Mike Starr on Some Fort Langley European Colonial and First Nations History

*Interview conducted September 29, 2016.*

Mike Starr: So, I was saying. The cedar tree, for example, is not just a resource, but it’s like a relative. So that the legend of the first cedar. There was an enormous man who always shared fish. The people really loved him. He grew old and eventually died. The Creator spoke to the people of the village and said, “I don’t want you to put him in a box in the tree, as you would usually bury your dead. I want you to bury him in the ground.” From where he was buried, a new tree came up. This is the cedar tree. The cedar, just like the generous man, is very generous. The roots are used to make baskets. The bark is used to make clothing. The heartwood is used to build longhouses. Even the cedar boughs are used to make softer beds, they’re, often, used for spiritual ceremonies. You wave the boughs as you go through the house to bless a house. You use cedar boughs. You might even put some small sprigs of cedar boughs up above doorways to keep the evil spirits out of the rooms. Other aspects, the First Nations culture was an oral culture until the time of contact. There was no written language. Although, there is a story at Xa:ytem (Haytem), by Mission. There is a sacred First Nations site that was a historic site that was open to the public for a while. There are three stones. The stones were transformed from people, from elders, chiefs, who were given the gift of writing from the Creator and did not share that gift with their people. So, their people were kept with a non-written society, basically, an oral culture. Because they didn’t share that gift. The Creator transformed them into stones. There are number of these transformer stones in the Fraser Valley that are all sacred sites. They all have lessons in them. There’s another legend about the Fraser River. The legend of the might Fraser. Apparently, it used o be crystal clear. The people were taking too many fish. Because it was clear. They could see all the fish and could easily scoop them all up, and were taking too many, more than they need. So, the Creator took a big pole way up the Fraser River and started stirring the mud up. Stirred and stirred and the Fraser became a muddy river, where you couldn’t see the fish, unless, they were right at the surface. People were taught not to take more than they needed. These stories from the oral culture teach lessons. They teach a way of relating to the land and to each other too. This is the spirituality. You can get some more, especially on the pre-Contact prophets who prophesied about the coming Europeans. In the book, A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas, it’s big, big book. It has a lot of nice illustrations and maps, very interesting about First Nations spirituality and contact, and changes of colonialism, diseases — European diseases that came in, just everything you want to know. It was created by Stó:lō people. I have, basically, exhausted my knowledge of First Nations spirituality. [Laughing]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Starr: Is there anything else you were curious about?

Jacobsen: A bunch, but I don’t want to abuse that time, you already gave me an hour and a quarter.

Starr: Is there, maybe, one more topic?

Jacobsen: The Europeans when they came over and were colonists. There were Protestants. There were Catholics. That’s, maybe, 73% [sic] of the population. In fact, the number has decreased over time, which means the number has been higher in the past.

Starr: Right, right.

Jacobsen: Given that, they have their own conflicts, but there are broad based agreements within that own spirituality, that particular religious view. So, you’ve given a perspective on a little of First Nations or Coast Salish spirituality. What about the colonialists’ spirituality, and how it, possibly, influenced their perspectives on First Nations, or even on those that were necessarily purely European in some sense?

Starr: You, probably, got to distinguish between adherence of the Catholics who worked at the Fort and the Protestants who worked at the Fort, and the priests who came later, because the priests were wanting to teach and, sometimes, to enforce changes in culture due to their religious beliefs. So, monogamy was a big one. I talked about James MacMillan having four different wives.

Jacobsen: So, also, the status of women, probably, both cultures at that point.

Starr: Yes.

Jacobsen: Wow.

Starr: Slavery, this was about the time that Fort Langley was busiest, which was the time when there was the movement — the anti-slavery movement — led by… was it William Wilburforce in Britain? Who saw a conflict between his faith and slavery. There were slaves here. It’s really hard to decode between indentured servants and slaves. There are people who insist, “No, it is an entirely different thing: indentured servants in slavery.” In practice, sometimes, it was the same thing. You’ve got Hudson’s Bay company using indentured servants. You’ve got First Nations people who took slaves, basically, when they had a conflict with another First Nations group. If they were the winners, they might take slaves and keep them. So, apparently, some of the women who married the men at Fort Langley had slaves from other First Nations groups who came with them. Pretty complex stuff, the Kwantlen First Nation people today are very uncomfortable with it. They might not use that word of slaves. Yet, we haven’t been able to find another word that really fits.

Jacobsen: If you could take a two-sentence statement, let’s say the word is to a reader, not necessarily what they’re looking for. What is a two-sentence statement of what was done on either side?

Starr: These are unpaid servants whose pay is their room and board, but they’re required to do everything that their master ask them to do. They’re not free to go back home to their own village. So, it’s pretty much the definition of slavery. Yet, there are so many connotations attached to that word that many people are uncomfortable using the word to cover these variety of situations.

Jacobsen: Everyone has their uncomfortable history, apparently.

Starr: Monogamy was one of the things. Burying in the ground rather than up in the tree. Some of the things were not, perhaps, necessarily… they were more cultural than spiritual, I guess, is what I’m trying to say, when we still have that struggle. Missionaries who go to foreign lands. If the people convert and want to follow your God, then what do you tell is essential to do? They want to know, “What do I do now?” Over the years, that’s changed. It used to be: You get rid of your three extra wives and start having a bath once a week, put a fence around your property. There are all these things that are cultural things that weren’t necessarily part of the essential spirituality. So, I think we have a much different perspective today on what is essential. Many Christians in Africa or even in South American have a mix of their old cultures’ spiritual beliefs that mix in with their Catholicism or Protestantism. That was the case here. Things changed over time from when the first was first established to when the colony was getting up and running.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time.

Starr: You’re welcome.