The Lax Kw'alaams Band is a

First Nation Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

s government at

Lax Kw'alaams Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...

, formerly Port Simpson, close to Prince Rupert in

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada.

Member governments

Treaty Process

History

Lax Kw'alaams derives from ''Laxłgu'alaams,'' which means "place of the wild roses." It is an ancient camping spot of the Gispaxlo'ots tribe and in 1834 became the site of a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business di ...

(HBC) trading post called

Fort Simpson Fort Simpson (Slavey language: ''Łı́ı́dlı̨ı̨ Kų́ę́'' "place where rivers come together") is a village, the only one in the entire territory, in the Dehcho Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. The community is located on an ...

, then Port Simpson. The name Fort Simpson derived from Capt. Aemilius Simpson, superintendent of the HBC's Marine Department, who had established the first, short lived, Fort Simpson, on the nearby

Nass River The Nass River is a river in northern British Columbia, Canada. It flows from the Coast Mountains southwest to Nass Bay, a sidewater of Portland Inlet, which connects to the North Pacific Ocean via the Dixon Entrance. Nass Bay joins Portland In ...

, in 1830 with Peter Skene Ogden. The first HBC factor at the new Fort Simpson was Dr. John Frederick Kennedy, who married the daughter of the Gispaxlo'ots chief

Ligeex Ligeex (variously spelled: "Legaic" etc.) is an hereditary name-title belonging to the Gispaxlo'ots tribe of the Tsimshian First Nation from the village of Lax Kw'alaams (a.k.a. Port Simpson), British Columbia, Canada. The name, and the chieftainsh ...

as part of the diplomacy which established the fort on Gispaxlo'ots territory. Kennedy served at Fort Simpson until 1856. In 1857 an Anglican lay missionary named William Duncan brought Christianity to Lax Kw'alaams, but, feeling that he was competing in vain with the dissipated fort atmosphere for Tsimshian souls, he relocated about 350 of his flock to Metlakatla, at Metlakatla Pass just to the south. There was no further missionary presence at Lax Kw'alaams until the arrival of the Rev. Thomas Crosby of the

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

church in 1874. The community is still predominantly Methodist (i.e.

United Church of Canada The United Church of Canada (french: link=no, Église unie du Canada) is a mainline Protestant denomination that is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada and the second largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Catholi ...

). Crosby's wife, Emma Crosby, founded the Crosby Girls' Home in the community in the 1880s. It became part of B.C.'s residential school system in 1893 and was closed in 1948. It was in Port Simpson in 1931 that the

Native Brotherhood of British Columbia The Native Brotherhood of British Columbia is a province-wide First Nations rights organization. It was founded on the 13 December, 1931, during a week long series of meetings between Haida representatives from Masset and Tsimshian representatives ...

was founded as the province's first Native-run rights organization. Its four founders included the Tsimshian ethnologist

William Beynon William Beynon (1888–1958) was a Canadian hereditary chief of the Tsimshian Nation and an oral historian; he served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists who studied his people. Early life and educatio ...

and Hereditary

Chief William Jeffrey Chief William Jeffrey (born 1899, date of death unknown) was a Canadian hereditary Tsimshian Chief, First Nations activist and carver. He attended residential school from 1914 to 1917. Though he desired to be a lawyer, his status as a First Nations ...

. Duncan estimated the population of Lax Kw'alaams in 1857 as 2,300, living in 140 houses. Approximately 500 died in the

1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic Year 186 ( CLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aurelius and Glabrio (or, less frequently, year 939 '' Ab urbe c ...

, shortly after Duncan's departure. Today Lax Kw'alaams is the largest of the seven Tsimshian village communities in Canada. Its population in 1983 was 882. The legal and political interests of the people of Lax Kw'alaams ''vis à vis'' the provincial and federal governments are represented by the Allied Tsimshian Tribes Association, which represents the hereditary chiefs of the Nine Tribes.

Member governments

Treaty Process

History

Demographics

Economic Development

Social, Educational and Cultural Programs and Facilities

See also

References