Kwikwetlem First Nation
The Kwikwetlem or Kwikwetlem First Nation (also Kwayhquitlum, Coquitlam, etc.) are one of the First Nations in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. They live at the mouth of the Fraser River in Coquitlam and Port Coquitlam. To the family who lives in the U.S. and Canada, listed in August 2009, exactly 63 people on Canadian territory.
They belong to the coastal Salish and spoke Hun'qum'i'num, a dialect of Downriver - Halkomelem. Their neighbors were the Tsleil - Waututh in the north and in the south of Tsawwassen. The name means "red fish in the upper river ."
According to them the place Coquitlam is named.
History
1978-1981 undermined the archaeologist Valerie Patenaude from a summer village at the Mary Hill By-pass, which was probably 6000 years continuously in use. 50,000 artifacts were secured. You are now in the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria.
European
The Kwikwetlem designated Europeans as Xwelitems or " Hungry people." Simon Fraser toured in 1808 named after him Fraser River. He described a nave of Kwikwetlem, which was 640 feet long and 60 wide. The front was 18 feet high and the posts had a diameter of 3 feet. One of the post served as a transit. Above it hung a life-size figure that represented an animal or a bird.
1846, Great Britain and the United States agreed on the 49th parallel as the boundary, 1859 JW Trutch visited the area. Opened in 1860, the Catholic St. Charles Mission in New Westminster, which made contact in the same year to the trunk. In May 1861, the strain was designated as " Coquitlam Tribe ". He was one of the first tribes a reservation by Governor Douglas. The 1871 Indian Reserve 2 was assigned because of a burial ground located there.
A few years later Coquitlam was founded, which bears the name of the chief Kwikwetlem William. From 1878, were not allowed to catch fish for commercial purposes Indians. With the Indian Act of 1884, important institutions such as the potlatch, forbidden, 1889, a system of fishing licenses was established, which commercial fishing was terminated. It was not until 1923 such licenses could be bought.
Although Canada under tied to land claims since 1927, court decisions, 1931, the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia this task secretly true. Twenty years later, the potlatch ban was lifted. Chief Kwikwetlem William, who died on April 23, 1953, was allegedly 110 years old. At his funeral appeared 700 to 800 mourners. His successor was William Tommy. In 1992, the British Columbia Treaty Commission was established.
Current Situation
The larger reserve and the residential area of the trunk is Coquitlam 2, comprising 81.9 ha. It lies on the left bank of the Coquitlam River, 3 km upstream of its confluence with the Fraser River. Coquitlam 1 comprises only 2.6 ha and is located less than 7 km east of New Westminster, on the right bank of the Coquitlam River. In the reserve lived in August 2008, 31 people, the other members of the tribe consisting of 63 people lived outside the reserve.