Nuu-chah-nulth

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Three Nuu-chah-nulth children in Yuquot, British Columbia, 1930s.

The Nuu-chah-nulth (pronounced Template:IPA, or approximately "noo-cha-nulth")[1] (also formerly referred to as the Nootka, Nutka, Aht, Nuuchahnulth) people are Indigenous peoples in Canada. The term 'Nuu-chah-nulth' is used to describe 15 separate but related nations whose traditional home is in the Pacific Northwest on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In pre-contact and early post-contact times, the number of nations was much greater, but smallpox and other consequences of contact resulted in the disappearance of some groups, and the absorption of others into neighbouring groups. The Nuu-chah-nulth are related to the Chinookan and Kwakwaka'wakw, and the Nuu-chah-nulth language is part of the Wakashan language group.

1 History
- 1.1 First contact
- 1.2 Post-colonization
2 Tribes
3 Culture and Society
- 3.1 Potlatch
4 Mythology
5 See also
6 Bibliography
7 External links

History

At the time of early contact with European explorers, up until 1830, more than 90 percent of the Nuu-chah-nulth were killed by sexually transmitted diseases, malaria, and smallpox, and by cultural turmoil resulting from contact with Westerners.

First contact

When James Cook first encountered the villagers at Yuquot in 1778, they directed him to "come around" (Nuu-chah-nulth nuutkaa is "to cirlce around")<ref name="Campbell">Campbell, Lyle (1997). American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pg. 396 n.34</ref> with his ship to the harbour. Cook interpreted this as the name of their tribe. In 1978 the term Nuu-chah-nulth (Template:Unicode, meaning "all along the mountains")<ref name="Campbell" /> was chosen as a collective term to describe the closely related nations of western Vancouver Island. This was the culmination of the 1958 alliance forged between the various nations in order to present a unified political voice. The Makah of Washington State are directly related to the Nuu-chah-nulth.

The Nuu-chah-nulth were among the first Pacific peoples north of California to come into contact with Europeans. Competition between Spain and the United Kingdom over control of Nootka Sound led to a bitter international dispute around 1790, which was settled when Spain agreed to abandon its exclusive claims to the North Pacific coast. Negotiations to settle the dispute were handled under the hospitality of a powerful chief of the Mowachaht Nuu-chah-nulth of Nootka Sound, Maquinna.

Post-colonization

Tribes

Below is the tribes that make up the Nuu-chah-nulth. After contact, the advent of foreign diseases spread and decimated some tribes, and others merged with neighboring tribes.

Culture and Society

The Nuu-chah-nulth were one of the few groups on the Pacific Coast who hunted whales. Whaling is essential to Nuu-chah-nulth culture and spirituality, and is reflected in stories, songs, names, family lines, and numerous place names throughout the Nuu-chah-nulth territores. Perhaps the most famous Nuu-chah-nulth artifact is the Yuquot "whaler's shrine", a ritual house-like structure used in the spiritual preparations for whale hunts. Composed of a series of memorial posts depicting spirit figures and the bones of whaling ancestors, it is presently in storage at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was the subject of a film, The Washing of Tears which recounts the rediscovery of the bones and other artifacts at the museum, and the travails of the Mowachaht people, the shrine's original owners, in seeking to repossess them. Template:Sect-stub

Potlatch

The Nuu-chah-nulth, and other Pacific Northwest cultures, were famous for their potlatch ceremonies, in which the host would honor guests with generous gifts. The term 'potlatch' is ultimately a word of Nuu-chah-nulth origin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Mythology

Template:Main A book by Anne Cameron, The Daughters of Copper Woman, addresses many of the creation myths of the Nuu-chah-nulth, as well as modern implications of colonization.

Bibliography

Ellis, David, W.; & Swan, Luke. (1981). Teachings of the tides: Uses of marine invertebrates by the Manhousat people. Nanaimo, British Columbia: Theytus Books.
Hoover, Alan L. (Ed.). (2002). Nuu-chah-nulth voices: Histories, objects & journeys. Victoria, B. C.: Royal British Columbia Museum.
Kim, Eun-Sook. (2003). Theoretical issues in Nuu-chah-nulth phonology and morphology. (Doctoral dissertation, The University of British Columbia, Department of Linguistics).
McMillian, Alan D. (1999). Since the time of the transformers: The ancient heritage of Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht, and Makah. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Sapir, Edward. (1938). Glottalized continuants in Navaho, Nootka, and Kwakiutl (with a note on Indo-European). Language, 14, 248-274.
Sapir, Edward; & Swadesh, Morris. (1939). Nootka texts: Tales and ethnological narratives with grammatical notes and lexical materials. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America.
Sapir, Edward; & Swadesh, Morris. (1955). Native accounts of Nootka ethnography. Publication of the Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics (No. 1); International journal of American linguistics (Vol. 21, No. 4, Pt. 2). Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics. (Reprinted 1978 in New York: AMS Press, ISBN 0-404-11892-5).
Shank, Scott; & Wilson, Ian. (2000). Acoustic evidence for ʕ as a glottalized pharyngeal glide in Nuu-chah-nulth. In S. Gessner & S. Oh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages (pp. 185-197). UBC working papers is linguistics (Vol. 3).