HUMAN USE OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE SOUTH OKANAGAN AND LOWER SIMILKAMEEN VALLEYS

Richard J. Cannings and Eva Durance

FIRST NATIONS' USE OF LAND AND WATER

The Okanagan people were hunter-gatherers before contact with Europeans and their relationship to the land was defined and 'understood' through their language and their family and community system; their world view was defined by their connection to the land. As Jeanette Armstrong put it in "Sharing Our Skin: Okanagan Community", the primary identification of people is through connection with the land itself from which their strength and meaning comes, second as a human, a being separate from other beings on the land. "[w]e are tiny and unkowledgeable in our individual selves, but the whole-Earth part of us contains immense knowledge." (p. 466) The word for the Okanagan people means "the ones who are dream and land together; we are keepers of Earth because we are Earth. We are old Earth." (p. 466) The use of land, water, and wildlife, therefore, was, and still contains to some extent and for some people, a spiritual dimension inextricable from the physical dimension.

Although the Okanagan peoples were hunter-gatherers dependent on seasonal hunting, fishing, and the gathering of roots, berries, herbs and other foods and medicines, as Carstens notes, were never "casual occupiers of land". Their villages were important indicators of where the core of the various territories were and were the winter residence of the people, although within this system, people often changed from living in one village to another . The resources, upon which they depended for a livelihood, were scattered widely and being seasonal, had to be gathered, preserved, and stored in central places (the village sites).

Their way of being on the land thus was "characterized by groups of people living in villages or camps [mostly over the winter] under the tutelage of a headman" who went out from the villages during the appropriate seasons of the year to hunt, fish, and gather food, make war, and carry on trade with neighbouring groups.

One critical role of the headman, or tribal chief, of an area was to allocate food and the use of land and resources such as how many salmon could be caught, how many sheep or other game animals taken, how much tulmin (Indian paint) gathered and traded. "It was a responsibility to care for and regulate the use of those things so they would not be over used.... The will of the people is the strength of the Chief. The survival of the people even into the future and the protection of all the life on the land is the only reason for a chief in the community. All other things are everyone's responsibility." (We Get Our Living ... p. 11)

One of the very important areas, used by all bands wishing to fish for salmon, was at Oakenacken (sic) Falls since the falls slowed the salmon moving into Skaha Lake. Fish were caught, smoked, and dried here over the summers and into early fall. For similar reasons, of readily available, year-round food and water, Penticton ("people always there") was an important village site which may have had some permanent residents (Thomson, The Response of Okanagan Indians... [p.1])

Groups also often came together into confederacies each comprised of clusters of villages and camps; in the early 19th century, there were seven of these in the Southern Interior, 18 of which were in the Penticton, Osoyoos, and Lower Similkameen-Washington State area. The main winter villages north of the border were at Nkamip (Osoyoos), Penticton, Nkamaplix (Head of the Lake), and Spallumcheen.

The economy of the Okanagan people was less precarious than that of tribes dependent on one staple, such as fish, since the former had a number of such staples, in particular salmon and deer. The procurement and distribution of these were communal and done through the headman. Families organized the collection of berries, roots, and other such materials and distributed these as they wished. Thus, the Okanagan people recognized both communal and family or individual ownership of resources, depending on the item and circumstances. (Thomson, The Response of Okanagan Indians..) Nonetheless, their overall economy was such that, "in their seasonal movements they relied entirely on the understanding that they were the sole owners of their land" (Carstens, p. 54).