The Geography of Memory: Reclaiming the Cultural, Natural and Spiritual History of the Snayackstx (Sinixt) First People

by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

Overview

This compact book records a quest for understanding, to find the story behind the Snayackstx (Sinixt) First Nation. Known in the United States as the Arrow Lakes Indians of the Colville Confederated Tribes, the tribe lived along the upper Columbia River and its tributaries for thousands of years. In a story unique to First Nations in Canada, the Canadian federal government declared them “extinct” in 1956, eliminating with the stroke of a pen this tribe’s ability to legally access 80 per cent of their trans-boundary traditional territory.

Part travelogue, part cultural history, the book details the culture, place names, practices, and landscape features of this lost tribe of British Columbia, through a contemporary lens that presents all readers with an opportunity to participate in reconciliation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771605212
Publisher:	Heritage Group Distribution
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	555,033
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Eileen Delehanty Pearkes explores landscape and the human imagination, with a focus on the history of the upper Columbia River and its tributaries. Born in the United States, educated at Stanford University(B.A., English) and the Universityof British Columbia (M.A., English), her work resists nationality and insists on truth. Popular on-line columns on the western Canadian landscape stress the need for reconciliation of people with land. She has spent over two decades working alongside the Sinixt tribe, to bring awareness to their story. In 2014, she curated an extensive exhibit on the history of the Upper Columbia River system in Canada for Touchstones Nelson museum and the Columbia Basin Trust. It details dramatic ecological and social changes in British Columbia, both before and after the Columbia River Treaty (1961–64), and won an award of excellence from the Canadian Museum Association. Eileen has published two books with RMB: The Geography of Memory: Reclaiming the Cultural, Natural and Spiritual History of the Snayackstx (Sinixt) First People and A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change. A dual citizen, Eileen divides her time between California and Nelson, British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Introduction to the New Edition 1

1 Parting the Veil of Time 7

2 Rivers as Highways and Byways 28

3 Revelstoke to Fauquier Journey into the Heartland 44

4 Fauquier to Castlegar Long Shadows in a Broad Valley 69

5 Rossland to Omak, WA Following the Salmon 92

6 Slocan Lake to Slocan Pool Land of the Living 127

7 Bonnington Falls to the West Arm & Salmo Shifting Geographies 148

8 Spokane, WA, to Sinixt Territory Lines and Shaded Areas 170

9 Gathering It All In 200

Appendices 219

Notes 237

Contributor Bios 243

Selected Bibliography 245

Acknowledgements 249

Index 251