Working in a Good Way: Secwépemc Landmarks project
Salmon Arm Observer photo
How the Shuswap Trail Alliance is helping reconnect the Secwépemc to their past.
As part of this story series, we will feature recreation organizations that are advancing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples through trail and outdoor recreation projects. We hope these stories inspire other community groups to contribute to advancing reconciliation in a meaningful and positive way, thereby ensuring the long-term sustainability of the outdoor recreation activities we love.
When you know where to look, and what to look for, everything from a cedar tree to a mountain, a pile of rocks to a cave has a story to tell, says Louis Thomas. Since time immemorial, and for at least 9,000 years according to archeological evidence, his ancestors have been reading the signs in the Shuswap region of central B.C.
Balanced stones or piles of dirt marked the edge of territory. Pictographs and landmarks relayed information, like good fishing and hunting spots. Culturally modified trees showed where people had gathered cedar bark. Trails were the footprints of the ancestors.
Much of that knowledge has faded from memory.
“The people haven’t been on the land for a long time,” says Thomas, an elder and councillor for the Neskonlith Indian Band. “We’re losing the knowledge and our ability to see the stories.”
That’s beginning to change thanks to renewed interest among Indigenous people, support from local communities and plenty of help from the Shuswap Trail Alliance.
The STA is a non-profit organisation through which multiple levels of government, tourism and business groups, communities, outdoor clubs and Indigenous groups in the Shuswap region working together on trail development. Out of this, the Shuswap Trails Roundtable was formed and provides a forum for all user groups to collaborate to provide much of the direction for the STA’s annual work plans. Increasingly, First Nations input has guided their work, says Jen Bellhouse, the STA’s executive director.
“First Nation interest is our first value, along with environmental considerations and working collaboratively with others,” she says. “We recognize we are all on their Secwépemc territory and the STA is striving to ensure everything it does is inclusive of their interests and values.”
The STA's sphere of interest is within the traditional territory of the Secwépemc Nation, a group of 17 bands (including the Neskonlith), whose traditional territory stretches roughly from Valemount to Revelstoke, Williams Lake to the Alberta border. Meaning “the people” and pronounced Se-KWEP-umk-wh, early settlers called them Shuswap, which became synonymous with the region around Salmon Arm.
Bellhouse says any new STA projects or ideas begin with consulting Secwépmec leaders and elders in an effort to avoid any areas with heritage or cultural sensitivities. When they overlap the STA adjusts the plans or cancels them completely. “We want [the First Nation’s] blessing,” she explains.
On a bigger scale, they also want to decolonize trails. More than consultation, that requires being a partner, says Shelley Witzky, a councillor and STA representative for the Adams Lake band.
Through a conversation with the STA’s main trail planner, Wtizky learned about a project in New Zealand that established carvings and signs that showed the native Maoris language and historic presence on the land. She wondered if they could do something similar to revive the Secwépemc’s practice of building landmarks. The STA was immediately interested in helping.
Staff worked with Witzky to develop the project, aided in accessing and administering funding, and members supported meetings with Secwépmec elders that generated the ideas for the landmarks.
The resulting Secwépemc Landmarks Project has two parts: 8 sculptures and interpretive panels in high profile locations and about 100 trailhead posts. The sculptures resemble the natural rock formations the Secwépemc used to mark their territory and feature oral histories, ancient place names, and stories about their presence on the land. Meanwhile, students from six area schools, both Indigenous and public, designed and carved the trailhead posts.
“We didn’t want it to be just kids from the reserve,” says Witzky. “We wanted to show the relationship between Indigenous and caucasian, everyone working together. That’s part of reconciliation.”
So is the support demonstrated by the STA, she says.
“The STA let us be in the driver seat,” says Witzky. “Other groups I’ve worked with see us as victims. They find solutions for us. We need to find them for ourselves. The STA didn’t come into meetings with an agenda. They sat in the navigator seat and helped us get where we wanted to go.”
The traihead posts were installed last year, the sculptures will be installed over the next year, and extra funding, announced in November 2021, will continue the project through 2023.
The STA is also helping Louis Thomas, the Neskonlith knowledge keeper, with another, more informal, endeavour. For more than 40 years Thomas has acted like a Secwépemc encyclopaedia, collecting information on the location of medicinal plants, historic travel routes and sacred places. At one time everyone would have known these sorts of things, but the move to reserves and residential schools stole the information. Regaining that knowledge is important for moving forward, Thomas says.
“In the past we hunted and gathered and survived and travelled all over our lands,” he says. “The more we know about who we were, gives us a better perspective of who we are.”
Thomas is just one man and the Shuswap is a big place. He can’t rediscover all the important features on his own. That’s where the STA steps in. When members are on the land, whether building trails or recreating, they keep an eye out for important features and report back to Thomas about what they see.
“They appreciate what I tell them and I appreciate what they tell me,” Thomas says. “It’s a two-way process.”
Bellhouse agrees.
“Whenever we work with First Nations we build trust and strengthen relationships,” she says. "I always enjoy the interaction and the opportunity to learn. Ultimately we make more informed decisions about what’s appropriate and what’s not.”
It makes sense: everyone is looking for the same outcome.
“The STA are really good people,” says Thomas. “They have the same passion we have. They want to go out on the land and make sure their grandkids can, too.”
Ryan Stuart started writing about his adventures as a way to get paid to play. Twenty years later he’s still at it. Look for his name in magazines like Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski Canada, online at Hakai and The Narwhal. When he’s not typing at his home office in Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley, you can find him skiing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, paddling or fishing somewhere nearby.
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