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The study, revival and use of British Columbia’s various First Nations languages is steadily gaining ground today, along with the inevitable challenges posed by spelling and pronunciation.
So it was for the explorers, fur traders and Native tribes of old: how to converse effectively in a multitude of European and Indigenous languages.
Read MoreMy intent this week is to focus on the growing trend of museums to surrender the priceless antiquities of ancient worlds—treasures often held by museums far from their creators and national origins—but particularly those much closer to home, right here in British Columbia.
Read MoreAs we’ve seen, throughout the 1850’s the Iroquois guide and interpreter Tomo Antoine was in the thick of almost every major exploration and police action that occurred on Vancouver Island. He was, in fact, Chief Factor/Governor James Douglas’s right-hand man in the field. For all that, he’s been all but forgotten.
Read MoreAs we’ve seen, two men were pivotal to the events leading up to the Cowichan Valley’s only recorded hanging. The first one is well known; in fact, Sir James Douglas is remembered as ‘the father of British Columbia’.
Read MoreWith Truth and Reconciliation has come a new awareness of and sensitivity to our colonial history. Everything about British Columbia’s formative years, once taken as gospel, is now under review.
Read MoreMore than a century after he was immortalized in bronze, his honorary title is to be erased in the name of Reconciliation.
Read MoreWe like to think that history repeats itself. Maybe yes, maybe no. But there’s no doubting that history does an about-face from time to time. You couldn’t find a greater contrast between these two news stories, which occurred 143 years apart, if you tried.
Read MoreCowichan’s legendary Tzouhalem is in the news again.
Not the Quamichan war chief himself—he’s been dead for well over a century—but the fact that he's going to be the subject of a movie.
Reporter Robert Barron recently reported in the Cowichan Valley Citizen that documentary filmmaker Harold C. Joe, a member of Cowichan Tribes, and a film crew are making a television documentary that will “examine the near-mythic figure of Chief Tzouhalem through interviews and creative re-enactments".
The operative word here is “creative” as the only existing written records that refer to Tzouhalem are the hand-me-downs of non-Indigenous (i.e. white) contemporaries (some of them in positions of authority and therefore adversarial).
