Sinixt

The Sinixt (also known as the "Arrow Lakes Band" or simply as "The Lakes") are a First Nation People living primarily on the Colville Reserve in Washington State. A few Sinixt live in adjacent territory in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, particularily the Slocan Valley. The majority of their traditional territory is in the Kootenays. The Sinixt are of Salishan linguistic extraction, and their own dialect was similar to Colville and Okanagan variations. In prehistoric times, the Sinixt were a mostly sedentary people, living in warm, semi-subterrainian houses for the winter months. The summers were spent managing fishing, hunting, and other food resources in their mountain and lake-dominated homeland. Scholars have classified the Sinixt as "Complex Collecters" (as opposed to, e.g, "hunter-gatherers"). To call the Sinixt nomadic would be a incorrect.

The history of the Sinixt is long and complex. They currently are not recognized in Canada, and were officially declared "extinct" by that country in the 1950s. However, there were several hundred Sinixt still living in Washington at the time, along with other self-identifying Sinixt who had relocated with relatives to the Okanagan. Their numbers have continued to grow since then. Today, the Sinixt are taking steps to reclaim their rights in British Columbia, where the vast majority of their ancesteral territory lies. Traditional Sinixt territory was centred in the Slocan Valley and the Lower Arrow Lakes, and also included the lower Kootenay River, and the Columbia River from the "Big Bend" north of Revelstoke to just above (and often including) Kettle Falls in the South.

There is historic evidence suggesting that the Sinixt were heavily depopulated by one or two smallpox epidemics that preceeded the arrival of European and American fur-traders. The epidemic of 1781 was likely the biggest single epidemic, with most accounts of that epidemic describing an 80% mortality rate. David Thompson and other early traders noticed the pock-marked faces of many older Sinixt and heard oral accounts of the epidemic. There is also extensive evidence that the Sinixt were seriously affected by the major political upheavals that preceeded the arrival of the Europeans. The Ktunaxa (Kutenai) people who neighboured the Sinixt to the East were driven further into the mountains by the Blackfoot, who had obtained control of Ktunaxa territory in the foothills and North-Western plains. There is ethnographic evidence suggesting the Ktunaxa and the Sinixt battled each other over the territory along the lower Kootenay River between the present cities of Nelson and Castlegar. The Sinixt later became allied with the Ktunaxa, and took common cause with the Ktunaxa, the Kalispel, the Flathead, the Coure D'Eleine, the Spokane, the Nez Pearce, and others against the Blackfoot. While the Sinixt never directly fought the Blackfoot as a group, it is very likey that individual Sinixt joined their Salishan neighbours (and the Ktunaxa) in war parties and buffalo hunts to the Western Plains.

The Sinixt played a major and largely unheralded role in the fur trade, and in the international dispute between England and the USA over "the Oregon Territory". The Sinixt and their allies had a very close relationship with the Hudson's Bay Company, and it was to be closer to the major trading post at Colville that lead the Sinixt to winter near the trading post for the first time in 1830-31. The Sinixt supported the company in its efforts to prevent American settlers from entering and taking over the territory. As fur traders, the Sinixt were often the most prolific of all the First Nations who traded at Fort Colvile.

When the United States gained control of Washington Territory, most Sinixt remained in American territory near Kettle Falls, where Fort Colvile continued to operate. With the discovery of gold and silver in their traditional territory in Southern British Columbia, the Sinixt continued to claim ownership over these lands and resisted the miners, sometimes by force. However, their reduced numbers resulted in the Sinixt being unable to maintain control of the area as it was flooded with miners who quickly built several boomtowns throughout the West Kootenay Region. Most chose to continue to live in Washington State, among the security of their friends and relatives of other Nations living on the Colville reserve. Nevertheless, they continued to return to their ancesteral land in B.C. to hunt in fish in the summer months well into the 20th Century. Today they continue to claim Aboriginal rights in the land they have lived in for at least 3800 years, when the Salish first expanded into the region.

Recent archaeological work at the Slocan Narrows site has resulted in some surprising findings that hint at a very complex social society. This is in line with historic, ethnographic, and contemporary Sinixt acounts of a socially and economically advanced society. Pithouses at the Slocan Narrows site are among the earliest very large houses of this type, with some having diameters of over 20 metres (66 feet). The site also included some of the most recent very large pithouses. This and other evidence of a hierarchical and stratified society has lead a leading scholar to state that the Sinixt's society was among the most complex of the entire region. Unfortunately, major hydro-electric projects along the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers has resulted in the flooding of many graveyards and the majority of Sinixt village sites. And Canadian legal paranoia and lack of political will has prevented the Sinixt from receiving their due recognition in Canada.