Thom, BrianJohnnie, Kathleen2026-07-082026-07-082026Thom, B., & Johnnie, K. (2026). Mapping the aspirations and challenges of the Hul’q’umi’num’ peoples. In C. Scott, E. S. Rivera, and K. Sinclair (Eds.), Instead: Indigenous stewardship of environment and alternative development. University of Toronto Press, 179–228. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487542689.009https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487542689.009https://hdl.handle.net/1828/24055The Hul’q’umi’num’ peoples are approximately 7,500 individuals living in and around the southeast coast of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada. Linguistically, these communities share the ancestral language of Hul’q’umi’num’, which is the Island dialect of the Halkomelem language, whose other dialects are spoken in the Vancouver area, all the way two hundred kilometres up the Fraser River to the Fraser Canyon. Culturally, the Hul’q’umi’num’ peoples are what anthropologists have often called Coast Salish (Suttles, 1990) and have lived in this area since time immemorial. Archaeological sites that are visible above modern-day sea levels in the area show continuous occupation for more than five thousand years (Mitchell, 1971; Carlson & Hobler, 1993; Carlson, 1970; Johnstone, 1991; Lake et al., 2004).2 The Hul’q’umi’num’ peoples have profound and ongoing attachments to their home places, which shape and are shaped by every facet of life from social organization to ontological orientation. These places range in scale from specific locales like a boulder or freshwater bathing pool in a creek, to large mountainsides, watersheds, and islandscapes. They are richly imbued with meaning and Indigenous identity. In Hul’q’umi’num’ peoples’ experiences of dwelling in their ancestral homeland, these places centre relationships with ancestors and non-human persons. This sense of place runs through the expressions of property and territory that underlie traditional Hul’q’umi’num’ economies and intercommunity relations (Thom, 2005).enIndigenousBook chapterDepartment of Anthropology