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Kwakiutl

 
Dictionary: Kwa·ki·u·tl   (kwä'kē-ūt'l) pronunciation
n., pl., Kwakiutl, or -tls.
    1. A Native American people inhabiting parts of coastal British Columbia and northern Vancouver Island.
    2. A member of this people.
  1. The Wakashan language of the Kwakiutl.

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Northwest Coast Indian people who live along the shores of Vancouver Island, B.C., Can., and the mainland opposite. They speak a Wakashan language and call themselves Kwakwaka'wakw, meaning "those who speak Kwakwala." Traditionally, the Kwakiutl subsisted mainly by fishing and had a technology based largely on woodworking. Their society was stratified by rank, determined primarily by inheritance. The potlatch was elaborately developed and was often combined with dances and songs dramatizing ancestral experiences with supernatural beings. They continue to be known for their highly stylized art, which includes totem poles and striking masks. Early 21st-century population estimates indicated approximately 700 individuals of Kwakiutl descent.

For more information on Kwakiutl, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Kwakiutl
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Kwakiutl (kwä'kēū'təl), group of closely related Native North Americans who inhabit N Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland of British Columbia, Canada. They, together with the Nootka, their southern neighbors, make up the Wakashan branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). Kwakiutl culture was typical of the Northwest Coast area (including the custom of potlatch). The ethnographer Franz Boas produced a significant number of ethnographic studies on the Kwakiutl. Numbering c.15,000 before European contact, they are now reduced to around 4,000 and are mainly engaged in fishing and farming.

Bibliography

See F. Boas, Kwakiutl Ethnography, ed. by H. F. Codere (1966); R. P. Rohner and E. C. Rohner, The Kwakiutl (1970).


WordNet: Kwakiutl
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: a member of the Wakashan people living on Queen Charlotte Sound and northern Vancouver Island

Meaning #2: a Wakashan language spoken by the Kwakiutl people


Wikipedia: Kwakiutl
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The term Kwakiutl, historically applied to the entire Kwakwaka'wakw enthno-linguistic group of peoples, comes from one of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes, the Kwagu'ł or Kwagyeulth, at Fort Rupert, with whom Franz Boas did most of his anthropological work and whose Indian Act Band government is the Kwakiutl First Nation. The term is now considered a misnomer by most of the peoples it is applied to, the correct term for whom is Kwakwaka'wakw, which means Kwak'wala-speaking-peoples, although some bands such as the Legwiltok at Campbell River still embrace it -they are known as the Southern Kwakiutl and the tribal council they are in is the Kwakiutl District Council (which includes the Kwakiutl First Nation).

The term, created by anthropologist Franz Boas, was widely used into the 1980s and remains current in other languages than English, but is nowadays rejected by most Kwakwaka'wakw groups.

"Northern Kwakiutl"

The term was also misapplied to mean all the tribes who spoke Kwak'wala, as well as three other indigenous peoples whose language is a part of the Wakashan linguistical group, but whose language is not Kwak'wala. These peoples, incorrectly known as the Northern Kwakiutl, are the Haisla, Wuikinuxv, and Heiltsuk.


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kwakiutl" Read more