Squamish people
[5] The traditional territory is in the area now in southwestern British Columbia, Canada, and covers Point Grey as the southern border.
The southern and eastern part of their territory includes Indian Arm, along Burrard Inlet, through False Creek then English Bay and Point Grey.
Although first recorded contact with Europeans happened with George Vancouver and José María Narváez in 1791–1792,[8] disease had devastated much of the population before in the 1770s.
Along with the influx of new foreigners, usurpation of their ancestral lands, and later policies of assimilation by the Canadian government, caused a significant shift in their culture, way of life, and society.
[12]: 13 [13] In another story of the first ancestors, two men first appeared at and Sch’enḵ and Chekw’élhp,[14][12]: 20 located at what is now known as Gibsons, British Columbia.
[11]: 284 During the 1770s, smallpox (variola major) eradicated at least 30 percent of the indigenous population on the Northwest coast of North America, including many Squamish.
… One salmon season the fish were found to be covered with running sores and blotches, which rendered them unfit for food.
Men, women, and children sickened, took the disease and died in agony by hundreds, so that when the spring arrived and fresh food was procurable, there was scarcely a person left of all their numbers to get it.
The remains of which, said the old man, in answer by my queries on this, are found today in the old camp sites or midden-heaps over which the forest has been growing for so many generations.
Little by little the remnant left by the disease grew into a nation again, and when the first white men sailed up the Squamish in their big boats, the tribe was strong and numerous again”[9] The epidemic of the 1770s was the first and the most devastating, with more to follow.
[16] European expansion during the fur trade boom, gold rush, along with the subsequent colonization policies by the Canadian government, ushered in a new way of life for the Squamish.
In a few years, they had quickly fallen to a small minority, due to more disease, displacement from their land, and the rising European and Asian populations.
The families who lived in the village were placed on a barge and sent out to sea, with the intent for them to move up to the Squamish River area.
In 1906, a delegation of chiefs from British Columbia traveled to London to seek an audience with King Edward VII regarding the land confiscated by the government of Canada under the reserve system.
The vegetation of the Squamish people's homeland is a dense temperate rainforest, formed mainly of conifers with a spread of maple and alder, as well as large areas of swampland.
[22] The largest trees of old growth forest were located around Burrard Inlet, the slopes of Sen̓áḵw and the area presently known as False Creek.
This distribution of wealth is a key component of the potlatch gift-giving festival, and was encouraged through the display of values celebrated in the culture such as generosity, humility and respect.
As Andy Paull noted, "It was the duty of the more responsible Indians to see that the history and traditions of our race were properly handed down to posterity.
Other property included fishing spots and hunting trap lines, as well as berry patches, canoes, and works of art.
Rights to places to hunt, fish, or gather food could be obtained through marriage to people from other villages or nations.
The value and ownership of places usually correlated to a valuable resource in the location, as opposed to overt physical characteristics.
Usually the resources in question were food sources, such as salmon streams, herring spawning grounds, berry patches, and fishing holes.
The Squamish kinship is based on a loose patrilineal structure, with large extended families and communal village life.
If the father endorsed the marriage, he would invite the groom into his house after conducting a test or trial on the young man.
Through their history, their culture has gone through a great deal of change in the past few hundred years since contact and colonization started.
The history of the Residential Schools and the potlatch ban was a part where the Canadian government tried to exterminate their cultural practices.
This caused decades of effects with the near extinction of their language, the assimilation into mainstream Western society, and inter-generational trauma.
Before contact, a village would consist of multiple dwellings called Longhouses, which would hold a large extended family.
The language is part the Coast Salish linguistic group, and most closely related to Sháshíshálh (Sechelt), and (Halkomelem) and Xwsa7km (Lhéchalosem).
Many anthropologists and linguists have worked with Squamish people and their language including Franz Boas, Charles Hill-Tout, Homer Barnett, and Aert H. Kuipers.
