First Nations of BC



Game: How many names can you name that have a First Nations origin.

First Nations of BC

Although much is uncertain, the first people to came to BC arrived around 14, 000 years ago (12 000 BCE). That is very, very rough, but people were arriving from Siberia around that time, and before that all of BC was covered in ice and no one could have lived here.

This is quite impressive when you think that the roots of our civilization started with the Greeks 1100 BCE. And the oldest cities in the world are maybe 9000 BCE in India, Iraq and Egypt.

See:

First Nations oral histories do not mention the arrival from siberia that I know of. They usually people appearing or being created here in North America.

First Nations are so called because they are many different societies not one group. This is true; they varied enormously in culture and language, but they had some things in common.

Through most of North America, especially the North and West, First Nations were Hunter-Gatherers meaning they did not grow crops or herd animals, but fished, hunted and collected wild plants for food.

Until Europeans began trading with them, their technology was based on natural materials and tools made of wood, bone or stone.

While studying First Nations we must be careful about ethnocentrism that is: the belief that one’s culture is superior to all others. While it is certainly true that we have more advanced knowledge about many things and technology, we should not assume we are more advanced. If you look at other societies you will often find that you envy things about those societies that dislike about your own, and you can always learn from the wisdom of other societies.

For example, in many First Nations societies, men and women are equal, there was little poverty, health was excellent, mental conditions like depression were very uncommon and people had to work much less to get food and shelter. First Nations societies were not perfect either, but as you can see they had aspects that were in many ways more “advanced” than our society.

One other important issue to remember is that the First Nations cultures we are studying are not dead. First Nations culture was severely disrupted by the disease[1] brought by Europeans and by residential schools that tried to exterminate their culture. Also their lifestyle is now often just like ours rather than a traditional Hunter-Gatherer lifestyle. However, some still do, especially in remote places. They use rifles and snowmobiles instead of horses and bows and arrows, but not that much else has changed.

Different First Nations Groups in BC

The First Nations of BC can be divided into three major culture groups and 6 language groups.

|Culture Groups: | |Language Groups |Bands, Tribal Councils, People, Groups |

| | |: | |

|Coastal | |Na Dene: |Tlingit, Tagish, Kaska, Denne Zaa, Dene|

| | | |Thah, Sekani, Dakelth, Wet'suwet'en, |

| | | |Tsilhqot'in |

|Plateau | |Penutian: |Gitxsan, Nisga'a, Tsimshian |

| | |Haida: | Haida |

|Sub-Arctic | |Wakashan: |Nuu Chah Nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, |

| | | |Heiltsuk, Haisla, Nitinaht |

| | |Salishan |Nuxalk, Coast Salish, |

| | | |Stl’atl’em,Okanagan, Nlaka’pamux, |

| | | |Secwepemc |

| | |Kutenai |Ktunaxa |

These language groups are extremely broad! particularly the language groups. Languages in the same group might have less in common than English, Polish, Arabic and Hindi.

Coastal People got a majority of food from the ocean and moved a few times per year.

Plateau People fed mostly from the salmon run and lived together in Winter Villages.

Sub-Arctic and Kutenai People hunted game like Bison and Cariboo and moved frequently.

As you can see they had completely different homes.

Questions:

List the culture groups on from your map.

Coastal:

Plateau:

Sub-Arctic:

A lot of First Nations are still facing a lot of ignorance and racism. Here’s a very short rant on their frustrations:



EXTENSION: You can colour this map in a paint program or by printing it. First show which people were Coastal, which were Plateau and which were Sub-Arctic. You can leave Ktunaxa uncoloured because they were not closely related. If you can also mark each language family with a symbol, do that.

-----------------------

[1] The European colonists, whose Eurasian lifestyle included sharing close quarters with animal reservoirs of disease (cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses and various domesticated fowl), introduced novel germs to the agriculturally-advanced indigenous peoples of the Americas. Smallpox (1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) epidemics swept ahead of initial European contact killing between 10 million and 112 million indigenous peoples of the Americas in the largest mass death of humans ever. These unprecidented epidemics, which killed between 95% and 98% of the indigenous population, subsequently facilitated the conquest of these native civilizations. [1]

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download