Talk:Squamish people

message: I have noticed the English word Squamish is shown in this article and others, such as the Stanley Park article in the Squamish language, as "Sḵwx̱wú7mesh", as opposed to in the English language? Forgive my ignorance of any earlier discussion or controversy on this issue other than the first section on this discussion page, which outlined problems with browsers displaying the characters etc and appeared unresolved. Is there a reason for this? Is it simply out of respect to or due to requests or edits by the Squamish people? Just curious as this appears inconsistant to most of the rest of the English Wikipedia. Thanks :-) MsBatfish (talk) 11:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that the language article has been moved to Squamish language. Even linguists can't be bothered with tongue-twisters and special character tornados in an English context, and especially linguists are aware of the utility and validity of having endonyms; this monster (that I don't even want to copy & paste because it is so completely unnecessary and I don't want to promote it) is just not an English word: it's a Squamish word, just like français is a French word. Political correctness gone haywire, again. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:33, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

text: By the way, note WP:ENGLISH, which was the policy used to justify the move. This is still the English Wikipedia, not the Squamish Wikipedia. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:37, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

text: Maybe I'm missing a controversial or political issue, but Squamish seems like the right title for this English article.  Certainly Sḵwx̱wú7mesh could be prominent in the intro sentence if it is notable and verifiable.  But, as others have said, this is the English Wikipedia and the name of these people is most often and most expected to be written Squamish in English.  This can be verified easily and is actually reflected in most (but not all) of the references and bibliography. Question... Do most peoples around the world not have English Wikipedia articles titled in English instead of their own language?  Or is there a difference here?  Just wondering what principle is at work here. --Ds13 (talk) 00:44, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: UPDATE: I placed a move template on the article page and posted a rename & move request below for discussion. --MsBatfish (talk) 11:18, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: further update  This comment "I have been able to find a couple other articles that uses non-English spellings" was in the wake of undiscussed speedies by a certain editor who ignored previous name discussions; but even without those, now reverted but only some, there are tons of others; Mi'kmaq was a main page until the same editor converted it into a disambiguation containing Mi'kmaq people; ; Tsuu T'ina is not Blood people, Ojibwe is not Ojibway.  The premise that undiscussed speedies can be used as examples when they were all controversial and any attempt to change them back was vociferously opposed by the same lone editor, on endlessly trivial grounds and despite demanding sources, provided none of this own.  The result of your RM nomination below has been a completely unworkable ill-advised category name, and now suggestions that all ethno-tribal categories be deleted.  Nice....very constructive.  The Skwxwu7mesh article was started by a Skwxwu7mesh person; he's part Kwakwaka'wakw also and started that article and its category, the Dakelh article was started by the pre-eminent scholar in that field, who also started that category.  That not all guidelines have been examined in the following RM, nor the prior consensus re terminology and paradigms because of differences between the concept of peoples vs band governments vs language groups, and the scattered application of mis-used guidelines, has resulted in time-consuming chaos and yet the original speedies remain unreverted despite the obvious fact that they were faulty and have resulted in useless confusion....and a very bad category name, very bad indeed.Skookum1 (talk) 09:20, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

text: and re "English wikipedia"....on Canadian-content articles, terms used in Canadian English (as Skwxwu7mesh is, though not to the same degree as Sto:lo and Secwepemc and St'at'imc etc......., IS English.  The pretense that English should be standardized is not valid, nor are guidelines hard and fast when other conditions and circumstances apply.  That people unfamiliar with the places and peoples who naming and categorization are affected,and do not take the time to consider why these things were named and organized as they are, are the ones "voting" does not add up....votes based on false premises or insufficient knowledge/information, and knee-jerking about "what is English and what is not" I see more and more of; the result is, in teh case of indigenous articles, re-enforcing inadequate, confusing and archaic usages on people who themselves, and who mostly speak English, do not use and largely disregard and consider incorrect.Skookum1 (talk) 09:25, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sḵwx̱wú7mesh versus Squamish? 

message: :The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:54, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: * Yes, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh is their name in their language, not in English. The special characters were developed in order to create a written language (that uses some characters from the Latin/Roman alphabet) because their language was originally oral only. "Squamish Nation" is the government of the Squamish people. See the Wikipedia article Squamish Nation. Squamish is a disambiguation page with numerous possible articles, so I figured that "Squamish people" would be the most appropriate title for the rename for this article. And it seems to be in line with the names of (most) other articles on specific indigenous peoples of Canada (at least the ones that fit the naming convention guidelines).  --MsBatfish (talk) 01:56, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

text: Other native American groups have endonyms which are demonstrably more widely used in English: Diné, Tsalagi, Absaalooke, Muskogee, Lakota, and Tohono O'odham. Only the last two are not redirects to the traditional English exonyms. In the case of Lakota, the exonym "Sioux" refers to other groups as well, and the Tohono O'odham have put a lot of effort into pushing their endonym, to the extent that it is probably more used today in English than "Papago".--Curtis Clark (talk) 04:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: * Still, that's a political reason to title the article Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. There could certainly be some mention of the controversy about the name and it's history in the article (provided there are sources for it of course). I don't see how it justifies going against the article naming guidelines solely because some people dislike the spelling Squamish. --MsBatfish (talk) 06:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'm not arguing either way; I just wanted to provide some perspective on how it ended up at this title. Certainly many other Wikipedia articles have names for political reasons, in many cases after carefully crafted compromises. In this case, it seems that the editors who strongly supported "Sḵwx̱wú7mesh" are either no longer around or else don't have this article on their watchlists. User:OldManRivers, who I believe is Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, last edited in June 2010. I also notice that the endonym Kwakwaka'wakw is used as the article title ("Kwakiutl", the commonest English exonym, is inaccurate); perhaps endonyms are more often used in Canada, or at least in British Columbia.--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:22, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: *I know you were just explaining what happened in the past & why to your knowledge :-) I was just explaining that I understood but still disagree with the naming. Wikipedia is not the place to try to bring about changes in the public vernacular. I also think part of the contention with this article in particular is that it uses non-English characters & diacriticals which are not widely known. At least the Kwakwaka'wakw title is in English characters (although I would still debate whether it's the most commonly known English word for it - even in BC Canada where I live). But I'm not saying that some of the other article titles don't also need to be changed, (as In ictu oculi mentioned), if they violate Wikipedia:naming conventions. I am not trying to be insensitive - I am part native myself - but I just find article titles like "Sḵwx̱wú7mesh" confusing and to be in contradiction with the pertinent policy. --MsBatfish (talk) 01:45, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

text: The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move.  Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
*Comment This move has turned out to have disastrous consequences as it was used to speedy-changed the ethno category to :Category:Squamish which is now undergoing an arduous and, because of this article-title, seemingly intractable CfR where the premise that article titles and category names "must" match, despite the existing standards within IPNA and WPCAN to use the endonyms where appropriate (as they were here).  This is not a matter of sensitivity or a confusing title (as if it were alone in Wikipedia in being a term most people don't recognize).  The move should have been to remove diacriticals only; the mess that's created is deplorable, as are the arguments by rule-biters who resist any logic to the need for a better category name; both article and category should be at the un-diacritical Skwxwu7mesh or of -mesh isn't redundant for people, Skwxwu7mesh people.  The current situation is untenable and this RM and others that happened re the St'at'imc and Nlaka'pamux and others need revisitation........Skookum1 (talk) 14:33, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

text: OH really??  Fine thing for YOU to say after all the reckless speedy moves you'd done which provided the terms for the close on the RM that caused :Category:Squamish and would have caused :Category:Lillooet, :Category:Chilcotin, :Category:Shuswap and other completely confusing namespace collisions if your speedies hadn't been corrected after long and arduous argument with YOU, no matter how many cites were brought forward you still dug in your heels and opposed any and all cites, citing specious reasons to ignore them and insist on your own way.  Fine thing to SAY that category names don't HAVE to match main article names, but too many others have been operating as though they must be changed, which is what happened to what is now :Category:Squamish and also .  You're been reckless, arrogant, and once again, as here, incredibly smug.Skookum1 (talk) 04:08, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested Move (Nov 23, 2011)

message: I came looking for what I know had been here about the meaning of the name.....where'd it go?  Been lots of vandalism here of late, maybe it didn't get reverted once it got deleted; it's not on the language page either.Skookum1 (talk) 10:36, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I may have removed it until I get get a proper citation. Or it got deleted in some of the edits/vandalisms. I can’t remember which took place. Haha 02:02, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Reason I was asking was re the -mesh ending....is that "people" such that "Skwxwu7mesh people" is redundant?Skookum1 (talk) 06:41, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting note on that. There are theories that /-mesh/ and /-mexw/ have similar origins.  They both mean "people" in different Coast Salish languages. Hence, Snuneymuxw.  The word for people in hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ is xʷəlmexʷ, where as in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh it is stélmexw. Similar, you see. Then you travel to the interior where we get Sƛ’aƛ’imxǝc and Nlaka'pamux, with the same ending. In the Washington side of things, we have Sʼabš (Samish) or Suqʷabš (Suquamish).  The /b/ at one time may have been an /m/ instead, which would result in all those being amš, which is similar to -mesh.  Hence, when we look at the languages, one can see how the Coast Salish and Interior Salish are related. I will look for reference/citation to include the explaining of -mesh on the Squamish people article though. OldManRivers (talk) 01:17, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: K, thanks, would be good to know before attempting an RM....the slashed lambda re St'at'imcets by the way, pretty sure if you use that there's no need for the apostrophe; in the Van Eijk orthography for St'at'imcets that's now official with the SN/LTC and USCCLES the /t'/ represents that "ƛ" sound, it's not a glottal stop or, as it is in Chinookan, a plosive 't'.Skookum1 (talk) 02:48, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, having said that, the older official orthography, still used by the Stl'atl'imx Tribal Police and the Lower Stl'atl'imx Tribal Council, has an apostrophe in it, maybe there's an implicit glottal-stop or voiceless marker, I'm not sure; the old orthography is the closest to English-style romanization of the sounds, Stlatliumh, which you'll see in older writings and on older maps, sometimes as Slatliumh...."people of Sat'" it means, where Sat is the Bridge River Fishing Grounds.  The name Lillooet wasn't applied to the Fraser River or Lakes groups until the town was renamed in 1860, just as since then the "people of Sat" meaning is now used by the Lil'wat and the Lower Lillooet (Skatin, Samahquam, Xa'xtsa/Douglas), though for the language they prefer the name Ucwalmicwts down that way (that's on the title of the primer from the Upper St'at'imc Cultural and Language Education Society I have in storage somewhere....so is the norm within the language; Ucwalmicw is of course cognate to your Uxwuimixw or whatever it is....Skookum1 (talk) 02:56, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  what happened to the explanation of  the name that used to be here? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I just wanted to provide some feedback for possible edits to be made! I think that there are some underrepresented views in this article that can be improved upon. What I mean by this can be first seen in the sections discussing the land and geographical history of the Squamish. Although a very substantial, painful aspect of the Squamish history is the forced unsettlement of their land by the Canadian government, this was glossed over in the "European colonization and the Indian Reserves" section. There is just one small portion that discusses how lands were "sold away" both "legally and illegally". The section also cites one specific instance but sums it up in one sentence by saying "families were forced into leaving". Here, I think it would be helpful instead to elaborate on how the Squamish people were unsettled. For example, one piece by Jean Barman goes in-depth into a particular instance where premier Richard McBride pushed the Squamish people out of their homes by citing the 1911 Amendment to the Indian Act which allowed the government to remove Indigenous People from reserves without their consent (Barman, Jean). When the Squamish were forced out, the government burned down the homes there. Stories such as this are extremely important in understanding the Squamish history and Canada's place in it. Another edit that could help would be adding some more pictures of modern-day Squamish people. For example, pictures of Squamish people playing lacrosse or at city hall? Although it is important to showcase the Squamish people in their cultural attire and through historical pictures, it is also important to showcase a modern-day Squamish. This is because depicting every Indigenous person as a warrior ensures that we continually paint them in that light, exclusively. Lastly, I think adding a section about sports would be extremely valuable. The Squamish people have strong ties to canoeing and lacrosse, which many people are unaware of. In fact, the Squamish people have played lacrosse in "pre-contact" times (Teiontsikwaeks). It is important to show that the Squamish were their own people with their own games and sports and that they introduced these to the colonists, not the other way around. Being wary of not accepting the European colonial version of history is crucial I think making the aforementioned edits would help bolster the article as a whole and allow it to represent the views of the Squamish equally. Geec22 (talk) 16:07, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underrepresented Views