Talk:Tsimshian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Alaska, an effort to create, expand, organize, and improve Alaska-related articles to a feature-quality standard.

	This article is part of WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America, which collaborates on Native American, First Nations, and related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet been rated on the assessment scale.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. Before assessing this article, be sure to check the existing Archive of assessments made under the previous system (used until July 2006), and feel free to help in migrating the existing comments besides from adding your own evaluation. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.
Please rate this article and leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

	This article is part of WikiProject British Columbia, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to British Columbia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
	If you have rated this article please consider adding assessment comments.

This page needs a lot of work. Many of the claims made in the last section are unsubstaniated, unclear, and irrelevant. It would be great if someone familiar with the details of the Tsimshian culture could help to make this more specific and accurate or rewrite the whole section. Dan Lesh 07:08, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notes for later on dialects

Came across Gitgaat Community Language page, which is about the small community of Hartley Bay, British Columbia, which was in the news lately re the Queen of the North sinking. Quoted from that webpage for later writers of this page:

The Gitga’at originally spoke Sguuks or Sguumxs (Southern Tsimshian), but adopted the more widely spoken Sm’algyax (Coast Tsimshian) during their stay with missionary William Duncan in Metlakatla. Sm’algyax literally means ‘the Real Language’ or ‘Real Talk’. The Sm’algyax name for Hartley Bay is Txalgiu. Sm’algyax was historically an oral language. Christian missionaries were the first to write the language when they completed translations of the Bible. English is presently the predominant language of the Gitga’at community in Hartley Bay, although many elders remain fluent in Sm’algyax and the village school continues traditional language programs.Skookum1 01:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)