Weaving the histories of Klehkwahnnohm: a Tla'amin community in southwest British Columbia

This thesis is a reconstruction of the history of the Klehkwahnnohm (glossed as “tide waters rushing in”), a small bay within Tla’amin traditional territory on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. The events and lives lived on the land are illuminated through the integration of archaeology, oral history, ethnographic texts, and historical documents. These sources provide insight to different periods of time and together reveal a continued use of and connection to the landscape beginning around 2,000 years ago. The connections to the landscape are best represented through plank house and settlement construction (~2,000 B.P.–250 B.P.), use of a defensive feature (800 B.P–1910 A.D), and the processing of herring (800 B.P–1950 A.D.). The history of Klehkwahnnohm is written chronologically and from a landscape perspective. This approach highlights the connections between people, resources, places, and events that have imprinted the land to create the Klehkwahnnohm landscape and shape its history.