Opening event for ŚTEṈIST ȻENTOL EȻSIÁ TĆÁNȻE / Walking Forward with the Past project, August 27th 2022
On Saturday August 27th, eighty people gathered at the Agricultural Hall in Miners Bay for a screening of three new W̱SÁNEĆ films about the Southern Gulf Islands, known in SENĆOŦEN as ṮEṮÁĆES meaning “relatives of the deep.’ One film was titled ‘SḴŦAḴ,’ the W̱SÁNEĆ name for our island.
Tsartlip / W̱JOȽEȽP Elder J’SINTEN / Dr John Elliott opened the day with a song, accompanied by many W̱SÁNEĆ family members. This lineage has strong and direct ties to our Island, their homeland. The family name is JESESINSET meaning “the people that are growing themselves up.” We learned that their ancestor ȻELOWENŦET won the island in a hand-to-hand combat with a Cowichan warrior, and that it was J’SINTEN’s great grandmother SEXSOXELWET / Cecilia Elliott-Cooper, who met with the government agent in 1877 to affirm that SḴŦAḴ was her family patrimony. We learned that Helen Point is their family reef net fishing site, called ŚKELAMEKS, and Miners Bay is their ÁLELEN / village site. The colonial government reduced the JESESINSET / Elliott family land to only the Reserve land. Despite this history of dispossession, J’SINTEN’s family is warm and welcoming and at this event, islanders and WSANEC talked about ‘walking forward together.’
That same day, a reconciliation project - ŚTEṈIST ȻENTOL EȻSIÁ TĆÁNȻE / Walking Forward with the Past - was launched at the wetland site of the future ethnobotanical garden, located on the museum and thrift shop grounds. On Sunday, J’SINTEN told us that a song had come to him about working together to grow the garden, and he asked us to sing it with him. It was a powerful way to launch this project.
MLA Adam Olsen sent his congratulations and best wishes, saying “I am impressed with the vision and work of the Mayne Island community to build a stronger relationship with W̱SÁNEĆ people that recognizes the rich heritage and traditions of the first people of this territory. I am a descendent of the W̱SÁNEĆ families that called Mayne – known as SḴŦAḴ in our SENĆOŦEN language – and the other Gulf Islands home and I look forward to seeing this project emerge.”
