Sxwōxwiyám Places

S’ólh Téméxw is our world, as Stó:lō people. Our world is unique. It is built from our ancient and close connection with the land, the rivers, and our relatives. It is full of thousands of years of our history. Like a library, the land contains information. Libraries contain books with titles telling us what information they hold. The land contains important places, which are named, reflecting connections between our land and people.

We are an oral society. Since time immemorial, we shared knowledge without writing—by teaching, telling stories, listening and watching how things were done. One way of sharing information was to attach it to the land. By naming places, our history and knowledge is stored in the land for us to remember. S’ólh Téméxw is alive with our knowledge! The Halq’eméylem word ‘xel’ means ‘to inscribe, or to write,’ as in to write on the land. The name for our Transformer, Xexá:ls, is close to this word. Xexá:ls are the four black bears, three brothers and a sister, children of Red-headed Woodpecker and his wife Black Bear. They travelled the land at a time when there was no veil between the spirit and physical worlds, when people shifted forms like the sturgeon ancestor of our Sq’éwlets people. Their actions showed us how to live and behave as good Stó:lō people.

Through these transformations of people into stone, Xexá:ls “wrote” down a very old history. Our important places contain knowledge about our events, environment, resources, travel and other things. It is important that we see these places, as our ancestors at Qithyil saw many such sxwōxwiyám places in the Central Fraser Valley. The view from our Band Office, near where most of our community now lives, has a more limited view. In common with our ancestors we still see Lhílheqey, the mother mountain, and her daughters as a connection to the Central Fraser Valley and sxwōxwiyám shared by many of our Stó:lō relatives.

Our sxwōxwiyám is carried in the names of our places. The maps presented here show our world, S’ólh Téméxw, from above. The maps show sxwōxwiyám places in red that we can see from two places. The first map shows a set of places visible from where the Harrison and Fraser Rivers meet near Qithyil, our ancient village. The second map shows a set of places visible from our Band Office. What we see from our homes now situated around our Band Office has changed since we were set on this Reserve. It is important that our young people understand how our daily lives have been changed by the Indian Reserve system. It is important that our youth remain connected to the places that for thousands of years our ancestors saw from their homes as part of their daily lives at Qithyil. These views of place names from both our Band Office and Qithyil show our ancestral and current connections to our viewscape.

The names of these places can be heard by clicking on them.