Welcome to the Híɫzaqv Language and Culture Mobilization Partnership!

Through an MoU signed in 2016, the Heiltsuk Cultural Education Centre, the Bella Bella Community School and UBC’s First Nations and Endangered Languages Program are partnering in an effort to collaboratively create new opportunities for speaking, writing and reading the Híɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) language by expanding and deepening existing community language revitalization and cultural documentation in a digital environment. The partnership brings together students, staff and faculty in Vancouver and Bella Bella by providing spaces to productively combine academic and community goals.

We are grateful to members of the Heiltsuk Nation in Bella Bella and beyond, for their gracious welcome and their invitation to work in respectful partnership in their traditional territories.

Bella Bella: View from head of a bay with structures along left coastline. From: View In the Cascade Mountains: On Coast Exploration of 1874 (Charles Horetzky, 1838-1900)