Indigenous non-profit buying site of former First Nation village on Salt Spring Island
CBC
A 10-acre (four hectare) parcel of land on one of B.C.'s Southern Gulf Islands will soon become property of an Indigenous-led non-profit society.
The land on Salt Spring Island is where Xwaaqw'um (HWAA-kwum) once stood — a village of the Quw'utsun (Cowichan) peoples, who have traditional territory on Vancouver Island and across the Salish Sea to the mainland.
The current owners are selling to the Stqeeye' Learning Society, which runs a land-based learning program for Indigenous youth through the local school district, and is also working to restore both a nearby wetland and a Garry oak ecosystem.
The society, which will take ownership of the land on Dec. 1, currently operates in nearby Burgoyne Bay Provincial Park.
Maiya Modeste, a project co-ordinator with the society whose traditional name is Sulatiye', said the new land will allow Stqeeye' to continue its work without the bureaucracy of working within the parks system.
In the Hul'qumi'num language, Xwaaqw'um means "place of the female merganser duck."
It's in a valley between two mountains and, with the nearby bay, was a rich site for food.
Modeste hopes the site will be a place for hunting and harvesting, and where cultural rites can be practised in private, as well as a place for land-based learning.
She says the project is a long-time dream of her grandfather Tousilum (Ron George), who recently passed away.
Tousilum's great-grandfather was a chief of the village and left land to his daughter — but when married a non-Indigenous man, she lost her First Nations status under the Indian Act and could not hold the land, Modeste said.
Modeste said it was around that time that settlers took the land.
The opportunity to buy the lot was perfect, Modeste says.
She said the owners approached the society because they wanted to sell to someone who cared about the land as much as they did.
"So it feels really, really amazing the way that it's all happened," said Modeste.
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