‘The First Time We've Ever Had a Place to Call Our Own’

Laughter is the first thing Sulatiye’ Maiya Modeste sees when she imagines Quw’utsun Elders and youth returning home to Xwaaqw’um, or Burgoyne Bay, on Salt Spring Island.

“When I think of success, I'm thinking of grandma teaching youth how to weave and everybody laughing,” said Sulatiye’, who comes from the village of Quamichan in Quw’utsun, or Cowichan. “The facilitation of intergenerational learning is one of the biggest goals that I have.”

Through her role as the Garry Oak ecosystem restoration co-ordinator for Stqeeye’ Learning Society, Sulatiye’ is leading the Mi tse’ t’awk, or Coming Home campaign to restore a 10-acre property adjacent to Xwaaqw’um for Quw’utsun people to call a permanent home. The property, which the society has purchased from private landowners, is the unceded territory of the Quw’utsun people.

“This is the first time we've ever had a place to call our own. And that's insane to me, that this is the first campaign of its kind in the past 200 years. And this is the first opportunity we've had to buy land back here on Salt Spring Island.”

Sulatiye’s grandparents founded the non-profit Stqeeye’ Learning Society in 2014. Since then, she said it has been their dream to return to Xwaaqw’um, where her late grandfather’s traditional name comes from. In 2021, Sulatiye’ began working for the non-profit where she has been leading its recent land acquisition campaign, which has raised nearly half of its $2 million fundraising goal.

Once complete, Sulatiye’ envisions Xwaaqw’um as a burgeoning home base with a building and outhouse for Stqeeye’ Learning Society staff to use, a smokehouse for fish, room to store medicines, a processing building and walk-in cooler for hunting, a multi-purpose building, and camping platforms for youth and cultural camps.

Sulatiye’ currently lives with her grandmother on the land in a house which will also receive major upgrades through the project.

“A lot of it is meeting accessibility needs, so that my grandma can really grow old in this house,” she said.

Zita Botelho with Watersheds BC nominated Sulatiye’ for the Real Estate Foundation of BC’s Emerging Leader Award. The award recognizes a young person who has had a positive impact on others and proven their potential as a catalyst for change. Sulatiye’ won and was recognized at the Land Awards Gala that took place on June 13 in Vancouver.

“[Modeste] operates with integrity by centring her ancestors’ teachings in all of her work,” wrote Botelho in her nomination. “She walks her talk by sharing their teachings at every opportunity.”

Sulatiye’ said her grandparents were a large part of what led her to this leadership role, and that her grandfather always wanted to see youth return to Xwaaqw’um because they “bring a heartbeat back into the land.”

“It was always about coming home, and reconnecting with culture, and most importantly, bringing youth back onto the land to learn to revitalize a lot of our practices that have been lost and stolen from colonization.”

Sulatiye’ has also been working to reintroduce Indigenous staple foods, like camus, chocolate lily or deltoid balsamroot, to Xwaaqw’um in support of food sovereignty. She hopes to one day teach youth how to harvest, prepare, preserve and cook it, so Elders may eat traditional meals that come from the land.

But this can only happen once they know the land intimately again. “Because it's also a BC Park we can't say how those dogs or people have interacted with this plant or our medicine, so we don't really harvest from those public spaces.”

“A version of success I also see is being able to harvest on our land knowing that there are no pesticides, no animals interacting with it or using it as a bathroom, or there's no pollution.”