What Was Said to Me: The Life of a Sti’tum’atul’wut, a Cowichan Woman

Ruby Peter with Helene Demers

Royal BC Museum, 2021

https://publications.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/product/what-was-said-to-me/

Over seven decades, Sti’tum’atul’wut mentored hundreds of students and teachers and helped thousands of people to develop a basic knowledge of the Hul’q’umi’num’ language. She contributed to dictionaries and grammars, and helped assemble a valuable corpus of stories, sound and video files—with more than 10,000 pages of texts from Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers—that has been described as “a treasure of linguistic and cultural knowledge.” Without her passion, commitment and expertise, this rich legacy of material would not exist for future generations.

In 1997 Vancouver Island University anthropologist Helene Demers recorded Sti’tum’atul’wut’s life stories over nine sessions. She prepared the transcripts for publication in close collaboration with Sti’tum’atul’wut’ and her family. The result is rich with family and cultural history—a compelling narrative of resistance and resilience that promises to help shape progressive social policy for generations to follow.

Sti’tum’atul’wut Ruby Peter was a Cowichan Elder and linguist who has trained Hul’q’umi’num’ language teachers and researchers for over six decades. She was the lead language consultant on five SSHRC grants on Hul’q’umi’num’ stories and four Partnership Development Grants on narrative and discourse structure, pronunciation, the language of canoe culture and Hul’q’umi’num’ theatre. Ruby served on boards, panels and committees that set policies and provide linguistic support for language revitalization efforts in her community. In 2019 she was awarded honorary doctorate degrees by the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University. She was the associate editor of The Cowichan Dictionary.

Helene Demers is a Dutch-Canadian cultural anthropologist and a research associate at Vancouver Island University. Her research in the Cowichan Valley spans 30 years and includes recording life histories, The Cowichan Valley Community Oral History Project: The Meaning of Home and assisting in the repatriation of a Cowichan Sxwuyxw mask. As an immigrant, she is deeply aware of the interconnection between identity and place, and this thread runs through her research. Currently, she is researching “home artifacts,” the items that immigrants and refugees bring from their homeland, as well as documenting journeys and migrations through a collaborative embroidery project.