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List of Halkomelem-speaking peoples

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 13, 2025
Entity authorityQ17008483 ↗
Source-derived summary

This is a list of indigenous peoples speaking Halkomelem, or who did so historically (as most living members of those peoples no longer speak them). The term Halkomelem people has been used by certain linguists to mean "Halkomelem-speaking peoples" but such a group does not exist as an ethnicity or band or other group:

Hunquminum (Downriver dialect)

Peoples who spoke Downriver Halkomelem lived from the Stave River westwards to the mouth of the Fraser, and included the Tsleil-waututh on Burrard Inlet.

Tsleil-Waututh (Burrards)

Musqueam (Hmethkwyem)

Kwantlen

Katzie

Kwikwetlem

Snokomish

Tsawwassen

Hulquminum (Island dialect)

Hulquminum or Island Halkomelem was spoken on the other side of Georgia Strait, and is most identified with the

Cowichan

the Cowichan designation is derived from the name of one of several groups forming the Cowichan Tribes band government, the Quwutsun, whose geographic focus is the Cowichan Valley, but other Halkomelem-speakers in the area were also considered Cowichan; the Snaw-na-ass (Nanoose Bay) and Sneneymux (Nanaimo) peoples were Hulquminum speakers were separate from the Cowichan. In the 19th century this term or the variant "Cowidgin" was applied to all Halkomelem-speaking groups and certain others such as the Skwxwu7mesh and Semiahmoo. On Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, other Cowichan groups are such as the Halalt, Malahat, Penelakut, Lyackson and Lamalcha.

Lake Cowichan

Malahat (the MÁLEXEȽ speak both Hulquminum and SENĆOŦEN (Saanich), and have their own dialect called Malchosen

Halalt

Lamalcha (Hwlitsum)

Lyackson

Pauquachin, the BOḰEĆEN also speak SENĆOŦEN

Penelakut

Stz'uminus (Chemainus)

Snaw-naw-as (originally this term was used for both the Snuneymuxw/Nanaimo and the group that today uses this name, at Nanoose Bay)

Qualicum

Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo)

Scia'new (Beecher Bay Band)

Halqemeylem (Upriver dialect)

Halqemeylem or Upriver Halkomelem was spoken by peoples from the Stave River upstream to the lower reaches of the Fraser Canyon at Yale and environs.

Editorial summary

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This entry incorporates text from “List of Halkomelem-speaking peoples” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.