Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Journeys Map. Click to go to the site.
The Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations have jointly produced a really nice website which explores the cultural landscape of their traditional territories, which lie just north of Vancouver. Edit: it looks like their website now sells kitchen products – obviously they did not keep their registration up to date.
The interactive map has dozens of “clickable” elements, taking you to place name information, to the description of rock art motifs, and to landscape features imbued with stories from history and the supernatural. Some of these include simple but effective animations, and the overall site design is clean and harmonious.
It seems that seven highway pullouts have also been designed with this information: aboriginal cultural tourism out on the land is something I have long thought has enormous potential in B.C. Looking at a book or a website is one thing, but having the information available, provided by the First Nations, at the place where the story happened or the traditional use occurred, seems like it would be very effective, and popular, way of educating the public about the thousands of years of cultural history on either side of the Olympics.
Supernatural serpent emerging from Ts’zil (Mt. Currie). Screenshot from culturaljourney.ca
Northwest Coast Archaeology 
Thanks for the tip about the website, Quentin. The highway kiosks are covered by over-sized coast salish style cedar hats and quite attractive. But, also impressive about the public education along the sea-to-sky highway are the large and very attractive stone place name markers giving the Squamish language names of the settlements along the route. Even if you can’t stop at the kiosks, the First Nations connections to the places along the route are obvious.
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Hi Tad, thanks for the information. I haven’t driven that road for a while; it’s good to hear the roadside information is effective and (seemingly) tasteful and targeted at those too busy to stop, as well!
I’ve sometimes thought that a concerted place-names “repatriation” effort would be a good program for, especially, urban-proximal First Nations to engage in. Nch’kay for Mt Garibaldi would be a good start, as would renaming Grouse Mountain and Cypress Bowl, say: bland Euro-Canadian names that it would be hard to object to replacing.
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I would like to know the Squamish name for the peaks to the east of Britannia Beach: Sky Pilot Mtn. (the highest in the group), Ledge Mtn., Mt Sheer, etc. And what was the name for Britannia Beach, and what is the name for the Stawamus Chief & mt. Garibaldi. Also, I would be grateful if you could inform me of the English translations, e.g. “The Sisters” for the Lions. Thank you so much!
Best regards,
Arnold Shives
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