Margaret Siwallace

Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, 1985

Margaret Siwallace was born in Kimsquit, B.C. Educated at the Crosby Indian Girls School at Port Simpson, Margaret Siwallace was an excellent translator, moving easily between English, Chinook, and her own native Nuxalk (Bella Coola) language. An intercultural woman of great personal and scholarly integrity, Siwallace was the principal source for many papers and theses in fields that ranged from ethnobotany to linguistics, history to nutrition, and ethnomedicine to pharmacology. A true scholar and scientist in her own right, she fought for First Nations rights, working for her own community as well as for good relations amongst others. Siwallace mediated and unraveled many knotty problems in politics, law, customs, science and more general scholarship. Trained for chieftainship from an early age--which office of the Nuxalk people she graced with rare ability for many years--she was a great historian. She was a mother of five, grandmother of eighteen and great-grandmother to thirty. Throughout a long life which had known dire tragedy as well as the extremes of material poverty, Margaret Siwallace has always been generous of herself, freely sharing with others the qualities and wealth of her mind and heart, her knowledge, her sympathy and her insight. She earned the respect, admiration and love of all who encountered her.

Photo by Kent Danielson, 1985