Pride and celebration poured all over again from Wolf Ritual Beach in Port Alberni on Tuesday all while First Nations singing and drums reawakened the important and historic Tseshaht cultural site that is now named Harbour Quay.
“Our ancestors would be proud we are reawakening (the site),” said Tseshaht artist Willard Gallic Jr.
For thousands of years, Indigenous families celebrated and feasted in winter at Wolf Ritual Beach after months of hard work fishing and hunting the coast.
It’s also where they prepared spiritually for the roles and responsibilities they would need to take care of their communities.
“I like to think of it as their holiday. It was more than that but in modern terms after a year of work in the sound, in the Barclay Sound. They were finished their harvesting,” said Denis St. Claire, chief advisor of Tseshaht archaeology.
“For several months it was festivities, it was rituals and it was here and it was inappropriately taken away 120 years ago,” said St. Claire.
With a new wolf tower unveiling, and a ceremony Tuesday, the Tseshaht people symbolically took back the site.
Tseshaht Chief Ken Watts called it a deeply emotional event.
“For our people to come back here and reconnect to the ground and feel our feet on the ground in this are of sacred Wolf Ritual Beach here, it’s a special feeling. For me I know it was overwhelming a lot of parts of today,” said Watts.
The Tseshaht hope this will be the first of many reawakenings for their people. As reconciliation efforts hit home, and restore pride where it was taken.
Skye Ryan
