Collected in this book are the personal life histories of four female St’át’imc elders: Beverley Frank, Gertrude Ned, Laura Thevarge, and Rose Agnes Whitley. These elders are among the last remaining fluent speakers of St’át’imcets, a severely imperilled Northern Interior Salish language, also known as Lillooet and spoken in the southwest interior of British Columbia. Their stories are presented in the original St’át’imcets as well as in English translation. A morpheme-by-morpheme gloss is provided for the purposes of linguistic analysis.

These texts are among the longest oral narratives of the Salish language to be grammatically analyzed. They are also of a rare type, in that they consist of personal memories rather than of myths or legends: They provide first-hand accounts of what it was like to be a female child growing up in the 1930s and ’40s both within St’át’imc communities and in residential schools. Important historical information is woven into the stories – about events in the Lillooet area, the traditional St’át’imc way of life, and the consequences of contact with Western culture.

When I Was Small – I Wan Kwikws will be of interest to members of St’át’imc communities, including teachers and curriculum developers, and to linguists, anthropologists, and others studying the St’at’imc, their culture, and their language.