Kwakwaka'wakw People - Terminology

Terminology

The term Kwakiutl for the Kwakwaka'wakw, popularized by anthropologist Franz Boas, was widely used into the 1980s. It comes from one of the Kwakwaka'wakw tribes, the Kwagu'ł, at Fort Rupert, with whom Franz Boas did most of his anthropological work and whose Indian Act band government is the Kwakiutl First Nation. The term was also misapplied to mean all the tribes who spoke Kwak'wala, as well as three other indigenous peoples whose language is a part of the Wakashan linguistical group, but whose language is not Kwak'wala. These peoples, incorrectly known as the Northern Kwakiutl, were the Haisla, Wuikinuxv, and Heiltsuk.