The Gwawaenuk Tribe, or Gwawaʼenux̱w is a First Nations band government of the Kwakwaka'wakw people located in the Queen Charlotte Strait region of the Central Coast region of British Columbia, Canada. The Gwawaenuk Tribe has no year-round road access to a service centre and being about 160 km to 240 km from the nearest service centre.
Language.
As of 2012, about half the tribe speaks the Kwak'wala language. The tribe's dialect is called "Gwawaenuk."
Demographics.
First nation number 627 with 39 members. It is one of about 175 Aboriginal Communities in Canada that is off-the-grid.
List of Reserves.
Indian reserves under the administration of the band are:
Recent community history.
In 2009, the Gwawaenuk collaborated on a local pilot project to fight diabetes, called "Diabetes and My Nation," which proved to be unusually successful, according to a report at the World Diabetes Congress in Montreal. The program coupled education on medical checkups and healthy eating, including traditional foods, with community events promoting physical activity, such as a "young warriors program that had youth build and race a canoe."
In 2011, a "European strain of the Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) virus has been identified in wild sockeye smolt taken from the Rivers Inlet region of British Columbia. Gwawaenuk Chief Charlie Williams has been vehemently opposed to salmon farming in his territory due to concerns about environmental impacts, including disease transfer. Gwawaenuk territory is centred around Watson Island in the Broughton Archipelago." The tribe, which depends on marine life for subsistence, opposes nearby fish farming as a potential source of disease affecting wild salmon. A 2003 lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the Sierra Club, because "98% of our wild pink Salmon run was massacred by sea lice." "The lawsuit asks for an injunction to prevent the stocking of open net cage salmon aquaculture facilities in the Broughton, to prevent the use of SLICE, a pesticide that has been scientifically shown to have impacts on crustaceans and has not been generally approved for use in Canada, and to require that infected sites remove infected fish from the marine environment." Tribal members have learned GIS for coastal mapping.
Hereditary chief Robert Joseph served as a "special adviser at West Vancouver's Indian Residential School Survivors Society', serving those who had suffered abuse at Indian boarding schools prior to their 1966 closure, in conjunction with the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Traditional Gwawaenuk masks are featured in the exhibits of the Museum at Campbell River.
References.
 ;templatestyles src="Reflist/styles.css" / ;