Vancouver Island Tree Stories

We need your help identifying and locating these trees to include them in this project. Indigenous people have revered trees for millennia as practical, spiritual, medicinal, and nutritional essentials in their culture. In the 1980’s Government Foresters of British Columbia gave the term ‘Culturally Modified Tree (CMT)’ to describe trees altered by indigenous people prior to 1846. Vancouver Island has been inhabited at least since the last glaciers receded 10,000 years ago with three distinct nations of indigenous people establishing firm territories over millenniums. Today people of the Coast Salish live along the south east of the island, Nuu-chah-nulth live all along the west coast, and the Kwakwaka’wakw inhabit the north of the island.