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A2 Terrace Review — Wednesday, June 19, 1991

Kitwancool submits claim,

reclaims old village name

: 7” \TWANCOOL IS NO MORE. - On June 15, after. presenting documents outlining |

their land claim to representatives of the B.C. government, the village chiefs ceremonially changed the name of the community from Kitwancool to Gitanyow.

by Michael Kelly

' The change is a return to the original name of the place at the south end of Kitwancool Lake. In the Gitksan language Gitanyow means "village of many people". That name was changed in the late 1800's after a disastrous war with another native group to the north, the "Tse ‘Tsaut, which left the Gitanyow people victorious but decimated. The name of the village was changed to Git gun higuu’l, "village of reduced numbers", later becoming Kitwancool because the

white men couldn’t pronounce the.

Gitksan name.

‘The weekend ceremony was —

attended by village residents, emis- saries of neighbouring native groups, and provincial, federal and local government representatives, a total of about 300 people who gathered under warm, overcast skies in the village’s new, partially finished school .to witness the Gitanyow chiefs present their land claim research documents to B.C. Native Affairs. Minister John Sav- age. Copies of the documents were also given to native leaders from Skidegate, Hartley Bay and Aiyansh, Skeena MLA Dave Parker,” Terrace Health Care Society chairman David Lane, the mayors of Hazelton and Stewart, Terrace mayor Jack Talstra, and federal Indian Affairs officer John White.

Each of the house chiefs spoke to the assemblage on the history of their houses and relations to the land, The speeches in Gitksan were translated by Elmer Derrick, a member of one of the Gitanyow houses and a resident of Kitse- gukla.

Derrick explained the house system, saying, "Our community functions, because of the houses we have, the mutual and moral support of many houses and their members. We're here to celebrate the beginning of a journey. In many decades past leaders have gone before us, many chiefs have

stepped forward to answer the land question. "The journey we're starting is

going to be challenging for all of

us. We hope to achieve a just and honourable settlement.”

The presentations and speeches were followed by a feast.

Derrick Jater said," Feasts are carried on to enact and exercise our laws. For people in govern- ment, an understanding of the feast helps clarify the questions that come up in court.

"People wonder why we don’t become part of society. It’s because we are different. We do this [present the claim] with hon- our and dignity, take it with you in the spirit in which it is offered, in friendship.

"Our laws tell us that we own the land. We have undertaken to

exist under the system; we don’t -

reject the constitution, We are trying to find our place."

Derrick also addressed the “gravy train" issue. Looking around the unfinished interior of the school he said, "When we ask for something, we are told we have too much

already... We are determined to.

secure some of the services com- mon to everyone. When we talk about land claims, suddenly these things — pensions, family allow- ance, band council funds — are threatened. We never believed that we are a burden. It is we who are burdened by jurisdiction."

He explained that changing the name of the village is a type of baptism and a symbolic leaving of the jurisdiction of the Indian Act. The process of settling the land question, he said, will require the support of all people of the North- wes.

The Gitanyow claim was sub--

mitted to the federal government in 1977, largely as result of work done by Dr. Peter Williams, intro- duced to the ceremony June 15 as the president of Kitwancool. Williams sat through the proceed. ings in a wheelchair. He is 91

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years old and:a Doctor of Law. On Sept. 3, 1927, Peter Williams and three other Gitanyow Indians were sentenced in provincial court in Smithers to serve between ore and three months in jail for

assaulting public officers and ob- |

structing a Dominion survey. A report of the court proceedings states that the group entered the’ camp of surveyors in the valley and took their instruments. Williams later refused to hand over what was alleged to be a loaded pistol to an RCMP officer. He served his time in Oakalla prison.

The Gitanyow land submission takes note of several such stories — the surveyors were in the pro- cess of staking land for the pur-

pose of establishing reserves, a

process the Gitanyow resisted for decades.

The land research paper cites archacological evidence and the oral tradition that about 1,000 the

" one of the Gitanyow houses moved

from Kaien Island, the present site of Prince Rupert, up the Nass River valley and eventually settled along the Kitwancool River, estab- lishing a large and prosperous community. Another, it says, migrated from Gitanmaaks (Hazel- ton) up the Kispiox and to Kitwan- cool. Another house came south- ward from the Skeena headwaters. During the wars that resulted in changing the name of the village, the Gitanyow also acquired terti- tory north of Meziadin Lake.

The research points toward estab- lished fishing, hunting, trapping

and berry-picking areas and camps “#4

on the northward-flowing tributary creeks and rivers of the Nass. The paper states, "For some years now the Nisga’a Tribal Council. has claimed that their people lay ownership to the land which drains into the Nass River, from the watershed which divides the Skeena and the Nass drainage. The Kitwancool, cautious to prevent any injury to the Nisga’a case which went before the Supreme Court of this country, did not speak out. The ownership of this territory musi now clearly be defined 1o both the Federal and Provincial Governments."

The paper then identifies several

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Elmer Derrick, Chief Robert Good: A baptism, a symbolic leaving of the jurisdiction of the Indian Act.

sites in the Cranberry and Kiteen areas, explaining that a migration of Kitwancool people took place in the 1800’s, with many of the vil- lagers moving to the Nass estuary in search of cannery jobs. Some- of them stayed in the Nass valley, and those who still live there pos-

sess ancestral rights within Kit- wancool,

The concluding section of the research submission is taken up with transcripts of hearings and meetings between the Gitanyow chiefs and various land commis- sions that came through the terri- tory between 1913 and 1915. In it the chiefs repeatedly resist offers

from the government to establish schools and medical services in the village, suspicious that such collab-

oration would prejudice the land |

question. They eventually accepted

those services, still demanding to

know when there would be an end to the reserve system and a return of at least part of the land they formerly held through their house system.

It’s a question that is yei to be answered, and June 15 marked the

beginning of what may be a new

line of inquiry. At the conclusion of the day’s events Terrace mayor Jack Talstra

— Continued on page A3

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