Kwak'wala is a Wakashan language spoken by the Kwakwaka'wakw and Laich-kwil-tach (Euclataws or Southern Kwakiutl) people of northern Vancouver Island. These peoples collectively are known as the Kwakiutl and are among the most numerous of the British Columbia Coast. There are about 250 Kwak'wala speakers today which is only about 5% of the entire Kwakiutl population. Wakashan is a family of languages spoken around Vancouver Island. ... Kwakwakawakw (also Kwakiutl, pronounced Kwa-gyu-thl) is a term used to describe a group of Canadian First Nations people, numbering about 5,500, who live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the mainland. ... Laich-kwil-tach is the proper spelling in the Kwakwala language of the name used for themselves by the Southern Kwakiutl people of Quadra Island and Campbell River. ... Vancouver Island is separated from mainland British Columbia by the Strait of Georgia and the Queen Charlotte Strait, and from Washington by the Juan De Fuca Strait. ... Until the 1980s the termKwakiutl was usually applied to all of the various First Nations peoples of northern Vancouver Island, Queen Charlotte Strait and the Johnstone Strait whose traditional Wakashan language was Kwakwala. ... The British Columbia Coast is one of Canadas two continental coastlines, the other being the coastline from the Beaufort Sea of the Arctic Ocean via the Northwest Passage and Hudson Bay to the Ungava Peninsula and Labrador and the Gulf of St. ...