The true Native American history of Henry Island | Guest Column

From a Native perspective, the ceremony on Henry Island was not an expression of our islands’ Native cultures, but an appropriation as inconsiderate as the French and British explorers that planted flags and crosses on the East Coast claiming ownership without asking the existing owners.

By Russel Barsh

Special to the Journal

Ever since Seattle struck gold by serving as the jumping-off point for the 19th century “excitement” in Alaska and the Yukon, and welcomed back thousands of young men with their Alaskan wives and souvenirs, the Northwest Coast “totem pole” has been our regional emblem of native cultures.

Unfortunately, the “totem pole” is not a part of the Coast Salish speaking cultures actually indigenous to these islands and the rest of the Salish Sea. In fact, it is associated with Northwest Pacific peoples that raided and burned Coast Salish villages in the islands each summer and took Coast Salish people as slaves for centuries, right up to the time of European settlement. Totem poles are the coats-of-arms of hereditary chiefs up north.

In Coast Salish civilization, leadership roles were earned rather than inherited, and villages erected naturalistic human statures as “welcome posts” to be invitations to sea travelers—not unlike the Statue of Liberty in spirit and intent.

Coast Salish people here in the San Juan Islands called the peoples of the totem poles xwitilem: “pirates.”

Before Henry Island was settled by Euro-Americans, its inhabitants spoke the Saanich (Senchathun) dialect of Lknugenung, the Straits Salish language of the islands. They did not speak Kwakwaka’wakw, which is not a Salish language and belongs to villages over 100 miles farther north on the edge of the Coast Salish world. In Saanich, the name of Henry Island is Nungnengut, and Saanich speaking people on Vancouver Island still regard it as a part of their traditional territory and fishing area.

Amongst Indian Tribes and First Nations, there is a diplomatic protocol that you do not do anything in another people’s territory without asking them: meetings of Native peoples always begin with a welcoming by representatives of the “traditional owners” of the territory, which in the case of Henry Island would be the Saanich.

From a Native perspective, the ceremony on Henry Island was not an expression of our islands’ Native cultures, but an appropriation as inconsiderate as the French and British explorers that planted flags and crosses on the East Coast claiming ownership without asking the existing owners.

Indeed, it is a bit like flying the Confederate flag today in the South, reminding people not of their freedom and culture today, but of their oppressor 150 years ago.

The Kwakwaka’wakw today are justly proud of their cultural survival and key role on Canadian First Nations politics. They are diplomats, artists and teachers highly regarded by their Native neighbors. But that is not reason to pretend that they were the indigenous peoples of Henry Island, and to turn our backs, here in San Juan County, on the Saanich people who are our real predecessors, and should be a key part of our efforts to understand our islands’ cultural and ecological past.

Barsh taught Native Studies at the University of Washington, Dartmouth, and University of Lethbridge (Alberta), and served many B.C. and Washington First Nations as an adviser on environmental issues and as a technical adviser for Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, was the senior manager of Canada’s Treaty Commissioner for the Prairies, and an adviser to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs under Senator Daniel Inouye. He has published over a hundred articles on Native history and ecology.