Dr. Dorothy Kennedy

​DR. DOROTHY KENNEDY, ANTHROPOLOGIST & ETHNOHISTORIAN
THE STORIED LAND OF PLENTY: K’ΌMOK PLACE-NAMING & THE MERGING OF TWO DISTINCT CULTURES—SALISHAN & LEKWILTOK

K'ómoks First Nation today is made up of several formerly separate tribes—culturally K’ómoks and Pentlatch of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Dr. Dorothy Kennedy’s talk will share with us how the landscape provides the foundation of multiple forms of social knowledge—informing social practices, social systems, and social relationships, as well as the boundaries between them. 

We know that what is named and how it is named is culture-specific. Dr. Kennedy will share how local place names and associated stories evolved from the land and share insights—particularly those from her work with renowned Elder, Mrs. Mary Clifton and others reported, gleaned between 1971 and 1981—of how those practices have come to shape our home here in the Comox Valley.  

K’όmok place-naming is deeply rooted in human experience, in this instance, an experience involving merging two distinct cultures, one Salishan and the other Lekwiltok. 

Join us as we explore those concepts in Dr. Dorothy Kennedy’s talk, The Storied Land of Plenty. Her presentation will be at 11:15 AM during the invitation-only morning program at this year’s K’όmok Festival, June 21, 2023.

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ABOUT DR. DOROTHY KENNEDY

Dr. Dorothy Kennedy is an anthropologist and ethnohistorian specializing in the cultures and history of British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples. 
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Dr. Kennedy was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal at the University of Victoria for her award-winning master’s thesis on Coast Salish social organisation. She went on to complete her doctorate at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. 
Her expertise relating to Indigenous peoples is relied upon by the Courts in deciding issues of Aboriginal Rights and Title and by First Nations in regulatory matters, claims, and cultural revitalization programs. 

Her fifty years of fieldwork includes research amongst the K’όmoks, working in the 1970s with renowned Elder, Mrs. Mary Clifton. Drawing from this research, undertaken with her husband/colleague, linguist and ethnographer Randy Bouchard, we are honoured to have Dr. Dorothy Kennedy present “The Storied Land of Plenty” at this year’s K’όmoks Festival.