The story of Hwlumelhtsu (Lamalchi Bay)

Jared Qwustenuxun Williams

Video Transcript / Brunswick Point, August 2022

Jared: Where I'm from - just, if you look over behind me there's one of the mountains looks like a wave, a wave over the ocean. All the elders would say, when you leave this tribe's land and you would like to go home, you just have to look for that one mountain which we would call Swuq'us. Now on your way there there's one or two or three other large islands but I really want to highlight that the tribe that is here now on these lands is originally from the village at Hwlumelhtsu [Lamalchi]...

Jared: I just really want to raise my hands here to the Hwlitsum tribe. This is their lands for all these years and I just really want to talk about how they wound up here. So this wonderful tribe, they are originally from the village at Hwlumelhtsu, also known as Lamalchi Bay. Lamalchi. In approximately 1863 they were attacked within their village by the HMS Forward and the Captain Lascelles.

They were attacked because the British were looking for two supposed murderers that were within their village which they were not and so when they told them, oh no they're not here, they attacked and the village is designed, or was designed, in a way that they were able to repel the attack. Which means they are the only tribe in the history of the West Coast to force the Royal Navy to retreat. So, hell ya! But when that happened though they realized that they would return and that they would have more guns and larger ammunition, and so they fled their home village at Hwlumelhtsu. They went to all these other villages within the islands but they eventually all settled here at Hwlhits'um. Hwlhits'um originally translates to where you harvest the stth'e'qun so this was already a well-used harvesting village which was then used by the remainder of the tribe from Hwlumelhtsu. I really just want everybody to know that the tribe here was the only tribe to successfully repel the Navy. And that's just awesome.