Who owned your object and/or similar objects? How has its ownership changed over time? What have its owners used this object for? Has your object traveled? What has been its historical route? How does interacting with the object shape your impression of it? How does its current use(s) relate to its uses in the past?
Mountains of BC are actually an agglomerate of separately classified ranges: the Cascade Range, the Coast Mountains, the Columbia Mountains, the Insular Mountains, Interior Mountains, Saint Elias Mountains, Vancouver Island Ranges, and more.
More research for more detailed and accurate description is needed here, but so far, the original peoples or at least the ones inhabiting the BC mountains before European contact with the continent, have been classified by archeologists as Northwest Coast, Plateau, Plains and the majority being Sub-Arctic Athapascan. I would like to know what Indigenous knowledge says about the first peoples in these areas and how they came to be there.
Today the First Nations who’s territory language areas are related to the BC mountain ranges are[i];
the Tagish,
the Tutchone,
the Inland TLingit,
the Tahltan,
the Dene-thah,
the Nisga'a,
the Gitxsan
the Sekani,
the Dunne-za,
the Nat'ooten,
the Wet'suwet'en,
the Dakelhne,
the Saulteaux Cree,
the Secwepemc,
the Stoney,
the Ktunaza Kinbasket,
the Xaadas Haida,
the Tsimshian,
the Haisla,
the Heiltsuk,
the Oweekeno,
the Kwakwaka’wakw,
the Tsilhqot’in,
the Stl’atl’imx,
the Nlaka’pamux,
the Nuu-chah-nulth,
the Ditidaht,
the Homalco,
the Klahoose,
the Sliammon,
the Comox,
the Qualicum,
the Se’shalt,
the Sne-Nay-Muxw
the Squamish,
the Quwutsun’,
the Sto:lo
the Semiahmoo,
the Tsleil-Waututh,
the Musqueam,
the Tsawwassen,
the T’Sou-ke,
the Esquimalt,
the Songhees,
the Saanich,
the Coquitlam, and
the Okanagan.
To look specifically at the Coast Mountains and Squamish traditional territory as an example, currently the owners or more accurately, relatives of the mountains within are Sub-alpine fir, mountain hemlock, black bear, grizzly bear, mountain goat, elk, deer, snowshoe hare, yellow-bellied marmot, heath and meadow alpine plants, Canada goose, grouse, ptarmigan, and salmon[ii]. The Squamish people have used the area for hunting, fishing, and gathering in temporary settlements in the summer for traditional use. Specifically, the Coast Salish people – of whom the Squamish people are a part – hunt Xwuxwelken[iii] (mountain goat) at the highest altitudes, including in the Ch’ich’iyu’y Elxwikn area mountains known by Vancouverites as ‘the Lions’[iv]. Hunting Xwuxwelken necessitates using other aspects of the mountains such as the rivers to bathe in often, cedar boughs to rub the hunter’s body in, and Xwuxwelken’s wool either from sheddings or from a blanket passed down from older hunters – all in order to keep Xwuxwelken from smelling the hunter while being tracked. Wind direction, large rocks and other hiding places, and cliffs to drive Xwuxwelken off of were also instrumental mountain elements used by the hunter[v]. In turn, blankets made from Xwuxwelken’s wool have held high ceremonial value and at potlatches have been distributed as a sign of wealth (Ibid).
When in the late 1700s with the beginning of European contact and colonial war, small pox epidemics killed 30% and later 50% of the Indigenous population in BC. This shift in population certainly shifted ‘ownership’ and use of the mountains. Since then many different people have lived in and used these mountains including British and American mining companies searching for various minerals including coal, diamonds, and gold. Forestry is another industry making its profit from the BC mountains. Migrant Chinese, South Asian, Japanese and freed diasporic African people have also been a part of the mining and forestry operations in these mountains. It was specifically the migrant Chinese who named the entire North American continent as ‘Gold Mountain’, a literal and metaphorical place of financial wealth and a desired migration spot. Indigenous people have continued to live and hunt among the BC mountains, as well as being employed in the above mentioned economic industries.
Specifically, it was the gold rushes in the 1800s that saw many towns spring up in the many mountain ranges. However, with the end of the rushes in the 1900s, many towns were abandoned and remained either empty or only sparsely populated and known as ‘ghost towns’ until the 1941 mass incarceration of Japanese-Canadians in these remote mountain towns. Meant as jail sites, these ghost towns were used by the interned Japanese-Canadians to build houses, and a new tradition of maa-take (pine mushroom) hunting formed, and considered these hard-to-get mushrooms a delicacy. Today they sell in the grocery store or at specialty markets for upwards of $40.00 per pound as they cannot be farmed, but merely harvested in their natural environment largely free of human contact.
After the 1946 release of the internees, since they were denied permission to move back to their homes on the west coast of BC, many Japanese-Canadian families stayed behind in the mountain towns, and today make up a notable facet of BC mountain population. The mountains remain in the nation’s imagination, as popular images of remoteness. Tourism ads promoting Canada as a travel destination highlight BC’s mountains and associate them with the ‘natural beauty’ and ruggedness that constructs the Canadian international image. Currently, in addition to all the activities already mentioned, the mountains are being used as recreation sites for hiking, sport fishing, skiing, and other winter sports. In the previously referenced Squamish territory, a world-known luxury resort at Whistler has been built by a private company and is being run in tandem with outdoor sports at Whistler and surrounding mountains. Many other ski resorts have been built in the mountains, and most recently due to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics site in the mountains, much media attention has been given to the Sun Peaks resort and its degradation and destruction of Secwepemc traditional territory.
Being in the mountains from time to time in my life my impressions of them have changed. Within them, they no longer become a national symbol. Everything is very localized when you are inside. Especially being descended from survivors of internment, interacting with the mountains in BC make me think of family and familiarity, something wholly detached from nationalism. In fact, being in the mountains triggers/heightens a kind of anti-nationalism in me, hearing the silence of a people-less stretch reflects the emptiness left from the brutal colonization and purposeful extraction of Indigenous populations from these ranges.
[i] http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/cultmap.html
[ii] From “Alpine Archaeology and Oral History of the Squamish”. Squamish Nation & Rudy Reimer (2003). In Archaeology of Coastal British Columbia: Essays in Honor of Phillip M. Hobler. Roy L. Carlson (ed). SFU Archaeology Press, Burnaby BC. P47.
[iii] Where indigenous language has been provided to name that which is related to the indigenous population referenced, the indigenous language name is privileged to stay true to the relation. English translations are provided after the term in brackets.
[iv] Alpine Archaeology and Oral History of the Squamish. P49.
[v] Alpine Archaeology and Oral History of the Squamish. P49-50.
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