How First Nations Culture Enriches the City of Vancouver

Seeing Vancouver through the eyes of its First Nations people reveals the ancient roots of this youthful Canadian city.

From the air, Vancouver seems more liquid than solid. The city of glass shimmers against a dramatic backdrop of mountains, forests and ocean as I lift off beside the white sails and cruise liners of Canada Place with Gulf Island Seaplanes, looping over the gentrified Shipyards of the North Shore to the seaside mansions of West Vancouver. Below us, the busy blue Pacific is parked with container ships, fishing fleets and marinas; ferries and motorboats trace white arcs on the water.

Vancouver is a surprisingly young city, founded only in 1866. But beneath its shiny modern veneer lies another, much older story. The landmark twin peaks known today as The Lions are, to the Squamish First Nations people, The Two Sisters, an everlasting symbol of the peaceful alliance between the Coast Salish tribes of the Pacific Northwest. False Creek, now home to the popular Granville Island market and the distinctive dome of Science World, bordered the Squamish village of Senakw, renowned for its huge potlatches or ceremonial feasts, where chiefs would disperse their wealth to forge social bonds. The Ice Age fjord of Indian Arm was the summer village of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and their red-ochre paintings still decorate its rock faces.

On descent the seaplane skims low over the massed treetops of Stanley Park, a remnant patch of rainforest at the western edge of downtown that’s one of the more accessible portals to Vancouver’s pre-colonial past. Beneath the dense canopy lie buried middens, traces of cedar-bark harvesting and memories of Xwayxway, a First Nations village where the Squamish lived in vast, multi-family houses more than 60 metres long.

“Stanley Park was a year-round village, winter and summer,” says Shishalh anthropologist Candace Campo who, with her Squamish husband Larry, founded Talaysay Tours to share their Indigenous culture. “My husband’s family and my children, that is their village. When we look at any feature of the land, we are looking at our strong connection to our ancestors.”

Campo, the consummate cultural go-between, details the complex pre-contact societies that existed among the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam peoples, ancestral owners of the unceded lands on which the British built Vancouver. The average citizen spoke three to five dialects to manage intricate inter-tribal relationships. In their matrilineal societies, women could choose to perform any role and every child was believed to be born with a gift. “There was universal housing; people had access to clothing, food and shelter, medicine,” she says. “It was a good way of life.”

On an afternoon tour of Stanley Park with Talaysay guide Patrick Canning – or Hooyisgum Ganaaw, to use his Nisga’a and Haida names – I glimpse the landscape through his eyes. The “wilderness” the British found in the late 18th century had been managed by First Nations people for thousands of years. There were orchards and berry fields, controlled burning to keep ecosystems healthy and productive, and a natural pharmacy. Pacific willow was used as aspirin, red alder soothed coughs and sap from the ubiquitous Douglas fir was an antibacterial salve. “Kind of like a liquid Band-Aid,” says Canning as we sip berry and rosehip tea in a fir glade carpeted with lush mosses.

Campo tells me these walks offer “a friendly space to tackle misconceptions of some of the more challenging parts of our history”. Specifically, the dispossession and discrimination First Nations people suffered at the hands of the British and, later, Canadian governments. “We hope to give our guests another way of being and another way of thinking.”

On West Broadway later that day, I savour the flavours of the Pacific Northwest with Nuxalk woman Inez Cook at her restaurant, Salmon n’ Bannock. It’s Vancouver’s only Indigenous-owned eatery – she opened an outpost at the international airport early this year – and a meal of many firsts. I taste spring elk and wild boar salamis, warm bannock bread rolls doused in bison gravy, sablefish (black cod) and sliced elk steak with peppercorn sauce, which Cook insists I try. “It tastes like heaven,” she says, grinning. Even the wine and beer comes from Indigenous-owned vineyards and breweries. Apricus Cellars’ Daybreak is a fresh, fruity blend of pinot gris, riesling and ehrinfelser – a winning match with the candied salmon.

Wild-caught produce at Salmon n’ Bannock

I’m also dining with Paula Amos from Indigenous Tourism BC, who tells me that Indigenous-run businesses in the province have grown from 15 to 170 in less than two decades. In the Vancouver region these include tours in replica 11-metre canoes that retrace the ocean “highways” of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and, in the mountains at Whistler, the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, where guests are welcomed with drum songs and guided tours of artefacts and a traditional longhouse. “There’s a big demand for Indigenous-run tourism experiences,” says Amos. “Visitors want to have a deeper experience and learn about local people.”

I catch a SeaBus ferry across the harbour to MONOVA, the Museum of North Vancouver, to discover more First Nations stories. Some are confronting – Canada is still actively grappling with its treatment of Indigenous peoples, remembered annually on 30 September with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation – but there are also tales of great dignity. I learn about Squamish chief Sahp-luk, known as Joe Capilano, who took the fight for Indigenous rights all the way to London and an audience with King Edward VII.

Wild Man of the Woods by Squamish artist John August at MONOVA

Indigenous art is everywhere in Vancouver, from vibrant murals and a stunning assembly of totem poles at Brockton Point in Stanley Park to the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in downtown.

But for an inspiring and authentic entry point to First Nations creativity, visit Skwachays Lodge, an Indigenous social enterprise run by the Vancouver Native Housing Society. This six-storey building on the edge of Chinatown offers residential accommodation for artists, providing shelter, security and a space to create as well as a co-operative gallery featuring works exclusively by in-house talents such as Mike Alexander, a Swan Lake man from south-west Manitoba.

For Alexander, who began his residency here at the start of 2022, Skwachays has been “absolutely life-changing”. We sit in the dedicated studio space as he speaks frankly about his past; how he was part of the Sixties Scoop, the Indigenous children forcibly removed from families into foster homes or state care. “It caused an awful lot of problems for me,” he says. “Life became unmanageable not knowing anything about myself… But when I got here, that’s when everything changed.”

He follows the Woodlands School pioneered by Ojibwe artist Norval Morrisseau, a style he describes as “very bright scenes of animals and the natural world depicted in 2D like an X-ray”, often drawn from visions and dreams. He shows me an arresting self-portrait depicting a crane, his clan symbol, in pale blue against a red sky, with bullrushes rising from salmon-filled waters. Three golden suns behind the crane, a signature of his, represent the passage of time. It’s one of a series of family portraits he’s been doing since reuniting with his sister, aunts, uncles and cousins four years ago. “I want to honour them. I’m so proud to meet these folks. I want to tell the world that I’ve never been happier.”

And he’s never been more successful. Alexander has commissions from buyers as far away as the United Kingdom, an upcoming joint show at the Bill Reid Gallery (“which I’m thrilled about”) and he’s been asked to paint a series of murals at BC Place, the city’s main stadium. “Things got out of control a little bit,” he says, smiling. “It’s sort of turned into this career.”

Starting next northern spring, Gulf Island Seaplanes plans to make Vancouver’s First Nations culture even easier to discover. Owner Alison Evans is incorporating the oral histories of elders into onboard narration of stories and landscape so passengers not only see Vancouver but also Kemkemelay, the place of many maple trees.

“Our goal is to link those sites and landmarks to stories of resilience and strength in the First Nations people of this area,” says Evans, who’s from the Hagwilget Nation. “We have a unique opportunity to show people what was here before Vancouver was here. It was a thriving, beautiful community.” And one that enriches the city to this day.