Occupying the Land - Digital Library Of The Commons

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As well as gardens, patches and stands of plant resources, salmon spawning streams andlakes, clam beds, gooseneck barnacle places, sea and sea lion hunting rocks, bear trails,halibut fishing grounds, beach salvage zones, and many other sites for harvesting animalresources were subject to ownership and control. Among the Nuu-chah-nulth, chumsalmon streams were particularly closely guarded against unauthorized use as this was thepreferred species for smoke drying, but sockeye and coho fisheries were also owned.Sometimes a chief’s hahuulhi was exercised over one part of a creek, where he couldbuild fish traps, and another chief’s hahuulhi would encompass another part of the creek(Bouchard and Kennedy 1990: 23). Place names often reflected peoples’ associations andrelationships with an area. For example, a clam-beach called t’iimiiq (literally “move orthrow rocks aside”) on the south end of a beach on the northwest side of Vargas Island,according to George Louie and Peter Webster, was named after the practice of lookingafter the beach and the clam populations by moving the rocks aside (Bouchard andKennedy 1990: 386).The Kwakwaka'wakw system of ownership and stewardship of lands and places follows asimilar pattern to the Nuu-chah-nulth hahuulhi. Ownership and areas of use andoccupancy are associated with tribes and clans, or numayms, which are descent groupsbased on stipulated kinship. The clans or numayms, in between the social levels of afamily and tribe, are the fundamental unit of Kwakwaka'wakw society. A numaymconsists of one or more extended family groups all related to a common ancestor. Eachnumaym owned its own traditions, crests, privileges, family names, the right to sponsorpotlatches, the right to own houses in the winter village, and the right to own seasonalcamping spots for oolichan fishing, hunting and berry picking, fishing sites for nets, weirsor dipnetting, clam beds and hunting and gathering places. Thus the numaym linked thesocial structure with the land it inhabited. Kwakwaka'wakw land ownership, likehahuulhi, involves inheritability and restriction of access (Galois, 1994). In most cases,there were effective social controls in place in which the system was so widely observedand respected, that trespassing would not be even thought of. Daisy Sewid-Smith andChief Adam Dick (pers. comm. 1996) explained that people very seldom crossed theboundaries into another clan’s designated resource areas. “They don't do that, comeacross [onto others’ lands], cause they know they're owned. They well respect eachother.” (Chief Adam Dick).The actual role of the clan hereditary chief and his family in managing the resources overwhich they had jurisdiction is explained by Kwakwaka'wakw researchers, MartinWeinstein and Mike Morrell:Within traditional Kwakiutl [Kwakwaka'wakw] society resource management wasnot the realm of a class of professional specialists, but of the harvesting group and,in particular, the namima [numayam or clan] leadership. The namima was the unitof governance in traditional Kwakwaka'wakw society. The head chief was both thesovereign and the administrative head of the group. Each of the offices in thenamima, the named and ranked positions, traced its origin and original place in thehierarchy to the ancestral creation myths. The connection with the creation mythsand the spirit world was the ultimate basis both for sovereignty and for the group's14
esponsibility over resources and particular areas of the Kwakwaka’wakw territory(Weinstein and Morrell 1995: 35-36).Thus, as noted by Daisy Sewid-Smith, Chief Adam Dick, Weinstein (1994), Gisday Waand Delgam Uukw (1989) and others, the head chief of the clan was responsible not onlyfor the economic administration of his clan, for ensuring that his group’s ceremonialobligations were fulfilled, and for carefully managing his group’s natural resources. Healso represented his clan in a larger advisory capacity fulfilled by all of the chiefs to makedecisions affecting the entire tribal territory. An illustration of this role in a majormanagement question was provided by Chief Adam Dick and Daisy Sewid-Smith. Justbefore the arrival of Captain George Vancouver to the northeast coast of VancouverIsland, the salmon failed to run in any large numbers up the Nimpkish River, widelyknown for its runs of excellent salmon. The chiefs of the clans and villages situated allalong the Nimpkish River made a decision to call a moratorium against salmon fishing inthe Nimpkish until the runs re-established themselves. To allow all the people to beadequately fed, they decided to move everybody down to the village at the mouth of theriver, where they survived on clams and other seafood and probably root vegetables fromthe famous Nimpkish clover and silverweed beds, until the salmon were once againplentiful (pers. comm. to NT, 1997). Such a ruling would have been strictly enforced,and people would not have considered transgressing the restrictions imposed by theirchiefs (Weinstein 1994).The land ownership systems of Haida, Tsimshian, Gitxsan and other peoples were alsosimilar in nature to Nuu-Chah-Nulth. For example, for Haida:Each Haida family had its own creek, creeks, or portion of a creek, wheresmokehouses stood, some of the smaller creeks are said to have no owners; on theother hand, some of the families are said to have had no land. In the latter case,they were obliged to wait until another family was through before picking berries,and had to pay for the privilege. Any family might pick berries on the landbelonging to another, after the owners had finished picking, if it obtained theconsent of the latter and paid a certain price (Swanton 1905: 71).and:The Haida trouble themselves little about the interior country, but the coast line,and especially the various rivers and streams, are divided among the differentfamilies. These tracts are considered as strictly personal property, and arehereditary rights or possessions, descending from one generation to another,according to the rule of succession.... They may be bartered or given away, and,should one family desire to fish or gather berries in the domain of another, theprivilege must be paid for. So strict are these ideas of proprietary right in the soil,that on some parts of the coast, sticks may be seen set up to define the limits of thevarious properties.... Along the shores the principal berry gathering grounds arefound, and thus divided. The larger salmon streams are often the property jointly ofa number of families; and at these autumn fishing grounds temporary houses, smalland roughly constructed, are generally to be found (Dawson 1878: 117-118b, 136b).15
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