Some notes toward north Surrey (Qiqayt) territorial acknowledgements

qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ - Kwantlen (Qw’ó:ntl’an; quont-len)
sq̓əc̓iy̓aɁɬ təməxʷ - Katzie (kate-zee)
kʷikʷəƛ̓əm - Kwikwetlem (quick-wet-lem)

I was asked by community members to share some info on doing a local territorial acknowledgement. (Was glad to, since I've been looking into the history of this watershed on north Surrey mountain sloping down to the river for a while now, and have collected some images and other resistance-related documentation from local land defenders and water protectors.) I've added to these notes over time, but am very much open to correction or new information, please do get in touch.

From what I've learned, this whole area is often referred to as Coast Salish territories, however for Surrey City Centre, it's better to specifically acknowledge the nations by name instead. (See Dr. Sarah Hunt, below, for more on this "catch-all" term imposed by colonialism.)

So, for Whalley, here in north Surrey, basically, it could go like this:

We acknowledge that we're meeting today on the shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie (pronounced Kate-zee) and Kwikwetlem peoples; This is unceded land, which means it was never surrendered nor sold. 

Mostly, it's good just to put it in your own words, at the beginning of an event...

 it would be best to contact people from the nations themselves directly to learn more about the history, and present struggles, and to connect directly with your group or organization. Also, because most of us are settlers here, understand it's not our place to "welcome" people onto their territories... it's sort of like we're all uninvited guests here, so saying this is also to point out this relationship which is rooted in violence (because it often gets hidden.) Could also be directly stated as "occupation" or settler colonialism, but our point is to "unsettle" the usual narrative, so try to avoid phrases like "live, work and play on" their land.

As much of Africa was colonized land, and still is in processes of liberation, here it was British colonizers, who brought (and purposefully spread!) small pox, which nearly wiped out the Stó:lō people. British troops and business agents occupied and set up a Fort (Langley) and a government (so-called "British Columbia") and starting printing money (basically, the whole Queen's operation was driven by greed, with the Hudson's Bay Company trying to control the fur trade and secure access to the gold rush, while keeping out the Americans.) 

Water Is Life, Salmon Are Sacred
Having lived in this area for more than 10,000 years, or as they put it "since time immemorial", the Stó:lō people had a very rich traditional governance and culture, centred mainly on the river, in fact Stó:lō means "People of the River". I've also heard Kwantlen referred to as Salmon People... certainly fishing and drying salmon was (maybe still is!) a staple food, and there is a lot of cultural knowledge (and now, a resurgence of interest) in the tides, rivers, streams and whole watershed; also many marinas, canoe sheds and docks along their settlements.  Protection of the land and water is a priority whenever I've heard traditional folks deliver an opening address. The name "Kwantlen" also means "tireless runner" as the grandmothers often sent the young men back and forth to the different neighboring tribes with messages. As Kwantlen Polytechnic University likes to point out, the people here have been very much about fostering intercommunication between neighbors and upriver.

     There are strong elements in the history here of the potlatch ceremony, as a whole differently structured economy and culture, really, "where prestige is the prize gained through distribution rather than the accumulation of wealth. Influence is attained through respect." (Guujaaw, 2014.) The name "Seyem" refers to a respected person, such as an elder, teacher or role model, and the recent "West Coast Family Night" and "Culture Saves Lives" resurgences remind us that many Coast nations still hold these practices, traditions, languages and ceremonies, and this is a living, growing vitality. That's even despite the smallpox, the decades of residential schools and the Indian Act, attempting to ban the potlatch from 1884 until 1951, (also the year the first Transmountain pipeline was built through these lands, more later.) That's why the shaming ceremony was so powerful, to see Beau Dick's copper-breaking on the steps of the Legislature in 2013 was such a significant day (and later, to hear of the trip to Ottawa where he broke Guujaaw's "Taaw" copper on Parliament Hill in July of 2014! See Guujaaw's words here on page 14.)

From Father Sky, to the water, land and all the breath of life, from the four-legged, the crawling, the winged ones, the ones that swim, all are seen "not as a possession of an unlawful bankrupt corporation called Canada" but as all part of our relations, a complex web of "Mother Earth". (In "The Pipes" by Gyauustees, pg. 15). As I understand it, there's some patrilineal lines, but also strongly centred matriarchal culture, in several areas land "stewardship" (or more, "responsibility") was passed down mothers through daughters. With a very strong oral history tradition, this is often done through "blanketing ceremonies" to mark the event, naming, launch of public artwork, and so forth... so that the many who witness the blanketing will be able to recall and retell that story and what happened, and those so blanketed carry a special responsibility to bear witness throughout their life.

  They also developed very beautiful and elaborate weaving and carving practices here, making cedar posts into house poles or canoes, and weaving cedar bark into roofing, hats, baskets, etc.  Their roofs were round, not peaked nor pointed. At one point, I think they were about 10,000 strong--mostly situated in their main village at Skaiametl, which is now New Westminster, and their summer fishing village on the south side of the river, called Kikait or as the Musqueam called it Qiqéyt. That is the Surrey side, down by the Patullo Bridge footholds (and the new Skytrain bridge), colonially known as Brownsville or more broadly now, the Bridgeview neighborhood.

So, that's why we acknowledge that we are settlers on this "unceded" or "stolen" land... It means that we recognize there were no treaties signed here regarding these territories (in most of BC that is the story), and the land was never sold nor given up, surrendered nor traded.

  Instead, there has been a murderous process of land grabbing and displacement of the Stó:lō people. After the small pox nearly wiped out their downriver settlements, the few survivors moved up river, trading with the British and took protection (also from warring Island tribes, like the Yaculta) behind Fort Langley, which is where the main "Kwantlen FN" reserve land (#6) is today, although their traditional territory stretches all the way from here at the mouth of the river (they called Stó:lō, colonially known as the Fraser River) all the way up to Hatzic, past Mission.  Katzie is situated on Barnston Island, only a bit west of Qiqayt.

Many also had to suffer through the residential schools at Mission and Kamloops, which further decimated their language, to the point that there is now only a handful of speakers, although they're diligently teaching others right now.   It's called hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (pronounced hen-qwee-meen-um) and it's the downriver dialect of Halq’eméylem (hal-qo-mey-lem). On twitter, you can follow sesmélət (Fern Gabriel) who is a teacher if you are interested.

There has also been much repression of Stó:lō fishing rights, as I've learned from talks with Kwitsel Tatel (aka Patricia Kelly), a ferociously inspiring single mom, whose long battle over the years with the Government of Canada through it's Department of Fisheries and Oceans is a case study in how racist and colonial the court system has become, and shows how difficult it is for sustenance fishers to survive on current allotments. Yet, she has persisted to the Supreme Court, affirmed the Sparrow case, and continues to fight for her people--her children, now grown and fighting alongside--not only for the right to fish when hungry, but for the defense of the watershed itself, for the very future of the salmon. Pipelines and fish farms keep coming, despite a near total collapse of the sockeye this past summer (2020), and the DFO continues to favour enabling commercial settler fisheries over Indigenous sustenance fishers, and even allowing foreign-owned corporate fish farm operations to "self-regulate" which means spreading sea lice counts getting onto the wild salmon all the way up the straight as they come into the mouth of the Fraser from the ocean.

As mentioned above, the first Transmountain pipeline was forced directly through Stó:lō territories in 1952 (also, through sovereign Secwepemc, Nlaka'Pamux, Stat'imc, Sumas Mountain, Cheam, Chehalis and other neighboring nations, against the will of many of the people, but previous to "Indians" getting the vote in so-called "British Columbia".)

qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ - Kwantlen (Qw’ó:ntl’an; quont-len)
sq̓əc̓iy̓aɁɬ təməxʷ - Katzie (kate-zee)
kʷikʷəƛ̓əm - Kwikwetlem (quick-wet-lem)

a note about Qay'qayt First Nation in local territorial acknowledgements

Sometimes Surrey and New Westminster people also add Qayqayt.  I don't usually, because of a long backstory, but basically, that "nation" is a Federal Band Council creation that's a kind of "rainbow nation", of many other urban indigenous, and they took the name of the village that was down by the river, shared by several nations, and they re-registered it with the Canadian Government in the 90s.  So many different bands of "Indians" lived here by the mouth of the river before colonization, and the small pox was so brutal, that the few remaining survivors were displaced, scattered, and much history and language and cohesiveness of the community was lost. Many Kwantlen survivors from this area moved upriver to further north east territories (near Hatzic and Whonnock), but also many took protection and traded with Fort Langley when it was built in 1827, and that ended up being where the main Kwantlen reserve lands (IR#6) are today. Little recognition of their history here (nor the long Musqueam history in the area) seems to ever get acknowledged by "New Westminster" colonial institutions, including the Justice Institute, the school district, and the various political parties, who, in the past few years, effectively limit their "recognition" only to the newly created Federal Indian Band "Qayqayt."

There's a haunting book of poetry ("From the Poplars") by the local activist and artist Cicely Nicholson which is about the ghostly place where many who died from the small pox were buried, here by Qiqayt, now Poplar Island, out in the middle of the river.  So while it's not historically their "shared traditional territory" as an original sovereign nation, it's definitely good to acknowledge that there were and are today, an large unknown number of "urban indigenous"  here from many local and afar Indigenous nations. (Perhaps why the British tried establishing their first capital city, New Westminster, directly on top of Skaiametl, this main gathering place on the north side of the river.) 

Qiqayt (pronounced key-kite, and also appears in various written records as qiqéyt, Kikait, Qay'qayt, qiqe'yt or my fav, qiq8) was a Kwantlen summer fishing village, but the Chief was married with the Tsawwassen, neighbors to the south and west, by the Salish Sea; it was also Village #32 in the Musqueam Declaration of 1976, at the furthest southern reach of their vast territories.
{image links to the Musqueam Declaration: https://www.musqueam.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/musqueam_declarati...}

It was also frequented by SEMYOME (Semiahmoo), neighbors to the south, who should be also acknowledged anywhere in south Surrey); Stó:lō people, and the Tsawwassen nation, whose stories of the great fearful MaɁqʷəm (Maqwum or 'bog', colonially known as Burns Bog) should stand as a great warning against the follies of expanding the Port of Vancouver, the paving of the South Fraser Perimetre Road in 2011 (which dried out the precious peat bog, living lungs of the Lower Mainland) as well as the proposed Tilbury EPIC LNG terminal expansion.

There is some information about the Kwantlen people's history here on their website and
there is also good detailed info on Stó:lō self-governance on the Kwantlen.community resurgence website.  

[Less reliably, here's settler Charles Hill-Tout's account in Surrey's historical archives on the area, which tells the "first contact" story of Whattlekainum saving Fraser and his men after a retaliation for a beating. Note also that current mayor of Surrey has a long history of disrespecting Kwantlen elders, and it was only a few years ago that the City of Surrey *very unceremoniously* removed bones and a stone memorial from that Kwantlen Park Sky Burial at what is now 104 Avenue and Old Yale Road, and they paved it over for a parking lot, without so much as notifying those elders who still visited their ancestors at that site! This desecration should be squarely confronted and denounced. Similar disrespect continues around Green Timbers where the RCMP headquarters expanded their parking lot into the forests there, while nowhere on park signage can one find acknowledgement of the Indigenous land relationships.]

At Kwantlen currently there is overlap between the "hereditary" and "band council" chief system, and they also have a regularly meeting Elders Council. Here's the contact info at the band office:

office@kwantlenfn.ca (604) 888-2488

You might also wish to visit Lekeyten, at the Gathering Place (12666 72 Ave), where he is the Elder-in-Residence at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and frequently holds his door open for advice to both Indigenous students, and the many of us who have visited and/or learned from his teaching over the years at various KPU events.

A "Stand With Kwantlen" campaign for the construction of a healing lodge in opposition to the Transmountain pipeline construction took place in 2017-18. (Here's my story on it, and their website, and facebook page. Here's the detailed routemap through Surrey, and info from my Access to Information request regarding the City of Surrey's position on the pipeline expansion route.)

It's also interesting to note that the 2018 Vaisakhi day parade for the first time invited local Indigenous nations to open the parade with a place of honour and respect, drums and acknowledgement of the territory.

More recently, within the nation, efforts are underway to revive the "Snəw̓eyəɬ - a meeting where we share traditional teachings." (Follow @rjjago on twitter for further in this regard.)

General Notes on Delivering Territorial Acknowledgements

Here's a good article called "Unceded Territory" (in Megaphone Magazine) with strong quotes from Audrey Siegl (Musqueam) and Sarah Hunt (who is "Kwagu’ł (Kwakwaka’wakw Nation) but spent most of her life as a guest in Lkwungen territories" and teaches at UBC.

“As a coastal person myself, recognizing the territory you are on and where you are from is the way we begin every event, any gathering,” she says. “It’s an important aspect of protocol, so for me the starting point is to think about these acknowledgements as a way to respect the laws of the territories we are on.”

When asked about her thoughts over the types of land acknowledgements and broad recognitions about “Coast Salish territory” that sometimes precede public events, she says: “The tricky part for me is that some of those recognitions can be empty. For myself, I think they are only meaningful if people bother to know whose land they are on precisely.”

According to Dr. Hunt, without a connection to a specific place—and to a specific people—the acknowledgement can’t be meaningful. And that’s the problem with using generalized labels like “Coast Salish territories” as a catch-all term, Hunt explains—it reproduces the colonial categorization system, undermining the ability of the people being labeled to self determine how they want to be named.

“Coast Salish is an imposed term,” she says. “It came out of the anthropological tradition, and it’s not a way that people here would describe themselves.”
History is littered with examples of governments who labelled indigenous groups in order to classify them for administrative purposes, she explains, removing their agency in the process.

By that analysis, both Vancouver and Victoria have at least done their homework. The City of Vancouver motion specifically mentions the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, and the City of Victoria names the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. Although the Esquimalt and Songhees refer to themselves as Lekwungen, the two were originally one community.

Basically, we don't want to just say it for the sake of saying it, we want to make it meaningful, and hopefully it's part of a process of interacting with and getting to know the local original peoples.

There's a good piece by âpihtawikosisân (Chelsea Vowel), called "Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements" that lays out some crucial context and criticism of rote repetition in delivering such statements.

Further Resources

• This panel, organized in November 2016, on "Making Coast Salish Territorial Acknowledgements Matter" ... with participants from Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish nations alongside settlers seeking decolonization, outlines the current situation for these greetings/openings and relationship building in the context of the past 20 years or so of changes... including, what is "protocol", where did it come from, and what can we do now to make it more disruptive of power and restore the original peoples' influence and control of the territories?
• Here's the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) guide, generally considered a fairly accurate listing of most territories in so-called Canada.
• Here's the (somewhat disputed) website for a searchable map of Turtle Island original peoples' territories: native-land.ca
• Here's the Teen Vogue guide to doing territorial acknowledgements, they basically outline 3 steps:
  1. Identify (whose land)
  2. Articulate (a statement); and then
  3. Deliver

  ________

  1. Identify.“The first step is identifying the traditional inhabitants of the lands you’re on. This task may be complicated by multiple and contested histories . . . So it is important to proceed with care, doing good research before making statements of acknowledgment.”
  2. Articulate.“Once you’ve identified the group(s) who should be recognized, formulate the statement. There is no exact script . . . Beginning with just a simple sentence would be a meaningful intervention in most U.S. spaces . . . Often, statements specifically honor elders . . . Acknowledgments may also make explicit mention of the occupied, unceded nature of the territory.”
  3. Deliver.“Offer your acknowledgment as the first element of a welcome to the next public gathering or event that you host. If . . . you’ve built relationships with members of Native communities, consider inviting them to give a welcome before yours . . . Acknowledgment should be approached not as a set of obligatory words to rush through . . . Consider your own place in the story of colonization and of undoing its legacy.”

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