The Gitga'ata (sometimes also spelled Gitga'at or Gitk'a'ata) are one of the 14 tribes of the Tsimshian First Nation in British Columbia, Canada, and inhabit the village of Hartley Bay, British Columbia. The name Gitga'ata in the Tsimshian language means "people of the cane" (as in, a ceremonial stick). The Gitga'ata, along with the Kitasoo Tsimshians at Klemtu, B.C., are often classed as "Southern Tsimshian," their traditional language being the southern dialect of the Tsimshian language. Most Tsimshian-speakers in Hartley Bay, however, speak the form of the language shared by villages to the north. The Tsimshian (usually pronounced in English SIM-shee-an), translated as People Inside the Skeena River, are a Native American and First Nation people who live around Terrace and Prince Rupert, on the north coast of British Columbia and the southernmost corner of Alaska on Annette Island. ... Motto: Splendor Sine Occasu (Latin: Splendour without diminishment) Official languages English de facto (none stated in law) Flower Pacific dogwood Tree Western Redcedar Bird Stellers Jay Capital Victoria Largest city Vancouver Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo Premier Gordon Campbell (BC Liberal) Parliamentary representation  - House seats  - Senate seats 36 6 Area... Hartley Bay, B.C. 2003 Hartley Bay, B.C. ca 1980 Hartley Bay is a small First Nations community on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. ... Klemtu is a village in the coastal fjords of British Columbia, Canada. ...

In 1947, Edmund Patalas ("belonging to the Kitamat tribe at Hartley Bay") described to the Tsimshian ethnologist William Beynon the origins of the Laxsgiik (Eagle clan) people of the "Gitxon" group who migrated from the land of the Haida people on the Queen Charlotte Islands first to Kitamaat and then to the Gitga'ata people, where a branch of this group, the House of Sinaxeet, is now considered "the royal Eagle house of Kitkata" (described in Barbeau's Totem Poles). William Beynon (1888-1958) was a hereditary chief from the Tsimshian nation (British Columbia, Canada) and an oral historian who served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists. ... The Haida are an indigenous people of the west coast of North America. ... Leaving Skidegate Inlet aboard BC Ferries M/V Queen of Prince Rupert The Queen Charlotte Islands or Haida Gwaii are an archipelago off the northwest coast of British Columbia, Canada, consisting of two main islands, Graham Island in the North, and Moresby Island in the south, and approximately 150 smaller...

Bibliography

• Barbeau, Marius (1950) Totem Poles. 2 vols. (Anthropology Series 30, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 119.) Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.

• Miller, Jay (1997) Tsimshian Culture: A Light through the Ages. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

• Seguin, Margaret (ed.) (1984) The Tsimshian: Images of the Past; Views for the Present. Vancouver: UBC Press.