Petroglyph Provinical Park, BC

The petroglyphs at Petroglyph Provincial Park were created by the ancestors of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, a Coast Salish people who have inhabited the Nanaimo region for over five thousand years. The carvings are at least a thousand years old, depicting sea wolves, supernatural beings, and human figures associated with shamanistic practice, vision quests, and ceremonial life. The park was established in 1948 as one of British Columbia's earliest efforts to protect indigenous rock art.

Snuneymuxw mythology tells of the powerful shaman Thauxwaam, who grew arrogant in his abilities. The creator Xaals — a transformer figure in Coast Salish tradition who reshaped the world and its inhabitants — punished Thauxwaam by turning him to stone. This transformation story connects the rock formations and petroglyphs to the spiritual authority of the creator and serves as a lasting teaching about the limits of human power before the sacred.

The petroglyphs themselves belong to a broader Coast Salish rock art tradition in which carvings were made at places of concentrated spiritual force. According to this tradition, locations were chosen not randomly but at sites marked by distinctive natural features — waterfalls, rock formations, caves — and nearly always near water. The carvings recorded encounters with the spirit world: vision quests, shamanistic journeys, meetings with supernatural beings. They were also records of communal events — coming-of-age ceremonies, potlatches, territorial boundaries — and of significant natural events such as floods, storms, and wars.