The Kwakwañkañüwakw (), also known as the Kwakiutl (; "Kwaküwala-speaking peoples"), are an indigenous group of the Pacific Northwest Coast, in southwestern Canada. Their total population, according to a 2016 census, was 3,665 people. Most live in their traditional territories on northern Vancouver Island, as well as nearby smaller islands (such as the Discovery Islands) and inland on the adjacent British Columbia mainland. Some also live outside their traditional homelands, in urban areas such as Victoria and Vancouver. They are politically organized into 13 band governments.
The Kwakwaka'wakw language, now spoken by only 3.1% of the population, consists of four dialects of what is commonly referred to as Kwaküwala, known as KwakÃÂwala, 'NakÃÂwala, GñucÃÂala and TÃÂà ÂatÃÂà ÂasikÃÂwala.
The name Kwakiutl derives from Kwaguüà ÂâÂÂthe name of a single community of Kwakwañkañüwakw located at Fort Rupert. The anthropologist Franz Boas had done most of his anthropological work in this area and popularized the term for both this nation and the collective as a whole. The term became misapplied to mean all the nations who spoke Kwaküwala, as well as three other Indigenous peoples whose language is a part of the Wakashan linguistic group, but whose language is not Kwaküwala. These peoples, incorrectly known as the Northern Kwakiutl, were the Haisla, Wuikinuxv, and Heiltsuk.
Many people whom others call Kwakiutl consider that name a misnomer. They prefer the name Kwakwañkañüwakw, which means "Kwaküwala-speaking-peoples". One exception is the Laich-kwil-tach at Campbell River: they are known as the Southern Kwakiutl, and their council is the Kwakiutl District Council.
Kwakwañkañüwakw oral history says their ancestors (ünaümima) came in the forms of animals via the land, sea and from underground. When one of these ancestral creatures arrived at a given spot, it shed its animal appearance and became human. Animals that figure in these origin myths include the Thunderbird and his brother, Kolas, the seagull, orca, grizzly bear, or chief ghost. Some ancestors have human origins and are said to come from distant places.
Historically, the Kwakwañkañüwakw economy was based primarily on fishing, with the men also engaging in some hunting, and the women gathering wild fruits and berries. Ornate weaving and woodwork were important crafts, and wealth, defined by slaves and material goods, was prominently displayed and traded at potlatch ceremonies. These customs were the subject of extensive study by the anthropologist Franz Boas. In contrast to most non-native societies, wealth and status were not determined by how much you had, but by how much you had to give away. This act of giving away your wealth was one of the main acts in a potlatch.
The first documented contact with Europeans was with Captain George Vancouver in 1792. Disease, which developed as a result of direct contact with European settlers along the West Coast of Canada, drastically reduced the Indigenous Kwakwañkañüwakw population during the late 19th-early 20th century. Kwakwañkañüwakw population dropped by 75% between 1830 and 1880. The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic alone killed over half of the people.
Kwakwañkañüwakw dancers from Vancouver Island performed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
An account of experiences of two founders of early residential schools for Aboriginal children was published in 2006 by the University of British Columbia Press. Good Intentions Gone Awry â Emma Crosby and the Methodist Mission On the Northwest Coast by Jan Hare and Jean Barman contains the letters and account of the life of the wife of Thomas Crosby, the first missionary in Lax Kwüalaams (Port Simpson). This covers the period from 1870 to the turn of the 20th century.
A second book was published in 2005 by the University of Calgary Press, The Letters of Margaret Butcher â Missionary Imperialism on the North Pacific Coast, edited by Mary-Ellen Kelm. It picks up the story from 1916 to 1919 in Kitamaat Village and details of Butcher's experiences among the Haisla people.
A review article entitled Mothers of a Native Hell, about these two books, was published in the British Columbia online news magazine The Tyee in 2007.
Restoring their ties to their land, culture and rights, the Kwakwañkañüwakw have undertaken much in bringing back their customs, beliefs and language. Potlatches occur more frequently as families reconnect to their birthright, and the community uses language programs, classes and social events to restore the language. Artists in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Mungo Martin, Ellen Neel and Willie Seaweed, have taken efforts to revive Kwakwakaüwakw art and culture.
Each Kwakwañkañüwakw nation has its own clans, chiefs, history, culture and peoples, but remain collectively similar to the rest of the KwakÃÂwala-Speaking nations.
Kwakwañkañüwakw kinship is based on a bilinear structure, with loose characteristics of a patrilineal culture. It has large extended families and interconnected community life. The Kwakwañkañüwakw are made up of numerous communities or bands. Within those communities they are organized into extended family units or naümima, which means 'of one kind'. Each naümima had positions that carried particular responsibilities and privileges. Each community had around four naümima, although some had more, some had less.
Kwakwañkañüwakw follow their genealogy back to their ancestral roots. A head chief who, through primogeniture, could trace his origins to that naümimas ancestors delineated the roles throughout the rest of his family. Every clan had several sub-chiefs, who gained their titles and position through their own family's primogeniture. These chiefs organized their people to harvest the communal lands that belonged to their family.
Kwakwañkañüwakw society was organized into four classes: the nobility, attained through birthright and connection in lineage to ancestors, the aristocracy who attained status through connection to wealth, resources or spiritual powers displayed or distributed in the potlatch, commoners, and slaves. On the nobility class, "the noble was recognized as the literal conduit between the social and spiritual domains, birthright alone was not enough to secure rank: only individuals displaying the correct moral behavior [sic] throughout their life course could maintain ranking status."
As in other Northwest Coast peoples, the concept of property was well developed and important to daily life. Territorial property such as hunting or fishing grounds was inherited, and from these properties material wealth was collected and stored.
A trade and barter subsistence economy formed the early stages of the Kwakwañkañüwakw economy. Trade was carried out between internal Kwakwakaüwakw nations, as well as surrounding Indigenous nations such as the Tsimshian, Tlingit, the Nuu-chah-nulth and Coast Salish peoples.
Over time, the potlatch tradition created a demand for stored surpluses, as such a display of wealth had social implications. By the time of European colonialism, it was noted that wool blankets had become a form of common currency. In the potlatch tradition, hosts of the potlatch were expected to provide enough gifts for all the guests invited. This practice created a system of loan and interest, using wool blankets as currency.
As with other Pacific Northwest nations, the Kwakwañkañüwakw highly valued copper in their economy and used it for ornament and precious goods. Scholars have proposed that prior to trade with Europeans, the people acquired copper from natural copper veins along riverbeds, but this has not been proven. Contact with European settlers, particularly through the Hudson's Bay Company, brought an influx of copper to their territories. The Kwakwañkañüwakw nations also were aware of silver and gold, and crafted intricate bracelets and jewellery from hammered coins traded from European settlers. Copper was given a special value amongst the Kwakwañkañüwakw, most likely for its ceremonial purposes. This copper was beaten into sheets or plates, and then painted with mythological figures. The sheets were used for decorating wooden carvings or kept for the sake of prestige.
Individual pieces of copper were sometimes given names based on their value. The value of any given piece was defined by the number of wool blankets last traded for them. In this system, it was considered prestigious for a buyer to purchase the same piece of copper at a higher price than it was previously sold, in their version of an art market. During potlatch, copper pieces would be brought out, and bids were placed on them by rival chiefs. The highest bidder would have the honour of buying said copper piece. If a host still held a surplus of copper after throwing an expensive potlatch, he was considered a wealthy and important man. Highly ranked members of the communities often have the Kwaküwala word for "copper" as part of their names.
Copper's importance as an indicator of status also led to its use in a Kwakwañkañüwakw shaming ritual. The copper cutting ceremony involved breaking copper plaques. The act represents a challenge; if the target cannot break a plaque of equal or greater value, he or she is shamed. The ceremony, which had not been performed since the 1950s, was revived by chief Beau Dick in 2013, as part of the Idle No More movement. He performed a copper cutting ritual on the lawn of the British Columbia Legislature on February 10, 2013, to ritually shame the Stephen Harper government.
The Kwakwañkañüwakw are a highly stratified bilineal culture of the Pacific Northwest. They are many separate nations, each with its own history, culture and governance. The Nations commonly each had a head chief, who acted as the leader of the nation, with numerous hereditary clan or family chiefs below him. In some of the nations, there also existed Eagle Chiefs, but this was a separate society within the main society and applied to the potlatching only.
The Kwakwañkañüwakw are one of the few bilineal cultures. Traditionally the rights of the family would be passed down through the paternal side, but in rare occasions, the rights could pass on the maternal side of their family also. Within the pre-colonization times, the Kwakwañkañüwakw were organized into three classes: nobles, commoners, and slaves. The Kwakwañkañüwakw shared many cultural and political alliances with numerous neighbours in the area, including the Nuu-chah-nulth, Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv and some Coast Salish.
The Kwaküwala language is a part of the Wakashan language group. Word lists and some documentation of Kwaküwala were created from the early period of contact with Europeans in the 18th century, but a systematic attempt to record the language did not occur before the work of Franz Boas in the late 19th and early 20th century. The use of Kwaküwala declined significantly in the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly due to the assimilationist policies of the Canadian government. Kwakwañkañüwakw children were forced to attend residential schools, which enforced English use and discouraged other languages. Although Kwaküwala and Kwakwañkañüwakw culture have been well-studied by linguists and anthropologists, these efforts did not reverse the trends leading to language loss. According to Guy Buchholtzer, "The anthropological discourse had too often become a long monologue, in which the Kwakwañkañüwakw had nothing to say."
As a result of these pressures, there are relatively few Kwaküwala speakers today. Most remaining speakers are past the age of child-rearing, which is considered a crucial stage for language transmission. As with many other Indigenous languages, there are significant barriers to language revitalization. Another barrier separating new learners from the native speaker is the presence of four separate orthographies; the young are taught Uümista or NAPA, while the older generations generally use Boaz, developed by the American anthropologist Franz Boas.
A number of revitalization efforts are underway. A 2005 proposal to build a Kwakwakaüwakw First Nations Centre for Language Culture has gained wide support. A review of revitalization efforts in the 1990s showed that the potential to fully revitalize Kwaküwala still remained, but serious hurdles also existed.
In the old times, the Kwakwañkañüwakw believed that art symbolized a common underlying element shared by all species.
Kwakwakaüwakw arts consist of a diverse range of crafts, including totems, masks, textiles, jewellery and carved objects, ranging in size from transformation masks to tall totem poles. Cedar wood was the preferred medium for sculpting and carving projects as it was readily available in the native Kwakwañkañüwakw regions. Totems were carved with bold cuts, a relative degree of realism, and an emphatic use of paints. Masks make up a large portion of Kwakwañkañüwakw art, as masks are important in the portrayal of the characters central to Kwakwañkañüwakw dance ceremonies. Woven textiles included the Chilkat blanket, dance aprons and button cloaks, each patterned with Kwakwañkañüwakw designs. The Kwakwañkañüwakw used a variety of objects for jewellery, including ivory, bone, abalone shell, copper, silver and more. Adornments were frequently found on the clothes of important persons.
Kwakwakaüwakw music is the ancient art of the Kwakwañkañüwakw peoples. The music is an ancient art form, stretching back thousands of years. The music is used primarily for ceremony and ritual, and is based on percussive instrumentation, especially log, box, and hide drums, as well as rattles and whistles. The four-day Klasila festival is an important cultural display of song and dance and masks; it occurs just before the advent of the tsetseka, or winter.
The potlatch culture of the Northwest is well known and widely studied. It is still practised among the Kwakwañkañüwakw, as is the lavish artwork for which they and their neighbours are renowned for. The phenomenon of the potlatch, and the vibrant societies and cultures associated with it, can be found in Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch, which details the artwork and legendary material that go with the other aspects of the potlatch, and gives a glimpse into the high politics and great wealth and power of the Kwakwañkañüwakw chiefs.
When the Canadian government was focused on assimilation of First Nations, it made the potlatch a target of activities to be suppressed. Missionary William Duncan wrote in 1875 that the potlatch was "by far the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming Christians, or even civilized".
In 1885, the Indian Act was revised to include clauses banning the potlatch and making it illegal to practise. The official legislation read,
Oüwaxñañlagañlis, Chief of the KwaguÃ¼à  "Fort Rupert Tribes", said to anthropologist Franz Boas on October 7, 1886, when he arrived to study their culture:
Eventually the Act was amended, expanded to prohibit guests from participating in the potlatch ceremony. The Kwakwañkañüwakw were too numerous to police, and the government could not enforce the law. Duncan Campbell Scott convinced Parliament to change the offence from criminal to summary, which meant "the agents, as justice of the peace, could try a case, convict, and sentence".
Sustaining the customs and culture of their ancestors, in the 21st century the Kwakwañkañüwakw openly hold potlatches to commit to the revival of their ancestors' ways. The frequency of potlatches has increased as occur frequently and increasingly more over the years as families reclaim their birthright.
The Kwakwañkañüwakw built their houses from cedar planks, which are highly water resistant. They were very large, anywhere from long. The houses could hold about 50 people, usually families from the same clan. At the entrance, there was usually a totem pole carved with different animals, mythological figures and family crests.
In summer, men wore no clothing except jewelry. In the winter, they usually rubbed fat on themselves to keep warm. In battle the men wore red cedar armor and helmets, and breech clouts made from cedar. During ceremonies they wore circles of cedar bark on their ankles as well as cedar breech clouts. The women wore skirts of softened cedar, and a cedar or wool blanket on top during the winter.
Kwakwañkañüwakw transportation was similar to that of other coastal people. Being an ocean and coastal people, they travelled mainly by canoe. Cedar dugout canoes, each made from one log, would be carved for use by individuals, families and communities. Sizes varied from ocean-going canoes, for long sea-worthy travel in trade missions, to smaller local canoes for inter-village travel. Some boats had buffalo fur inside to keep protection from the cold winters.