HUMAN USE OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE SOUTH OKANAGAN AND LOWER SIMILKAMEEN VALLEYS
Richard J. Cannings and Eva Durance
POST CONTACT TO THE PRESENT
The flexibility of their economic organization, along with the added dimension of trade among tribes and with other peoples, allowed for testing and possible adaptation of new tools and methods. As Thomson states, however, the Okanagan people "faced the challenge and opportunity of the new political and economic order [of the European immigrants] with a remarkable willingness to adapt to the new circumstances". ((Thomson, The Response of Okanagan Indians.., [p.1]) The adoption of the horse in the first part of the 18th century, before white traders arrived, is a good example of such willingness and was one which paid high dividends since horses could be ridden, used for packing bulky and heavy items over long distances, eaten, or sold. Their use, however, did affect the Okanagan way of life, the traditional boundaries of their lands, their trade routes and how far they were able to trade, and ultimately their social relations especially in regard to the authority of headmen to control the use of resources.
Horticulture, too, was readily taken up by the Okanagan people after the coming of the Hudson's Bay Company traders, and by the mid 19th century, had come to be a valuable part of their food economy. As their land base became increasingly limited, and even eroded, towards the end of the century, however, the reliance on agriculture for food (made necessary by the depletion of game animal populations) led to poverty, an inability to maintain viable farms, and reliance for a living on wages earned elsewhere.
The three main factors in the erosion of the Okanagan way of life and culture were the fur trade, the gold rush in the Interior, and the arrival of Christian missionaries. The effects of the first two in the South Okanagan-Similkameen were in good part indirect since fur-bearing animals were not plentiful in this region and the gold rush largely occurred elsewhere with miners only passing through the subject area. Items such as steel traps, guns, tobacco, and European clothing and medicines, however, soon became an important part of the native people's economy and the development of political and social ties between certain Okanagan groups and the whites independent of other Okanagans created new sources of division. In the South Okanagan as well, the demands on the fishery led to a drastic decline in salmon stocks and in the North in game animals.
While miners largely passed through Okanagan territory, the rush brought more people into the area, increasingly people who wished to pre-empt land and settle, which came into direct conflict with the native subsistence way of life and communal views on land holding. The effect of the arrival of missionaries was more direct. It added significantly to settlement pressures, especially with Father Pandosy's establishment of Okanagan Mission in 1858 which provided an inducement to settlers and a Mission and school for native children at the head of the lake in 1863. It also eroded the Okanagan spiritual and cultural beliefs, and encouraged them to adopt a completely different way of living based on permanent settlements centred on the Church, agriculture, and a strictly regulated life overseen by the village chief who acquired considerably greater power over people's daily lives (Carstens and Thomson).
Overall, the fur traders, cattlemen, miners, missionaries, and later settlers, gradually altered the Okanagan way of life so that by the turn of the century, there was little, and only casual, 'living off the land' (Carstens, p. 66). In the 1881 Canada Census, only five of sixty-five Okanagan family heads lived solely by "traditional" means (hunting, fishing, packing, guiding); 68% relied solely and 75% partly on agriculture. In the subject area, no family member lived solely or even partly by "traditional" occupations; in the Penticton Band, 100% of family heads lived solely by agriculture, in the Nkamip (Osoyoos) Band, seven of nine did so, and in the Similkameen Band, six of nine lived solely by agriculture. Non-agricultural livelihoods were non-agricultural wage labour.
The Okanagan people in general made "an impressive changeover to agriculture [in] the 25 years after they settled at their new village sites" (Thomson, "The Response of Okanagan Indians..." [p.9]) They accomplished this feat in spite of serious problems of lack of suitable land in particular after numerous large and small reductions in lands from the original reserves agreed upon in 1861 with Governor James Douglas. These 'cut-offs' were made without consultation with the native people and solely to give land to white cattlemen and other settlers. (A very important additional effect of such settlement on the edges of the reserves was to cut off native access to Crown lands on which they had been granted traditional rights of hunting, fishing, and gathering leading to a further erosion of their way of life.) In addition, the Indian land tenure was very insecure (reserves were not officially assigned until the 1980's) and even within reserves, their freedom to have access to land and to use it as they wished was severely hampered and controlled by "the whim of the white Indian Agent and the current chief and his claque" (Thomson, [p. 6)] In spite of the obstacles, however, some individuals and bands were described by the Indian Agent J. W. MacKay as being in "easy circumstances" in Nkamip (Osoyoos) and "thriving" in Penticton.
By the latter part of the 19th century, however, the land crunch became serious for the Okanagans, and by 1916, their economy was stagnant. World markets for livestock had virtually collapsed and their income from cattle and horses with these. Population also had increased by 40% from 1892. While the native people were willing and quite capable of shifting to horticultural crops, including orchards, their ability to do so on a large scale was hampered severely by their lack of capital and difficulties in obtaining it from the dominant white society. In addition, their traditional access to water was denied them, in the form of water records or licences, under the British Columbia Water Act because they were not fee simple owners of the land.
Thus, since the early 19th century, the Okanagan people's traditional sustainable, largely communal, hunter-gatherer economy based on a spiritual connection with the land with built-in social controls against excessive exploitation of resources has changed irrevocably to a commercial, money-based one dependent upon the larger white society and in many cases upon its social assistance programs. In recent years, however, there has been a renewed desire and determination among certain individuals and bands to regain a greater measure of independence in their economic and social lives and to rekindle the spiritual dimension of their traditional relationship to the land. This is manifesting itself in programs for native youth, such as the Penticton-based En'Owkin Cultural Centre and in outreach programs for the non-native community. Within bands as well, there is considerable debate over the best use of their lands and how to achieve a balance between economic stability in the larger, non-native, society and traditional values pertaining to the land.
