Just In: Exclusive: Inside Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Meaningful Visit to Squamish Nation…..See More

We righted a wrong from the past,” Squamish spokesperson Wilson Williams tells T&C. “It was a special moment with our community.”

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s trip to Canada continued with a meaningful visit to Squamish Nation.

“It’s a special day for us,” Wilson Williams, the spokesperson for Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation), tells T&C. “I’ve been waiting to host them in our community. I’ve been a part of the [Invictus] journey for three years.”

That journey began when Vancouver and Whistler campaigned to host the Games, and made Indigenous voices a cornerstone of their bid, proclaiming that Four Host Nations— Lil̓wat7úl (Líl̓wat), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations—would be at the center of the event.

Williams himself was instrumental in the bid, and he traveled to London as part of the pitch a few years ago. “The night before the bid, I called my auntie, who’s an elder matriarch of our language,” he recalls. “I said, ‘I’m in London for the Invictus Games. I’m representing the Four Host Nations for the Indigenous representative.’ And she started crying.”

Williams told his aunt about how Squamish’s Hereditary Chief Ian Campbell lent him regalia to wear in London. “He opened his closet to pick any of his regalia, and I knew what it meant. She told me that in 1906, when Chief Capilano went to address the King in London, he was the first person to leave our villages and territories and go overseas to do this. It was a big deal. So she was crying because she said the last time someone [from Squamish] walked the streets of London was when Chief Capilano was donning his regalia—just like I was going to do the next day. So that was a magical, intimate moment.”

The bidding process was anxiety-inducing, he remembers, but “I knew how special it was for Indigenous people to be part of Invictus—we all are unconquered. We are persevering and finding that healing.”

We are now part of the Invictus family—giving what we can to the games, and adding that healing and medicine and spiritual side of our culture, our traditions, and our language,” he continues. “So the Invictus Games now is that much more richer; Prince Harry knew right away.” When the Duke of Sussex announced that Vancouver and Whistler had won the bid, Williams remembers, Harry said it was with “the invitation and permission of the Indigenous people.”

Harry and Meghan have “embraced the moment,” Williams says. This morning, he drove with them from their hotel in Vancouver to Squamish Nation, and spoke to them about his people’s history with the royal family, telling them the story his aunt told him of Chief Capilano traveling to London in 1906 and how King Edward VII did not meet him and his delegation. Capilano “just left a petition there of our people that signed it, saying that we’re still here, please stop taking resources, land, and our rights away. We are here. We were becoming a diminishing people. A lot of our people were being decimated, in certain ways, of sicknesses.”