IIn Sliammon where I live, right by Powell River, tiyskʷɑt, there’s a river there, or there was a river there, way before my time that I remember. It was in the early 1900s that river was dammed when they decided to build a mill there. And our people lived on that site by the river. Our people always lived where there was a river, or creek, or where there’s water. And so when they decided to put us on reserves, they took us from that area, took my great-grandparents from that area and placed them in Sliammon. There’s a boundary there: “You are now the Sliammon Band.”

Well, I don’t – I don’t care for those titles they put on our people. We are ɬaʔamɩn qɑymixʷ. We’re people of the land. ’Cause our people travelled all over the land! They just didn’t stay in this corral like a bunch of cattle.