Tag Archives: coast salish

We called it Sum-nuw

Posted by Jared Qwustenuxun Williams on July 17, 2024

There is an island in the Salish Sea that connects to another smaller Island. These two Islands are connected by two long sandy beaches that surround a lagoon that is situated directly between the islands. Not many places on our coast are more appealing for a canoe village site. There are a dozen or so soft sand landing sites all around the smaller island and even in the small lagoon. Hundreds of canoes would have once lined these beaches. Cooking fires would cover the rocky places processing an endless amount of shellfish that would grow on the sandy shoreline. There … Continue reading We called it Sum-nuw →

My very first sp’e’qum tu speenhw

Posted by Jared Qwustenuxun Williams on June 17, 2024

Many of us GenX/Millennials were taught in grade school that Indigenous people were basic hunter gatherers, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Speenhw* is great example of Indigenous agriculture, or permaculture, or maybe just culture. See speenhw is grown in p’hwulhp* meadows and grasslands which date back thousands of years. Dendrochronological data, basically the rings found in the p’hwulhp, show annual burning of the grasslands going back generations. Burning that made way for the speenhw to grow. Certain family members would specialize in looking after their family’s fields. By breaking apart the dirt into square mats, and rolling … Continue reading My very first sp’e’qum tu speenhw →

The Salish Apocalypse

Posted by Jared Qwustenuxun Williams on June 03, 2024

It’s hard to fully imagine what happened here, on Turtle Island when the Hwunitum* arrived. But, in order to understand the current state of Indigenous Cultures we must understand, not only where it comes from, but what it went through to survive. Any Indigenous culture that exists under colonialism has had to suffer and endure to still exist in any form today. As if germ warfare, directly stealing land, and gunboat diplomacy weren’t enough. Our cultures further endured over a hundred years of anti Indigenous ‘kill the Indian save the child’ education, a full on multi generational potlatch ban that … Continue reading The Salish Apocalypse →