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Sḵwx̱wú7mesh  , or Squamish people, are an indigenous people of southwestern British Columbia, a part of the Salishan-speaking people. Their language is the Coast Salish Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language. Their communities are located around present day cities and towns of Vancouver, British Columbia, North Vancouver, British Columbia, and Squamish, British Columbia.

Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language is distinct from neighboring Coast Salish languages, but also considered an endangered language. Sḵwx̱wú7mesh culture had been transmitted through generations with oral tradition as no writing-system existed before European contact. In contemporary times, members of their community continue to contribute to their history as a people. Their culture undergone significant change from recent and modern impacts like smallpox, disease, Canadian government policies, Church operated Residential Schools, and Western culture dominance in their homelands. Despite their communities promote and encourage the use of their traditional culture.

Name
Their name has been transliterated into multiple variations, most notably Squamish. The name used more recently has been Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. This form uses their orthography that is based of the Latin alphabet and a single Arabic numeral. The Arabic numeral in this case represents a glottal stop found in many languages, but not signified in English. Other variations have included Skokmish, Skohomish, Skwomesh, Skwamish.

Archaeological origins
Archaeological surveys at village sites in and around Vancouvers Stanley Park date midden and village-sites dating to at least 3,000 years ago.

Oral history
For generations within Sḵwx̱wú7mesh culture, the history was transmitted through an oral tradition. It is important to understand much of their cultural history remains, and continues to be passed on through traditional ways in contemporary times. A knowledge-base included societal aspects of their culture like kinship ties, family tree lineage, conduction of ceremony, and ethnobotany. Things such as hunting, fishing, and food gathering practices are taught from one succeeding generation to the next. Knowledge such as house-construction, canoe-building, tool-making, and fine-arts like wood carving, cedar bark and Mountain Goat wool weaving was passed on in similar fashions.

Historical events stemming to reported supernatural times to feats of past ancestors have been told through legend and story. This includes a historical understanding of their traditional territory and specific places of cultural and historical significance. Ceremony and their traditional way of life blended many aspects of their history with customs and practices, as remembering ones history has been an important aspect of their culture." Continuing to pass on this history has been regarded as  "responsible duty of responsible elders." Those who possessed the knowledge of their cultural history are regarded with respect and high regard.

Foriegn impact
During the 1770s, smallpox (variola major) eradicated at least 30 percent of the indigenous population on the Northwest coast of North America, including many Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. This disease was one of the most deadly that hit the region over the next 80 to 100 years. During the 80-year period from the 1770s to 1850, smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases killed many villages and communities. Surviving oral histories describe the 1770s epidemic. An "aged informant" of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, in the 1890s, related the history of a catastrophic illness to ethnographer Charles Hill-Tout. He wrote: "“[A] dreadful misfortune befell them. … One salmon season the fish were found to be covered with running sores and blotches, which rendered them unfit for food. As the people depended very largely upon these salmon for their winter’s food supply, they were obliged to catch and cure them as best they could, and store them away for food. They put off eating them till no other food was available, and then began a terrible time of sickness and distress. A dreadful skin disease, loathsome to look upon, broke out upon all alike. None were spared. Men, women, and children sickened, took the disease and died in agony by hundreds, so that when the spring arrived and fresh food was procurable, there was scarcely a person left of all their numbers to get it. Camp after camp, village after village, was left desolate. The remains of which, said the old man, in answer by my queries on this, are found today in the old camp sites or midden-heaps over which the forest has been growing for so many generations. Little by little the remnant left by the disease grew into a nation again, and when the first white men sailed up the Squamish in their big boats, the tribe was strong and numerous again”" The epidemic of the 1770s was the first and the most devastating, with more to follow. During the next few decades, other damaging outbreaks would attack this area:  a smallpox epidemic in 1800-1801, influenza in 1836-1837, measles in 1847-1848, and smallpox again in 1862.

European Contact
The Sḵwxwú7mesh were the first indigenous people on the mainland in British Columbia known to have met Europeans, who first came to the head of Howe Sound in 1792 near St'a7mes, the village near the town of Squamish. Along the Burrard Inlet, where numerous villages existed, Spanish Captain Jose Maria Narvaez was the first European to explore this area in 1791. In the following year, 1792, the British naval Captain George Vancouver (1757–1798) met the Spanish expedition in Burrard Inlet.

Fur trade
In the early 1800s, the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Langley was the first major trading post. During this time, much trade went on between the people and Fort Langley. In 1858–59 the Fraser Gold Rush brought in more foreign settlers to their territory, but most major settlement did not begin until after the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, bringing more foreigners from eastern Canada.

Indian Act, Reserves, and Residential School
In 1876 the Indian Act was passed by the Canadian government, and in the Joint Indian Reserve Commission, plots of land or Indian reserves were cordoned and designated the indigenous population to specific areas, managed and controlled by Indian Agents from the Department of Northern and Indian Affairs. At the time, numerous reserves were plotted out from already-existing village sites, and then assigned or ratified chiefs over these reserves.

Between the original plotting in 1876 and 1901, reserve lands were sold off from the respective families and chiefs, both illegally and legally. One instance was the case of Kitsilano Indian Reserve, the location of which was Senakw. Portions of the reserve were expropriated, both in 1886, and again in 1902. Numerous families were forced into leaving their homes, and promised pay for the "sale". The families who lived in the village were placed on a barge and sent out to sea, with the intent for them to move up to the Squamish River area.

In 1906, a delegation of chiefs from British Columbia, traveled to London to seek an audience with King Edward VII regarding the land confiscated by the government of Canada with the reserve system. Joe Capilano traveled with Cowichan Chief Charley Isipaymilt and Secwepemc Chief Basil David, but their requests to see the King were eventually denied. During this time, Joe Capilano met noted Mohawk poet and writer Pauline Johnson, that begin a propserous relationship and introducing Johnson to Squamish culture and territory.

Modern period
In recent and contemporary times, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people continue to add to their history. Since contact and the following cultural upheaval that followed, many of their communities have assimilated and adapted to certain degree's. This has blended their culture and history that continues to practice much of their traditional culture in modern ways, while still holding much of their historical identity intact.

Many members of their present communities have become successful members of the larger society.

Geography
Their traditional territory extends over 673,540 hectares. On the southern part, it includes the Indian Arm, along Burrard Inlet, through False Creek then English Bay and Point Grey serving as the border southward. From here, it moved northward to Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, up the Howe Sound. Then, the northern part included the Squamish, Cheakamus, Bowen Island, Elaho and Mamquam Rivers. Up the Cheakamus River it included land past Whistler, British Columbia.

The vegetation of their homeland is a dense temperate rain forest, formed up of conifers with a spread of maple and alder, as well as large areas of swampland. The trees are typical coast British Columbia mix of Douglas-fir, Western red cedar and Western Hemlock;. The largest trees of old growth forest were around the Burrard Inlet and around the slopes of Senakw and present day False Creek area. This abundance in natural resources fueled their affluent culture.

Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory also overlaps with the territories of neighboring indigenous peoples. Their land was situated on shared territory between Xwméthkwyiem, Tseil-waututh, Shishalh, and Lil'wat (main southern branch of the St'at'imc). In their language, the Tseil-waututh are Sel’it’wetulh, the Shishalh are the Shishá7lh, the Xwméthkwyiem are Xwmétskwiyam, and the Lil'wat are Lú x wels. Roberts Creek, on the Sunshine Coast, is considered the boarder with the Shishalh. They are culturally similar, but politically different from their kin, the Tseil-waututh. A large portion of Sḵw x wú7mesh territory is shared with the Lil'wat. Through family inter-marriage and the land rights that sometimes came with it, many places for resource gathering were shared.

Vancouver and adjacent municipalities are located within their territory, making the Sḵw x wú7mesh one of the few indigenous peoples in Canada to have communities near or in metropolitan area's. Of the 673,540 km, currently 0.4230% of this is reserve land allotted to the Squamish Nation. It is on these reserves that most of the current communities exist.

Communities
Most communities of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people are located near the cities and towns of Vancouver, British Columbia, North Vancouver, British Columbia, and Squamish, British Columbia. The communities range in size and number, but many are located on Indian reserves and inhabit historical village sites occupied for generations. Other villages and communities once inhabited were either left, abandoned, or forcibly removed. Some of these places included villages in and around the City of Vancouver near Kitslano, and Stanley Park, as well as in the Howe Sound area including Gibsons, British Columbia. In one village called X wáý x way, located in present day Stanley Park, a traditional longhouse had been documented in 1887 at being 60 meters long and near 20 meters wide, and 11 families were said to live in the house.

Prior to relocating, abandoning, and moving to present day communities, they once inhabited dozens of villages, season camps, and larger communities throughout their traditional homelands. Villages existed in Burrard Inlet, False Creek, English Bay, Howe Sound, and the Squamish River and Cheakamus River watershed. Traditional lifestyles precipitate a semi-nomadic culture where families and communities will move to different villages during the warmer months to best utilize resource gathering sites for food, medicine, and mineral deposits necessary for the colder winter months. Some villages would be populated all year around, where as some were summer-camp sites with more permanent residence at their winter homes.

Language
The people spoke Sḵwx̱wú7mesh snichim (snichim meaning "language"), a distinct language apart of Coast Salish linguistic group. Due to European colonization, displacement, relocation, Residential Schools, and dominance of the English language has lead to the near extinction of this language. Some reports have their language with 10 fluent speakers. It is important to note that the language is uniquely different the Halkomelem language and Sháshíshálh language which neighbor their territory. In the Squamish orthography, it has 41 Latin alphabet symbols and the Arabic symbol 7 used to represent the glottal stop. This orthographic system was adapted to help record and document Squamish language as it was a spoken language for generations.

Anthropologists and linguists who have worked on the Squamish language go back to the 1880s. The first collection of words was by the German anthropologist Franz Boas. The following decade, another anthropologist, Charles Hill-Tout, also collected some Squamish words, sentences, and stories. In the 1930s anthropologist Homer Barnett worked with Jimmy Frank. Barnett collected information about the traditional Squamish culture, including some Squamish words. In the 1950s the Dutch linguist Aert J. Kuipers worked on the first comprehensive grammar of the Squamish language. In 1968 the BC Language Project undertook more documentation of the Squamish language and culture. Randy Bouchard and Dorthy Kennedy were the main collaborators on this project. They devised the present writing system used for Squamish.

Family ties
The family ties in traditional society is maintained today and carries importance among many families. Families held a inter-connected network through genealogy, often tracing back to a common ancestor in their family history. Large extended families formed the basis for much of the social structure for the communities. Within traditional culture, first-cousins would be regarded as siblings. As well, parents first-cousins would be regarded as aunties and uncles as well. Even as such, great-grandparents, and their siblings, would be treated with equal place in the social structure of the family. This fabricated large, but closely connected, families. Most of these large families would often occupy a single dwelling called a longhouse. "During winter months Squamish people lived in large family owned long houses. These houses formed villages usually found along rivers and the ocean sides where terrestrial, river, inter-tidal and ocean resources could easily be obtained."

Eventually multiple longhouses each with their own extended family form much of the communities that once existed. Kinship ties to various villages encouraged the sharing of resources and strengthened each community. Often inter-marriage would occur with neighboring tribes, as with the case of Mary Capilano's great grandfather K iyapalanexw who had a Xwmétskwiyam father and a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh mother. Historically, marriage would occur through either arranged marriage, or the groom proposing to the father of the prospective wife. If the father endorses the marriage, he invites the groom into his house after a trial conducted on the young man. Polygamy was also practiced, but only the most wealthy individuals would practice this. Strong families ties between various villages and tribes precipitated alliances and strong bonds.

Weaving
Wool weaving has seen a significant revival in recent years. Traditional weaving was once conducted with wool gathered from Mountain Goat and a small wooly dog that once populated much of Coast Salish territory. Through the use of a loom, spindle whorl, and a few other tools, women of the community would weave blankets, mats, shawls, and clothing for colder, wintery months. In the past few years, Janice George of the Squamish people contributed to the revitalization of the weaving practices of her ancestors. In the ongoing revitalization, their community now holds over 150 weavers practicing the fine art.

Food and nutrition
Their geographical territory was abundant in rich food sources from land animals to sea life and plants and animals. For game, deer, bear, elk, duck, swan, and small rodents such as squirrel. With ocean food it was mussels, sea eggs, cockles, clams, seaweed, herring, trout, crab, urchin, sea lion, seal, all kinds of salmon. For berries and plants, it was different kinds of wild blueberry, blackberry, salmon berry, slalal berry, five different kinds of grass and the roots of different plants. Ooligan's were once in their river system and Ooligan grease was once made from it. Sea food, particularly salmon was their main staple. It was this abundance of sea food and salmon that their diet was considerably heavy on natural fats and oils. This left relatively small amounts of carbohydrates in the diet. To ensure that essentials vitamins are acquired, they eat almost all parts of animals which they harvest. Bones used for soup stock provide leached calcium, as do ground calcined shells. Vitamin A is obtained from liver. Vitamin C is primarily found in berries and some other plants, such as skunk cabbage leaves. Bone marrow provides valuable iron and vitamin D. Intestines and stomachs can be eaten to provide vitamin E and the vitamin B complexes. Within the decade following the establishment of Fort Langley in 1827 the the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh had begun extensive farming of potatoes. Recent shifts away from a traditional diet, relatively low in carbs and sugar has led to many health problems in the present day Sḵw x wú7mesh community. Diabetes and cholesterol run high compared to North American averages.

Notable Sḵw x wú7mesh

 * August Jack Khatsahlano
 * Joe Capilano
 * Harriet Nahanee
 * Andy Paull