Product of decades-long process aims to restore Heiltsuk’s system of coherent governance destroyed by colonial powers

When outsiders arrived in the lands of the Heiltsuk people, they brought with them a rapacious appetite for the region’s trees, fish and minerals. Settlers and the government soon followed, claiming ownership of the thick cedar forests, the fjords and the abundance of life. Heiltsuk elders were confused. “If these are truly your lands,” they asked, “where are your stories?”

For the Heiltsuk, stories explain everything from the shape of a local mountain to the distinct red fur fringes on the sea wolves stalking shores. They tell of the flesh-eating monster baxbakwa’lanuxusiwe, whose entire body was covered with snapping mouths before it was destroyed by a shaman and became a cloud of mosquitoes.

Passed down over generations, in ceremonies forbidden by Canada’s government, the stories weave together the physical world, the supernatural and the liminal space that binds the two.

Such stories are also the bedrock of the Heiltsuk’s newly created constitution, a document recently ratified through ceremony that asserts the nation’s long-held convictions that they are the original inhabitants and rightful stewards of the region’s future.

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