Kwakwaka'wakw mythology

This article is about the spiritual beliefs, histories and practices in Kwakwaka'wakw mythology. The Kwakwaka'wakw are a group of Indigenous nations, numbering about 5,500, who live in the central coast of British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the mainland. Kwakwaka'wakw translates into "Kwak'wala speaking tribes." However, the tribes are single autonomous nations and do not view themselves collectively as one group.

These people share many common cultural customs with neighboring nations. These peoples share beliefs in many of the same spirits and deities, although they speak different languages. Some spirits are however totally unique to one or two cultures and are not universally known throughout the Northwest Coast. Each tribe has its own history, practices, and stories. Some origin stories belong to only one specific tribe, while another tribe has its own stories. But many practices, rituals, and ceremonies occur throughout Kwakwaka'wakw culture, and in some cases, neighboring indigenous cultures also.

The Kwakwaka'wakw creation narrative states the world was created by a raven flying over water, who, finding nowhere to land, decided to create islands by dropping small pebbles into the water. He then created trees and grass, and, after several failed attempts, he made the first man and woman out of wood and clay.

Like all Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, most of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes have stories about their people surviving the flood. With some of these nations, their history talks of their ancestors transforming into their natural form and disappearing while the waters rose then subsided. For others, they have stories of their people attaching their oceangoing canoes to tall peaking mountains. For the stories about supernatural powers, these figures tend to be the founding clans of some Kwakwaka'wakw nations.

Tseiqami is a man who comes from the cedar tree and Thunderbird, lord of the winter dance season, a massive supernatural bird whose wing beats cause the thunder, and the flash of whose eyes causes lightning. Tseiqami hunts whales for its dinner out at sea, and sometimes helped heroic ancestors build houses by placing giant cedar beams for them. Thunderbird has a younger brother named Kolus.

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