indigenous

Jared Qwustenuxun Williams of Quw’utsun shares the story of how the landmark also known as ‘Mount Prevost’ got its original name

Every landmark in the Cowichan valley has an ancient name, almost every place that wears hwunitum sne’ once wore a Hul’q’umi’num sne’. But in less than 10 generations our landscape has become dominated by hwinitum sne’, so much so that even many hwulmuhw people don’t even know the Hul’q’umi’num place names.

One of these places is Mount Prevost, renamed so for the British captain James Charles Prevost, and I shared that story here. This story is about a dog named Swuq’us and his master, Stutsun.

The story of Swuq’us is akin to a Genesis story from the Bible. Our first people were those who fell from the sky and among them was a man named Stutsun. In this story, Stutsun was the first who fell from the sky and he prayed for a companion and so Tsitsulh Siem sent him Swuq’us.

But to give you the fullest and most accurate version of this story, I reached out to my friend Ts’ules (Chuck Seymour), who is a cultural and language teacher in Cowichan. I was honoured to be given this chance to share the story, as many of our stories are sacred and some cannot be shared.

read more: https://indiginews.com/first-person/the-ancient-story-of-the-mountain-swuqus