Sq’éwlets: A Stó:lo-Coast Salish Community, and their Website
In British Columbia, where the Harrison and Fraser Rivers meet, live the Sq’éwlets, a tribe of the Stó:lō people, who call themselves Sqwōwich — People of the Sturgeon. On a website, through the Virtual Museum of Canada, they share their story — from long ago up through the present — in their own way, and with the words of their own language.
That language, Halq’eméylem, is a Central Salishan language, and one of three dialects of a larger language group that includes Upriver (Halq’eméylem itself), Downriver (Hun’qumyi’num), and Island Halkomelem (Hul’q’umín’um).
As of 2011, there were less than 600 speakers of Halkomelem as a whole. Governmental policies, especially in education, have threatened the future of the language. However, at the same time, revitalization efforts have been active for all dialects, including documentation in dictionaries and grammars.
As this website shares the Sq’éwlets and Stó:lō story, it also stands at the forefront of those efforts to sustain the language through which their culture is communicated, employing philosophies quite novel to the world of documentation.
In this region of British Columbia, there is an archaeological site — in Halq’eméylem, the site is called Qithyil. Qithyil is ancestral for the Sq’éwlets, as are the items uncovered there. In 2010, they began making a website as an exhibit for these items, these belongings. It became a place to share their story with their own children, their neighbors, and the world.
From the first word on the site, Kwéleches, to the section titles of the site, Halq’eméylem is present throughout the text, audio, and videos of the website. For one, Stámés, the name of the site’s first section, means “about”, and gives all this information and more about the website, the project, the languages, and the people.
The next section, Sxwōxwiyám, describes the origin stories of the Stó:lo, including how they connect to places known to the Sq’éwlets. It gives the Sxwōxwiyám of the Stó:lō and Sq’éwlets, and outlines the places mentioned therein with a map to give a sense of the connection. These stories are told in English, but Halq’eméylem names and terms are used throughout.
Sqwélqwel, the name of the third section, means “true news”, and refers in Halq’eméylem to oral history of the Sq’éwlets and their ancestors. This section includes the topic of Qithyil — the belongings found there, and the ancestral lifestyle they indicate. It also, however, goes forward, covering the recent history of the Sq’éwlets and Stó:lō in the face of European settlement and actions against First Nations, continuing further to cover topics of current Sq’éwlets life and values, and their concerns for the future.
The website features numerous terms in Halq’eméylem, from site section headings to individual places to the Traditional Knowledge Labels that communicate site rules and terms-of-use — and all these terms are listed in an expansive glossary, with pronunciation, roots, and detailed definitions.
In an article entitled “Sharing deep history as digital knowledge” in the Journal of Social Archaeology, the site creators explain the motivations behind featuring the language:
“We chose to feature the Halq’eméylem language prominently… in order to create a comfortable and familiar entry into the website for Sq’éwlets and Stó:lō users and to invite outside users to learn more about the Sq’éwlets community, its stories, and its worldview.”
The website itself says that it uses Halq’eméylem to teach both their own young people and other visitors about their culture. For other visitors particularly, resources are included to bridge the linguistic and cultural gap — including the aforementioned glossary.
Another prominent use of the language, in the way the journal article and website give, is the TK Label system.
TK stands for Traditional Knowledge, which the Sq’éwlets and Stó:lō use to refer to the teachings, passed down from generation to generation, about the right way of living and of respecting the world.
The six labels were chosen by Sq’éwlets members, and aim to communicate to people outside the community the pieces of Traditional Knowledge relevant to the content with which they are tagged, and so how that content can be used respectfully towards the Sq’éwlets and Stó:lō.
Each label has an associated Halq’eméylem term, with an explanation in English. The labels themselves, then, again represent a way of thinking about the website rooted in the same Sq’éwlets and Stó:lō culture that it shares, through their language.
This website about the Sq’éwlets people was created by the Sq’éwlets people. Compared to past methods of cultural and language documentation, this sort of work is a more recent development — but community-driven documentation is gaining considerable traction, for the results it produces.
Projects like the Sq’éwlets website share information about the people and languages they consider, but they do so as that people and that language’s speakers see fit. With them at the helm, such projects not only provide a complete perspective on the culture, rooted within that very culture, but they also allow for those communities to reap the benefits they see necessary. For one, the Sq’éwlets use the website as a place to teach not only outside visitors, but their own young people, about their culture, helping to pass down the knowledge to the next generation.
It is through efforts like this website, by and about the Sq’éwlets tribe of the Stó:lō, that the field of documentation is being revolutionized. When a community is its own documenter, no crucial detail will be overlooked — either in the information provided, or in how it is presented to the world.
According to the website’s TK Label for skwix qas te téméxw (Attribution), it is necessary to make clear that the information here is paraphrased from the website, and so belongs to the Sq’éwlets people, a tribe of Stó:lō.
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