp teeth. Fishers using

this method would maneuver their canoes over a school of herring,

pull the rake through the school, impaling the herring, and then shake

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Tskah, Xs’waanx 109

them off into the canoe. The herring was then processed by drying,

smoking, or rendering into oil.

The fresh herring was strung through their gills on prepared cedar

skewers, a couple of feet in length, in groups of fifty to one hundred

fish. These fish- laden skewers were then hung in the rafters of a long-

house to dry or processed in a specially built smokehouse. Once either

dried or smoked the fish was packaged in bentwood boxes for long-

term storage. Herring processed in this manner was used as a house-

hold food item and as a commodity for trade and exchange.

The method for rendering herring into oil is similar to that used to

produce oolichan grease. After capture the herring were stored in large

wooden containers and allowed to ripen for a period of several days

or weeks. Once ripe the fish were boiled in large open containers, and

the oil floated to the surface of the water. The resultant fish oil was

then stored in special wooden boxes and consumed as a household

food item or traded in the regional networks of trade and exchange.

Herring roe was, and remains, a food item harvested for household

consumption and trade. To harvest roe a work group would first collect

hemlock branches or entire small trees. The branches would be secured

along the shoreline in anticipation of the spawning herring, usually

from April through May. A second form of herring roe, called legi, was

also harvested. This is a variant of spawn on seaweed; it is picked at

low tide after the herring have spawned. While most Gitxaała herring

roe harvested today comes from Kitkatla Inlet near Lach Klan, in years

past roe (and herring) were harvested throughout laxyuup Gitxaała.

Herring roe is processed to store by drying. In the case of roe on

hemlock, the branches are removed from the water once the spawn-

ing fish have deposited a layer of spawn. On shore the branches are

cut into smaller lengths, which are hung to air- dry the roe. Once dried,

the roe is carefully removed from the branches and, in the past, was

packed in bentwood boxes for storage. Today people use plastic bags

and freeze the dried roe to store for future use. Legi is dried and stored

in the same manner.

For millennia prior to the arrival of K’amksiwah herring was har-

vested for roe and the fish itself. Based on our archaeological research

we can document very clearly the importance of herring in the recov-

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110 Tskah, Xs’waanx

ered faunal assemblages. Our research began in 2008 with the objec-

tive of mapping and recording intertidal fish traps. Beginning in 2009

we expanded our scope to include a set of noninvasive archaeological

techniques: systematic soil sampling by bucket auger, percussion cor-

ing, and limited small excavations (about one cubic meter) of cooking

hearths in the ancient longhouses. Our objective was to document the

deep history of Gitxaała harvest practices as a complement to con-

temporary historical knowledge provided by community resource har-

vesters and elders.

The percussion coring allows us to determine the depth of anthro-

pogenic soils at the places of our research and whether the place had

been lived in without interruption. We also are able to collect charcoal

samples from the very bottom of the core tests and use them to deter-

mine the date of earliest occupation through the process of C14 dating.

The household hearth excavations provide us with a fine- grained anal-

ysis of food processing. The augers have been our primary technique

for developing a systematic understanding of Gitxaała’s ancient har-

vesting practices.

With the auger we are able to collect soil samples from the surface

to the bottom of the anthropogenic soils. The auger is screwed into the

ground in thirty- centimeter intervals. Each insertion of the auger pro-

duces about one liter of soil, which is collected in plastic bags for later

screening and analysis at the Museum of Anthropology at the Univer-

sity of British Columbia. Depending on the depth of the soil we can find

ourselves collecting samples from as deep as five or even six meters!

We place our test holes about ten to fifteen meters apart from each

other (depending on the size of the place we are documenting) in a sys-

tematic grid pattern. Using this approach we can provide a fairly de-

tailed account of the faunal materials deposited at each place we visit.

We are able to locate each sample in a spatial and temporal matrix.

Doing all of this has provided us with a very detailed account of the

wide diversity of animals harvested over time. Most significant to me

is the consistency of harvest at each location over multiple millennia.

In archaeology one of the standard measures used is NISP: number

of individual specimens. NISP is often presented as a percentage to

allow for comparisons of relative abundance of a particular species

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Tskah, Xs’waanx 111

within the context of a specific sample or archaeological site. It is im-

portant to point out that NISP is not a measure of abundance of spe-

cies or a measure of the actual harvest level. It simply tells us that a

species was present and its relative quantity in relation to other spe-

cies indentified in a sample.

Table 1 shows the %NISP of salmon, herring, and greenling for nine

Gitxaała places we have worked at since 2009. The amazing thing here

is the quantity of herring relative to the culturally iconic fish, salmon.

These data allow us to talk about seasonality of use (herring is typi-

cally a spring fish and salmon a summer and fall fish) and regional net-

works of exchange. For our purposes here, the data point to the use of

whole herring by Gitxaała in the past.

K’moda has a lower, almost insignificant %NISP for herring com-

pared to the other sites. However K’moda has a high %NISP for a herring-

like fish, anchovy. The two places at Will u sgetk have relatively low

%NISP herring but a correspondingly high rockfish %NISP. Regional

variations in faunal assemblages speak to the potential of interregion-

al trade. Ultimately our data show that herring was an important fish

consumed whole in the millennia prior to the arrival of K’amksiwah.

I now turn to an examination of the factors and processes that result-

ed in a narrowing of herring utilization by Gitxaała.

Narrowing of Utilization

Herring is not alone among traditional Gitxaała food items that have

seen changed patterns of utilization. Some foods are no longer used;

new items have been added (some of which, such as sugar, flour, and

rice, have quite deleterious health effects); and long- standing food

items are today more likely to be fried rather than boiled or baked, as

they were in the past. Changing foodways are part of all cultures. Un-

derstanding how and why a specific change in taste or practice has

occurred at a specific location or a particular moment in time is criti-

cally important. Some changes in taste are merely shifts in fashion;

others can tell us about structural alterations or disruptions. Changes

in utilization of herring point to a structural change in Gitxaała soci-

ety induced by incorporation within the global capitalist economy.

Some food items require a high investment of human labor. Some

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112 Tskah, Xs’waanx

produce a comparatively low energy output compared to other foods.

Some require complicated procedures to render the food consumable.

Herring is a reasonably easy fish to catch given the harvesting gear

utilized by Gitxaała and the behavior of the fish. It is, however, a fish

that required a relatively high intensity of labor power to harvest us-

able quantities. Relative to salmon and halibut— two other important

fish— herring requires more effort per unit harvested. Said differently,

less effort catches more salmon and more halibut using traditional fish-

ing gears. This point is critical, I think, when one considers the human

implications of initial contact with the K’amksiwah.

As Robert Boyd (1999) documents in chilling detail, K’amksiwah

contact brought with it a pathogenic tidal wave of death. From the

Table 1. Percent NISP of salmon, herring, and greenling

for nine Gitxaała villages

PLACE

SALMON

(%NISP)

HERRING

(%NISP)

GREENLING

(%NISP)

Citeyats 71.36 9.47 5.30

K’moda1 76.59 0.8 0.48

Ks’waan 33.24 27.06 27.74

Ktsm laagn 33.52 56.82 0.57

Lax kn dip wand 21.64 68.06 6.11

Lax kwil da’a 54.45 37.72 1.78

Sga wina’a 23.61 62.14 7.8

Will u sgetk (1) 51.43 14.34 9.56

Will u sgetk (2)2 15.15 16.67 16.67

1 K’moda is the only place to show a high %NISP for anchovy, 21.34. Anchovy shows

up in trace amounts at two other places, both of which are some distance away, on the

west coast of Banks Island.

2 For Will u sgetk (2) the %NISP of rockfish is 39.39. This is one of the highest values

for rockfish. The next highest is nearby Will u sgetk (1), with a %NISP of 21.22.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Tskah, Xs’waanx 113

mid- 1700s to the early 1900s waves of smallpox, measles, and influ-

enza swept along the coast. These waves of death disrupted social re-

lations and human communities. Gitxaała oral history has several

accounts of having to resort to mass graves to cope with the large num-

bers of deaths in some of the outlying villages.

Early ships’ logs, in particular that of Charles Bishop on the sailing

vessel Ruby, document the spread and impact of diseases circa 1795.

The following is Bishop’s entry for Saturday, July 27, 1795:

In the Afternoon, Shakes [Seax] in a large Cannoe Paddled by 20

men with his two wives, his son, and Several Other chiefs, Attend-

ed by 2 Large cannoes full of Amr’d Men, and the Cannoe which

had been with us in the Morning, came Paddling down to the Ship,

Singing, with Great Melody. . . . Shakes appear’d to be about 40

years of age and was a respectable Figure, but the Small Pox with

which he was covered, though it appeared to be in the latest stages

of the disorder, rendered him a Piteous object. (Roe 1967, 70– 71)

A month later Captain Bishop again visited Seax. Bishop comments:

The Small Pox is raging among them and altho’ shakes is quite

recovered, yet his Family are much affected by it and he has bur-

ied one of his Wives lately. His Eldest and favourite son is now ill

of this terrible desease. (91– 92)

Disease was spread not simply by the accident of contact. In 1862 lo-

cal officials in Victoria forcibly evicted Indigenous people from the town

when smallpox broke out (Campbell 2005, 94– 96). The spread of small-

pox from this one event had a devastating effect in coastal communi-

ties that had already been weakened by nearly a century of K’amksiwah

diseases. Gitxaała’s population had been devastated by earlier waves

of disease and now consisted of barely a thousand people. The 1862

epidemic killed 67 percent of the people living at that time (96).

The impact of depopulation— large and catastrophic waves of death—

cannot be ignored when one examines the shift in utilization of her-

ring and other foodstuffs. Disease directly reduced the number of

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114 Tskah, Xs’waanx

people available for and capable of engaging in the processing of foods

and the maintenance of Gitxaała society. This was a common coastal

experience in the northwest coast of North America.

With the devastation of disease also came new economic opportu-

nities. I am uncertain as to whether this is an irony or a paradox; it is

at the very least a tragedy. The very sailors who brought smallpox into

Gitxaała homes were also seeking out furs and commercial trade.

Gitxaała was not alone in meeting these new opportunities by rede-

ploying the labor power remaining into economically viable pursuits.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s this involved deploying labor into in-

tensified community harvests of sea otters. With the extirpation of sea

otters labor was again redeployed to intensify the harvest of seals. Then

again, toward the late 1880s, with the rise of the industrial salmon can-

nery fisheries, labor was redeployed to expand harvesting in salmon

fisheries. Throughout all of this the harvesting of herring shifted from

a broad- based utilization of oil, flesh, and roe to a narrowly focused

fishery targeting only the harvesting of roe.

The transition arose from a combination of reduced availability of

labor, changing market opportunities, and the value of roe and flesh

of herring compared to other possible foodstuffs. As described previ-

ously, harvesting herring for the flesh is labor- intense, whereas herring

roe is a relatively easily harvested food item. In the face of the labor

shortage strategic decisions were required. These conditions, combined

with the new market opportunities, underlie the shift from broad- based

to narrow utilization.

The transition was not immediate. However, it would appear that

by the late 1800s herring was being harvested by Gitxaała only as roe

on an annual basis from April to May. Oral histories of resource har-

vest in the twentieth century present the harvesting of herring roe,

xs’waanx, as one of a normal and important set of activities practiced

at spring seaweed camps. Herring roe is further referenced as a criti-

cal object of trade within Gitxaała but, more important, with upriver

Indigenous communities.

Ben Hill, who spent his childhood springs at a drag seine and sea-

weed camp on the west coast of Banks Island in the mid- 1900s, de-

scribed how his family would dry roe at their camps. Matthew Hill,

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Tskah, Xs’waanx 115

who spent his childhood in the same region, describes harvesting her-

ring roe prior to the start of salmon fishing, along with the production

of seaweed and fishing for halibut. Larry Bolton, whose house terri-

tory is also on the west coast of Banks Island, explains that harvesting

herring roe in his laxyuup is important as it is used to trade with peo-

ple on the Nass for oolichan grease. The herring spawn, he notes, is

also a time to hunt birds and ducks that are attracted to the spawn.

Few of the harvesters I have spoken with over the past decades— except

those, like my father, who fished for herring commercially— ever dis-

cussed fishing herring for food. Those who spoke of herring were speak-

ing of herring roe, xs’waanx, not the fish itself.

Contemporary Utilization

Harvesting xs’waanx and the commercial roe- on- kelp fishery are the

extent of Gitxaała’s contemporary herring fishery. Much of this harvest

now takes place in Kitkatla Inlet and along the west coast of Banks Is-

land. Modest harvests occur from time to time in other locations with-

in laxyuup Gitxaała, but the primary harvest area is the Inlet.

Fishermen like my father and George Wood spent their lives work-

ing in the commercial fisheries while also maintaining connections to

their home communities. George, for example, spent much of the lat-

er years of his life fishing on boats operated or owned by the Gitxaała

Nation. George fished for commercial roe herring in Kitkatla Inlet from

about the 1980s for a decade and then shifted to the roe- on- kelp fish-

ery on Gitxaała’s own boat.

A commercial roe- on- kelp and sac roe fishery was established in BC

a few years after the collapse of the reduction herring fishery. The roe

fishery ushered in a gold rush– like ten- year period in BC’s commercial

fisheries. The commercial roe fishery exported roe to Japan for prices

that rose astronomically during the 1970s and then collapsed just as

quickly in the early 1980s.

George witnessed the transformations of the local commercial fish-

ery firsthand:

The first year I started fishing for roe herring in Kitkatla Inlet, two

boats would take 1200 tonnes of herring between them. The next

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116 Tskah, Xs’waanx

year, there were four to six boats which took 800– 900 tonnes.

Each year after that, the number of boats and tonnage increased

until the roe herring fishery was closed. When we fished in Kit-

katla Inlet using a seine and pumps, we greatly disturbed the bot-

tom of the Inlet. The nets would drag along the bottom tearing

out the eel grass and other marine life in the Inlet. At first, it did

not seem to make a big difference to the state of the Inlet. Today,

I can now see what kind of impact the commercial roe herring

fishery has had on the Inlet. For example, for approximately the

last ten years I have not seen any herring spawn in the areas that

used to be plentiful in the Inlet and Freeman Pass.1

Though some Gitxaała fishers with a foothold in the commercial

fishery benefited from the herring gold rush, most community mem-

bers did not. The effect on Gitxaała’s local fishery has been harsh. The

industrial reduction fishery, while engaged in overfishing, did not fo-

cus on herring stocks in Kitkatla Inlet. The commercial roe fishery,

however, did concentrate activities in these waters. The intensity of

the commercial fishery in the Inlet made the harvesting of xs’waanx

increasingly difficult. Community members report serous declines in

availability and quality of xs’waanx since the development of the com-

mercialized roe fishery.

In the spring of 1980 I was a crew member on a commercial herring

seine boat. I had previously fished with my father and his crew gillnet-

ting for herring nearly every Spring Break since the mid- 1970s; I always

appreciated the extended break from school. This was my first season

herring seining. (I worked about a half- dozen herring seine seasons

over the course of the 1980s.) My job was to operate the twenty- foot

power skiff that helped tow, open, and close the seine in partner with

the main vessel.

The weather was miserable: strong southeast wind and sheeting,

cold rain. It was April. I waited in the skiff, which was tied to the stern

of the main boat, as we cruised around the Inlet searching for a large

school of herring. The anticipation is akin to standing on a starting line

waiting for the starter pistol’s shot. But here there is no ready, set . . .

It’s wait, wait, GO!

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Tskah, Xs’waanx 117

When the signal came, the main boat belched a cloud of black smoke,

heeling over to one side as she accelerated around and toward the

school of fish. I slammed my skiff into reverse, pulling the net off the

stern of the main boat. Start to finish was less than ten minutes. And

then I sat at the end of a towline holding the main boat in position as

the seine was gathered up and the fish loaded on board.

I could see starfish, rocks, and mud coming up with the net. I knew

from the radiophone with me in the skiff that we had a good set, may-

be a hundred tons. That season the seine fleet took about 2,400 tons

and the gill net fleet a further 1,200 tons. We loaded our fish, lifted our

skiff, and headed home to Prince Rupert.

The commercial seine fishery and subsequent roe- on- kelp fishery

took a heavy toll on the Kitkatla Inlet herring stocks that ultimately

was felt by Gitxaała community harvesters. It came to a head in the

early 1990s, when Chief Councilor Matthew Hill sued the federal gov-

ernment on behalf of Gitxaała seeking an end to the commercial har-

vest of herring from the Inlet in order to protect community harvests

of xs’waanx. The court didn’t provide a remedy that met with Gitxaała’s

needs and allowed the fishery to continue.

In the legal proceedings Gitxaała argued that community members

had not been able to harvest sufficient herring roe for their needs in

the years prior to their court action in 2000. The nature of the fishery

was such that the commercial roe herring fishery preceded the aborig-

inal fishery for xs’waanx. The result was that the constitutionally pro-

tected aboriginal right to harvest xs’waanx was constantly disrupted

by commercial overfishing that took place prior to the aboriginal spawn

fishery. To make matters worse the shallow waters of the Inlet com-

bined with the commercial fishing gear resulted in the environmental

degradation of the herring spawning habitat. All of this resulted in de-

clining Gitxaała xs’waanx harvests.

The judge, however, was not convinced that he should act: “I am not

persuaded that the harm feared by the applicants [Gitxaała] is estab-

lished as likely to occur. Moreover, should it occur I am not persuaded

that it would be irreparable in the circumstances of this case.” Para-

doxically the judge was blinded to the documented century- long decline

of herring stocks in Kitkatla Inlet. Focusing on a narrow interpretation

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118 Tskah, Xs’waanx

of the law, he decided “the balance of convenience favours the respon-

dent [the minister of fisheries], and those acting on his behalf, and the

Court had no basis to interfere with his and their exercise of public

statutory responsibilities.”2

In subsequent years the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has

taken a more conservative approach toward the commercial herring

fisheries in the Inlet. Nonetheless the commercial herring fishery is

still managed in a manner that is injurious to Gitxaała community fish-

eries. Problems such as this will unfortunately persist until Gitxaała

are able to exercise our own authority and jurisdiction unmolested by

external interests.

Summary

Any public meal or feast in Lach Klan is guaranteed to have herring

roe on the table. Though the flesh of the herring is no longer consumed,

herring roe remains a prized staple. The practice of harvesting, pre-

paring, and consuming xs’waanx is integral to being Gitxaała today.

Herring roe is a prized trade good that brings cherished foods, such as

oolichan grease, into the community. Like abalone and salmon, her-

ring is a central fish in the life and culture of Gitxaała. It has been so

for millennia and, as long as external commercial operations, oil tank-

ers, and other industrial developments are kept at bay, it will remain

so for millennia to come.

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119

Bilhaa

Abalone

Bilhaa is one of a set of Gitxaała culturally important species that “play

a unique role in shaping and characterizing the identity of the people

who rely on them. . . . These are species that become embedded in a

people’s cultural traditions and narratives, their ceremonies, dances,

songs, and discourse” (Garibaldi and Turner 2004, 1). Until the late

twentieth century Gitxaała people were unhindered in the harvesting

of bilhaa within their traditional territory and in accord with long-

standing systems of Indigenous authority and jurisdiction. However,

the rapid expansion of a commercial dive fishery in the 1970s and 1980s

brought bilhaa stocks perilously close to extinction. The Department

of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) responded to this self- induced crisis by

closing the total bilhaa fishery; it made no effort to accommodate In-

digenous interests.

The closure of bilhaa fishing has left a palpable sense a grief among

Gitxaała people, especially community elders who have grown up with

bilhaa as a key item of food and trade. Community members feel em-

bittered that once again a significant part of their normal lives has been

closed to them by the Canadian government. Since the arrival of the

first European in our midst Gitxaała people have made clear the extent

and nature of our rights, use, and occupancy of our territories. From

the yaawk (feasts) held for the ships’ skippers James Colnett and Ja-

cinto Caamano in the eighteenth century through the various visita-

tions of government officials, Gitxaała and our leadership have

plainly expressed our long ownership of these territories and the rights

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120 Bilhaa

to use and profit from them. The exclusion from harvesting bilhaa is

for Gitxaała just one more attempt to marginalize and exclude us from

our ability to carry out our normal livelihood practices.

When I first began professional research with Gitxaała in 1998 I heard

over and over a story that I came to call “the abalone story.” The per-

vasive and ubiquitous nature of this story led me to write about it in an

article published in the Canadian Journal of Native Education in 2004:

At the heart of the account was a government sponsored research

project into the health and location of abalone conducted in the

recent past. The government researchers explained that their proj-

ect would benefit the local community. This would be accom-

plished by collecting location and population data that would

make the job of protecting the abalone grounds from over har-

vesting and poaching more effective. After some consideration

community members agreed and a number of surveys were com-

pleted. Following the departure of the researchers a fleet of com-

mercial dive boats turned up on the abalone grounds that had

been described to the researchers. The end result was the com-

plete degradation of the local grounds and ultimately a complete

closure of commercial abalone fishing on the coast. The commu-

nity members who had participated in the study felt betrayed by

the process. (Menzies 2004, 22)

I go on to discuss the story as a cautionary tale for researchers, as that

was the audience for whom I was writing the article. The story is also

an account of the community’s real and heartfelt loss and sense of be-

trayal. For generation upon generation community members have har-

vested seafood in a way that our ancestors have before us. Attempts

have been made to accommodate non- Gitxaała in business, in research,

and in settlement, but it would seem that each instance has left the

community worse off than it was before.

The abalone story reminds us that the impact on Gitxaała people is

more than just a loss of a favored food— it is part of an ongoing colo-

nial entanglement of disruption, resistance, and accommodation. None-

theless, over the past two centuries the practice of fishing, including

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Bilhaa 121

for bilhaa, has remained highly significant to Gitxaała. Fishing consti-

tutes a critical component, alongside the harvesting and processing of

terrestrial resources, of what it is to be Gitxaała. The products of har-

vesting from the sea and intertidal zones are used for food, clothing,

medicine, ceremonial items, and, importantly, trade. The ability to en-

gage in trade and exchange has always been an integral aspect of

Gitxaała culture and society.

Gitxaała people have continued to engage in fisheries since Euro-

pean arrival. While maintaining the continuity of this practice we have

also actively adapted new technologies and techniques of harvesting,

processing, and trading of a variety of seafood, including fin fish, sea

mammals, invertebrates and mollusks of various types (such as bilhaa,

clams, cockles, mussels, barnacles, crabs, chitons, sea cucumbers, sea

urchins), and seaweed and kelp. Government policies, regulations, and

related systematic attempts to displace Gitxaała and other Indigenous

peoples from their traditional territories have contributed additional

pressure for change.

Canadian fisheries policy has developed historically to displace and

marginalize Indigenous fisheries (see Newell 1993). As with all human

societies, however, change in the organization of production does not

in and of itself mean that a society or culture ceases to exist. Nor does

it mean that fisheries cease to be a relevant culturally integral aspect

of being Gitxaała. In fact the various attempts over the past century

and a half to remove Gitxaała from fisheries have not been uniform in

application. For the most part those resources that escaped the gaze

of outsiders remained generally under the control of Gitxaała. Until

the mid- 1970s bilhaa was one of those resources that remained outside

of the regulatory gaze of the Canadian state.

Bilhaa Harvesting, Processing, and Use

The Gitxaała practice of bilhaa harvesting has been explicitly organized

to ensure the continuation of the biological stock. Gitxaała harvesting

practices reflect the culturally important role of bilhaa as a treasured

entity, a social being with whom we share relations, and as an impor-

tant cultural marker of being a ranked member of Gitxaała society. The

effect of this relationship is to place a cultural limitation on the har-

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122 Bilhaa

vesting of bilhaa. Bilhaa have been harvested as far back as any living

person can recall and prior to the time of European contact (Butler

2004). Evidence for the antiquity of bilhaa harvesting can be found in

references to bilhaa in Ts’msyen and Gitxaała adaawx, contemporary

academic publications (such as faunal analysis from north coast ar-

chaeological sites),1 and contemporary accounts.

Adaawx, Ceremonial Practice, and Use of Bilhaa

References to the presence, power, and importance of bilhaa to Ts’msyen

and Gitxaała people are recorded in the adaawx and are used on cer-

emonial regalia to denote power and prestige. The cultural importance

of bilhaa plays a role in shaping resource- harvesting practices. In com-

bination with the principle of syt güülum goot (being of one heart) the

high value placed on bilhaa as a symbol of prestige and rank imposes

a cultural limitation on harvesting levels. This is so in two ways. First,

the use of bilhaa as decoration and adornment is restricted to a minor-

ity of high- ranking community members. Second, the cultural impor-

tance of bilhaa as a signifier of rank obligates harvesters to treat bilhaa

with respect such that unrestrained harvesting is a violation of social

norms and is subject to community sanction.

Throughout Gitxaała and Ts’msyen adaawx are accounts of how bilhaa

and bilhaa- adorned objects become important cultural markets. For ex-

ample, “Explanation of the Abalone Bow” is an adaawx that describes

how the Bilhaa Bow became a chief ’s crest (Boas 1916, 284, 835). In the

narrative G- it- na- gun- a’ks bilhaa also feature as an inlay on “a good- sized

box” that is one of several gifts exchanged between a naxnox, Na- gun-

a’ks, and the people of Dzagam- sa’gisk (285– 92). Drawing upon his work

up to 1916, Boas also notes that “ear- ornaments of abalone shell” are men-

tioned in the Ts’msyen adaawx (398). Viola Garfield (1939, 194) writes

that “at any ceremonial large wool ornaments with abalone shell pen-

dants were worn in the ears of the women who sing in the chief ’s choir,

so that the status of each was clearly indicated to the tribes at large.”

Bilhaa is clearly a marker of high rank and prestige within Ts’msyen

and Gitxaała society. Halpin (1984) documents how crests that were

restricted to high- ranked individuals often had names that would in-

clude “shining,” and the individuals’ associated regalia might use bilhaa

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Bilhaa 123

shells to indicate their high status. In a description of a mid- nineteenth-

century feast Halpin writes, “We would have noted that the men who

made the speeches wore the more elaborate headdresses, richly deco-

rated with shining abalone” (16; see also Halpin 1973).

Jay Miller (1997) further highlights the cultural importance of bril-

liance and luminosity, of light, beams of light, and spirit, or naxnox

powers or beings. According to Miller, “The use of abalone, copper,

and polished surfaces on chiefly artifacts provides further support for

the mediation of light” (39). John Cove’s (1987) monograph on Ts’msyen

shamanism and narrative also discusses the cultural concept of bril-

liance, this time in reference to special rock and water mirrors. Bilhaa

shells were incorporated into this cultural complex as a critical mate-

rial manifestation of cultural history and spiritual practices of Ts’msyen

and Gitxaała peoples.

Contemporary Academic Accounts

The archaeological and related peer- reviewed publications on the sub-

ject of bilhaa are sparse but illuminating in their discussion of the im-

portance of bilhaa to the Ts’msyen peoples, of which academic accounts

typically include the Gitxaała. Halpin and Seguin (1990, 271) list bil-

haa as one of the shellfish gathered by the Ts’msyen. Quoting Halpin

(1984), they write, “Special crests that could be made of real animal

heads and skins, and [that] included ermine and abalone decoration,

were restricted to the chief ” (1990, 276).

In a survey of shellfish harvesting,2 gender, and status, Madonna

Moss (1993, 633) lists bilhaa as one of several shellfish harvested with

a prying stick from the low- tide zone (see also Suttles 1990, 28). Rich-

ard Bolton (2007), working with Andrew Martindale on Dundas Island,

identifies, among other shellfish, bilhaa shell as a constituent of shell

middens that date to times prior to European arrival.

Archaeologist Michael Blake (2004, 109– 11) has found empirical ev-

idence of bilhaa ornaments dating back more than 1,400 years in a

burial mound in the lower Fraser River region. Blake’s work comple-

ments the ethnographic descriptions of Boas and others on the cultur-

al importance and antiquity of bilhaa use among the Indigenous peoples

of the Northwest Coast region.

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124 Bilhaa

Prior to my own work in laxyuup Gitxaała, practically no archaeo-

logical research had been conducted in this region. The closest sus-

tained archaeological research in this region has centered on Prince

Rupert Harbor, where, in the 1960s, George MacDonald began an am-

bitious program of excavation. In the absence of detailed work else-

where on the north coast of BC, the Prince Rupert Harbor research has

developed into an orthodox vision in which the harbor is seen as the

central area of habitation and economic activity outside of the mouth

of the Skeena River.

In our archaeological research within Gitxaała territory a fragment

of abalone shell was found in a shovel test at an ancient Gitxaała vil-

lage site in Curtis Inlet. According to Gitxaała adaawx, this is where

the important hereditary leader Ts’ibasaa first established his village

within Gitxaała territory. We have also found significant quantities of

abalone shell in situ at Ks’waan (near Calamity Bay, at the south end

of Banks Island). Abalone has been recovered from a one- cubic- meter

excavation of a house floor, from a soil profile taken from the exposed

shoreward midden face, and from systematic auger tests conducted

throughout the village at Ks’waan. These are significant finds as they

are the first archaeologically recorded findings of abalone in a shell

midden site within the heart of Gitxaała territory. The presence of ab-

alone shells and shell fragments in the soil of our old villages indicates

human use at or before the time of European arrival (Menzies 2015).

Contemporary Accounts of Long- standing Practice

Harvesting methods for bilhaa involved hand picking at low tide or use

of a passive trap set at low tide and then harvested at the next low tide.

This trap method involved the use of either sealskin or a flat, light- colored

plank. The trap would be weighed down at the low tide level. As the wa-

ter covered it, bilhaa would gather on the light- colored material. At the

next low tide any bilhaa that stayed on the trap would be harvested.

The typical manner of picking bilhaa is at the low, low tides. It is

ha’wałks (taboo) to pick bilhaa from in the water or under the water

beyond what a person can normally reach scrambling along the beach

(people call the shoreline “beach” in English, but these are fairly rocky,

steep shorelines) or from a small canoe or skiff moving along the wa-

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Bilhaa 125

ter’s edge. A similar method of harvesting bilhaa is described for the

Haida (Jones et al. 2004). In both cases the combination of technology

and environmental conditions acts as a potential ecological limiting

factor on harvesting. Techniques and tools could have been used to

overharvest bilhaa, yet bilhaa were not overharvested until the devel-

opment of DFO- regulated, market- oriented bilhaa fishing in 1972.

Sigidmnaanax (matriarchs) Agnes Shaw, Charlotte Brown, Violet Skog,

and Janet Moody described in some detail the old ways of harvesting

bilhaa; steaming the harvest on the beach in the sand with heated rocks,

skunk cabbage leaves, and water; and then drying the cleaned meat in

the sun or near a slow fire. Agnes and Charlotte describe harvesting bil-

haa on the west coast of Banks Island. Violet, lamenting the loss of bil-

haa, said, “Bilhaa was the first to go. We used to have lots. My mom used

to dry them at Banks. Now we can’t find anything. It’s so hard to get the

seafood now. Everything is just gone.” Janet too describes harvesting bil-

haa on Banks Island. Dried bilhaa was traded with people upriver for,

among other things, moose meat, oolichan grease, and soapberries.

Like most women of their generation (in their late seventies to nine-

ties), these women spent a great deal of time living and working in the

hereditary territories. The annual cycle of food harvesting and prepa-

ration involved extensive periods at special resource harvest sites for

seaweed, halibut, bilhaa, seal, deer, goat, salmon, and other foods.

Charlotte described collecting seaweed as a child and a young woman

with her family on Banks Island (at her uncle’s and father’s tradition-

al site), where she also picked bilhaa: “May at Banks— we got seaweed,

bilhaa— there was lots of it. They were too big to cook in the stove so

we would dig in the sand and put leaves inside. Then we put hot rocks

on top with a hole in the top. We’d pour in water and steam them. Then

we’d hang them to dry after they were cooked. We used skunk cabbage

leaves. After the fishing was done we’d stay and dry fish. Sometimes

seven hundred fish. We’d hang them up and dry them. We got halibut

woks [then sliced, dried fish] when we got seaweed. We would move

into a small camp with just two houses to dry the halibut.”

Bilhaa were easy to pick; there were so many that you could hear

their shells hitting together. (Most of the older people that I have spo-

ken with have commented, at one time or another, on the noise the

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126 Bilhaa

bilhaa used to make before the K’amksiwah harvesters reduced the lo-

cal stock. The bilhaa would gather in large clumps, and the sound of

their shells hitting one another was clearly audible.) Charlotte wasn’t

able to recall how many bilhaa her family harvested— “lots” was her

comment. There was enough, at any rate, to have as a regular food

item throughout the winter and to trade with people from the Skeena,

Nass, and Kemano for goods such as soapberries and oolichan grease.

Sm’ooygit Matthew Hill explained to me in a conversation that a

typical family group might harvest about five hundred pounds of bil-

haa for the winter. A larger family would harvest more. Even more

would be harvested if a yaawk was being prepared.

In an interview in February 2002 Sm’ooygit Jeffrey Spencer made

the following comment about bilhaa harvesting and abundance and

their importance as part of household food provisioning: “Bilhaa, there

was really lots round here. No one bothered you if you catch a hun-

dred pounds. Not anymore, they all go to the Chinese. In Vancouver I

went to buy some sea cucumbers in Chinatown. I went to buy seven,

thinking it would be maybe fifty dollars. For a seven- inch live one it

was thirty- five dollars. That’s our livelihood taken away from us. So

now we just live on bologna and wieners. Bilhaa, we used to boil them

and then string them. Hang them in the smokehouse. When you want

to cook it, soak in salt water you get from the ocean. There was no such

thing as a deep freeze or run out of power. Cockles and clams we did

the same thing. We smoke seal, sea lion. Slice them up and smoke them.

Salmon and seafood— that’s how we survived.”

Kenneth Innes, a contemporary resource harvester, highlights the

lessons he has learned about bilhaa harvesting and the problems with

the contemporary fishery: “Like with the Bilhaa. The Creator made the

water only go down so far. So you can only harvest what you see. The

commercial fishery dives for them and wiped them out. The sea urchins

and goeducks will be the same. They can get at all of them if they dive.”

The late Russell Lewis, who was an active resource harvester, had

this to say:

RUSSELL LEWIS: My mom was really good at trading. I mean she

was well known by the Gitxsans and the Nisga’as in the canner-

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Bilhaa 127

ies and more mostly North Pacific. She did a lot of trading

there. And she would trade bilhaa, seaweed, a whole bunch of

stuff that she preserved here; that’s what she did, what I

remember anyways. So, they did a lot of trading with bilhaa.

AUTHOR: Did you know what she traded for, what did she get in

return?

RUSSELL: Most of the things that I seen there was from up there,

there was either, if you were going to the Nisga’a, you gotta get

their grease or whatever, or the other one was soapberries, I

remember soapberries, a lot of that, back then.

Bilhaa evokes strong meanings, strong feelings, and a deep attach-

ment to place for Gitxaała. Methods of harvest continue to be trans-

mitted through a community of practice. Youth are instructed in the

principles of syt güülum goot; people visit their traditional harvesting

sites; and our histories and songs are retold even in the face of the DFO

closure of the bilhaa fishery.

Shutting Down the Fishery

The closure of the bilhaa fishery has had a significant impact upon

Gitxaała people. Specifically it has resulted in the loss of a critical food

resource, the loss of a critical trade item, and an increase of surveil-

lance on aboriginal harvesters.

The sense of loss and desire is reflected in Elder and Sm’ooygit Jef-

fery Spencer’s comments in a November 2001 interview: “Seaweed and

bilhaa and . . . ooh, I want to talk about bilhaa— chew it in my mouth.

I never taste that for a long time. [Laughter] Pretty hard to get. Don’t

allowed to get it. Don’t allowed to get it. I just don’t know why. I just

don’t know why.”

In a separate interview Janet Moody commented, “It’s . . . when

the fisheries knew that bilhaa is abundant, they opened it, they got

license, and like I said, they used divers, they went down and started

picking them, and that’s when they disappeared. Like I said, you can

just stand there and you can hear them. . . . Sounds really nice, when

they’re walking like that. Today they’re all gone. And to me, it’s not

our fault. It’s not our fault, it’s their own work. And we still do have

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128 Bilhaa

a right to harvest that for our own use, cause we don’t sell it. We eat

it ourselves. And it’s them that did harm on it. And now they’re try-

ing to punish us, and telling us not to get bilhaa, and that’s wrong. It’s

our tradition, it was given to us. Our heavenly father gave us what

kind of food to eat, what kind of medicine that we use with plants, he

gave us how to survive, and it’s the fisheries that’s spoiling that, that’s

why it’s gone from us.”

Speaking to the perceptions of monitoring harassment, Russell Lew-

is said, “That’s what’s really hurting, myself; I can understand the spe-

cies at risk thing, but you shouldn’t go that far, it’s not very good— just

going out there myself now to try and do my harvest, I’m scared; who’s

watching me? I went over there to pick, and not even five minutes af-

ter I got off there, that boat come around. So I knew how they found

us, I knew right away that they got the eye in the sky there. So it’s not

too much anybody can do, so . . . [Pause] It’s really sad and me, when

I go out to try and harvest any of my food, I’m wondering, is somebody

there watching me? I know I’ve always been boarded, and searched,

and that really hurts, when we’re trying to harvest our own, for our

traditional use, for our use only. I have a hard time, I have to meet with

DFO, and . . . [Pause] It’s hard for me to put it into words how I feel

about them, because I have to work with them. I can understand the

frustrations from our community onto me, because I get a lot of ques-

tions, ‘Why are they [the DFO patrol vessel] tied here [to our dock]?’

Well, we try to negotiate about that, we were successful in lowering

that harassment or whatever you want to call it, the monitoring.”

At the same time as Gitxaała community members perceive increased

and excessive monitoring of their food harvesting practices, they also

believe there is a lack of sufficient attention placed on monitoring com-

mercial dive fishermen and recreational dive fishermen. On many oc-

casions I have heard comments to the effect that enforcement against

the large- scale illegal harvesting operations is insufficient and that ex-

cess enforcement appears to be applied to Gitxaała community har-

vesters. During my many visits to Gitxaała I too have observed DFO

vessels in the nearby inlet and at the community dock more often dur-

ing zero tides than at other times. Serendipitously I had the opportu-

nity to confirm this from DFO enforcement officers in person.

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Bilhaa 129

While participating in a workshop on the oolichan fishery in Prince

Rupert in March 2009 I had a chance to speak with DFO enforcement

officials. During one of the breaks in the two- day workshop I outlined

my observations to one of the officers. When I suggested that I would

need access to the ship’s log to see if my observations were correct,

the officer said, “No need to do that. We always go out on the zero

tides because that’s when the local people are picking abalone.” When

I asked about enforcement of the dive fleet he said that there isn’t

the time or manpower to monitor the underwater fishery. “It’s easy

to see someone picking abalone on a zero tide— it’s a lot harder to

catch a diver,” he explained. It would seem that community senti-

ment is correct: DFO is focusing on aboriginal harvesters rather than

targeting the commercial and illegal dive fishermen who work with-

out regard to zero tides.

Returning to a Sustainable Fishery

Despite DFO surveillance, bilhaa continues to be illegally harvested by

non- Gitxaała people, to the detriment of both Gitxaała and bilhaa. In

Gitxaała we have contained our own harvests within the context of our

own authority and jurisdiction. However, that is insufficient as long as

the illegal non- Gitxaała fishing persists. There is a solution with the

potential to benefit Gitxaała and bilhaa: returning management con-

trol to Gitxaała under our traditional system of harvest and governance.

As my colleague Caroline Butler and I have documented elsewhere,

“Gitxaala people have been taught by their Elders to take only what

they need, not to overexploit the natural resources. ‘Take what you

need’ was in fact the standard response in reply to questions about how

to use the resources sustainably, and what the Elders taught them about

harvesting” (Menzies and Butler 2007, 455– 56). Across the Hecate

Straits on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), the Haida and their

non- Haida neighbors have been able to establish control over bilhaa

in Gwaii Haanas (the national park in the southern islands), drawing

upon the powers of Parks Canada and Haida authority and jurisdiction

over their traditional territory (Jones et al. 2004) by establishing a co-

management regime.

By drawing upon Gitxaała resource harvesting principles and our

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130 Bilhaa

associated harvesting practices and techniques, a sustainable bilhaa

fishery is possible. The Haida comanagement model is one path that

could be followed. In Gitxaała, however, hereditary leaders and com-

munity members prefer to manage under our own authority and juris-

diction. Linking new fishery science knowledge with the Gitxaała house

governance and the principle of syt güülum goot, a revived and sus-

tainable bilhaa fishery is possible in laxyuup Gitxaała.

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131

Hoon

Salmon

I must have been twelve or thirteen the first time I saw an old stone

fish trap. It was late July, warm, crisp blue skies. I was playing around

on the water at the head of a small cove, marking the time until the

commercial seine fishing would begin. Drifting along with the tide, I

was watching coho salmon swimming below me illuminated by the

bright sun. Then I saw the walls of stone on the ocean floor. I was cap-

tivated by the intricacies of the stonework, a fascination that has stayed

with me for more than three decades. Back on my father’s fishing boat

I asked him about the stone walls in the water. “That,” he said, “that’s

an old fish trap. They used to drag seine here.”

There is a common misperception that prior to the arrival of the

K’amksiwah the natural world was pristine and untouched. Indigenous

peoples on the Northwest Coast were thought to have lived opportu-

nistically on the bounty of nature. While we do know that, though

abundant, these resources were not guaranteed (Suttles 1987), the idea

that our Indigenous ancestors had no significant impact on the envi-

ronment (unless of course they were massacring Pleistocene megafau-

na; for an informed discussion of this issue, see Kelly and Prasciunas

2007) is a persistent Euro- American myth.

This chapter challenges the myth of the pristine and untouched nat-

ural world. My challenge may not prove the case, but through my re-

flections, considerations, and speculations I wish to challenge readers

to consider that the world that the K’amksiwah entered in the late

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132 Hoon

1700s was no “natural” world but the outcome of a deliberate and di-

rect human- environment interaction over millennia.

I grew up working on a salmon seiner skippered by my father. I spent

my summers with him on the boat and much of my time in the winter

after school working alongside him in gear lockers and engine rooms,

doing the tasks one does to keep a large wooden boat afloat and ready

to fish. In the summer we traveled and fished throughout the north

coast. The area of my childhood travels mirrors, to a large extent, if

imperfectly, the traditional territory of my Gitxaała ancestors. I felt

connected to this place and people through the stories my father told

me, and the places where we fished.

My first experience of seeing a stone trap has stayed with me. It was

a captivating sight for a young boy. But even as an adult the often in-

tensely complex construction is impressive. One cannot leave a stone

trap site without considering the implications of human labor in the

environment. I grew up with stories of my great grandfather’s fishing

camp in K’moda. Yet seeing the curved walls of stone in the water made

me think quite differently about what might actually be involved in

building these structures. As noted in the three accounts below, some

significant quantity of labor is required to construct, maintain, and

then operate fisheries using stone trap gear.

In the 1970s and early 1980s I was very much involved in salmon en-

hancement projects and discussions. As a professional researcher in the

1990s I was involved in watershed restoration projects and conducting

oral history research into traditional management practices that could

be deployed in the present. Throughout these experiences I started to

note a similarity between the ancient practices described to me and in-

scribed within the creeks and shorelines of Gitxaała territory and the

contemporary scientific models of enhancement and restoration.

Community harvesters I interviewed framed creekscaping and har-

vesting techniques in terms of relations between humans and nonhu-

man social beings. That is, one’s behavior is regulated by one’s social

relations, which are understood as kin- like (see, for example, Langdon

2006). This implies and requires a structure of obligation and reciproc-

ity. One learns this firsthand through experience on the water and land.

But these lessons are also heard and reinforced in the oral histories of

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Hoon 133

Gitxaała people, some of which have been recorded over the past cen-

tury and a half (recall the story of Txemsum and his wife, the Princess

of the Salmon, in chapter 5).

The stone fish traps and associated Indigenous practices discussed

in this chapter document some of what is actually done in terms of

creekscaping and fishing techniques. These practices have implications

for purposeful conservation management practices. It is useful to re-

mind ourselves that the extension of Canadian law into aboriginal fish-

eries and land management practices has involved an explicit attempt

to disrupt and displace aboriginal practices (Harris 2008). Thus since

the 1880s Gitxaała fisheries practices were essentially criminalized and

the fisheries transformed into a so- called food fishery for Indians (which

First Nations are allowed to harvest for social and ceremonial purpos-

es) and a commercial fishery for “everyone” (in which the sale of fish

for economic benefit is permitted).

When one compares the catch data over the past 150 or so years with

the estimates of pre- K’amksiwah harvest levels, the numbers are rough-

ly equivalent over several millennia (Glavin 1996). As Michael Kew

(1989, 180) notes, “The Indian salmon fishery stands as a prime exam-

ple of high utilization and dependence by humans over a long period

of time with no depletion of the resource.” Put another way: the com-

mercial and aboriginal fisheries caught about the same amount of fish,

but in 150 years of the commercial fishery salmon have been pushed

to a dangerously low level. What happened? Very likely the criminal-

ization of aboriginal creekscaping and fisheries practices played a sig-

nificant role in undermining the health of salmon stocks in BC (Harris

2008; Menzies and Butler 2007).

Prior to the extension of the Canadian Fisheries Act to British Co-

lumbia in the 1880s Gitxaała people actively managed and shaped

creeks and associated spawning channels, increasing spawning areas

by modifying the watercourse. In addition they managed harvesting

by controlling the number of salmon entering the spawning channels.

All of these actions had the effect of stabilizing the amount of salmon

available for Gitxaała harvesting.

Gitxaała management practices were essentially a form of Keynes-

ian management. That is, the human interaction with the environment

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134 Hoon

cut off the high peaks and low valleys of fish runs to generate a stable

and reliable supply of fish. Because of the reproductive strategy of

salmon (r- selection: that is, a high number of offspring from low pa-

rental investment) the fish can react quickly to changes in their envi-

ronment. This strategy also allows for the augmentation of runs beyond

the potential capacity of spawning grounds. As a side consequence it

provides surplus fish that can be harvested without affecting the long-

term sustainability of the fish stock. This is a classic tenet of contem-

porary salmon management practices, and it does appear to have been

a successful part of Indigenous salmon management prior to the crim-

inalization of Indigenous practices in the late 1800s.

The customary fishing methods of Northwest Coast First Nations

comprise a highly varied and refined assemblage of technologies, re-

flecting millennia of development and innovations. These fishing tech-

nologies and gears were designed with micro- ecological factors in

mind: tides, eddies, and other water features; seasonal considerations;

and the behavior of target species. The method and gear used at a par-

ticular site were selected according to multiple factors to improve ef-

ficiency without destroying fish stocks for future use. These highly

specialized technologies allowed for sustained yields of salmon, pro-

viding adequate food supplies for many First Nations for thousands of

years (Berringer 1982; Newell 1993; Stewart 1977).

Traditional fishing gears included gaffs, clubs, traps, weirs, trolling

hooks, drag seines, gill nets, tidal traps, spears, dip nets, hooks on lines,

and fish rakes (McDonald 1991). Each of these gears was associated with

particular fishing sites, species, and seasons. The following case studies

explore the interconnection between locally appropriate gear types,

Indigenous history and knowledge systems related to each fishing site,

and the implications of all this for the idea of cultivating salmon. Each

account offers a unique vantage point from which to consider the spe-

cific question at hand.

K’moda is a location that figures prominently within my own fam-

ily’s history. It is the site of one of the first canneries on the north coast

and a site of ancient conflict between the northern invaders and Gitxaała

and their Gitga’ata cousins. A stream named Kxooyax also figures in

the history of early encounters with K’amksiwah; here Capt. James

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Colnett’s crew decided to tear apart a portion of the stone fish trap.

But this is also where Gitxaała people learned an early lesson about

treating salmon with respect and the cost of not doing so. It is a place

where K’amksiwah laws came into conflict with Gitxaała laws over

the allocation of fishing rights. Kxenk’aa’wen (Place of Fishing Trap)

stands out as a place with an amazing complex of stone traps; in fact

the place- name is a direct reference to the special nature of the local

stone fish traps. K’amksiwah also encountered Gitxaała people here

early in their commercial trading ventures along this coast. More im-

portant, Kxenk’aa’wen is a place where people live and have lived for

millennia harvesting a multitude of resources, not least of which are

salmon in the unique traps the place is named after.

Fishing at K’moda

K’moda is a river and lake system at the head of Lowe Inlet within

Gitxaała territory. This is the traditional territory of Sm’ooygit He:l.

Over the past century and a half this place has been at the center of

significant social transformations. This is also the place at the heart

of many of the stories that my father would tell me about my great-

grandfather Edward Gamble and my uncle Russell Gamble. I have been

fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit this place many times.

One notable trip stands out.

As I described in chapter 4, I organized a research trip with my cous-

in Teddy Gamble, who took us to Lowe Inlet on his gillnetter. We were

joined on this trip by Sm’ooygit He:l (Russell Gamble), my father, my

sons, and my colleague Caroline Butler. Being able to listen to my fa-

ther and uncle speak about this place and their recollections of fishing

and the people who once lived there shapes my understanding in ways

that my written words may not be able to convey. When I return to this

place I still see them there on the beach, talking. My memory of this

trip has transformed the abstract landscape into a social space through

which my family has passed and to which it retains an important con-

nection. Thus while I write about the fish trap and the history of salm-

on fisheries and management I do so aware of the larger social world

within which this place is more than just a place to catch fish.

In the late 1880s one the earliest salmon canneries in BC was estab-

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136 Hoon

lished here. Employing local Gitga’ata and Gitxaała community mem-

bers the cannery operated for several decades spanning the late

nineteenth and early twentieth century. Coastal steamers made regular

stops here on the Inside Passage route from Vancouver to Alaska. The

Harriman expedition, notable for the number of Indigenous objects

they removed without permission and donated to U.S. museums, passed

through here on its way north to Alaska in 1899. Photographer Edward

Curtis took a few pictures of the area while other scientists onboard

collected plant samples. The census taker recorded in his personal jour-

nal his trials and tribulations in attempting to take census data during

his visit in 1881 to the Gitxaała houses at the mouth of the K’moda.

Records of customary use and commercial trade by a Gitxaała

sm’ooygit are inscribed in the Canadian Sessional Papers.1 One, dated

1890, states, “The chief at Lowe’s Inlet, assisted by his sons, caught and

sold to two canneries on the Skeena River forty thousand fish, at an

average of seven and eight cents each.”2 Oral accounts describe the

close interconnection between customary use in the area and the de-

velopment of a local Gitxaała and Gitga’ata labor force that caught and

processed salmon in the Lowe Inlet cannery.

Some find the combination of traditional and commercial fisheries

practices to be either a contradiction in terms or evidence of accultur-

ation. However, this is far from the case for Indigenous fisheries along

the west coast of Canada. Those who believe that aboriginal fisheries

were always subsistence endeavors or just for food are mistaken. This

colonial misconception underlies a great many historical and contem-

porary ruminations on aboriginal fisheries. In point of fact Gitxaała

harvesters have always harvested for domestic consumption, gift ex-

change, and exchange for benefit. The development of the K’amksiwah

commercial salmon fishery, especially in its early decades, fit well

within the entrepreneurial culture of Gitxaała and neighboring Indig-

enous communities.

For generations K’moda has been the house territory of the leading

sm’ooygit from Gitxaała, Sm’ooygit He:l. The late Sm’ooygit He:l (Rus-

sell Gamble) explained that during the middle of the twentieth cen-

tury K’moda was occupied by the chief and house group from late

spring through early fall. Resources gathered included mountain goats,

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deer, a range of different berries, bark, clams and cockles, seals, and,

of course, salmon and other fish. Elders who were young children dur-

ing the early twentieth century recall the life of the campsite during

the leadership of Sm’ooygit Seax/He:l (Edward Gamble), nephew and

heir of Ts’ibasaa. Edward Gamble was the named hereditary chief who

held this site in the decades prior to his heir, Russell Gamble.

Over the course of the twentieth century the fishing patterns at

K’moda evolved from customary harvesting for consumption and ex-

change for benefit (up to about 1880), to a period of intense industrial

harvesting coexisting with customary harvesting (1880– 1930), to lo-

cally controlled drag seining (1930– 67), and finally, to less intensive,

occasional customary harvest using gill nets (1967 to present). In what

follows I describe the key aspects of the customary techniques of fish

harvesting, using data from site visits to K’moda with Sm’ooygit He:l

(see chapter 4) and interviews with Gitxaała elders and community

members who actively use or have used this place for the harvest of

fish and other resources.

Three key customary fishing techniques have been deployed at

K’moda: gaffs, stone tidal traps, and drag seines (Menzies and Butler

2007). Up until the late 1800s fishing with gaffs and stone traps was

the key technique for harvesting salmon. Coincident with the develop-

ment of the industrial salmon canning fishery Gitxaała fishers switched

to drag seining. This innovation accommodated the reduction in the

labor force caused by the waves of disease and dislocation brought by

invasive non- Indigenous humans.

Stone traps can be found throughout the Northwest Coast region (see,

for example, Langdon 2006; Stewart 1977). Traps were typically locat-

ed near streams and rivers where migrating salmon traveled as they

returned to spawn in the fall. Traps consisted of a series of stones ar-

ranged in a semicircular design. Boulders and stones were stacked upon

each other. No mortar was used to hold the stones together; instead

careful selection and placement of the stones was required. In this way

the wall of stones would remain upright in rough weather and through-

out vigorous tidal action. Stone traps were used by house groups, rely-

ing on collaborative labor under the guidance of the house leader.

Stone fishing traps use the principle of tidal drift to catch fish. Salm-

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138 Hoon

on gather near the mouth of their birth river or stream in preparation

to spawn. When the water is deep enough, the salmon enter the river

system and swim upstream. As the tide comes in, the salmon are pushed

toward the shore and the waiting trap. When the tide recedes, the

salmon move downstream, away from the shore. As they swim away

from the shore with the current they become trapped by the wall of

stones. Fishers would position themselves along the wall as the tide

dropped and splash the water to keep the fish from swimming out be-

fore the water was lower than the wall.

The K’moda stone trap is located in a small cove near, but not in or

across, the opening of the creek. Its design, like all stone fishing traps,

uses tidal drift to capture fish. Elders report that the number of salmon

returning to spawn in creeks and streams was so vast that a trap located

at the beach, anywhere close to a stream would provide a rich harvest.

Trap placement, however, typically takes advantage of the micro

movements of local currents; this technology is not simply placed near

or in a creek mouth. At K’moda the trap is located to the north of the

creek’s actual mouth. During our observations of tidal patterns we

noted that at about three- quarter ebb a back eddy formed, which act-

ed as a great broom sweeping the fish into the belly of the trap. Then,

as the tide receded, the current dropped the fish behind the trap’s wall,

allowing the fishers to select those fish that were required for process-

ing that day.

Streamscaping at Kxooyax

Kxooyax is a stream and lake system located on the southeastern shore

of Banks Island. This ancient fishing site is the territory of Gilasgam-

gan, Laskiik. It has been a site of significant Gitxaała fisheries prior to,

at, and well past the point of initial encounter with Europeans.

James Colnett, captain of the vessel Prince of Wales, made the first

known European record of this trap in October 1787. Colnett’s crew

fished here without permission from the local title holder and disman-

tled a portion of the trap: “The Wire that was fixed in the Run was to

prevent the fish from getting too hastily up as well as down, & some of

our people out of pity for the sickly fish above broke part of the wire

down by which means the fish had a free passage up & when the run

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Hoon 139

increased nothing to stop them” (Galois 2004, 157).3 Colnett’s inabil-

ity to recognize the existing Indigenous regulations and customs re-

lated to use of local resources ultimately resulted in conflict between

his crew and Gitxaała people. After Colnett’s early account of Kxooyax

this place enters the official Euro- Canadian historical record via the

assignment of a reserve for Gitxaała and the licensing of fishing rights

by the Canadian government.

Following a meeting with Gitxaała hereditary leaders at K’moda in

July 1891, Indian Reserve Commissioner Peter O’Reilly agreed to es-

tablish Indian Reserve 12, Ks- or- yet (variant of Kxooyax), for Gitxaała.

He described the reserve as composed of twenty- eight acres and “situ-

ated on the eastern shore of Banks Island, about four mile north of

Gale Point.”4 F. A. Devereux surveyed the reserve in May 1892 and not-

ed the presence of an “Indian house” within its boundary.5

In 1911 the Canadian government assigned the commercial drag seine

fishing rights to BC Packers (License No. 18, Bare Bay).6 The majority

of these drag seine licenses were normally operated by the Indigenous

title holder, the hereditary leader who would customarily be consid-

ered the individual with rights to use and governance over such plac-

es. The assignment of fishing rights to nonaboriginal fishing companies

were not without problems. In 1890, for example, Sm’ooygit Seax (here

written as Chief Shukes) advised a cannery manager operating near

his territory to stop fishing. Seax’s enactment of his authority and ju-

risdiction is recorded in a letter from M. K. Morrison, fishery guardian,

to Thomas Mowat, inspector of fisheries:

I was down to Low’s Inlet and around Banks Island where I found

considerable trouble between the Low’s Inlet Canning people and

the Indians, the cause I will try and make clear to you. Part of

Low’s Inlet is an Indian Reserve (Kitk- a- thla Tribe), the Cannery

is not on the Reserve where the fish is caught inside the Reserve

line salt water, but close to the falls the same has to be hauled on

Indian reserve below high water mark— Chef Shukes forbid the

Cannery people to fish, if they did he and his young men would

cut their nets. . . . I went to Shukes and he told me as follows:

Judge O’Reilly gave this land and water to my people, I do not

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140 Hoon

want any Whitemen to fish here please tell your chief I have fished

at Low’s Inlet for 8 years, it is the principal support of myself and

people. . . . The Indians on Banks Island told the Captain of the

“Murrial” if he put out a seine to fish in their water he would be

shot, he did not do it had not men enough.7

The cannery licensing system also interfered with Gitxaała custom-

ary practices by preferentially allocating licenses to community mem-

bers in ways that were not in accord with traditional practices. Thus,

on September 30, 1915, a petition of complaint was submitted to the

Royal Commission on Indian Affairs regarding the process of assign-

ing fishing rights at Kxooyax:

There is a salmon creek running on Eastside of Banks Island be-

low Bare Hill called in our language K’Oyaht [a variant of Kxooy-

ax] and from immemorial our forefathers in our family own it and

claim it as their own, and it is from where they generally obtain

their living . . . but, some years ago another man of different fam-

ily butt in and troubling us by taking advantage of us in taking

away that salmon creek from us, and we’ve pressed out by him.

He has been running that creek since for Lowe Inlet Cannery . . .

and now we want to take it back from him through you by recog-

nizing it to us. It was reserved to our family by or through the late

Indian Agent. . . . This man’s name who took that place away from

us is Alfred Robinson also of Kitkatla, B.C. He has no right to claim

that place and salmon creek other than us. We’ll mention the

names of only four of our forefathers herewith who own that place

mentioned above from immemorial . . . Milsh, Haqulockgamla-

hap, Dwilthlagianat and Lthgooshamun. . . . We are their descen-

dants and therefore we have right to run that salmon creek

ourselves for that cannery. . . . We want to be allowed to get our

own drag seine license for that salmon creek for next season.8

Echoes of these disagreements reverberate in the present.

My own first visit to this place, nearly two centuries later, was in the

1970s while fishing with my father. This is the same area where I first

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saw a stone trap (as described earlier). Since the late 1990s I have re-

visited this place several times in order to record and observe the stone

trap complex in greater detail. The stone trap complex at Kxooyax dif-

fers significantly from the K’moda trap. Whereas the K’moda trap ad-

joins the stream mouth, at Kxooyax the trap complex is located in the

creek mouth and entrance channel.

At least eight individual rock alignment features and three retain-

ing pool features are identifiable along both sides of the creek extend-

ing over an area of approximately 430 meters in length and ranging in

elevation from a low of 2.45 meters below the current barnacle line to

0.5 meters above the barnacle line. The longest border alignment is 81

meters and is located in the center of the stream in a V- shaped forma-

tion that substantially alters the stream flow. Four shorter linear fea-

tures are present along the lower reaches of the southern stream bank

running nearly perpendicular to the stream. These features run paral-

lel to each other but do not match up with similar features on the

northern stream bank. A distinct 50- meter- long arc- shaped boulder

alignment follows the stream flow, in contrast to the four linear fea-

tures on the southern shoreline. The alignment located closest to the

stream outlet extends all the way across the stream channel. This par-

ticular feature is visible only at low- low tide. The lower reaches of

Kxooyax Stream have been extensively modified and engineered to fa-

cilitate access to the salmon fishery. The complexity and extent of the

features represent a significant intergenerational commitment in se-

curing access and managing the use of salmon at this place. The loca-

tion of a canoe run along the north side of the stream mouth (near the

Indian house documented by Devereux) further demonstrates the ex-

tent of human use of this area.

There is no way Kxooyax can be thought of as a “natural” space; it

is totally creekscaped. The path of the stream— from the high- tide mark

to the lowest low- tide mark— shows clear evidence of human modifi-

cation. Deep V- shaped stone structures provide access points for gaff-

ing and dip- netting salmon. Holding pools along the sides of the stream

in the upper reaches of the tidal area allowed for live storage and se-

lective removal of fish according to processing and consumption needs.

This is a human- designed space dedicated to the harvesting of salmon.

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Kxenk’aa’wen (Place of Special Trap)

Kxenk’aa’wen, also known as Bonilla Arm, is an inlet on the west coast

of Banks Island noted for, among other things, its seaweed, seals, fish,

and a range of productive salmon streams. This is an ancient place with-

in the Gitxaała world, with histories linking contemporary title holders

back beyond the ken of time. The very name, Kxenk’aa’wen, can be

translated as Place of Special Trap. Indeed there is a special and amaz-

ing example of stone fish traps here. Along one side of the inlet, stretch-

ing for a full kilometer, is a complex of stone traps the like of which is

seldom observed along BC’s coast. (See Smethurst 2014 for an extensive

analysis of these traps and associated human use and occupancy.)

Kxenk’aa’wen is one of the places the Gitxaała people first met the

K’amksiwah. Gitxaała people fishing halibut off Lax t’xal (Bonilla Is-

land) sighted a strange being floating offshore. “The greatest number

[of Gitxaała people] would gather on the west coast of Banks Island,

and Bonilla Island (lax t’xal). Here over a large area they would fish

for halibut. One day these people set out as usual for their fishing each

choosing a locality and all being very close to one another, in case of

sudden danger. Then the chief Sabaan and his slave went the furthest

out to sea to get more halibut then [sic] the rest. All were busy engaged

in fishing and suddenly as if coming from nowhere, there appeared a

huge being with many wings and no noise, it came so suddenly among

the people that they were barely able to pull up their anchors and es-

cape” (Beynon notebook, 1955– 56, CMC). Upon investigation Sabaan

realized it was a vessel with sails, not wings, and strange people on-

board, not a supernatural being.

The academic literature concerning these first encounters distills

the various Gitxaała narratives into a singular event in which Colnett

met with Gitxaała at Ks’waan (Calamity Bay; discussed earlier in rela-

tion to Kxooyax [Galois 2004]). However, an alternative understand-

ing, and one that is more in keeping with Gitxaała perspectives, is that

these historical narratives relate a series of encounters between Gitxaała

and K’amksiwah peoples. Colnett was not alone in traveling through

these waters. At least a half- dozen ships are known to have been here

around the time of Colnett’s voyage. Thus the K’amksiwah academics

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writing about this issue have overlooked the possibility that variations

in this story may in fact be evidence of different first encounters rath-

er than errors of memory and discursive flourishes on the part of latter-

day storytellers.

The contemporary title holders, Inta ‘we walp and Kaymt Kwa’, ex-

ercise rights and responsibilities for this place whose history goes

back long before the K’amksiwah drifted up on these coasts. Both men

continue to this day to live on and from the products of their labor in

this place. This unique place has a long history of interconnected re-

source use within which salmon is a critical, but not exclusive, object

of harvest.

Given the nature of the fish traps, how they are laid out along the

shoreline, their shape, and their placement in relation to local streams,

the target species were likely pink and dog salmon. Unlike sockeye,

these two salmon species travel close to shore in dense schools. (Sock-

eye tend to run farther off the beach.) Pink and dog salmon are thus

particularly amenable to harvest using large half- moon- shaped stone

barricades. Sockeye, another prime target species, is more likely har-

vested on its way up the stream mouth, given its different traveling be-

havior. Thus at Kxooyax, which is a sockeye stream, the stone traps are

located within the creek. In Kxenk’aa’wen the stone traps are located

along the shoreline where they can more effectively intercept pink and

dog salmon (though there are significant sockeye runs here as well).

With the development of the industrial commercial salmon fishery

in the late 1800s came changes in fishing techniques and gear types

even as the cultural values of Gitxaała remained consistent with the

ancestors (Menzies and Butler 2008). In Kxenk’aa’wen a shift occurred

away from the use of stone and wooden traps to cotton drag seines and

then, in the mid- twentieth century, to seines and gill nets operated

from motorized vessels. The operators of the new gear types remained

the traditional title holders and members of their house groups.

The exact date of the transition from stone traps to drag seines is not

clear from either the oral history or the documentary record. It is con-

ceivable that the transition predated K’amksiwah arrival, occurred at

the moment K’amksiwah first arrived (early maritime traders used drag

seines in Gitxaała territory to harvest fish for food), or occurred later in

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144 Hoon

the nineteenth century with the emergence of the industrial commercial

fishery. Gitxaała people had the knowledge and the capacity to produce

nettle twine nets that could have been used as drag seines prior to the

arrival of marine traders using seines. Coast Salish fishers in the Fraser

River estuary and surrounding areas used large stationary nets to trap

salmon (see, for example, Kew 1989; Suttles 1987). Thus the leap from

drag seines is not significant conceptually for experienced coastal fish-

ermen like the Gitxaała. However, given that the catching capacity of

the traps appears to be more than sufficient for the supply of labor avail-

able prior to contact, it is also possible that there was no reason to shift

technology until the new diseases brought by K’amksiwah (smallpox,

measles, flu) devastated coastal communities in one wave of death after

another (Boyd 1999; Campbell 2005). What is clear is that the custom-

ary laws of access and proprietorship governing these fishing sites date

well before K’amksiwah arrival and have continued into the present.

Changes in technique and gear type have implications for labor de-

ployment. Fishing with stone traps would require a community effort

in which intergenerational labor would be deployed and harvesting and

processing would be coordinated. Shifting to drag seining for the com-

mercial fishery would sever the coordination between harvesting and

processing. Aside from processing related to household consumption

and trade, the majority of processing would be shifted out of commu-

nity control into industrial fish processing plants. Furthermore the la-

bor requirement would be reduced as the operation of a drag seine

requires at most a dozen people. The harvested fish would be immedi-

ately loaded onto a tender boat and then transported to the fish pro-

cessing plant. Household fish processing would likely drop to about five

hundred to one thousand fish per household given that most produc-

tion of fish for economic benefit had been redirected to the industrial

fish processing plants rather than held and processed within commu-

nity processing facilities (i.e., local smokehouses).

Sigyidm hana’a Agnes Shaw and Charlotte Brown grew up in

Kxenk’aa’wen. In a series of interviews and conversations they described

their experience growing up and living in their father’s clan territory

in the early twentieth century. Their father, William Lewis, and his

brother, James, were members of the Gispuwada (blackfish) house

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group. Agnes comments, “When my dad get some seal, and then he’d

call my grandfather [Samuel Wise Lewis] up, his father. And that was

Albert Argyle’s house, where my dad stayed, in Kxenk’aa’wen, and then

when he [Albert] died, then my dad moved in into his house” (July 4,

2005). Agnes and Charlotte describe an annual cycle that began in May

with the seaweed and halibut harvest and finished in the late fall, when

the last salmon was put up in the big smokehouse located near their

homes at Kxenk’aa’wen. A short list of resources harvested includes

abalone, seal, sea lion, halibut, deer, and several species of berries. The

people also maintained a garden out on Lax t’xal that was noted for its

large white potatoes.

Agnes and Charlotte explained that they would stay out at Banks

after finishing the commercial drag seine fishery to put up their own

fish. “There’s a big smokehouse in Bonilla Arm. Four women in that

big smokehouse. They divided it into four sections for those four la-

dies. One [section] for each lady” (Agnes Shaw, March 10, 2005). Char-

lotte estimated that the “women put up about seven hundred fish each

for their households” (December 14, 2001). Agnes described the pro-

cess: “We would dry the fish, my mom and me. Hundreds of fish in the

big smokehouse. When they were dry, we put them higher up, to make

them really dry. In the winter to eat them, we soak it overnight to get

the salt out and then boil it. We did that for halibut too. Seal we would

dry it really dry, sea lion too.” (February 11, 2002).

Charlotte recalled drag seining in the early part of the twentieth

century: “We were drag seining when Albert Argyle was alive. He was

the owner of the river before, Killerwhale Clan. Last time we drag

seined when I was small. They went into the salt lake and were fishing

inside it. They got the boat in on a strong tide” (December 14, 2001).

Agnes has this to say about early drag seining: “I can just remember.

It was so good what those guys used to do. And then, when the boat

ran along the shore to Gushi’algun, and we’d ride along, we were on

there with all the kids. After a while near the rapids [sxr’adzlaasen,

salt water rapids created by the tide] these guys would get out and pull

their canoes along the shore line [i.e., on foot], and then we’d pull the

boat along to fish in the inlet by drag seine. And up by the tree line,

that’s where we’d sit, me and the rest of the ladies. And these ladies

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146 Hoon

would get ready with their containers, empty cans, and then they’d

spear crabs. I really wonder what that area is like today, whether there’s

lots of crabs there now. They’d build a big fire there. At twelve o’clock

they’d [the men] come back and we’d all eat down the beach, they [the

women] would build a fire and boil crabs. It was so good, what those

people used to do” (July 4, 2005).

The contemporary title holders continue to live on resources har-

vested in their Kxenk’aa’wen territories. They still spend time in their

territory, though likely not as much time as during Agnes and Char-

lotte’s youth. Salmon fishing now occurs with the use of gill nets, which

can be fixed in place or drifting. Whereas the stone traps required sev-

eral households working together and the drag seines at least a dozen

people to operate, gill nets need only one or two people in a small skiff

(twelve to eighteen feet in length) or a commercial gillnetter (thirty-

five to forty feet in length). In a small vessel with an outboard motor

harvesters can selectively access their traditional territory and return

home the same day without having to camp overnight. Nonetheless

harvesters do remain on site for periods of time depending upon the

particular resources they are harvesting. Despite changes in time spent

in the territory and techniques used for harvesting, the customary pro-

tocols governing ownership and access still pertain.

Laxyuup Gitxaała and the Cultivation of Salmon

These examples of customary fishing sties, and their attendant human-

modified environments, provide a backdrop to my contention that

Gitxaała people purposefully managed salmon stocks. At each of these

places fishing techniques relied upon similar principles of regulating

who could fish, when they could fish, and how much fish would be

taken. While the introduction of drag seine gear to Gitxaała territory

is more recent than the stone trap or gaff fishing, it does have histori-

cal antecedents in north coast Indigenous fishing techniques. Nets of

various sorts, including encircling seine- type nets, have been used for

millennia by Indigenous fishers. Gear selection has been based on the

particular ecological conditions at a site and the social dynamics of

the community actively engaged in fishing the site. It should be point-

ed out that a variety of gears are employed not only across different

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sites but even at the same site. Thus fishers vary their harvesting tech-

niques according to the time of year, local weather conditions and fish

availability, and targeted species.

K’moda is a highly productive salmon watershed that, since the gov-

ernment’s removal of Gitxaała engagement, has seen a marked decline

in fish stocks. There are of course many factors to take into consider-

ation, but the role of Gitxaała title holders in the health and well- being

of salmon resources should not be overlooked. Stories relate how Ed-

ward Gamble would survey the stream above the tidal falls and direct

young members of his household and crew as they cleared and struc-

tured the watercourse. The fish trap near the mouth of the creek was

designed to take advantage of local tidal currents. The fishery at the

falls allowed for selective removal of fish (Menzies and Butler 2007).

At Kxooyax the major modification of the creek above and below the

high- tide line reflects the intensive investment of human labor power.

This site remains a customary harvesting site. (In fact several times

while we were there our crew set a net to harvest salmon for our own

consumption.) Side pools and V- shaped structures point to techniques

of fish harvesting that allowed effective removal of fish from the stream.

In interviews with hereditary leaders and active resource harvesters

we hear over and over accounts of active management of the fish.

Kxenk’aa’wen is notable for the large and expansive set of traps that

cover nearly a kilometer of the intertidal zone. This is a system of mul-

tiple pink, chum, and sockeye salmon runs. Each species requires a

somewhat different harvesting approach, and evidence in the mate-

rial remains documents a diversity of harvesting techniques. This area

remains a key traditional territory from which the local title holders

harvest a range of marine resources.

A critical aspect of these Gitxaała fishing techniques is the ability

to avoid or to release unharmed nontarget species. One of the prob-

lems encountered in the contemporary industrial fishery is the mix of

stock. The fleet encounters a mass of fish that can include several spe-

cies, spawners from a variety of creeks within the same species, and

juveniles. Traditionally the industrial gears have found it difficult to

release nontarget species without stress or damage. When it was dis-

covered in 1997 that coho stocks in the Fraser and Skeena river systems

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148 Hoon

had drastically declined, the fleet was required to release coho live at

specific times and in particular areas (see Copes 1998). The stress on

the fish during harvest required that they had to be individually resus-

citated in “revival boxes” of fresh, flowing seawater before release.

Selectivity, both of species and of particular spawning runs, continues

to be an issue for commercial salmon harvesters. The priority of weak

stock management to preserve biodiversity obligates the DFO to man-

age according to the weakest run of spawners in a system. If harvest-

ers cannot identify and avoid salmon from a particular creek that has

been identified as weak, then an entire fishery can be reduced or closed.

When harvesting occurs at the mouth of a creek, the harvester knows

exactly which spawning population is being targeted. Harvesting at

close range ensures that the fisher can target a particular species (spring

salmon rather than coho, etc.) or size of fish.

Similarly stone traps are located at or near the mouths of creeks. As

I documented earlier, harvesting was regulated based on the house

leader’s observation of spawner abundance, and a specific ratio of har-

vest was maintained to prevent overly pressuring one run of fish. The

trap functions to corral the fish into a small pond of water, and they

are then removed by harvesters. The fishers can select by species and

age at this point and leave the nontarget or juvenile fish to escape the

trap as the tide rises. The drag seine, being very close in function to

the stone trap, is selective on the same bases.

Gitxaała technologies are also supported by social relations, which

guide and control their use. Whereas the K’amksiwah fishery was driv-

en by capitalist market forces and catching efficiency, Gitxaała fishing

techniques and approaches have been regulated by community- based

use and harvesting principles within a cultural framework that treats

salmon as a relative and a social being deserving of respect.

This chapter (and this book) began with the assumption that purpose-

ful human- environment interactions are not the sole prerogative of late

capitalist society. Of course this is not a new or startling assertion. There

is empirical evidence for many disastrous human- environment interac-

tions. Discussions of beneficial and positive outcomes, however, seems

to me to be few and far between.

My experience growing up on the north coast of BC, my time work-

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Hoon 149

ing with my father on his fishing boat, and my trips to Gitxaała and

through Gitxaała territory led me to question the idea that there was

no intent or design behind all of that human labor that my ancestors

gave to our traditional territory. There is more to do, more to say, more

to consider, as this argument is advanced. Nonetheless, based on all

that I have seen, it seems that the environment that forms Gitxaała

territory was shaped by millennia of human practices and behaviors.

It was not and is not pristine wilderness on which nature wrote her

own story. Laxyuup Gitxaała is thus the outcome of millennia of inter-

action, purposeful intervention, and human disturbance; this fact is

what makes it the place it is today.

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151

Conclusion

This book, this story is about core Gitxaała values and Gitxaała so-

cial institutions: names, governance, place (laxyuup), and history.

This is what provides the intellectual and cultural framework that

guides a Gitxaała way of being, a way of being that is grounded in

the laxyuup— the place that Gitxaała call home. Everyday practices

arise from direct engagement with the laxyuup. The story that I have

told begins with the core values and then explores the ways these

values are played out through the practice of fishing. Telling stories

about catching fish, sharing fish, and eating fish is central to one core

enactment of being Gitxaała.

Names of individuals and peoples, places, and regions are decisive

political interventions. Whether the arena is that of inter- Indigenous

conflict (recall the discussion on the use of Southern Tsimshian) or at-

tempted colonial erasures by settlers who rename our laxyuup with

English or Spanish names, names are important. Names root people

and places in history and determine who can govern; therefore gover-

nance is tied to place through history. This is manifested in actions

mundane (such as the simple act of catching a fish) and ritualized (such

as distributing oolichan grease at a feast).

Being Gitxaała is thus a process that involves knowing both where

one is from (in terms of place and socially as a person) and who one

is (in terms of relations to other social beings). This is an entwined,

spatially and temporally rooted ontology. Laws, history, and gover-

nance are all tied to history, place, and person. To be Gitxaała is to un-

derstand oneself as enmeshed within a community of relationships

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152 Conclusion

with people (understood broadly as human and nonhuman) and with

a storied sense of place.

In this book I have explored how being Gitxaała is enacted through

community practices of fisheries. I have reviewed the nature and ex-

tent of fisheries practices historically and today. Fish harvesting is a

central aspect of Gitxaała practice. This book documents the broad

extent of Gitxaała’s resource harvesting, and the three case studies fo-

cus on abalone, herring, and salmon. Each highlights a particular fea-

ture and experience of being Gitxaała.

I discussed abalone as a culturally important species and the devas-

tating effects of an uncontrolled harvest by K’amksiwah fishers. The

problem was the intrusion of an ill- conceived bio- economic model of

resource management combined with an unrestrained market- oriented

commercial fishery. In contrast, our data document an ancient and

long- standing practice among Gitxaała of sustainable harvest.

Over the course of the colonial experience Indigenous resource uti-

lization has been constrained and restricted. The case of herring dem-

onstrates how the use of one resource narrowed over the course of a

century. Utilization shifted from ancient times to the present: in the

past herring was consumed whole and in quantities equivalent to that

of salmon; today only the roe is consumed. The case illuminates the

consequences of pathogenic colonialism combined with economic tran-

sition; that is, disease, death, and capitalism operating in concert cre-

ated conditions that narrowed the utilization of herring.

The case study of salmon fishing documents the role of Indigenous

husbandry of natural resources and the continuing importance of salm-

on as an iconic, culturally significant species. Here a nuanced under-

standing of local ecology, based in a historical connection to specific

places, clearly reveals the importance of Indigenous interventions into

the environment. Thus I decisively set aside the false claim of the pris-

tine, untouched natural world to reveal the Gitxaała land- and marine-

scapes as places created by Gitxaała and themselves creating the

possibility of being Gitxaała.

Gitxaała choose to live on the most seaward edge of our territory. We

are an ancient people who have lived in our laxyuup for millennia. Our

history connects to our laxyuup, our home, back to the dawn of time.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Conclusion 153

We are also a contemporary modern people. We use cash, drive cars,

and go to school. We understand our connections to the wider global

world and know that this has changed us. However, as long as the ocean

persists, Git lax m’oon will remain the people of the saltwater. We shall

stand facing our future mindful of the importance of our past.

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155

Notes

Introduction

The epigraph is from a meeting with Moody in 2008, recorded in Menzies and

Rashleigh 2009.

1. My question of whether there is something epistemologically different

that can be labeled an Indigenous methodology arises from my sense

that the errors of past approaches lay in a lack of sensitivity and

empathy to the people researchers were studying. That is, we were made

into objects, translated into data, and our worlds were made laborato-

ries for colonial practices. The difference between an Indigenous

approach and a colonial one is, to me, a difference in political project,

not epistemology.

1. Git lax m’oon

1. Joan Lovisek, expert opinion in The Lax Kw’alaams Indian Band and

Others v. The Attorney General of Canada and Her Majesty the Queen in

Right of the Province of British Columbia, prepared for James M. Macken-

zie, Department of Justice, Vancouver, 2007.

2. These are unpublished consultant reports in the author’s private files.

3. William Beynon, 1916, vol. 1, BF 419, box B29, p. 1, Canadian Museum of

Civilization, Hull [hereafter CMC].

4. Each of these researchers published a great deal of material. I have

chosen to cite their work only when I specifically engage with the

content of their work. Here I name them as people of interest.

5. As with the mention of earlier ethnographers, these researchers are

people of interest. When I engage their work directly, that work is cited.

6. William Beynon, “Ethnical and Geographical Study of the Tsimshian

Nation,” 1954, American Museum of Natural History, New York.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

156 Notes to pages 24–37

7. Wilson Duff ’s field notes can be found in the archives of the Museum of

Anthropology at UBC.

8. George MacDonald, personal communication, June 17, 2009.

9. James McDonald, personal communication. (No date recorded. I spoke

with him many times over the course of more than twenty years).

2. Smgigyet

1. I recorded these leaders in my field notes.

2. Adaawx is an oral record of “historical events of collective political,

social, and economic significance, such as migration, territorial acquisi-

tion, natural disaster, epidemic, war, and significant shifts in political

and economic power. . . . Adawx are formally acknowledged by the

society as a whole and collectively represent the authorized history of

the nation” (Marsden 2002, 102– 3). Lach Klan is the contemporary

village of Kitkatla, located on Dolphin Island.

3. Beynon’s field notes can be found at the Canadian Museum of History,

Columbia University, and the American Museum of Natural History.

4. Beynon notebook, 1916, BF 424, box B29, p. 7, CMC.

5. Andrew Martindale, personal communication, November 5, 2007.

6. We have conducted archaeological research at and near this village site

and have C- 14 dates showing occupation of this area dating back at

least four thousand years. It is very likely, given the stratigraphy of

these archaeological sites, that the flood event mentioned in the

narrative preceded the C- 14 dates that we have because the stratigra-

phy shows continuous human occupation, with no abandonment, over

four millennia.

7. See Galois (2004, 2– 4) for a brief biography of James Colnett. Colnett

was born in Devon, England, in 1753. He “spent three and a half years

under the tutelage of [James] Cook” (2). In 1786 he left the British Navy

and “signed on with Richard Cadman Etches & Co as captain of the

Prince of Wales and commander of a two- vessel commercial venture” (3).

8. While this location is near Tuwartz Inlet, Marsden (2002) is mistaken

about the precise geographical location, which is at the southerly end of

Pitt Island, just to the east behind Cherry Islets. The village is located on

the Gitxaała reserve, Citeyats, where I have been involved in archaeolog-

ical research in collaboration with other Gitxaała.

9. The Canadian state has attempted to regulate Indigenous food production

through legislation that uses the criminal code to discipline and control

Indigenous people. For example, harvesting fish by traditional means

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Notes to pages 40–81 157

outside of the state’s regulatory process is a criminal act under the Fisheries

Act. See Anderson (2007) for a discussion of diabetes and Gitxaała.

10. See also the narrative by Dorothy Brown (1992; Dunn 1969). Brown says

Sabaan does not receive his name from the Europeans; rather he claims

that they already know his name.

11. Galois (2004) notes that it is filed as B234, file 4 (war texts), CMC.

12. The full context and translation of He:l wiheld’m wildɛł nəkłəłstɔ’lt, “The

offspring of beaver sits in many places,” is in Beynon notebooks, 1916,

vol. 6, BF 419– 24, CMC.

13. Using carbon 14 dating, samples that our collaborative UBC- Gitxaała

research team has collected from the areas near Ts’ibasaa’s original

home in Gitxaała territory date back at least four thousand years. We do

not yet have any processed dates from the site of his first village, but the

context is such as to suggest antiquity similar to those places that we do

have dates from. C14 data in author’s files and available upon request.

3. Laxyuup

1. Community meeting at the Highliner Inn, Prince Rupert, June 16, 2008.

2. Community research workshop, North West Community College,

January 2008.

3. See also McIlwraith’s Bella Coola Notes, 1922– 24, 47, held in the

Ethnology Division of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa.

4. Federal Collection, Minutes of Decision, Correspondence and Sketches,

P. O’Reilly, June 1882 to February 1885, file 29858, vol. 4 [Reg. B- 64645],

Federal Archives Canada, Vancouver.

5. William Beynon Manuscripts, undated, no. 100, Gitxaała Archives, Lach Klan.

6. Marius Barbeau Fonds, B.Mc21188(2), CMC.

7. Beynon writes that his “informant” was Joshua Tsibassa.

8. Joining our crew on this trip were Andrew Martindale, PhD (UBC

associate professor of archaeology) and Kisha Supernant, PhD (Universi-

ty of Alberta assistant professor of archaeology).

9. See Miller (1981), for example, where he discusses the ways in which

Klemtu— comprising at least two very different peoples— came into

being around an industrial salmon cannery in the late 1800s.

4. Adaawx

1. Nathan Shaw was a hereditary leader interviewed numerous times by

William Beynon in the early part of the twentieth century.

2. This is a reference to the new communities of Metlakatla (founded by

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

158 Notes to pages 90–102

the missionary William Duncan in the late 1800s) and Port Simpson

(founded by the Hudson’s Bay Company in the early 1800s).

5. Sihoon

1. This date of five thousand years references the time when sea levels

stabilized on the north coast of BC following the end of the ice age.

Archaeologists working in adjoining areas to the west and north have,

through modeling, found evidence of older human habitation both above

and below current sea levels.

2. C14 data in author’s files.

3. See Ames (2005, 365– 82) for a list of fish and other faunal remains

found in the Prince Rupert Harbor area. Matson and Coupland (1995)

and Suttles (1990, 16– 29) list a wide compendium of fish and other fauna

that they suggest would have been used and may continue to be used by

Indigenous peoples along the Northwest Coast.

4. A series of rock walls in Kitkatla Inlet may be more accurately under-

stood as clam gardens or terraces rather than stone fish traps. I have had

the opportunity to visit other locations within Gitxaała territory that may

also be better understood as clam terracing rather than stone fish traps.

5. “The Purchase of Nauhulk” by James Lewis, recorded by William

Beynon, n.d., narrative 70, Gitxaała Archives, Lach Klan.

6. William Beynon, “Tsimshian Geographical and Ethnical Material,”

notebook 6, p. 25, American Museum of Natural History, New York.

7. For example, there are a series of adaawx that document the alliances

and conflicts involving Ts’ibasaa and other Ts’msyen smgigyet. For

example, see the following, recorded by Beynon and archived in Gitxaała

Archives, Lach Klan: Henry Watt (Nisnawhl, Kitkatla), “A Challenge

Feast of Tsibasa,” 1948– 49; Matthew Johnson (Laraxnits, Gispaxloats),

“Legaix Cremates Himself,” 1926; James Lewis (Kaimtkwa, Kitkatla),

“The Rise of Kitkatla over the Tsimshian,” , 1947.

8. Here I list the key late twentieth- century linguists who worked with

Tsimshianic languages. As I am not directly engaging with their publica-

tions; I only reference their names.

9. Margaret Anderson, personal communication, October 11, 1997. See also

entries under buy, gift, sell, and trade in the Sm’algyax Dictionary,

Ts’msyen Sm’algyax Authority, Prince Rupert, January 2001.

10. Sm’algyax Dictionary.

11. See Memorandum of Understanding between the Province of BC and the

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Notes to pages 103–140 159

Federal Government of Canada, November 9, 1912, GR 435, box 16, file

137, British Columbia Archives, Victoria.

12. Memorandum of Understanding.

6. Tskah, Xs’waanx

1. George Wood, March 3, 2000, affidavit in respect of Kitkatla Band v. The

Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Federal Court, docket T- 284- 00.

2. Kitkatla Band v. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

7. Bilhaa

Reprinted by permission of Human Organization (vol. 69, no. 3).

1. Andrew Martindale, personal communication, February 15, 2007; Natalie

Brewster, personal communication, November 2, 2007. My own archaeo-

logical research clearly and unambiguously documents an extensive and

long- standing practice of bilhaa harvests (Menzies 2015).

2. This study surveys shellfish harvesting in the Northwest Coast ethno-

graphic area with particular attention to the Tlingit.

8. Hoon

1. Sessional papers are reports and papers that have been tabled in the

House of Commons (and sometimes the Senate) and deposited with

the clerk. These papers include annual reports of government depart-

ments and boards and the estimates, public accounts, and reports of

the royal commissions.

2. Sessional Papers 12, vol. 10, 1890.

3. Galois (2004) misidentifies, I think, the location of this event to a point a

few miles to the south of Kxooyax. However, having visited both places

many times and considering the information recorded by Colnett, the

most plausible location is in fact Kxooyax.

4. P. O’Reilly, Minutes of Decision, Correspondence and Sketches, April

1889 to January 1892, file 29858, vol. 6 [Reg. B- 64647], Federal Collec-

tion, Vancouver.

5. F. A. Devereux, field books, 1891– 92, pp. 448– 51, British Columbia

Archives, Victoria.

6. Bare Bay is the common name used to refer to the bay into which

Kxooyax Creek empties.

7. Indian Affairs, RG 10, vol. 3828, file 60,926 (reel C 10145), UBC Library,

Vancouver.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

160 Note to page 140

8. Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of BC, Transcripts

of Evidence, Questions Affecting the Fishing Rights, Interests and

Privileges of Indians in British Columbia, Bella Coola Agency, pp. 1– 33,

British Columbia Archives, Victoria.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

161

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Simonsen, Bjorn O. 1973. Archaeological Investigations in the Hecate Strait–

Milbanke Sound Area of British Columbia. Ottawa: National Museum of Man.

Smethurst, Naomi. 2014. “Inscribed on the Landscape: Stories of Stone Traps

and Fishing in Laxyuup Gitxaała.” MA thesis, University of British

Columbia, Vancouver.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and

Indigenous Peoples. New York: Zed Books.

Stewart, Hillary. 1977. Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast.

Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Suttles, Wayne. 1987. Coast Salish Essays. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

——— . 1990. “Environment.” In Handbook of North American Indians. Vol.

7: Northwest Coast, edited by Wayne Suttles, 16– 29. Washington DC:

Smithsonian Institution.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

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Tilley, Christopher. 2010. Interpreting Landscapes. Walnut Creek CA: Left

Coast Press.

Tolmie, W. Fraser. 1963. Physician and Fur Trader: The Journals of William

Fraser Tolmie. Vancouver: Mitchell Press.

Turner, Nancy J., and Helen Clifton. 2006. “The Forest and the Seaweed.” In

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management, edited

by Charles R. Menzies, 65– 86. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Wagner, Henry R., and W. A. Newcombe, eds. 1938. “The Journal of Don

Jacinto Caamano.” Translated by Harold Grenfell. British Columbia

Historical Quarterly, July– October: 189– 301.

Wigen, Becky. 2012. “Vertebrate Fauna from Gitxaała Augers.” Unpublished

report. Victoria: Pacific Identifications.

Winter, Barbara J. 1984. “William Beynon and the Anthropologists.”

Canadian Journal of Native Studies 2: 279– 92.

Wolf, Eric R. 1999. Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

171

Index

abalone (bilhaa), 8, 61, 92, 119– 30,

152, 159n1Chap7; archeological

research into, 123– 24; disappear-

ance of, 119, 126; fishery, closing

of, 127– 29; Gitxaała prohibited

from harvesting, 119– 21; harvest

and processing of, 121– 22, 124– 27;

sustainable harvesting of, 124– 30;

use of, 122– 23

“the abalone story,” 120– 21

adaawx (oral record), 30, 69– 85;

abalone in, 122; definition of, 156n2;

governance and, 35. See also history

adaptation postcontact, 37– 41, 97, 121

Ames, Kenneth, 22, 96

Anderson, Margaret Seguin, 16, 18,

22, 72, 123

anthropology: names and, 13– 14; and

oral history, 22– 23; power

imbalances in research, 7;

researcher as learner, 74; silence

misunderstood in, 73; studies of

abalone in, 123– 24

Argyle, Albert, 56, 58, 145

ayaawx (customary law), 32

Banks Island, 49, 57, 58, 64– 65,

114– 15, 125, 142

Barbeau, Marius, 21, 22, 23, 40;

Beynon as student of, 54

Bare Bay, 139, 159n6

Barnett, Homer, 22, 23

BC Packers, 139

Benjamin, Walter, 76

Beynon, William, 21– 24, 53, 65; on

antiquity of Gitxaała, 30– 31, 48;

early life of, 54; “Ethnical and

Geographical Study of the

Tsimshian Nation” by, 23, 24,

30– 31; Joshua Tsibassa inter-

viewed by, 40, 41, 157n7; on

laxyuup, 54– 59; “The Myth of the

Adventures of Gom’asnext” by,

53; permission for, to hear

adaawx, 70– 71; smgigyet stories

told to, 158n7; sources of, 56,

157n1Chap4, 157n7; on trade, 94

bilhaa (abalone), 8, 61, 92, 119– 30,

152, 159n1Chap7

Bishop, Charles, 32– 33, 64– 65, 92, 113

Blake, Michael, 123

Boas, Franz, 21, 22, 108, 122

boat rating system, 102– 3

Bolton, Ernie, 3, 79, 80

Bolton, Larry, 78, 82, 115; on gover-

nance, 28

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

172 Index

Bolton, Merle, 3

Bolton, Richard, 123

Bonilla Arm, 65, 135, 142– 46, 147

Boyd, Robert, 112

British Columbia Wildlife Act, 50

Brown, Alan, 80

Brown, Charlotte, 125, 126, 144– 45, 146

Brown, Dorothy, 157n10

Brown, Mason, 81

Butler, Caroline, 3, 25, 82, 83, 93, 129;

at K’moda, 135

Caamano, Jacinto, 32, 33, 62; crew of,

robbed of clothes, 63; at feast, 72

Campania Island, 49, 57, 64

Canadian Fisheries Act, 50, 101– 2, 133

Canadian government: breaking its

own laws, 78– 79; fishing regulat-

ed by, 98, 101– 5, 117– 18, 119– 21,

133; ignoring traditional practic-

es, 140; needing to consult with

aboriginal people, 78– 79;

surveillance of, on aboriginal

people, 127, 128– 29

canning salmon, 97– 100, 104, 114,

135– 36

capitalism, 38, 42– 45

children disrespecting fish, 88– 90

Citeyats, 32, 62– 63, 64, 101,

156n8Chap2

clam gardens, 92, 158n4

clans, 35, 54– 55

Clifton, Helen, 93

Coast Tsimshian, 14– 15, 24

Coast Tsimshian language, 15

Collinson, Samson, 77– 78

Colnett, James, 31– 32, 33– 34, 39;

early life of, 156n7Chap2; on fish

traps, 138– 39

colonialism: fishing rights and, 99,

101– 2, 104– 5, 117– 18, 119– 21, 152;

and Gitxaała society, 7– 8, 37,

120– 21, 152; laxyuup (territory)

affected by, 49– 53; misunder-

standing traditional economies,

136; as political vs. epistemologi-

cal, 7, 155n1Intro; residential

centralization imposed by, 49

communal decision making, 2

Coupland, Gary, 22, 96, 158n3

Cove, John, 22, 123

credit, 104

creekscaping, 132– 33, 138– 41. See

also fish traps

Curtis, Edward, 136

Davis, Vince, 4

Davis Plan, 104

decolonization, 6

Decolonizing Methodologies (Smith), 7

Dell, Annette, 2, 92

Department of Fisheries and Oceans

(DFO), 83, 98– 99, 118; double

standard enforced by, 128– 29

Devereux, F. A., 139, 141

diik (buy), 95

disease, 17, 37, 38, 112– 14, 144

displacement, 24, 103– 4, 121, 133

Dolphin Island, 52, 101

Donald, Leland, 49

drag seines, 63– 64, 107, 116– 17, 137,

139; description of, 145– 46;

restriction of, 50, 83, 98– 99,

139– 40; transition to, from fish

traps, 143– 44

Drucker, Phillip, 22, 23, 96

Duff, Wilson, 24

Duncan, William, 15, 51, 157n2Chap4

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Index 173

Dunn, John, 15– 17, 25

Dwyer, Kevin, 6

Dyck, Noel, 25

“Ecological Indian” myth, 131– 32

ecological problems, 8– 9, 117– 18, 148

economy, contemporary, 24– 25;

aboriginal people excluded from,

100, 102– 5, 117– 18; traditional

model integrated with, 99– 100,

105, 121

Estevan Group, 49, 64

“Ethnical and Geographical Study of

the Tsimshian Nation” (Beynon),

23, 24, 30– 31

Europeans: not respecting Gitxaała

law, 33, 96; violence committed

by, 34

extractive resource industries, 2,

42– 45; double standard in

monitoring of, 128– 29; fishing and,

97– 98, 101– 3, 114, 117– 18, 127– 29;

Gitxaała as labor for, 98, 136;

indigenous responses to, 18, 43– 45

feasts, 32; seaweed served at, 93;

silence at, 72– 73; telling history

at, 72– 73

Fisheries Act, 156n9Chap2

fishing, 87– 105, 107– 18; aboriginal

people denied rights to, 99, 101– 2,

104– 5, 117– 18, 119– 21; archeologi-

cal evidence of, 90, 91, 95– 96,

109– 11; in cannery- owned boats,

104; capitalism changing, 42– 44,

50, 97– 105; contemporary,

97– 105; gear, 134, 146– 47; and

Gitxaała cultural values, 8– 9,

87– 90, 91, 120– 21; at K’moda,

134– 38, 147; licenses, 97, 99, 103,

104– 5, 139– 40; nontarget species,

147– 48; in oral histories, 88– 90;

politics of, 5– 6, 8, 49– 50, 152;

race and, 102– 3; and respect,

87– 90; seasonal, 33, 108, 111, 134;

severed from processing, 144;

stock management in, 90, 121– 22,

133– 34, 148; sustainably, 98,

124– 30, 132– 35, 152; techniques,

90– 92, 108– 9, 116– 17, 121– 22,

124– 27, 137; terminology for, 95;

and title holders of fisheries,

52– 53, 75, 98, 142– 43, 146, 147;

for trade, 93– 96, 99– 100, 102;

visiting sites of, 64, 82– 84;

women and children and, 99

fish traps, 83– 84, 90, 108, 124,

131– 32; design of, 137– 38, 141; for

different types of salmon, 143;

drag seines replacing, 143– 44; at

Kxooyax, 138– 41, 143, 147, 159n3;

selectivity of, 148

the flood/deluge, 31, 48, 156n6

food harvesting, 85; of abalone,

124– 30; archeological research

into, 60, 66, 90– 91, 96, 108– 11,

123– 24; criminalization of

aboriginal methods of, 37, 44, 50,

133, 156n9Chap2; drying, 109, 125,

145; foraging, 137; hunting,

136– 37; and population decline,

113– 14, 137, 144; yearly cycle of,

145. See also fishing

foodways, changing, 111– 15, 126,

127– 28

Galois, Robert, 40, 157n11, 159n3

Gamble, Edward, 2, 135, 137, 147

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

174 Index

Gamble, Marvin (Teddy), 3, 82, 83,

84, 135

Gamble, Russell, 82, 83, 135, 136

Ganhada (raven clan), 35

Garfield, Viola, 23, 122; Tsimshian

Clan and Society, 22

gilam (give), 95

gill nets, 146

Gispuwada (blackfish clan), 35, 36,

41, 55; fishing sites of, 66

Gitga’ata (Hartley Bay), 20

Git lax m’oon (People of the Saltwa-

ter), 11. See also Gitxaała

Gitxaała, 1, 20; anthropological

studies of, 25; antiquity of, 1, 12,

13, 30, 31– 32, 158n1; conservative-

ness of, 21; as dependent labor

force, 100; as dominant force in

region, 33; early traders meeting,

31– 33, 41, 96; governance of, 7,

27; historical knowledge, 8, 21;

inheritance among, 14; material

evidence of, 12, 84, 109– 11; as

negotiators, 96; repelling

Europeans, 33; social organiza-

tion of, 7– 8; as Tsimshianic

people, 13– 14; worldview, 151

Gitxsan, 14, 20

Gitxsan language, 15

Gluckman, Max, 6

governance, 27– 29; and alliances, 37,

158n7; Band Council and, 45;

capitalism disrupting, 38;

hereditary, 27– 29, 30, 35, 42, 45;

and kinship ties, 34; as place-

based, 27, 29– 34, 35, 43, 139;

postcontact, 37– 45. See also

sm’ooygit (ranking hereditary

leader)

Grassy Island reserve, 51, 52

guns, 39

hadda oola (seal intestine dish), 92

Haida: comanagement model of

fishing, 129, 130; Gitxaała

relations with, 94; wars with,

80– 81

Haisla, 42– 43

halibut, 91

Halpin, Marjorie, 16, 18, 22, 24, 72,

122– 23

Harriman expedition, 136

Hartley Bay, 16, 17

ha’wałks (taboo), 124

He:l, 39, 40– 42, 55, 135, 136– 37. See

also Ts’ibasaa

hereditary names, 27, 29– 30, 35, 38

herring, 8, 91, 107– 18, 152; disappear-

ance of, 116, 117; historical use of,

108– 11, 152; planting of, 91; seine

boats, 107, 116– 17

herring roe, 8, 109, 114– 16, 118;

changes in harvest of, 115– 16;

locations of harvest of, 115

hierarchy, 27, 71– 72

Hill, Ben, 114

Hill, Matthew, 77– 78, 81, 114– 15; on

abalone harvest, 126; on commu-

nication, 29; suing to protect

fisheries, 117; on territory, 48; on

traditional foods, 87

Hill, Thelma, 48

history: bound to place, 29– 30, 49,

59– 60, 74– 75, 80– 85, 151– 53;

formal setting for transmitting,

72– 73; importance of, to

Gitxaała identity, 69– 70;

learning to tell, 70, 74; of

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Index 175

lineages, 71; and resource

sharing, 72; restricted according

to rank, 74; right to tell, 40, 70,

71; song and dance in telling, 72;

trade in, 94– 95. See also adaawx

(oral record)

home, 47, 67. See also laxyuup

(territory)

hoon (salmon), 8, 9, 131– 49

houses. See walp (house group)

Hudson Bay Company, 15, 17

Inglis, Gordon B., 21, 22

Inglis, Richard, 19

Innes, Kenneth, 126

Innes, Tim, 60– 61

Innis, Clarence, 79, 80

intimacy, anthropology and, 6

isolation, concepts of, 12

k’abawaalksik (heirs of chiefly

names), 27

Kaien Island, 76

K’amksiwah (white people), 29; first

contact with, 31– 33, 41, 96,

142– 43; governance after contact

with, 37– 45; settlement by, 102– 3

Kew, Michael, 103, 133

Keynesian management, 133– 34

kinship ties, 2– 3, 4; governance and,

34; matrilinear, 34, 35; with

nonhuman world, 132

Kitasoo (Klemtu), 20

Kitkatla (village), 16, 21

Kitselas, 20

Kitsumkalum, 20, 24

Klapthlon, 101

Klemtu, 16, 17, 20, 157n9

K’moda reserve, 51, 52

K’moda village, 66; cannery at, 98,

135– 36; fishing at, 134– 38, 147;

Menzies visiting, 66, 82– 84,

135– 38

Knight, Rolf, 101

Ks’waan, 60– 61, 64

Ktsm laagn, 65– 66

Kwakiutl, 37– 38

Kxenk’aa’wen, 65, 135, 142– 46, 147;

as “Place of Special Trap,” 142

Kxooyax, 138– 41, 143, 147, 159n3

Lach Klan, 1; author’s first visit to,

3– 4; as central winter village,

59– 60; continuous habitation of,

14, 17, 30, 36, 48; dating, 30– 31,

59; location of, 12; reserve, 51

łagyigyet (old people), 9, 72

languages. See Tsimshianic languages

Laskiik (eagle clan), 35

Laxgibu (wolf clan), 35

Lax Kw’alaams (Port Simpson), 14, 17,

36, 53

laxyuup (territory), 1, 8, 47– 67;

Beynon on, 54– 59; colonialism

affecting, 49– 53, 59, 100– 101;

experiencing, 67; expropriation

of, 100; governmental misunder-

standings of, 50; vs. hunting

grounds, 54; legal battles over,

50– 51, 75– 82; noncontiguous, 48;

reserve system and, 50– 53;

seasonal migration within, 49,

99; as social landscape, 59– 66,

152– 53; traditional extent of, 12,

47– 49, 50– 53

Legaic, 43

legal battles: names and, 15, 19– 20;

over fish conservation, 117– 18;

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

176 Index

legal battles (continued)

over fishing rights, 19; over

laxyuup (territory), 50– 51, 75– 82

Lewis, James, 94, 144

Lewis, Russell, 126– 27, 128

Lewis, Samuel, 56, 70, 81

Lewis, Samuel Wise, 145

Lewis, William, 144

light and luminosity, 123

lik’agyet (councilors), 27

Lovisek, Joan, 19

MacDonald, George, 19, 22, 25, 96, 124

MacDonald, Joanne, 19, 25

malsk (telling), 71– 72; as right to tell

stories, 71

marriage, 35

Marsden, Susan, 15, 17– 18, 22,

156n8Chap2

Martindale, Andrew, 19, 22, 123,

157n8; on the flood, 31

Maschner, Herbert, 96

matrilineality, 34, 35

Matson, R. G., 96, 158n3

McCauley, George, 40

McDonald, James, 18, 22, 24, 25, 101

McIlwraith, T. F., 49

McKenna- McBride Commission, 100

Menzies, Basso, 82, 83, 107, 108, 115,

135

Menzies, Charles R.: archeological

work of, 38– 39, 91, 96, 109– 10,

124, 156n6, 157n13; family of, 2– 3,

4, 82, 83– 84, 107– 8, 131– 32, 135;

fishing, 107, 116– 17, 132; helping

with legal issues, 79; K’moda and,

66, 82– 84, 135– 38; Kxooyax

visited by, 140– 41; Lach Klan

visited by, 3– 4; in Prince Rupert,

5– 6; on sustainable fishing, 129,

132; watershed restoration work

of, 132; working collaboratively

with Band Council, 4– 5

Menzies, Shirley Marie, 2

Menzies, Tristan, 79

methodology, 1– 2, 4– 9; collaborative,

4– 5; decolonizing, 6– 7; Indige-

nous, 6– 7, 155n1Intro; of soil

samples, 109– 11; for translation, 75

Metlakatla, 14, 17, 53, 76, 157n2Chap4

migration, seasonal, 49, 99

Miller, Jay, 17, 18, 22; on cultural

importance of light, 123; on

fishing, 88– 89, 157n9; Tsimshian

Culture, 16

missionary communities, 15, 53, 75

Mitchell, Donald, 49

Moody, Elmer, 1, 11; on governance, 28

Moody, Janet, 76– 77, 125, 127– 28

Moore Island, 64

Morrison, M. K., 139– 40

Moss, Madonna, 123

Muszynski, Alicja, 99

“The Myth of the Adventures of

Gom’asnext” (Beynon), 53

names: changing, 39– 40; geography

and, 66, 75– 82, 151– 52; given by

anthropologists, 13– 14, 15– 16, 17– 18,

19– 20; given by traders, 33, 41,

157n10; hereditary, 27, 29– 30, 35,

38; language of, 21; legal meanings

of, 15; and relationality, 151– 52; and

self- identification, 15, 18

Naming the Harbour (film), 79

natural world, aboriginal impact on,

131– 32, 141, 148– 49, 152

naxnox (supernatural being), 71– 72

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Index 177

Nees Ma’Outa, 34

nettle twine nets, 144

Newell, Dianne, 25

Nisga’a, 13– 14, 20; governance, 29

Nisga’a language, 15

Northern Coast- Tsimshian people,

17– 18, 50

“official ethnography,” 25

oil: herring, 109; seal, 92

Oka Crisis, 5

oral history. See adaawx (oral

record); history

O’Reilly, Peter, 44, 48; reserves

established by, 51– 53, 64, 101, 139

phratries (clans), 54

Pitt Island, 31, 49, 56– 57, 61, 62,

156n8Chap2

place, connection to. See laxyuup

(territory)

place- names workshop, 75– 79, 84

population decline, 37– 39, 59, 112– 14;

economic opportunities follow-

ing, 114; food harvesting affected

by, 113– 14, 137, 144

Port Essington BC, 97

Port Simpson, 14, 17, 36, 53

Prince, Paul, 22

Prince Rupert BC, 97

Prince Rupert Fishermen’s Co-

operative, 104

Prince Rupert Harbor: archeological

findings at, 158n3; name of,

79– 82, 84; ownership of, 75– 79

Pritchard, John, 24, 42

railroads, 97

Rashleigh, Jen, 79

reciprocity, 87– 88, 132– 33

regalia, 32, 122– 23

reserves: establishment of, 48, 51– 53;

fishing on, 101, 139; laxyuup

(territory) and, 50– 53; smallness

of, in BC, 100

Robinson, Rita, 77– 78

Roth, Christopher, 22

Sabaan, 39– 40, 91, 142, 157n10

sagyook (trade), 95

salmon, 8, 9, 131– 49; canning

industry, 97– 100, 104, 114, 135– 36;

decline of, 90, 133, 147– 48; and

hereditary fisheries, 52– 53, 66,

91, 97, 147; management, 44,

133– 35, 147– 48, 152; sustainable

harvest of, 98, 133– 35, 137– 41;

types of, 53, 143, 147– 48

saltwater, 1, 11, 64, 152– 53

seals: hunting, 64, 114; oil from, 92

sea otters, 114

seaweed harvesting, 92– 93

Seax: Bishop meeting, 32– 33; Colnett

meeting, 31– 32, 33; fishing rights

and, 44, 139– 40; reserve territory

and, 52

Sebassah, Paul, 51– 52, 99

“Sebassa” Indians, 33

Seguin, Margaret. See Anderson,

Margaret Seguin

Sessional Papers, 136, 159n1Chap8

Shaw, Agnes, 125, 144– 46

Shaw, Joseph, 77

Shaw, Nathan, 80, 157n1Chap4

shellfish, 92. See also abalone

sigyidm hana’a (matriarchs), 27

sihoon (catching fish), 87

silence, 72– 73

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

178 Index

Simonsen, Bjorn, 96

Skeena River, 43– 44

Skog, Violet, 125

Sky Brothers, 31

sm’algyax (Tsimshianic language), 21,

75, 158n9

smallpox, 113

smgigyet (real people), 27– 29, 35;

capitalism and, 43– 45

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai: Decolonizing

Methodologies, 7

sm’ooygit (ranking hereditary leader),

27, 35; paying respect to, 36– 37

social class, 34– 35, 122– 23

social landscape, 59– 66

soil, anthropogenic, 61, 110– 11

Southern Tsimshian language, 15– 16

Spencer, Jeffrey, 126, 127

Spencer, Job, 56

Spencer, Marc, 89– 90

Spencer, Richard, 77– 78, 80, 81; on

governance, 28– 29

stone traps. See fish traps

streamscaping, 132– 33, 138– 41. See

also fish traps

“subsistence,” 93– 94, 101– 2, 136

Supernant, Kisha, 157n8

Sussman, Amelia, 22, 23

Suttles, Wayne, 158n3

syt güülum goot (being of one heart),

122, 127

Tait, John, 88

Temlax’am, 35– 36

terraces, 61

territory. See laxyuup (territory)

Tilley, Christopher, 60

timber: compensation for, 101; trade

in, restricted, 100– 101

trade: in fish, 93– 96, 99– 100, 102;

linguistic data for, 95; networks,

94, 100; in roe, 114, 115

Ts’ibasaa, 33, 35, 157n13; changing

name to He:l, 39, 40– 42; houses

of, 65– 66; reserves and, 44, 51,

Tsibassa, Joshua, 40– 41, 53, 56;

granting approval for telling

stories, 70– 71; as source for

Beynon, 40, 41, 157n7

Tsimshian Clan and Society (Garfield),

Tsimshian Culture (Miller), 16

Tsimshianic languages, 15– 17

Tsimshianic peoples, 13– 14, 15; Coast

and Southern, 18, 19, 20; disputed

origins of, 19; postcontact

movements of, 17, 24; tripartite

model of, 17– 18

tskah (herring), 8, 91, 107– 18, 152

Ts’msyen, 15, 19, 20, 43– 44; Gitxaała

distinguishing themselves from,

Turner, Nancy, 93

Txemsum, 88

values, fishing and, 8– 9, 87– 90, 91,

120– 21

villages, 36, 55, 56– 58, 60– 66;

dating, 30– 31, 59, 61, 62, 66, 84;

described by Bishop, 64– 65

‘wa’at (sell), 95

walp (house group), 34– 35, 55;

resource- gathering governed by,

35, 148; territories of, 56– 58

wars with Haida, 80– 81

white settlers, 102– 3

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .

Index 179

wiheld’m, 40, 42

Wilhahlgamilramedik, 31, 156n6

Will u sgket, 61– 62

Windsor, C. S., 99

Winter, Barbara, 23

Wolf, Eric, 37– 38, 42

women: abalone harvested by, 125,

126; in canneries, 99; smoking

fish, 145– 46; trade by, 99– 100,

125, 126– 27

Wood, George, 107– 8, 115– 16

Wudinuxs, 31

xs’waanx (herring roe), 8, 114– 18

yaawk (feast, potlatch), 32, 94, 119, 126

un de r U. S. o r ap pl ic ab le c op yr ig ht l aw .