Fotoeins Fotografie

Fotoeins Friday: Coast Salish place names, four

By HL fotoeins on 22 Oct 2021

Civilization, before colonization

•   q̓əmq̓ə́mələɬp in the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ language of the Musqueam people.
•   Ḵ’emḵ’emel̓áy̓ in the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language of the Squamish people.

The meaning of the words is roughly “leafy maple trees”.

The headquarters for the Canadian Fishing Company (Canfisco) and the massive cranes of the Port of Vancouver’s CenTerm shipping facility provide this present-day picture at the foot of Gore and Dunlevy Streets. Recent history has this location as the home of Stamps Mill (1865, later Hastings Mill). Lining the image at right are the tracks of the Canadian Pacific Railway, connecting the Colony of British Columbia with national confederation and accelerating settler expansion from east to west.

The Sea-to-Sky highway between Vancouver and Pemberton has highway signs with locations printed in English and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. Vancouver is listed as “Ḵ’emḵ’emel̓áy̓” on signs along route BC-99, even though the physical area defined by the modern city once had multiple indigenous names for settlements and landmarks before colonization.

I’m grateful to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples on whose lands I was born as guest. I made the photo above on 2 Jul 2021 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime with the following settings: 1/1000-sec, f/10, ISO1000, and 18.5mm (28mm) focal length. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-lfs.