Brief history of the Sylix People
This week’s local history article is long overdue. It should have been written many years ago and its message subsequently repeated in this column. The subject of this article is important. It must be acknowledged, told, and honoured.
I begin this column with something else which should have been written many years ago and also repeated on a regular basis. As I write this article – and as most of you read it – I am on the unceded traditional territory of the Syilx people, also known to some people as the Okanagan First Nations.
The vast majority – no less than 95 per cent – of the land which comprises the province of British Columbia is on unceded traditional Indigenous territory. The City of Vancouver, that huge metropolis which houses people from across the globe, is on unceded territory.
What does unceded territory mean? It means that Indigenous people never formally ceded or legally signed away their traditional and ancestral lands to the Crown or to Canada. Accordingly, many people believe that non-Indigenous settlement on this territory is trespassing, since the land was never ceded, by treaty, to the provincial or federal governments.
The unceded traditional Syilx territory is vast and beautiful. I am truly fortunate to live here.
But there is so much more to say. And it needs to be said here and now.
Since 1994, this weekly column has offered its readers more than 1,200 articles about our local human and natural history. I have written 316 of the articles for this column, the majority of them documenting the lives of people who came to the Central Okanagan, as immigrants, in the late 19th century and into the early years of the 20th century.
I have carefully selected potential topics, then researched and written the newspaper articles, congratulating myself on recording aspects of the post-settlement colonial era. My articles usually deal with people, including some of my ancestors, who moved here from other parts of the world – Eastern Canada, the United States, Western Europe and Great Britain – recounting their lives in the Central Okanagan, and often including biographical information about that person’s life prior to coming to the Okanagan Valley, part of the unceded traditional Syilx territory.
My articles typically document these people’s arrival in the Okanagan, acquiring land upon which they lived, farmed or had a business, and made a comfortable life for themselves and their families. When they died, they were mourned and laid to rest, their families and friends thanking them for their contributions to their chosen community.
I am ashamed to admit that most of my 316 articles documenting the lives of people who have come to be known as pioneers have made little or no mention of the Sylix people, giving the false impression that the Central Okanagan was devoid of human settlement until the mid-19th century, when the first immigrants visited here, liked what they saw, and decided to stay... on unceded Syilx land.
I was wrong and must here and now correct this error, including an apology to those people and their descendants whom I have ignored and possibly insulted. I am sorry.
The Syilx people have a long history in what is now British Columbia. Their history needs to be acknowledged and shared but I am not qualified to relate this history, choosing instead to leave it to those people who know their people’s stories and traditions, sharing them with the nonIndigenous community.
Below, I offer a cursory online Syilx history:
At the height of Syilx culture, about 3000 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-permanent villages...
The bounds of Syilx territory are roughly the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Okanagan River, plus the basin of the Similkameen River to the west of the Okanagan Valley, and some of the uppermost valley of the Nicola River. The various Syilx communities in British Columbia and Washington form the Okanagan Nation Alliance, a border spanning organization which includes American-side Syilx residents in the Colville Indian Reservation, where the Syilx are sometimes
known as Colvilles.
The Upper Nicola Indian Band, a Syilx group of the Nicola Valley, which was at the northwestern perimeter of Okanagan territory, are known in their dialect as the Spaxomin, and are joint members in a historic alliance with neighbouring communities of the Nlaka’pamux in the region known as the Nicola Country, which is named after the 19th-century chief who founded the alliance, Nicola (N’Kwala). This alliance today is manifested in the Nicola Tribal Association.
The language of the Syilx people is Nsyilxcən. “Syilx” is at the root of the language name Nsyilxcən, surrounded by a prefix and suffix indicating a language. Nsyilxcən is an Interior Salish language that is spoken across the Canadian and U.S. border in the regions of southern B.C. and northern Washington. This language is currently endangered and has only 50 fluent speakers remaining...
I encourage you, the readers of this column, to broaden your knowledge of the Syilx people, who have called this area their home for more than 11,000 years. Visit your local museums and archives and make a special trip to The Sncewips Heritage Museum in West Kelowna, an excellent source of information about Syilx history and culture. Read about Indigenous history, hopefully in books and articles written by the Indigenous people themselves.
There is much to learn about the Syilx and other Indigenous people. It is up to each of us to finally take the time and effort to do this. If we don’t, we will not ever truly know and understand our local history.
way̓ limləmt (thank you).