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Background Anthropology
The social organisation of the Halkomelem people, as explained by Suttles (1990:465) was divided into the siem (worthy people), the siexem (worthless people) and the skeye (slave class). These boundaries were divided by the blood associations with accomplished ancestors and often stretch relations to what degree could be associate withed these ancestors. These family groups that make association to the accomplished ancestors would then have access, by ancestral links, to the technology, ritual and resource extraction areas that were associated with these ancestors. A good example of this would be the lineage's fishing spot, or berry picking location. Even within the kin group, there would be a ranking that would grant on the most apt the most important and ritualised rights in the group. Due to the great degree of wealth that was delineated, having strong family ties and ancestral association led to wealthy existence. The siem class is the group with the strongest lineal ties and therefore the group with the greatest resource base. The great accumulation of wealth by the siem class allowed the retention of slaves, the skeye. The siexem people would have been the people with access to the least stable and lowest quality resources as they had no lineage based rights to the most profitable locations.
Canoe based travel was the main mode of transportation of the Halkomelem people (Suttles, 1990:462). Many resources were obtained though the use of canoes and was thus of great importance. Also, a great deal of inter-group marriage was completed using long distance travel as it was a great cultural taboo to marry all but the most distant cousin. These marriages created extensive trade networks that would have given groups access to advantageous goods such as Camas, one of few carbohydrate dense foods on these region of the coast (Suttles, 1990:459). It is important to note that salt-water canoes were so important to the Halkomelem people that they persisted as far as Hope, which are the practical limits of these large 30 person boats in the Fraser River (Suttles, 1990). Considering the scale and degree of specialisation of these boats, it would take a great deal of the labour to comission the creatioin of such large boats. .
The division in travel between the three distinct groups of the Halkomelem seems to be divided between the siem/skeye and the siexem. This division seems likely as the siem would have retained the skeye as labours in any trade excursion with distant locations. This leaves the siexem out of the water based travel as it seems unlikely, due largely to the poor resource quality and density available to the siexem, that boat construction would be apart of their reality, at least for some individuals.