What Was Said to Me

A narrative of resistance and resilience spanning seven decades in the life of a tireless advocate for Indigenous language preservation. Life histories are a form of contemporary social history and convey important messages about identity, cosmology, social behaviour and ones place in the world. This first-person oral historythe first of its kind ever published by the Royal BC Museumdocuments a period of profound social change through the lens of Stitumatulwutalso known as Mrs. Ruby Petera Cowichan elder who made it her lifes work to share and safeguard the ancient language of her people: Hulquminum. Over seven decades, Stitumatulwut mentored hundreds of students and teachers and helped thousands of people to develop a basic knowledge of the Hulquminum language. She contributed to dictionaries and grammars, and helped assemble a valuable corpus of stories, sound and video fileswith more than 10,000 pages of texts from Hulquminum speakersthat has been described as a treasure of linguistic and cultural knowledge. Without her passion, commitment and expertise, this rich legacy of material would not exist for future generations