#sinixt

For thousands of years, Kettle Falls was a vital salmon fishing ground for the Sinixt, but early 20th-century dam construction blocked salmon migration.

Wrongfully declared extinct in Canada in 1956, the Sinixt fought for recognition and were officially acknowledged as Aboriginal Peoples of Canada in 2021.

In 2023, the U.S. government signed a $200 million agreement with a coalition of tribes, including the Sinixt, to fund an Indigenous-led salmon reintroduction program into the Columbia River system above dams in Washington.

A new argument is being made in a B.C. courtroom this week that could have consequences across B.C. Some U.S. tribes with traditional territory in B.C. say they should also get a say in economic decision-making. This week, a judicial review is underway in Rossland Provincial Court about a magnesium mine, proposed by West High Yield Resources and the Osyoos Indian Band. Participating in the review and pushing for an injunction to remain in place is the Sinixt, a U.S.-based Indigenous group that says the project sits on its traditional land.

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[Caption:] Virginia Redstar, center, with the River Warrior Society sings as she joins Colville Confederated Tribe members and supporters at the Boundary-Waneta Border Crossing [US-Canada, Washington-British Columbia border] in support of Rick Desautel's case in the Canadian Supreme court arguing for the Sinixt peoples' right to hunt traditional lands in Canada on Thursday, October 8, 2020, near Northport, Wash. [...]. [T]o challenge a Canadian declaration 60-years-ago that the Sinixt people were extinct. [...]

They got as close they could on Thursday afternoon [8 October 2020].

In a caravan of cars and trucks, they travelled north of Northport, to a bluff overlooking both the Columbia River and the Boundary-Waneta Border Crossing that wouldn’t let them – or anyone else from the United States – cross into Canada. They came with a simple message, but one that’s central to their existence and identity. “We’re still here,” Annette Peone told the crowd of mostly tribal members.

Many of them belong  to the Confederated Tribe of the Colville Indians, and a number are  descendants of the Sinixt. That tribe’s members once moved freely across this landscape, far into what is now British Columbia, into a country that  considers them officially extinct.

It’s a declaration their presence at the border was meant to pointedly contradict. And it’s a declaration that one of their fellow tribal members, Rick Desautel – a Sinixt descendant who belongs to what’s now known as the Lakes Tribe of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indians – objected to in a different way earlier the same day. Some 2,400 miles away,  in Ottawa, Ontario,  Mark Underhill, Desautel’s lawyer, argued a case in the Supreme Court of Canada that began 10 years ago this month [October 2020]. [...]

Those tensions had been forming since at least 1811, when the British explorer David Thompson encountered members of the band while passing through the Arrow Lakes. They mounted throughout  the 19th  century, as many of the Sinixt people who survived colonization were pushed from their homeland  south to the Colville Reservation. There, they and 11 other tribal bands were allotted 2,100 square miles of land wedged between the Columbia and Okanogan rivers to share.

When just 21 Sinixt were counted north of the border in the early 1900s, they and other area Indigenous people were granted a reserve for what the Canadian government called the Arrow Lakes Band.

After the last known member of that band died in 1956, the Canadian government declared the tribe legally extinct. But their descendants were very much alive in Washington, and remained deeply connected to the lands north of the border where their ancestors had lived .

[Caption:] Yvonne L. Swan stands with Colville Confederated Tribe members and supporters during a gathering at the Sharpening Stone [...] on Thursday, October 8, 2020, near Kettle Falls, Wash. [...]

Colville Confederated Tribe members and supporters gather at the Boundary-Waneta Border Crossing in support of Rick Desautel's case in the Canadian Supreme court arguing for the Sinixt peoples' right to hunt traditional lands in Canada on Thursday, October 8, 2020, near Northport, Wash. [...]

Linda Desautel, center in white, looks skyward and cheers with friends and Colville Confederated Tribe members as they rally [...]. [The] case in the Canadian Supreme court arguing for the Sinixt peoples' right to hunt traditional lands in Canada was first heard on Thursday, October 8, 2020

When plans for a new road threatened the remains of those ancestors in the late 1980s, Lakes members returned to their traditional homeland and helped form a blockade to stop the project near Vallican, which is home to a number of [...] sites containing the history and legacy of Sinixt culture.

The case has already been subject to a trio of provisional verdicts, one from a trial judge in Nelson, B.C., and two from appeals to that initial ruling. All of them ruled in favor of Desautel’s argument that he was “exercising his aboriginal right to hunt in the traditional territory of his Sinixt ancestors,” as Judge Lisa Mrozinski wrote in her 2017 judgement. [...]

While Her Majesty the Queen v. Richard Lee Desautel is narrowly about whether some 3,000 people have a right to hunt in a relatively remote part of British Columbia, the implications for not only the Lakes Tribe but also other Indigenous people with historical connections to Canada could be far-reaching. [...]

The effort by the Crown – that is, the Canadian government – to continue challenging that finding to the nation’s highest court is indicative of how much is at stake.

And he noted that the Crown has been vested in appealing the case because “they have taken the view that this would be precedent setting and would set the stage for other tribes.”

In its filings to the Supreme Court, the Crown’s lawyers made just that argument, claiming that “affirming that Indigenous groups located in the US are ‘aboriginal peoples of Canada’ enjoying a constitutionally protected Aboriginal right to hunt in Canada would mean that such groups may, in principle, hold constitutionally protected Aboriginal title to Canadian soil, too.”

That means “not only site-specific rights like the right to hunt, but also rights to the land itself,” the filings state. [...]

That could mean the Canadian government will have to consult with the Lakes Tribe on hydropower and pipeline projects, for example. And it may mean even more: that they have rights to land in Canada.

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Headline, photos, captions, and all text published by: Ted McDermott. [Photos by Tyler Tjomsland.] “’We’re still here’: Colville tribal member’s long battle against declaration of extinction reaches Canadian Supreme Court.” The Spokesman-Review. 11 October 2020.

Map of traditional Sinixt land, from Sinixt Nation online portal:

A cross-border tribe is seeking funding and recognition from the Canadian government one month after opening an office in British Columbia.

In late October, the Sinixt Confederacy — part of the Washington-headquartered Colville Confederated Tribes — established itself on the second floor of a small building in Nelson, B.C.

Sinixt considers itself a transboundary tribe with rights in both the U.S. and Canada but until recently, didn’t formally exist in Canada. The Sinixt were deemed “extinct” by the government in 1956 but two years ago, that changed when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the Sinixt Confederacy an “Aboriginal people of Canada.”

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