Git Ksi Lisims History & Culture

The History of the Git Ksi Lisims [people of the river Lisims] is a long one and capable of great elaboration and detail.

"Man is a social animal. He can only define himself by knowing his people, his language, his customs, his traditions. This applies to all people." (Mr. Justice Thomas R. Berger of the Supreme Court of B.C. Canada and Commissioner, Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry 1974-1978.)

   Before time immemorial [3000 BC / the year that North-west Coast Culture began to develop; Source: Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia, North American Indian], the people of the river lived here in Northwestern British Columbia, as members of an elaborate and complex society having their own cultural traditions, language, territorial boundaries, and systems of government and law.

   The most authentic history of Lisims ownership and occupation of the river and its’ approaches is, doubt-less, the living, oral tradition as it is remembered, ex-pressed, and handed down by historians and elders.

   Land and Resource Management was traditionally con-ducted through a system of family-owned territories in which the use of, and access to natural resources was regulated by the Head of each family, or House. Some sixty houses held territories, and access by each user was guaranteed through complex kinship relations or mutual arrangements as determined and dictated by the unwritten body of laws and social customs that govern behavior – Ayuukhl Nisga’a [the law of the people]. Together, these family territories form adjacent blocks of land that comprises the territory.

   Although by tradition, control over each House was unilaterally exercised by the ‘owning family’, in the early years of this century the hereditary chiefs agreed that land was to be held in common ownership. Thus, the land itself is visualized as a ‘common bowl’ for every-one in the nation.

   Lisims and its watershed – from glacial headwaters to Pacific estuary—provided the food, fur, tools, plants, medicine, timber and fuel that allowed the people to develop one of the most sophisticated cultures in North America.

   Since the last Great Ice Age, they traveled, fished and settled along all 380 kilometers of the river and its tributaries.

   The river supports all five species of Pacific salmon, the most important currency Lisims people have ever known. Rich salmon runs were harvested in a manner that allowed them to build their villages and evolve a far-flung trading empire that reached deep into the Interior and ranged up and down the coast.

  Note: the following information is in regard to the History of Christianization at the village of Laxgalts’ap:

   Prior to the advent of the Introduction of Christianity amongst our people, [late 1700’s], the people already experienced a way of communication with a Power greater than they. And that power was responsible for all of their lives; for the Land that they lived on, the resources, the food, the animals were provided by that Great Power.

   With that came the realization that this great power wanted them to respect all of these gifts, starting with the Gift of Life. And as our predecessors came to under-stand it, they began to develop Codes of Ethics for the way they lived. Those codes – we call them Ayuukhl Nisga’a, the edicts of Life, were very similar to the Ten Commandments that the Bible talks about.

   Today, although every one of our people are conversant with the Holy Book, we still integrate Ayuukhl Nisga’a (the Laws of the Nisga’a) with the Ten Commandments and the Doctrines of the Church.

   This compassion of light that we show for each other did not just begin the Christian era began in the valley.

   Again, with the communion with that Greater Power, our people realized that they had to share their life, their sorrow, their happiness, their difficult times.

   The white-man calls it Spirituality: “way before Christianity was introduced to our ancestors, there was KE’EM GOOT – pity, compassionate heart.”

   There are numerous ways of explaining what this term means, for example: “grandfather taught us that when a person is grieving, we stand up and grieve with him; this shows we are practicing ke’em goot.”

   Every aspect of our culture is a direct consequence of ‘Sayt K’il’im Goot’ – unity of heart. It means we are living within, or experiencing the holy spirit of God; we are living the new life, for we have abandoned ‘imagining or second-guessing what is in another man’s heart / mind.’

   After they heard of God’s ‘Yuuhlamk’askw’ (counseling), it changed and virtually eliminated two things in their lives: one is suugat – crime, mischief; the other: ‘Min gasgwim goot – jealousy. The end result of this learning was that it improved our fore-bearer’s lives in all respects so that now, today, it has rubbed-off on us.’

   There was a period of very serious thinking by those chieftains at that time. Because a part of the communication which managed to get through from the early missionaries to them, was that in effect, they were living a heathen way of life. They had a real struggle within themselves, to understand what that meant to them. And it took them some time to gain that understanding.

   Part of that understanding came about because they recognized that this all-powerful being that they had recognized as a source for their existence, et cetera, was very similar to the Savior that the missionaries were talking about.

   It was this realization which prompted one chieftain, and then another chieftain and then another, “to make the decision that their basic beliefs in that all-powerful being was not a heathen belief, that they could integrate it with the Christian concept of worshipping.”

   In making that decision those chieftains decided that some of their practices of life were in effect heathen, and they left these behind, to the point where some of them actually burnt some of the relics, artifacts and regalia that were tied into some of the ceremonies that bordered on heathenism.

   They left their Tribal communities which surrounds this particular site here [Laxgalts’ap], they came only with their basic belief that there is a power that is responsible for their lives.

   They came with a conviction that within the Christian era that they are accepting, they would carve-out a new, positive direction for their lives. And they foresaw that as a promise of life for future generations.

  “The Christian Era / movement began at this village site here [Laxgalts’ap/Greenville], and spread up-river from there.”

   Finally in 1904, after four years without a minister (Methodist church), the parishioners ‘asked the Anglicans to take care of them.’ Since that time Greenville Christians have been affiliated with this denomination.

   In 2004 the communities of Gingolx, Laxgalts’ap, Gitwin-ks’ihlkw and New Aiyansh have embarked on a new journey to attain Self-Reliance within the Anglican Church of Canada. This movement began back east ten years ago by the Anglican Church of Canada’s Indigenous Implementation Commission [ICIC].

   The end result of the movement is that the above communities will be able to use their own language and culture within the church. It will make the churches autonomous in every aspect of the administration.

   Excerpted from An address, researched by Alan Moore, to Elders Supper with Bishop William Anderson of Caledonia – Feb. 25, 2003.

   Researched/written by: Alan Moore-Researcher; email: bonycreek@yahoo.ca