Wakashan is a family of languages spoken in British Columbia around and on Vancouver Island, and in the northwestern corner of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, on the south side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
As is typical of the Northwest Coast, Wakashan languages have large consonant inventories—the consonants often occurring in complex clusters.
The Wakashan language family consists of seven languages:
I. Northern Wakashan (Kwakiutlan) languages
Lie alone in an empty bedroom
You were young so long ago
Lost the purple heart they gave you
Why did it mean so much before?
Crawled from the remains of war
Soon the world will care no more
They've never been through living hell
"Just an old man with a story to tell"
[Chorus]
NO ONE KNOWS
NO ONE CARES
NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU NO MORE
Strung along on a soldier's pension
And you've survived so many friends
Fought for God and Country,
Only to be forgotten in the end
Crawled from the remains of war
Soon the world will care no more
They've never been through living hell
"Just an old man with a story to tell"
[Chorus]
And with each new generation
Another story ceases to be told
What about the new generations?
Will anybody know?
Someday you'll be forgotten
Just a chapter in the history books
And they'll see a thousand crucifixes