Seabird Island Festival

Seabird Island First Nation Festival 2023 Map

You are invited to visit the Annual Seabird Island Festival.

The festival is open to the public to attend and take in some local culture.

This First Nation Festival is comprised of a series of First Nation tournaments; war canoe races, soccer and baseball. Also featured at the festival this year will be some cultural performers, arts and crafts and a variety of vendors.

People start arriving Friday night, but the main event starts Saturday morning around 10 a.m. and ends around 6 p.m. Sunday evening, with the main events occurring between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day.

Festival History

In 2019 Seabird celebrated its 50th year of Seabird Festival, however the tradition predates 1969 Festival.

Historically, prior to British settlement, First Nation communities in the area came together regularly for festivals such as this. The “People of the River” use to all travel up and down the rivers in their canoes, going to each community and having festivals where they shared culture, played sports, and traded goods. Seabird Island continues this rich tradition with the Seabird Festival each year on the last weekend in May.

Seabird Island First Nation (Sq’éwqel) is in the upper Fraser Valley, three kilometers northeast of Agassiz, British Columbia.

The English designation of Sea-bird Island is derived from the June 1858 grounding of the trans-port paddle wheeler Sea Bird, on an island, in the Fraser River, across from Sq’éwqel. Halq’emeylem for “turn in the river” Sq’éwqel is referred to by Indian Reserve Commissioner (1878 – 1880) Gilbert M Sproat as Skow-a-kull in his allocation statement and accompanying sketch of Seabird Island. Sq’éwqel identified a village located at the northern tip of Seabird Island, across the river from Skw’átits or what is contemporarily known as Peter’s Reserve. In June 1879, G. M. Sproat, Indian Reserve Commissioner, in consultation with interested First Nations people, allocated the island called “Skow-a-kull” as a reserve to be held in common by the people from Popkum, Skw’átits, Ohamil, Ska-wah-look, Hope, Union Bar and Yale. In 1958, Seabird Island Band.