Laich-kwil-tach Erotic

The Laich-kwil-tach are the southern edge of the Kwakwaka'wakw world. They are the Kwak'wala-speaking nations whose home waters lie around Campbell River, Quadra Island and the mainland inlets across Discovery Passage in British Columbia. In Kwak'wala the name is Ligwiłda'x̱w, and older records call them Lekwiltok or Yuculta. The Yuculta Rapids still carry that name on the chart. What sets them apart from their northern relatives is location. The channels of the Discovery Islands form a tight, tide-ripped gateway between the Strait of Georgia and Johnstone Strait. Canoes moving up or down the inside coast had to pass through water the Laich-kwil-tach watched, and for much of the nineteenth century they used that advantage.

Kwak'wala is a Wakashan language. That links them to the other Kwakwaka'wakw to the north and, more distantly, to the Nuu-chah-nulth on Vancouver Island's west coast. Locals often call their southern variety Liq'wala. Their southern neighbors spoke Salishan languages, which are not related at all. That border moved. In the first half of the 1800s, armed with muskets from the fur trade, Laich-kwil-tach groups pushed south into Coast Salish country. They took over Cape Mudge and the mouth of the Campbell River and raided deep into the Strait of Georgia. Salish communities eventually banded together and struck back, most famously at Maple Bay. Epidemics and colonial rule later ended the raiding for good.

Social life runs through the potlatch. Names, dances, crests and seats are inherited rights, and they only count once they are shown to invited guests, who receive gifts for acting as witnesses. Canada banned the potlatch from 1884 to 1951. After a large 1921 potlatch at Village Island, officials took masks and regalia from Kwakwaka'wakw families. Much of it was later returned, and the Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre at Cape Mudge opened in 1979 to hold part of that collection. Missionaries brought Christianity in the late nineteenth century, and the two traditions now sit side by side: plenty of families go to church and still hold feasts where names pass to the next generation.

Today the Laich-kwil-tach are organized mainly as the We Wai Kai, Wei Wai Kum and Kwiakah First Nations, which have worked together under the shared name. Wei Wai Kum reserve land sits inside the city of Campbell River, and the We Wai Kai village at Cape Mudge faces it across the passage from Quadra Island. Fishing supported many families through the twentieth century, and salmon is still central to how people here think about their coast. Language classes, carving and canoe journeys keep the older culture part of daily life, not locked away in the past.