Introduction Lesson: ntytyix (Chief Spring Salmon)
Importance of ntytyix (Chief Spring Salmon) and the sacred connection to Syilx people.
Syilx People are also called Salmon People
ntytyix, Salmon is a primary food of the Syilx People and central to their culture and trade traditions. A myriad of Syilx cultural practices demonstrate snx̌aʔiwləm (honouring the sacredness of the river) while reinforcing strong cultural and spiritual ties between Syilx communities and the salmon.
Salmon is a Keystone Species
Keystone species are a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically. Salmon have always been a central part of Syilx culture and a main food source for the community since well before European settlers arrived in what is now known as British Columbia.
Salmon are a versatile food which can be eaten fresh from a catch, or dried in a smoke house for the winter months, providing year-round sustenance.
Historic Species of Salmon in the Okanagan
Most salmon are anadromous fish, meaning they reproduce in freshwater but spend a good portion of their adult life in an ocean environment before returning to their natal home to spawn.
- skəlwis: spring salmon
- sc’win: early sockeye salmon
- tʕanyaʔ: fall sockeye salmon
- ntytyix: chinook – now endangered
- kisuʔ: coho – now locally extinct or “extirpated”
- kəkniʔ: land-locked salmon – kokanee
Unfortunately, the effects of colonization are still influencing our salmon. Colonial threats, such as the development of hydroelectric dams have severely impacted the salmon, bringing them closer to extinction.
The construction of Grand Coulee Dam on Columbia River at Kettle Falls, completed in 1942, stopped all salmon migration for thousands of kilometers of spawning river in Canada.
After years of effort by the Syilx Okanagan Nation to reintroduce salmon back to the region, sc’win (sockeye) and ntytyix (chinook) salmon are now returning and spawning in many of the rivers and creeks throughout the Okanagan.
Additionally, a fish ladder was left inoperable after the Penticton dam was built in the 1950s. In the case of the Penticton dam, in 2019 Okanagan Nation Alliance and Fisheries and Oceans Canada used a crane to remove a wooden gate that was blocking off the narrow concrete passage, thus opening the way for fish to get through the dam.
READ How Coyote Broke the Salmon Dam
(available for purchase at ONA Bookstore).
As one of our Four Food Chiefs, and central to many of our captikʷł, salmon are not only a form of sustenance, they are our relative, and an essential part of the continued resilience of the tmixʷ. As such, these salmon are central to a wide range of connections between generations, communities, humans & non-humans, terrestrial and aquatic species and transboundary watersheds within Canadian and American sovereigns including Indigenous Tribes along the Columbia River systems.
For generations salmon fed our people, yet when European settlers arrived everything changed. Upon contact, and the century that followed, colonization was as tough on our salmon as it was on our people. Overfishing was already an issue by the late-1800s. Logging and farming destroyed the gravel bars and clear streams where salmon lay their eggs. In the early thirties, International Water Agreements launched the building and expanse of hydro-electric developments on the Columbia River, making it impossible for fish passage, devastating the annual salmon runs to near extinction. This also led to agricultural and urban sprawl, while greatly undermining Indigenous food systems.