Kiixin: A Place of Significance for Huu-ay-aht First Nation

   Kiixin (pronounced Kee-hin) is a sacred site and former capital village and fortress for the Huu-ay-aht First Nation (pronounced Hoo-eye-at). It is located within their traditional territory on the beautiful and wild pacific coast of Vancouver Island. Very remote, getting there involved a 2-hour drive on a windy, semi-public, 77 km gravel logging road with frequent one-lane bridges, and competing with pick-ups and logging trucks kicking up dirt.

   After a night at the Bamfield Motel (owned by the Huu-ay-aht) we picked up our guide, Stella, at her home on the First Nations reserve, located just outside Bamfield. Stella is a member of the Huu-ay-eht tribe and former elected member of their Executive Council. She was extremely generous both with her time and her knowledge.  Over a tour of more than 3 hours she shared the history of her nation’s dealings with the Canadian Government to regain tribal lands and rights, as well as information about her culture, family and the flora and fauna of the area.   

   She led us on a beautiful hike through the rain forest to get to the site, located in a protected bay (Barkley Sound). The village was abandoned in the 1880s but remains important for food gathering as well as for spiritual and ceremonial purposes. It once contained a number of traditional longhouses with timber posts and beams, fronted by two elaborate welcome poles (now at the RC Museum).

   The longhouses have undergone natural decay and become overgrown in some places with cedar trees and other vegetation, but Stella showed us the remains, and taught us a lot about the oral history and archeology of the village.  Kiixin is designated as a Canadian National Historic Site as the only traditional First Nations village remaining on the southern BC coast that still features significant standing architecture, with evidence of occupation going back 3,000 years.

   Kiixin Village represents not only the past but also the future of this First Nation.

   This future is indicated by the treaty the Huu-ay-aht, along with four other regional tribes, negotiated and signed with the BC and Canadian governments in 2011. This treaty gave them full ownership of 8,200 hectares within their traditional territory. This land ownership, which for the first time includes Kiixin, has allowed them to develop a responsible and sustainable tourism infrastructure around this historic site, as well as more broadly unleashing a national development process, to the benefit of their 750 citizens. This includes the purchase and renovation of the motel, associated restaurant, and beautiful beachfront campground (Pachena Bay) as well as a number of other properties in the town, many of which are also being restored/upgraded for the tourist industry. All purchased since the treaty was signed. In addition, for the first time the nation now controls its own governance, cultural development, land, social services. public works, day care (provided free), housing (a new subdivision is starting to go up) and much else.

   The modern treaty process in British Columbia is the culmination of years of protest, petitions, resistance, confrontation and court cases. All this finally brought the government to the negotiating table. In the 1990s treaty negotiations began with many First Nations, and the first modern treaty was signed in 1998. There have been a few others, including with Huu-ay-aht, and many others still are being negotiated. These treaties essentially freed the First Nations from the Indian Act of 1876. The Indian Act was the essential legislative mechanism of settler control over First Nations peoples in Canada. It legitimized Canadian control over native lands to facilitate exploitation of their resources and settlement by whites. It severely constrained native autonomy, opportunity and development. In terms of economic development, for example, native people were forbidden from fishing commercially and from using traditional fishing methods; were forbidden from hiring lawyers to pursue land claims; could not own or borrow money on their reserve land even if they owned a home; and were subject to myriad other restrictions and bureaucratic procedures over their affairs.

   So visiting the Huu-ay-aht and Kiixin showed us both their past and a hoped-for future of national development. There is a lot of optimism there about the possibilities.

Drawing of Kiixin Village as it would have looked like in the 19th century

Stella, our guide in front of the village site

Photo of Welcome Figures in front of house frame in the village in 1911

40-foot male and female mythic carvings erected facing the beach at Kiixin about 1860, to welcome potlatch guests travelling by canoe. Now exhibited at the Royal Canadian Museum in Victoria

Frame entry to one of the longhouses, still standing but now overgrown and slowly returning to the earth

Sign at entry to Kiixin historic village

Back of their impressive administration building