Penelakut Island lies between Stuart Channel to the west and Trincomali Channel to the east in the southern Gulf Islands, about 40 miles (65 km) north-northwest of Victoria and 32 miles (52 km) southwest of Vancouver, British Columbia. Before 2010, the island was known as Kuper Island, named after Captain Augustus L. Kuper, who surveyed Haida Gwaii (then called the Queen Charlotte Islands) and the eastern coast of Vancouver Island. In 1851, commanding HMS Thetis, a 36-gun frigate, Kuper sailed into the Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia and assigned colonial names to two of them: Kuper and Thetis. He continued surveying the islands from 1851 to 1853, operating out of the Pacific Station at Esquimalt. Penelakut Island covers 865 acres (350 ha) and is separated from Thetis Island by a tidal channel known locally as The Cut, which at high tide serves as a boat passage between Clam Bay to the east and Telegraph Harbour to the west.

In 1861, about 300 warriors from Bella Bella staged a surprise attack and reportedly massacred some 225 Penelakut people. Two years later, on April 20th, 1863, the British gunboat HMS Forward shelled the Penelakut village in retaliation for its sheltering members of the Lamalchi people implicated in the killing of three Europeans. The gunboat withdrew after sustaining one casualty, and the colonial government subsequently launched a larger military assault, bringing the region under its control. The descendants of the Lamalchi peoples are the Hwlitsum, represented by the Hwlitsum First Nation. Penelakut Island is also home to the Penelakut and Kuper Island Indian Reserves, governed by the Penelakut First Nation. The six member tribes of the Penelakut First Nation are the Chemainus First Nation, Cowichan Tribes, Halalt First Nation, Lake Cowichan First Nation, Lyackson First Nation, and Penelakut Tribe—all of whose members speak Hul’qumi’num.

Penelakut Island was the site of the Kuper Island Indian Residential School, part of Canada’s Indian residential school system, which was designed to sever Indigenous children from their cultures and assimilate them into dominant British-Canadian society. The school opened in 1889, operated by the Roman Catholic Church and funded by the federal Department of Indian Affairs, and provided mandatory education to children from the Cowichan Indian Agency and neighboring Coast Salish communities. In 1896, students burned the school down after their holidays were canceled; a survey that year found that 107 of 264 former students had died, chiefly from tuberculosis—a toll reflecting the overcrowded conditions and negligent health practices that made residential schools breeding grounds for disease. The federal government assumed administration of the school in 1969 and closed it in 1975. Read more here and here. Explore more of Penelakut Island and Trincomali Channel here.