indigenous – Visit Lillooet

Xwísten Experience Tours

Post category:Eat & Drink Fishing Around Lillooet Heritage & Culture Historic Sites Indigenous Experiences Restaurants Sports & Outdoor Recreation

Discover one of British Columbia’s most immersive Indigenous cultural experiences. Xwísten Experience Tours offers guided pit house (S7ístken) tours, salmon drying demonstrations, and storytelling rooted in thousands of years of St’át’imc culture and land-based knowledge. Visitors learn directly from community members about traditional food harvesting, sustainable practices, and the living heritage of the Xwísten people.

Traditional Fishing Rock & Archaeological Village Tours and The Bearfoot Grill. Visit the Bridge River Fishing Grounds, the past and current fishing area of the St’át’imc People. Learn about the traditional wind-dried method of preserving the salmon still used by its people today.

Learn more at XwistenTours.ca

Lillooet Museum

Post category:Heritage & Culture Hiking Resources Historic Sites

Glimpse into Lillooet’s past in the Lillooet Museum, itself housed housed in the former Anglican Church, St Mary’s the Virgin. The church was first built in 1860, from timber carried piece by piece on the backs of miners and mules over the rugged Harrison-Lillooet trail, then reconstructed in 1961 with the original chancel.

Browse through the collection of artifacts, including the original church service bell and melodeon, gold mining relics, Indigenous artifacts, machinery, memories of Lillooet’s pioneer days, the largest mounted Rocky Mountain Elk head ever registered in BC, and more. Take a peek downstairs to discover the old newspaper office of fiery and famed editor Margaret “Ma” Murray.

The Museum is situated in downtown Lillooet at St. Mary the Virgin, a former Anglican church. The original St. Mary’s, which was torn down in 1960, stood on the same spot and arrived on the backs of miners and their mules, who carried the timber, piece by piece over the rugged Harrison-Lillooet trail in 1860. The original chancel was incorporated in the new St. Mary’s and the melodeon and bell from the old church are displayed in the museum.

Declaration of the Lillooet Tribe

Post category:Heritage & Culture Stories of our Past

(May 10, 1911)

To Whom It May Concern:

We the underwritten chiefs of the Lillooet tribe (being all the chiefs of said tribe) declare as follows:

We speak the truth, and we speak for our whole tribe, numbering about 1400 people at the present time.

We claim that we are the rightful owners of our tribal territory, and everything pertaining thereto.

We have always lived in our country; at no time have we ever deserted it, or left it to others.

We have retained it from the invasion of other tribes at the cost of our blood.

Our ancestors were in possession of our country centuries before the whites ever came.

It is the same as yesterday when the latter came, and like the day before when the first fur trader came.

We are aware the B.C. government claims our country, like all other Indian territories in B.C.; but we deny their right to it.

We never gave it nor sold it to them.