The Homalco Nation celebrated the launch of a new graphic novel based on the traditional teachings of the Nation's elders on Nov. 22 at the Discovery Inn.
Xwémalhkwu Hero Stories: A Graphic Novel was written and illustrated by First Nations artists Valen Onstine, Alina Pete and Gord Hill. Campbell River's Tchadas Leo was the graphic novel's editor.
"I'm thinking about the work that's been done to create this book that tells the story of our people, [and] our history, and I think it's kind of interesting. This year, we've gone down to New Zealand and connected with the Maori and started to learn how they are rebuilding their language, culture and their connection to their land, and that's what this book is doing," said Chief Darren Blaney of the Homalco First Nation. "The Maori have been working on keeping their language for the last 50 years, and for us, it's just been kind of an awakening in maybe the last five years..."
Blaney said most of the speakers of the language (ayʔaǰuθɛm) spoken by the Xwémalkwu people are over 50.
"So that means in twenty years, we will have lost the majority of our speakers," Blaney added.
He also spoke about residential schools and how the work they did has been paying some pretty big dividends due to vast substance abuse (across the country's Indigenous population), and the loss of connection to the land, which they were forced away from by Oblate missionaries forced the Xwémalkwu people off their traditional land in the 1860s, moving them to a site known as Muushkin (or Old Church House). The Nation was then relocated to Aupe (New Church House) in the early 1900s after winds blew down the buildings in Muushkin. However, the last people left Aupe in the 1980s and established a new reserve in Campbell River in the 1990s.
"As we move forward, we are connecting to the land, connecting to the language. Our language, again, comes from this land. It comes from nowhere else but this land, and for us to start to establish that connection, our language comes from this land, our DNA comes from this land, we belong to this land, and our strength is that connection, the culture, all the teachings and that is what this book is doing. Putting the teachings back, making it accessible for all of us, especially our young people," said Blaney.
The graphic novel was born out of a project started by the Homalco Nation's radio station, 107.3 FM The Raven, which created 12 podcast episodes converting analogue recordings of stories from elders into digital format. The podcast entitled Remember - Recordings of Elders Explored is available on Spotify. Education without Borders (EwB) and the UBC Comics Studies Cluster helped fund the project, which also used comics to visually represent the recordings. Leo selected three Indigenous artists to create the graphic novel and travelled to Bute Inlet, part of the traditional territory, for inspiration and to hear these stories first-hand.
"Those recordings of those elders are preserved, obviously talking about our history, our culture, our language and graphical locations," Leo said of the recordings used in the podcast. "A lot of these recordings are hours long, [with] lots of gruesome details when it comes to residential school memories. There are some really beautiful stories about hunting, fishing, clam digging, mountain goat hunting, (and) a lot of different ways that we preserved our food as well too, all filled with education."
Xwémalhkwu Hero Stories: A Graphic Novel has three stories: Canoe and Clam, River Bathing, and Hunting & Food Preservation. The three stories highlight pivotal moments in Coast Salish history and traditional practices. They are also written in a mixture of ayʔaǰuθɛm and English. The novel includes a glossary of ayʔaǰuθɛm words, aided by their English translation and pronunciation guide.
"We have three different stories inside this graphic novel. There could be nine, 10, 12, 30 more," said Leo. "There's so much rich history that we could have picked from, and I feel that we picked the right ones."
