Fintry monument honours Syilx people
The pitch to build a fence around a century-old mansion at Fintry sparked a new friendship between the volunteers who run the house and the Okanagan Indian Band.
The volunteers, who take visitors on tours of the stone mansion built by Scottish settler James Dun-Waters, were discussing the fence at a meeting in 2019. A BC Parks supervisor advised them to have an archaeologist on site because digging the post holes might expose the remains of First Nations people buried in the Shorts Creek delta near Westside Road.
The Friends of Fintry Provincial Park never built the fence. But the revelation inspired them to approach their Indigenous neighbours about building a monument in their honour.
Earlier this month, the group held a ceremony on the manor-house grounds to commemorate the Syilx Okanagan people as the inhabitants who, along with the Shuswap, controlled the delta for thousands of years.
Kelowna-West MLA Ben Stewart, Regional district chair Loyal Wooldridge, regional director Wayne Carson and Lake Country Mayor James Baker joined band councillors and OKIB members to celebrate that history.
Coun. Daniel Wilson said before European contact, the delta was a gathering place where people from separate tribes — the Shuswap, Chilcotin and Syilx Okanagan — got together.
When the pre-contact remains of a woman in her 20s were found on the delta six years ago, elders who came to rebury her weren’t sure which tribe she belonged to, Wilson said. The nations got along, for the most part, and communicated by sending smoke signals to warn each other when invaders like the Blackfoot, Cree or Aztecs were threatening.
“One puff meant the Syilx could handle it on our own. We had the forces necessary to repel whatever threat there was. Two puffs meant we had to send runners (to report the threat) to the Shuswap,” Wilson said.
“Three meant we’d have to get the Chilcotin because there was that big of a force on the other side of the Rockies, or amassing down south.”
People travelled along game trails to trade and communicate with one another. The Fur Brigade trail, which Westside Road later followed, led to Fort Kamloops. The route was previously known as Nkwala trail, named after the grand chief who mediated a truce between the Syilx and Shuswap in the 1800s.
Elders with the Okanagan Indian Band helped craft a message in two languages on the monument’s plaque.
It recognizes that Fintry Provincial Park is part of the Syilx Okanagan’s unceded territory and proclaims the delta provides critical habitat for endangered and sensitive species.
Drummer Bill Robins sang a stirring song to open the ceremony. Elder Pauline Archachan, who translated the English message into Nsyilxcen, gave a heartfelt prayer that celebrated the natural area and the new relationship with Fintry.