Indigenous people of the Northwest Plateau in Canada and the United States
Ethnic group
Okanagan
Okanagan (Syilx) members, c. 1918. Back Left: Marriette Gregoire. Back Center: Joe Abel. Back Right: Tommy Gregoire. Left: Celestine Lewis (child). Center: Millie Williams. Right: Mary Abel (toddler).
At the height of Okanagan Syilx culture, about 3,000 years ago, it is estimated that 12,000 people lived in this valley and surrounding areas. The Syilx employed an adaptive strategy, moving within traditional areas throughout the year to fish, hunt, or collect food, while in the winter months, they lived in semi-permanentvillages ofkekulis, a type of pithouse.[4] In Nsyilxcn pit house is q̓ʷc̓iʔ.[5]
When theOregon Treaty partitioned thePacific Northwest in 1846, the portion of the tribe remaining in what becameWashington Territory reorganized underChief Tonasket as a separate group from the majority of the Syilx, whose communities remain in Canada.[1] The Okanagan Tribal Alliance, however, incorporates the American branch of the Syilx. The latter are part of theConfederated Tribes of the Colville, a multi-tribal government in Washington state.[6][7]
TheUpper Nicola Indian Band, a Syilx group of theNicola Valley, which was at the northwestern perimeter of Okanagan territory, are known in their dialect as theSpaxomin, and are joint members in a historic alliance with neighbouring communities of theNlaka'pamux in the region known as theNicola Country, which is named after the 19th-century chief who founded the alliance,Nicola. This alliance today is manifested in theNicola Tribal Association.[9]
The language of the Syilx people is Nsyilxcn. "Syilx" is at the root of the language name Nsyilxcn, surrounded by a circumfix indicating a language.[11] When writing Nsyilxcn, no capital letters are used.[12] Nsyilxcn is an Interior Salish language that is spoken across theCanada–United States border in the regions of southern British Columbia and northern Washington.[13] This language is currently endangered and has less than 50 fluent speakers remaining.[13]
For learners in K-12 system, there are six band-operated schools and three community schools that teach the nsyilxcn language.[14]
According toJames Teit the "Okanagon Indians" included the "Okanagon", "Sanpoil", "Colville", and "Lake" peoples as they all spoke Nsyilxcn or Nsəlxcin. He estimated their historical population to be at least 8,500 though the likelihood of 10,000 or more is reasonable based on the information he received from tribal members. They estimated their population to have been at least four times what it was at the turn of the 20th century. A 1903 Canadian report and a 1905 American report collectively estimated the population at 2,579.[26]
^abcdLozar, Patrick (2018-07-01). ""My Home Is on Both Sides": Indigenous Communities and the US-Canadian Border on the Columbia Plateau, 1880s–1910s".Ethnohistory.65 (3):391–415.doi:10.1215/00141801-4451374.ISSN0014-1801.
^Peacock, Sandra L. (February 2008). "From complex to simple: balsamroot, inulin, and the chemistry of traditional Interior Salish pit-cooking technologyThis paper was submitted for the Special Issue on Ethnobotany, inspired by the Ethnobotany Symposium organized by Alain Cuerrier, Montréal Botanical Garden, and held in Montréal at the 2006 annual meeting of the Canadian Botanical Association/l'Association Botanique du Canada".Botany.86 (2):116–128.doi:10.1139/b07-111.ISSN1916-2790.
^John D. Greenough, Murray A. Roed, ed. (2004).Okanagan Geology. Kelowna Geology Committee. pp. 71–83.ISBN0-9699795-2-5.
^Gooding, Susan Staiger (1994). "Place, Race, and Names: Layered Identities in United States v. Oregon, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Plaintiff-Intervenor".Law & Society Review.28 (5):1181–1229.doi:10.2307/3054027.ISSN0023-9216.JSTOR3054027.
^Nicholas, George P. (2006). "Decolonizing the Archaeological Landscape: The Practice and Politics of Archaeology in British Columbia".The American Indian Quarterly.30 (3):350–380.doi:10.1353/aiq.2006.0031.ISSN1534-1828.
^Johnson, M. K. (2012). k^sup w^u_sq^sup w^a?q^sup w^a?álx (we begin to speak): Our journey within Nsyilxcn (Okanagan) language revitalization.Canadian Journal of Native Education, 35(1), 79.
^abJohnson, Sʔímlaʔx Michele K. (November 2017). "Syilx Language House: How and Why We Are Delivering 2,000 Decolonizing Hours in Nsyilxcn".Canadian Modern Language Review.73 (4):509–537.doi:10.3138/cmlr.4040.ISSN0008-4506.S2CID149072885.
^Baptiste, Maxine R. (2019). "When we talk: Okanagan Ways of Speaking of Elders/Fluent Speakers in Social Domains of Language-in-Use Implication For Okanagan Language Revitalization" (PhD thesis). University of Arizona.
Armstrong, Jeannette, and Lee Maracle, Okanagan Rights Committee; Delphine Derickson, Okanagan Indian Education Resource Society,We Get Our Living Like Milk from the Land, Theytus Books, 1994
Carstens, Peter.The Queen's People: A Study of Hegemony, Coercion, and Accommodation Among the Okanagan of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.ISBN0-8020-5893-0
Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Nature Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1992.ISBN1-55054-060-2
