Exploring Sam Steele's Legacy in Kootenays

Good afternoon and welcome. It is my honor and privilege to be with you today on on these beautiful traditional lands of the Tuna'ha and Chushuap people, and home of several chartered Métis communities. My name is Diane Teslak, and it is my pleasure, on behalf of myself and my awesome co-pilot for today's event, Dana. Wesley to introduce our speakers. To share with us the history of Sam Steele in the Kootenays, I welcome Nasuken Joe Pierre and Sean McPherson. Joe really needs no introduction as he is well known to so many as the chief of the Acom community and a great storyteller. If you've not had a chance to hear Joe tell the Tunaha creation story, I encourage you to seek out an opportunity. It's both powerful and beautiful. Joining Joe today is Sean McPherson. Sean is currently finishing a PhD in history at UBC and has worked collaboratively with the Tunaha Nation for many years doing research drawing on archival evidence of government correspondence to paint a more realistic history of colonialism in our region. We are thrilled to have him share with us today. I came across Sean's master's thesis quite accidentally one day and his writing impacted me. with such significance that I set out to try to find how to track him down in the hopes of having an event just like we are having today. I am so grateful to both speakers for sharing their time, energy, and knowledge with all of us, and I'm grateful to all of you for attending. We are recording today's event, and we will email a link to the YouTube channel with the recording once it's available to the email address that you indicated on your registration form. And now, over to you, Nasuk and Joel. Oh, is this working? Yep. Okay. I just wanted to say I'm glad that Diane knew that I was going first. Sean and I just had lunch together and we played rock, paper, scissor. And I won, so I'm going first. No, actually, I'm just joking. I'm really pleased to be here today. Ki Sokio Kiet, Kapi Neskiet, good day to you all. Ho Sokio Kokoni, Nausan Mietki, I'm very grateful for today. Ho Sokio Kokoni. Nausan Miyitke, I'm very happy today. I'm grateful to be sharing the stage with Sean today and just getting an opportunity to share some of the work that he's done and some of the ideas that we've talked about. Sean and I met, actually, you know what? I'm at that age now where if I say it was five years ago, it's going to be like 15 years ago, right? And so we met. We met a while ago, a while back, before he even started the work that led to the master's thesis, before he even cracked open that box with the letters. And so Sean and I met quite some time ago, and I'm just really pleased to be here today. I wanted to get started by acknowledging that here at the College of the Rockies, in our community, which is the... to knock a name for this place. The way that I learned it when I was growing up was, I heard it kind of in two different ways when I was growing up. Some elders would talk about the place where the two valleys meet. Others elders would talk about the place where the two creeks meet. You know, but I think that that kind of makes sense. And then there was even other elders that talked about the place of the two ram heads. But this place, the way that I first learned it, when I was first learning about the name of this place, this place was the place where the two creeks meet. And of course, you know, we're all very, very familiar with Joseph's Creek. And the way the storytelling that I heard when I was growing up is that, in fact, Joseph's Creek, Joseph's Prairie, the way that I came to understand things is that that name Joseph was referring to a Tanakh, to a Tanakh chief. That, in fact, we could say Chief Joseph's Creek, and we wouldn't be wrong. But Akiskakhe, the place where the two creeks meet. Those of you who are long-time Cranbrook people might remember. Again, if I say how many years ago, I'm going to be wrong. But it was about a decade ago. You might remember that summer where the street between where Savon is and that street that... ...towards where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is. You remember that summer when that all got dug up and that street was closed down, they were doing whatever work that there was. I remember there was one day where I saw a headline in the Townsend newspaper that said, Long lost... sidewalk was uncovered, was found. And so I read a little bit about, you know, long lost sidewalk. Well, in that work that they were doing on the street that they had dug down and they had found, I guess, concrete that was about four or five feet wide. like a sidewalk that just went straight for a long way. A little bit later, a few days later, or maybe the following week, the townsman was saying that they've realized that actually what they've uncovered is a culvert, a concrete culvert. This is that second creek. People might not understand or realize, like if you think about the waterfowl crossing at Elizabeth Lake, right? Elizabeth Lake, again, we know a man-made lake, right? It was made, you know, as a water... in the early days of this place here. But in the development of our town over time, I mean, water, you can stop it to make a lake, but you can't stop it, right? It's going to continue flowing. And so there is a creek that comes off that lake, and it's what and why we have that waterfowl crossing by the ballpark, because that creek does go underneath the road there. But if you were to actually continue following that creek, You all know now, right? It goes into that culvert underneath. And those two creeks do still meet. Akis Ka'ke'et, the place where the two creeks meet. That's the name for this place. Not so long ago, it was started to be referred to as Joseph's Prairie, and I've already talked about, you know, in Tanaka history. Tunaxa storytelling, that's the way that I heard it, was that this Joseph that's being referred to, Joseph's Prairie, Joseph's Creek, was actually a Tunaxa. I've been told that it was a Tunaxa chief. And then from what I understand from our local history is that it was 1905 that Cranbrook was incorporated as Cranbrook. So we are talking about just a very... Small, thin slice of history, aren't we? But it is the history of our hometown. Or at least for a lot of us, I think, in this audience, the history of our hometown. But I do think that what Sean is talking about in the paper that he wrote, and for those of you who have read it, you will understand what I'm talking about, and maybe, hopefully, today's presentation will encourage you to read it if you haven't. Because I honestly do believe that if you call yourself a Cranbrookite, Cranbrookian, Cranbrook person, You need to read this paper. If you are a leader within our community, you should read this paper. If you're just a person interested in our local history, you should read this paper. Senator Sinclair talked about how it was education that got us into this mess, it should be education that gets us out of this mess. And I think that truthfully, what Sean has tried to do here, is he's tried to understand truth. from multiple angles and multiple sources. And he's tried to understand how they connect together and sometimes how they don't even meet anywhere. They just kind of come close. But there's no real meeting of the understanding of the truths. He talks about in his paper how former elder and residents of the College of the Rockies, Herman Alpine, We talk about our history or Tanakh history, what he'd refer to as Tanakh history, and our understanding of history. And I really do believe that what Sean has tried to do here, as a young man who grew up in Cranbrook himself, trying to just understand the mustache. For those of you who've read the paper, you'll know what I'm referring to. I'm referring to Sam Steele's mustache. And why it became so important for this town. A mustache. But just that importance of symbols and the importance that we give to symbols. And so I'm just so pleased today that so many people have showed up here wearing their orange. Thank you for being mindful of that symbol. I'm just so pleased and grateful that so many of you have showed up here today to be surrounded by the very beautiful symbols that have just been placed upon these walls. I was moved to tears the first time I came in here and saw these murals. I'm so grateful to Darcy for her artwork, and I just want to acknowledge that. And so really today, my piece in this is to be here to support Sean in what he's going to present today. I'm here to help him to answer questions if there are questions that are more appropriately answered by, you know, maybe myself or maybe even some of my Tanakhah relatives who are here in this audience. So glad that you're all here too. It means a lot to me. I am very pleased that the college has decided to take this step and I don't want to I don't want to say anything more I really do want to get to Sean he does have a presentation we talked that there's likely going to be questions during his presentation and please We're ready for that. We do hope that this will come and then eventually will morph into that gathering and that meeting that is part of the poster as well. I must say that I'm so very impressed that so many people showed up with such a wordy poster. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen the poster. I'm just so glad that so many of you have shown up. And I'm going to turn the floor over to Sean now. Is this working? Can you all hear me? Thanks so much, Joe. Yeah, it couldn't have been that long ago that we met. But I remember, I'm from Cranbrook, and I remember... You know, it's a funny one to begin. Like, I grew up in this town in the 80s and 90s, and, you know, I think it was a different place. Maybe not. I don't know. I haven't lived here in a while, but I do come and spend time. But... You know, it was an interesting town, but it was also, you know, had a real dark side to it. It was a pretty violent place growing up. I, you know, I witnessed myself seeing a lot of bullying and physical assaults, and there was a lot of drugs and alcohol, and, you know, there was a darkness here that I... think always stayed with me in a little bit of a way growing up and you know we tried our best to make the most of things in this town and we skateboarded and we played in punk punk bands and metal bands and, you know, really made the best of this place. But there was always, there was always something about it that kind of, you know, affected me, I think, at a young age and with some of the things that, you know, we kind of saw here. And I always wondered why, you know, why was it like this? Like why, why am I seeing the things I've seen and why do people see so disconnected? Because connected or from the community. It didn't, when I grew up, it did not seem to be a supportive community to us kids or to anybody kind of different. So. But you know, I also love this town. In a really wild way. I defend it when I'm in the Kootenays and talking with other people from the West Kootenays and stuff. I'm like, well, eh, I don't know, maybe Cranmer's the most significant town in the Kootenays. Yeah, it's a pretty important place. There's a lot of history that happened here. And I think a lot of what's going on in the world today, you can see kind of ground central happening here. So Cranbrook's not very old. You know, it's like, I don't know exactly, 150 years, a little bit less than that. And I always found it was strange that it wasn't near the river, that it wasn't on the Kootenai River. If you wanted to build a thriving metropolis, why wouldn't you situate it over the Kootenai River? Over on the river and we always had this like thing we would joke about that there's a parallel dimension where Cranbrook was on the river and it was like this amazing metropolis and you know and instead of just kind of being on this kind of a flat strip, what it ended up being. But that flatness makes Cranbrook important, and it's the reason why Cranbrook exists. First of all, that flatness also... Where's my clicker? It was a site as settlers were coming in to the area, especially after and during the 1860s, during the gold rush, where there's a lot of American miners coming up. But there was also settlers coming up. Oh, Joe, do we want to talk about this more? I'm going to get going on... Finish your thought and then... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This site, Akiskakliot, became a perfect place for Chief Isidor to build a ranch. And this is what he did. And he became a master rancher in a very quick amount of time. And there's archival evidence of surveys and stuff at the time by the Indians. agent, what they called the Indian agent then, where he had about 500 head of cattle, which is like a pretty huge amount, and in a very short amount of time. So he was building on his way to being like an incredibly successful rancher, and at the head of like the biggest ranching empire maybe in BC at the time, or what could have been, maybe on his way to rival the big four in Alberta. But all that was taken away from him. This flatness that Cranbrook sits upon that was perfect for ranching also made it an ideal spot to build a railway or to imagine a railway. And this is the real reason why Cranbrook exists today. Did we want to talk about the... Yeah, let's situate... the ranch in Akaskakli in a bigger Tanuka context. So what I've shared with... Is my mic on? Yep. Okay. So what I've shared with Sean over the years and in the conversations that we've had is... what Diane was referring to. I am known for sharing the creation story with folks, or what we know as kind of what we call the modern-day creation story of the Tunaxa folks or people. And I say modern day version because I've been told by people, again, I'm going to reference my dear old mentor, elder, friend of mine, Herman Alpine. As a modern version, the version that we tell, he would tell me that if we were to really look at the Tanakhic creation, it would probably take multiple days, three days maybe, of coming together and singing and dancing and feasting and storytelling to really understand the fullness of the Tanakhic creation. of the Tanakhic creation story. But what I share these days are that modern version. And really, if you've heard me tell the modern version, a big piece of the story you'll remember is the place names that exist throughout our homelands. And those place names take, and that story itself takes place along the two rivers and the way that those two rivers join together. And so really, you know, a modern map, a modern version of our homelands. And I say modern because... because we've got the U.S.-Canada border there. We've got the provinces there, right? So this is a modern version of the Tanakh world as we know it now. Amakas Tanakh, Tanakh Amakas. You've got it both ways there, Sean. That's awesome. Because he was actually just asking me just a little while ago, I understand that Tanakh, and we've had debate within Tanakh back and forth about do we say Amakas Tanakh or do we say Tanakh Amakas. I don't know. I kind of say it both ways myself. And it's just trying to, it's an understanding of how exactly do we translate that into English, or how do we understand that in the English language. I don't know if we need to. Tanakha Amakas, Amakas Tanakha. It's the homelands of the Tanakha people. And so we have produced this map. The way the storytelling or the history that I have been told is that it was just after his residential school days when he was a young man. There's a Tanakha man in our nation. by the name of Wilford Jacobs. His Tanakhic name was Nixik Akham. And so the way that the story... Or, if you will, the way that Tanakhic history tells it, is that when Wilford was a young man, he undertook a journey around the homelands, and he was going to his elders of the time. So, Herman was an elder for me, but he was going to his elders. who are still alive, you know, people in the 1970s. Like someone like my grandfather, Andrew Michelle, who was born in 1891. This would have been an elder for Herman. And so he went around our nation speaking to people, and what I've been told is that the... or the main question, the idea that he was looking for was, can you please share with me the stories that you were told before you went to residential school? I want to hear those stories that you know and remember from before you were a student at that school. And so the elders were sharing with him Tunakha story, Tunakha history. And it was during this undertaking of his, this traveling around of our nation and visiting with our nation elders, that he started to hear similar stories. And he started to hear stories that were connected. Maybe the end of this story connected to the beginning of this story. And what he was starting to understand was what we call our creation canon of stories. And so really, I think that in that journey that what Wilford was able to come out with was this, what we call our modern version of the Tanakhic creation story. His piecing together of all of those stories. Because there are so many more place names. that are just simply beat out of us now. I mean, honestly, they were at the residential school. There was a lot that was beat out of us. And so there's a lot of place names. There's so many more place names than we have left today. But at that time, in the 1970s, I mean, the residential school had already been open for several decades. And a few generations of Tanakh had gone through that school. And so, you know, the elders that he was asking, he was trying to get as much as he could from them. And so he was able to put this together. And not so long after his journeys, in 1981, the Tanakh Nation came out with what we call our Tanakh Land. declaration. Declaration of what we understood our nation to be, our homelands to be. And so that's eventually what came to be this map. And really it is the headwaters of the Columbia River, including that Kootenai River arm of the Columbia River. And what I love is that in that creation story it talks about a time, a time before human beings, a time when those two rivers were actually joined together in the Columbia Valley. valley. And then the really cool thing is, is a few years ago, I got this book, and it's a geology book, written from the point of view of science, geology, the science of geology. And in that book, they talk about the formation of the Rocky Mountains, you know, the plates running into each other, pushing up, you know, this kind of thing. But in that book, the geologists, the scientists acknowledge that they believe that in the distant past, maybe just after the Ice Age, that those... two rivers were adjoined together. And I'm in a conversation with some science teachers at Mount Baker, and we're talking about this very thing. And one of the science teachers says to me, oh, so they got it right. And my response to the science teacher is, who do you mean by they? Because I think that that scientific geology stuff was written after the creation story was being told and shared. That young science teacher had a tough time thinking about who did he mean by they. I think that's what I'll share about the map right now. Shooting it back over to Sean. So Cranbrook, in comparison to this really long, continuous history here that was attempted to be kind of broken up by the residential school system, is a pretty recent creation, right? 150 years or so. And it was founded by a guy. This is sort of what some of the cleared lands would have looked like. And so the town was formed by this guy, Colonel James Baines. Baker. Have you maybe heard that name before? It's kind of all over the place. The Main Street, the Mountain, the, what's the Tanaka name for? Akinmi. Akinmi, what Akinmi has been called. The high school. He's around. And I think that that's him on the mural. Does anybody actually know for sure? I think it's supposed to be him. Okay, it is him. Okay. Well, your husband did a great job. I love that mural. Anyway, Colonel Baker, he's, I mean, there's nothing really that remarkable about him. I call him a typical colonial guy. There's this kind of, during this time, like the mid-19th century, there's this class of like... bourgeois, maybe aristocrats that haven't been able to scale the old hierarchy of British society, but want to really make a name and a legacy for themselves. And the way that they do that is they go down to the colonies. I call them the landed gentry. It's this kind of upper middle class bourgeois people that usually joined the military, was a part of this. And it's like everywhere, every town, almost in Australia, South Africa, here, the United States. A lot of these guys are going out throughout the Commonwealth, especially at this time. Maybe not so much in the United States, but early on. You know, and doing this kind of thing. And it really struck me that this is like an exercise in ego in a big way. in creating a name for yourself, you know, rather than something that really, really you need to do for your family. Or, you know, people are really caught up in these, like, visions of grandeur of what they could create for themselves. So, I don't know, he spent some time in the military. He went all over the place, and then he came here, and then this is where he decided to stay, He had some connections in the government. He became the MP, I think the first MP of the Kootenays. Maybe I'm wrong. And he kind of made friends with other landed gentry like William Ferny. And, you know, these names are all over the Kootenays. William Bailey Groman, who comes through Creston. And, you know, the Tanaka view of Baker was always really suspicious that he was coming to try to take lands away. And... And local settlers were kind of suspicious of Baker, too. In the Fort Steele Prospector, there's article after article in the op-ed that the editor there would write about Baker, and it was corrupt. He'd call it his Italian hand at work because he was always trying to get some kind of a deal or take advantage of something. And he ends up starting this... railway company here, right? But before he could do that, he had to get rid of Isidore, who was here on the land. So... I'm just going to fast forward. When Baker finally gets everything here, he calls it Cranbrook. Cranbrook, the actual name Cranbrook is like an old English name that means cranes come to the brook. And as far as I know, I've never seen a crane. around here. But, you know, and then after that, after Baker does all that, well, he does what a lot of these guys do, and he just leaves. That's it. You know, he got his town, he got his name, and that was it. Today, Cranbrook, as you all know, is known by a lot of different names. They called it the Key City for a while. When I was a kid, we called it Cranhall. And then, like... The millennials called it Dink Town. Which is hilarious. And I think the choice, the shop, made a shirt about that, which is awesome. You know, and it's a pretty typical town. Oh, there's the railway. And, you know, here it is today. And I chose this picture because it kind of reflects the intention of Baker way back then, you know? There wasn't a thought into building, like, a real thriving, sustainable community. It was to create, like, this transport hub that, like, made money, that generated money, generated income. And it's kind of the way the town is designed. And I feel in some way that geography, like, influences a place. And, like, I mean, I don't have the answers at all of, like, what Cranbrook is, you know, as an entity. Like, maybe there is no answer for it. But I feel like it's part of this feeling of, like, no, you're meant to go through it. Or you're meant to, like, extract something from it. I don't know. That's certainly what we thought when we were young. and we all just wanted to get out as fast as possible, and the strip seemed to encourage us to do that. But like a lot of settler communities, These, like, we don't have a definitive thing to define ourselves with, right? Like, what, like, what, how do we identify ourselves as community members of Cranbrook, of settler community members, right? And this is a problem throughout. Canada, the United States, everywhere. And you see municipalities, usually at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce or a history heritage society, trying to come up with things that define a town. And these can range from... you know, quaint to the bizarre, right? Like, we've got Vulcan that's like a Star Trek town for some reason. Or the giant Easter egg. Or, like, happy Hans. You know? And at some point, we have to think, well, what does that actually have to do with us? You know? So Cranbrook decided to go with the Mountie. And it's not like that obvious, but when you look for it, it's there, right? Mountie, Sam Steele, and the Northwest Mounted Police. You know? It's Sam Steele. It's at a Ford Steel. It's at the Sam Steel Strip Club. It became a thing that was somehow like, oh, that's kind of who we are, but like, you know. And this is like a process that I think is how myths work too, is that they're not like super obvious. They're not, oh yeah, that is who we are. They kind of exist in the background a little bit. There's messages that they contain that are really, really a lot more important than we think. Yeah, so Steele, he's a, he's a, oh, I already went through all that. And that's kind of like, when we look at Fort Steele, for instance, right? We go out there, and I used to work out there, I had like a dishwashing job, and like, what is Fort Steele? It could be anywhere, right? Like, I remember there were actors around, but they'd have like accents, they'd have like old-timey accents, there'd be... wax, there'd be ice cream. And it was like, what does this have to do with the place where really Fort Steele was a military outpost for the RCMP to come and prepare to like, if they had to attack the Tanaha, right? But today, it's ice cream and old-timey accents. And this is what I call settler mythology at work, where the history of a place, and the particular crammer here, is never fully told, but signs are presented as if they are. And what they suggest, or they encourage us to think, is that remembering the past, like history, is wholesome, and it connects us. to this place and that that connection is a good thing but like what it is specifically is kind of left out and I think this is how myths work is they allow us to remember while we simultaneously forget where am I there's Sam Steele There's another Mountie. Do you know what's so funny is like this was on, I was sleeping in my hotel last night and this show, Due South, came on for some reason. I was like, oh, I got to put this in it. But it kind of reflects that same myth of the Mountie, right? Of this idea of like just, fair, honorable. Good looking. Good looking. Right? And but like where did those ideas come from? And the thing is that those were created by historians. And they were created by the RCMP, because the RCMP wrote their own autobiographies. And those autobiographies became the sources that historians used when they were writing about history. So one of the big ones in Cranbrook, the big historical stories that I think was the reason that they ever picked Sam Steele to represent anything here or at Fort Steele or whatever, is this. historical event called the Kootenai Uprising. That's what history books call it. Oh, there's St. Steel Days. There's Fort Steele. I'm a little bit behind on my slides. So books like this. East Kootenai Chronicle. It's got like the longest subtitle there. It's a history of settlement lawlessness, mining disasters, fires stretching across southern British Columbia and the Alberta border to Creston on Kootenai Lake. And these histories, people, like these historians were kind of doing their best with the information that they had. So I don't think, you know, particularly that David Scotter, Edna Hanich, I think that's a, I think that's how you say it. say it, were trying to like mislead people anyway. They were kind of going with what they had and maybe operating with the biases that they had at the time. And they were trying to make it exciting too. So this book is actually has some really problematic stuff in it. You're introduced to Chief Isidore in this book as like a bloodthirsty tyrant that is like whipping a pregnant woman. There's no archival evidence for that. They just embellished it to make it exciting to get caught up in this story. They also kind of became one of the most widely used sources. So if you go to the library and you want to find out about East Kootenai history or Cranbrook history, this will be 100% for sure a book that's there. There's a couple other ones, too. There's This is the Kootenai, Clara Grant. I think, who did a bit of a better job. But, you know, this is the main one. This is like the most published one. So their story, what they say about the Kootenai uprising, which again is a misleading term, we'll get to that. to that is that after the gold rush, a miner was killed, and a Tunakha man named Kapla was arrested for the murder, and Chief Isidore and a group of warriors rode into town, and they broke him out of jail, and panic ensued, and the settlers feared for their lives, and then Sam Steele and the Northwest Mounted Police, they came riding in to save the day. Now, they have this twist here that Steele dismisses the case against... the accused Tanaka murderer in this justice or in this like gesture of justice and impartiality and then he leaves as being respected by Isidore that's like that's that's been the historical version of the story for ever that's it the quote from it is Isidore was pleased and impressed with the big Mounties fairness so here again right this myth of like uphold this higher standard of like impartial universal justice somehow. But what this book doesn't tell you is that that's not the reason that Sam Steele was here. Sam Steele was here to force Isidore and the Achaemenid people onto the reserve. So part of the way that I like was able to kind of unpack this history, what we've told as history, is like these letters. So as I started my MA at UVic, my supervisor was like, oh hey this archivist just found this box of letters about the Kootenays. Do you want to look at it? I was like, yeah, sure, of course. And then as I started to read them, I was like, okay, holy shit. This is Sam Steele's in it, Johnny McDonald's in it, Colonel Baker's in it, and they're all writing back to each other about what to do about it. what they're calling an uprising. So I'm just, I think, going to go through a little chronology of kind of how I interpreted them. And I've shown these letters to other Tanuka people, too, that found a real value in substantiating their version, their history of events, which they've maintained continuously, too, which has not been written in our settler histories. But anyway, I'll just... started off, the first letter gets sent out that the jail's been broken open and this prisoner's been released. And Colonel Baker, now that we kind of can see back that, and we have these documents of him planning this takeover for the CPR line that was originally intended to go to actually where Fort Steele is, ironically, he took this opportunity to turn John John A. MacDonald and the newly formed NWMP towards Isidore. And he writes a letter that says, Isidore, the Indian chief, has taken up such a dictatorial position, and I kind of think that that's... Sorry, I do a lot of sidebars here. I think that that's kind of where the historians wrote about Isidore as this dictator. Actually, just use this word here. here and went from there and was like, oh no, we're going to really paint him. as like this villainous dictator, right? But Baker's saying this in a really misleading way. So this is Baker again. Isidore, the Indian chief, has taken up such a dictatorial position that he's practically a master of the situation. and he has lately openly defied the law by rescuing an Indian prisoner at the head of 25 armed men and it's evident that such a state of affairs cannot be permitted to exist and that the only way of establishing the law order and personal security for white settlers is to introduce such a force of mounted police as would effectually overawe the Indians and thus prevent any chance of arising. And he says, unless this is done, I'm confident an outbreak will take place and probably a massacre of white settlers. So... Baker here is like really advocating for a violent intervention and this is really the first call to bring the Northwest Mountain Police in. Now, I'm going to talk about this later. but the Northwest Mounted Baker knows the Northwest Mounted Police happen to be in Edmonton right now because they just the Northwest resistance happens in one year before, 1885 1886 culminating in the largest hanging of Indigenous leaders in Canadian history in Battleford. So they're all there. This is the context kind of for this too, is that there's a military force available to come into the Kootenays. I would say that the Tanaka were completely aware that this was happening. The Moccasin Telegraph, if you will, would have definitely brought that news to the Tanaka people. They would have absolutely been aware of what happened in Battleford. Right, so, and also this word over, like there's a lot of keywords in here that I think are really significant and that end up influencing like, you know, history, the version of history we're talking about. Like over, this word of overawing. is, again, I think we should talk about that too, because this was like a tactic that the RCMP or the Northwest Mounted Police were using, was they would show up, like, in some of the treaties, like Treaty 7 with Siksika, the Blackfoot. they would show up and, like, run artillery drills, like, while they were meant to be signing a treaty, and they'd be like, you know, you'd be hearing cannons and bombs in the background while this supposed, like, peaceful treaty process was happening. And I think you have a... Yeah, I actually shared with Sean not so long ago that... I loved when this actually came out through the letters and when Sean told me about this because when I was young I remember driving towards Wausau with my grandmother, her name was Malian Michelle, and we were just... past the Fort Steele and the Fort Steele farms, you know, on that straight stretch, kind of goes up and down a little bit, you're heading north towards Wausau. And you, so we're heading north, and so out the right-hand side, side of the car or the east side, there's a few kind of like gullies that happen there. You know, Bummer's Flats is down here, but those gullies are there. I remember when I was just a teenager, one of those drives, my grandmother pointed to one of those gullies and she said, the storytelling that she knows or the stories that she remembers from when she was a little girl is that if you went into these gullies, you could find the cannonballs from Sam Steele. Because our people talk about how he had been set up on the other side of the river so. so the Akam or the St. Mary's side of the river, where my community is. And that they were firing their cannons from there into those little gullies. This was a part of his visit here, right? They would have known what happened out on the prairies. And then they would have been faced with this show of force. That was from Tanakhah history, Tanakhah storytelling, that came to me when I was just a teenager, and now clearly enforced by these letters. Yeah, and this was not limited to the prairies. This would also happen out on the coast, too, where gunships would pull up and shoot their cannons out into the water to threaten coastal Salish villages. It was a tactic of the government and the RCMP and before the military manifestations, before they were the RCMP. But while pressure mounted for this police invasion, The term uprising didn't accurately represent the state of affairs because right after the jailbreak, Isidore meets with local settlers. And this is like a thing to understand contextually too. Like I think this happens over and over in the story of colonialism, is that there's always like a different way things could have gone, you know. There was always some settlers at the beginning that wanted to live peacefully. and work together, but over and over again, and Indigenous people that are willing to share and work collaboratively, and over and over again, settlers breaking that trust through government institutions and other institutions, over and over again. that's the pattern. And you see every time it could go a different way and it never did. It never did once. But our like alternative possible history of how this could have gone I think shows here when a bunch of local settlers support Isidore. And these are landowners, these are like this is a really significant list because this would be like the heads of the household, the male heads of the household at the time. And big and the landowners and significant settlers that had been living in the community. And they all kind of came on his side and wrote a petition that was like, Isidore is not a threat to us. There's no massacre of white settlers happening. In fact, he grabbed Kapla from jail because there was no evidence that Kapla killed this miner. But furthermore, there was evidence that Tanaka people had been killed. killed. And Isidore had been petitioning the government through the Indian agent Michael Phillips to have a trial for these murdered Tanaka people. And that was not happening. So when his family member got taken in with little evidence, this is what prompted him to kind of break his relative out. And he was very clear to all the local settlers that this is not directed at you. We actually want justice too. So we welcome the province to come here and do a trial. And we'd like to see charges brought against the people that have murdered our people. I think what's significant here, what people need to think about and to remember, is that contact for the Tanaka people didn't really happen until the early 1800s. 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. There was 300 years of contact in other parts of this continent before they actually got here. And so the... attitude that was brought here was one of the frontier. That was the Tanaka experience with contact. It wasn't, you know, this story that we understand about North America where the indigenous people were welcoming them ashore and helping them out, right? We know that story too. But the attitude that was brought here by that time, I mean, most of the people that were coming into this area were coming up from California, Oregon, Gold Rush. I mean, they were just ripping things apart and trying to grab... grab what they could. That's what Isidore was faced with. I had an elder by the name of Leo Williams when I was growing up. And again, I'm going to use that terminology, Tanakhic history, because that's what I was learning from my elders, was Tanakhic history. And Leo would talk to me about how he heard from his elders that in the 1800s, it was half the Tanakhic people gone, and then half again. Now this was mostly to do with things like smallpox. But this is what Isidore was faced with by the time he was a leader. Knowing that there were so many Tunaxa people. In fact, about three quarters of the Tunaxa people had been killed off in the 1800s. He was trying to find some justice. And it wasn't happening. So he went to get his own man. He was going to put his own man on trial himself. Yeah, and colonial authorities, they were aware this petition got to them. So after Baker's request, this got to Peter O'Reilly, who I think is the head of the Department of Indian Affairs at the time. And they would have seen this petition, right? So they know that there's not a massacre. So that pretense to... send in the RCMP is bullshit. Actually what's happening in the context behind this is that two years earlier they send one of their guys, I think it's Peter O'Reilly again, that goes ...crossed BC one time, maybe twice. Because they kind of plan it too, when a lot of Tanaka people went down south for the wintertime to the big village in Libya, Aksuar. But they weren't here when he came through. Chief Isidore wasn't here. David wasn't there in Tobacco Plains, and that's when they drew up the reserves, the final reserve boundaries. So this is at the same time. So Isidore has already been presented with these new reserves and has rejected it. So this is the year before, 1886, is the real context of why the RCMP are getting sent, the NWMP are getting sent into.... Um, the country. Uh, so where am I? Yep, so Baker would, Sam Steele would come, and they conducted, they built a military barracks, they conducted artillery drills, uh, they were walking around fully armed. There's a quote by the priest, uh, uh, Kokola. Francis Coquilleau, I think. Maybe that's not his first name. But where he tells them that you have to leave your guns at home if you're coming to church. He has to tell the RCMP that, because they're threatening people. They're walking around, they've got knives and guns in there. And they're certainly not like a professional force, really, at this time either, right? This is kind of like a ragtag militia. But Baker would kind of get his way. This suited Johnny MacDonald's sort of plans for the West and plans to expand the Canadian state. And Sam Steele would come, and they forced Isidore from his ranch. This is the account of Sam Steele himself. of his experience with Isidore. Sam Steele states that the chief was very much against giving up the land at Colonel Baker's. So he's already calling it Colonel Baker's, saying that he was justly entitled to it. Isidore wished to meet the involved parties face-to-face. Again, Isidore is like being of good faith and wanting to meet and talk it through. But they refused to meet with him. Nobody would even meet with Isidore about this. And Steele says, the matter has to be decided at once. There's no appeal from the decision of the Indian commissioners, and he'll have to leave as soon as Colonel Baker could pay whatever prices offered for the improvements. Isidore refuses this. At which point, Steele instructs him to leave with more of a threatening, and this is in Steele's words, so you can imagine maybe what had happened in person. It would be a different exchange. But Steele says that, I advised Isidore that if he broke the laws and proved obstruction, as he was doing now that he would be deposed and another of a more law-abiding and reasonable nature appointed. So that's a really polite way, basically, of saying that we're going to take you out if you disagree. agree with us. So Isidore had a heavily armed militia at his doorstep, but Isidore wasn't just simply going to accept that either, and there had been calls down to the south for the allies in the Flathead and farther, the allies, Tunaka allies to the south, of whether to go to war or not. And there's evidence about this in letters from Idaho and Montana and stuff that people had been preparing. those nations down there had been preparing for war. So there was this imminent kind of conflict brewing. And if it would have happened, it would have been very much a decisive victory for the Tanaka and their allies because they vastly outnumbered the group of RC and NWP that was here. So I think, yeah, these letters, they show a different story than the historical myth of Sam Steele. Like, where is the Steele here that shakes Isidore's hand and leaves when they're both impressed with each other's manhood and integrity? You know, this isn't the same person. This is a different facet of history. Anything you'd like to... Well, again, too, the storytelling that I heard is that Isidore was burnt out three times. He was actually burnt out of Joseph's Prairie three times. I've also been told that, you know, in the understanding at that time for settlers was that the lands were available if they were not being put to a civilized use. Well, Isidore in the record shows, and it's in... it's in the record that he had cattle, that he had a ranch, that he was rivaling some of the local settlers in the size of the herd that he had. And so, you know, the way that... that it is kind of shown or talked about in our local history is that there was some kind of agreement that Isidore would leave. But Tanakh history talks about him being burnt out three times. There's also this So many hypocritical parts on the side of the colonial government, right? And this other one is this idea of preemption, right? So they have these laws of preemption that went in in the 1860s, and essentially... The land was deemed free if it wasn't being used, and if you built something on it, then it was yours. So this law was being honored for white settlers, but even if you had taken away the ancestral claims... of Isidore and his family here, he was still legitimately preempting the land because he had built on it. So there's this real double standard of what was going on here. And this was a time where you could really see what the government wanted to do. They did not want indigenous people to be successful in the economy. And they wanted to exclude them from private property ownership and to push them onto the reserve system. So this is fully... this confluence of all these things happening in this example of history. Fully encouraged through the residential schools, fully encouraged towards things like agriculture, and then laws passed where you couldn't buy any of the agricultural that was produced by Indigenous people. And you know something that I really think about because I spend a lot of time in Calgary after I left Cranbrook I too had a love-hate relationship with this place Right, absolutely love the area and love saying that I'm from here, but hated the fucking place when I was a kid and just wanted out of here. If you don't hate it when you're a kid, then I don't believe you're from Cranberry. From Cranberry. Right? So the place that I went was right across the mountains to a place that we call Achnook. Ak-Nuk-Tap-Tzik. Ak-Nuk-Tap-Tzik. Some of you might have figured out I'm talking about Calgary. The elbow, right? In their language over there, and I'm talking about our neighbors, the neighboring nation. In their language, they actually call it elbow as well. But I don't know the word because it's Blackfoot and it's not my language. But what I do know is that Ak-Nuk-Tap-Tzik is the Tanakh name for that place. That's where I went. So I actually stayed within the homelands of Tanakh, but I got away from here. It's interesting to me the way that those kinds of things work and the way that those kinds of things happen, right? Place names and understanding of where you're going. I loved and hated this place too. And I needed it, you know, somewhere to get to. And I didn't go that far. I ended up still in Tanaka World. But it was far enough away. It was far enough away for me at least to have comfort at that time. One of the... One of the fascinating parts of these letters, though, is that they contain these, like, unbeknownst to Baker at the time, I'm sure he'd be cringing at it right now, but he actually provides this evidence of, like, oral transcriptions and statements from Isidore. So, one, he, like, quotes word for word what Isidore says. Oh, this is, I guess I got to it earlier. This is the context. context right of the hangings in battleford where the the northwest mountain police was involved in um but um i knew i should have left it earlier but so this is what what he writes do you want do you want to read it out no no you you go ahead okay um so this is what baker's saying isidore the chief spoke in reply and became exceedingly insolent He dashed his staff on the ground. He took a pistol and placed it by his side and said it was for him to say what lands he would grant the queen and not that she should dictate to him. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, thank you. No, that deserves some applause, right? I think... That right there is the... is the... the Tunaca terms that Isidore is saying that's been recorded in history in a... a potentially legal document now that is saying I don't agree to relinquish any of these lands to you that... that the queen can't ask for these lands, these Tanaka lands, and that he's not giving them away. So that's a declaration of unceded territory that has never been interrupted, and there's something that Baker unknowingly recorded, which is a fascinating part of these letters. And the reason why, Sean, that I said, no, you go ahead and read it, is because that's from Baker's letters. That's Baker's words, right? Um, But what I love about it, though, is that he is making a statement. He's saying that, no, these are Tanakhic homelands. And I think that Tanakhic people, myself included, but my relatives that are here with me, we continue to say these things to this day. We've not stopped saying this, even during the Dark Ages. And the Dark Ages are the... the 1900s, by the way, for the Tunakha people. I'm not talking about the European Dark Ages. Even during the Dark Ages here in the Kootenays, the Tunakha people continued to say what Isidore was saying, and we continue to say it to this day. Yeah. I think that some of the really powerful perspectives I was able to hear about this work. I brought these letters to Tanaka Nation, I don't know, a while ago. But not too long ago that it makes me seem old. And I was fortunate enough to be really, you know, encouraged by Joe with this work and Bonnie Harvey, I don't know if she's here, and Christopher Horsief. And I was able to present this to the Tanaka elders group, and I kind of went through this whole presentation, and nobody said anything. I was like, okay. And then I left, and then they're like, oh, well, you got invited back. I was like, oh, okay. And then we started to kind of talk about more. And I think one of the main things that the elders group Wanted to share about like what reading these letters did for them is they wanted to talk about those dark ages and they wanted to talk about What came after this because this I think was a symbol. I don't want to you know, totally speak for them, but was a bit, it became apparent it was a symbol of, this was kind of the beginning of this really dark chapter in Tanaka history. And right, your mom told me this story of up until I think as late as the 1960s that Chinooka people weren't allowed in the town of Cranbrook and weren't allowed to eat at restaurants here and the only place they could go was in a Chinese restaurant in the back behind a curtain up until the 1960s or maybe That is definitely my mom's experience and Faye I know it's your mom's experience and Jason your family's experience I know that this is in our history parents'lifetime here in the town of Cranbrook. We could only go in just a few certain places. And it was usually those Chinese folks that let us in. But it was through the back door. You know, sometimes we can be comfortable in talking about history because it's, you know, what I'm talking about is, like, people who remember. people who this actually happened to. At one of the meetings, the late Herman Alpine came up to me and he wanted to share a story about it to share with... other people when I presented this, to include in my master's anyway, and to share it with people. But he had said that, I don't know, I've got a picture of, there's Herman there. Oh, there you go. And that... Well, he told me of this dream that he had, because he wanted to tell me about Isidore. And he told me this dream that he had, and Chief Isidore was there talking to Herman and Tanaka. And Herman said... around that time in the 1880s when Steele was entering the territory and faced with a grave decision on how to respond to this threat Isidore had to decide whether to lead his people to war to attack Steele's militia militia or try to negotiate and we the tanaka had the numbers and we knew the country and we had many allies with the flathead to the south and could have easily wiped steel out but isidor spoke to the great nupika and the nupika told isidor that he could kill all the sam steel's men and all of the settlers in this land if he wished but if he did so there would be a terrible price and great sorrow and death would follow and it would be the end of the people uh so caring for the lives and the future of the people he was in charge for isador decided to negotiate so um that yeah that dream was spoken all in tunaca to herman he told me um and you know i i uh i think that i might tell you how important uh isador is today to the region and what's what's funny right is we can see sam steel we can see these you know bakers and stuff like that but we don't the name Isidore in our settler history is not as prominent is it right and I knew you know a lot of Tanuka people that I talked when I was doing this research were thinking of a time when we might when there might be an Isidore days um I think that's that's It covers most of the letters and stuff right now. And I also have to give a mention to Liz Gravel, too, who spoke a lot with me about this kind of history. And there's a similar one that I don't maybe have time to get into today about in Tobacco Plains. and Chief David at the time, who the same thing had happened to in his lands, were taken away. And that reserve there got moved into the smallest, tiniest bit that's right... right near Kukanusa, but doesn't even touch the shore. So that's a whole other story too. But yeah, so I just, I want to say thank you so much for Tanooka Nation for trusting me and sharing your history with me. This was another concept I got really used to doing this, was Herman and Liz and many other elders were like, well, you have your history, but let's just... that's just your history. We have our history. We have Tanaka history. And those histories are, we've kept ours. And I think what they've appreciated was trying to come to the truth in our own settler history, which is full of untruth. So in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, I think that that's a good place for all of us as settlers to start. I'm so grateful to Sean for taking on this work and being brave enough to take on this work. And I'm grateful to the elders, the elders groups that did sit with him and talk to him. Herman was such an important man in my life. And I know, you know, the other elders like Liz that you spoke with, just in my life, my entire life. And so when I heard that Sean was being invited, invited back. Oh, he must have something. And then I heard Sean was getting invites to like people's homes to actually go to Liz's home and sit with Liz. I thought, oh, he must be actually saying something to my respected elders that are having him invited back and having him to actually sit and have tea with Liz in her home before she passed. So I'm just so grateful that that you undertook this work, Sean, and I'm grateful in the way that he wanted to approach it. I've been saying to folks now for a while, and maybe you've heard me utilize this analogy, but I'm going to utilize it again. Because I think it's very, very true. Truth and reconciliation. Our country has been blanketed. Absolutely blanketed with that idea of reconciliation. Right? One coast to the coast to the other coast. Just blanketed with reconciliation. But like a blanket. Reconciliation is thin. There's no depth to that blanket. I'm afraid that reconciliation has got so focused on the residential school, which it should be, there should be focus there, but that's not the only place where focus should be. Focus for truth should be on these stories. I absolutely believe that Liz was telling me the truth whenever I sat with her. That Herman was telling me the truth. That Leo was telling me the truth. That all those other elders that I haven't listed just yet were telling me the truth. And so it's this attempt to try to combine... You know what, he had been presented with those 300 pieces of correspondence, because I don't know, did he say the number? Inside that box were actually 300 letters, all to do with the Kootenai uprising. and not a single one of those letters was from the pen of a Tunaxa person. Every single one of those 300 letters were from the settlers here, Baker himself, Steele. Like he said, there's even letters in there from John A. MacDonald. but in his reading of the letters he's not Tanakhah but he grew up here in his reading of those letters he could see what Baker was saying about Isidore and Sean was trying to listen to so what was Baker saying or what was Isidore saying that made Baker write those words down When I share the creation story with you. I really do want to entertain. I am trying to entertain. I want you to feel like you have been entertained in my telling of the story. But at the same time, I am trying to repeat what Isidore was trying to say. I am trying to repeat what my mom tried to do. I'm trying to continue to voice Our sovereignty in our homelands. And I must say that this violent place that you grew up, this place that my dad has talked to me about, like Jim Whitehead have talked to me about, Gangs that they needed to run in just to protect themselves in this town here. That violence has taken on kind of a different form now, a different shape now. You know, we Canadians, right, can't say genocide, we've got to say cultural genocide. That seems nicer, doesn't it? Just fucking genocide is what it is. But even here in this town, in the last 365 days, I, my council, Jason, my councillors, I and my council were in a conversation with a local elected official. And that local elected official tried saying to me and my council, But you must admit, there were good things about colonization. He was trying to force me and my council to what? Accept modernity? That this is what's better about the places because we've come into this world of modernity? Forgetting that what colonization actually was for the Tanakhic people. Half and half again. postage-sized stamps that are called reserves. The demonization of our beliefs. And he's trying to say to me and my council, well, you've got to admit... Remember this, Jason? It was offensive. We've got to admit there were some good things about colonization. Modernity? The sickness that we find our mother, the earth, in right now? Is this what he's referring to? The ability to drive from here to Fernie in an hour. Is this the good stuff? All those animals that are dying out there because of cars and trains. Is this what he wants me to call the good things? This was within the last 365 days, folks. It happened this past year. This is the violence that's still being perpetuated here. Yeah, maybe we weren't getting kicked in the nuts. That's a really devious kind of violence, right? Couched in that, isn't it good? It's good, right? Colonization, it was good, wasn't it? There's some good stuff. Some good stuff. This is one of your elected officials, folks. Smokey, you had your hand up. 24 that was the MP. Saying their names, saying, you have all heard these stories now. Thank you. Michelle?. I'm just kidding.. No, not... The light is on. Thank you. Does this work? Many of you know me. My name is Michelle Sam. I am a descendant, a direct descendant of Isidore. I would like to ask other descendants of Isidore to stand up because this is actually part of our Tanakhah history as we are alive. We are still here. We're still going to say things and be disruptive, disruly, all those great things that keep getting talked about us, spoiling our relationships with other people. Without giving us a chance to be heard for who we are and our leadership, we come from Isidore. And I just want to acknowledge too, Eldeen Stanley isn't in the room. She retired from the RCMP. She's now leading the elders in Akiskanuk. And I want to acknowledge her for bringing back Isidore's song. reminding us of our role and our responsibilities. And Jo for acknowledging, and I'm saying this publicly, those three fires. She's been through two. Hey. No, the microphone will pick up the recording. Yeah, thank you. I don't know if I can do this then, but I'll try. Ah! Know your colonial history. Know your colonial history. 1885, Brandon, Manitoba. During the Métis uprising, my first European relative was born there. This poem I'm going to share with you is called Steam and I think it relates to that steam engine that went across coast to coast that decimated many and the steam poem also relates to when we hear something or some message that we don't particularly want to relate to. So at least I've given you a little advanced blurb. I'm my own human being running on my own steam. Restlessness lives in my bones. I have my own mind. I try to be kind. In time, I will own my own home. I try to be fair. I really do care. I don't think that you understand. This type of talk makes no sense. It's full of pretense, and I'd prefer. Oh, yes, I'd really, really prefer. I'd prefer if you'd leave me alone. So unless there's any other questions, Dana, Diane, we'll turn it back to you, I guess. Yeah, thank you. I'll speak into this for a sec. So thanks again, thank you very much for that powerful dialogue and for giving us that knowledge that we have a responsibility to share and to honour. So I'll just have another round of applause for Sean and Joe. So we just have a couple of gifts for Sean and Jo and then we'll have Nicole explain her gift. Go ahead. So thank you very much. That was great. So kisukukit, kukaklik Nicole Kapel. I'm the director of the lands and resources. ...sector at the Tenochtitlan Nation Council and just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was asked to be a messenger. So I was asked to provide this gift to you, Sean, from the elders group that you spoke to over the past, we don't know how many years, but I'll say a few. And so they had told Christopher Horsethief that they wanted to give you something and he didn't know when you'd be in town and then he randomly saw you. at lunch at the prestige and then randomly saw me and it all kind of worked out and so I'm here to say that the elders really wanted you to have a gift from the Tunica Nation and from the elders as a thank you for presenting for finding those letters and presenting that information to them and they really really appreciated it and so we just have a present from the Tunica Nation elders for you. Do I open it here? Oh wow. So this is a photograph by one of our young Tunica artists Blaine Burgoyne and his pictures can be purchased at SkinCoutts. And there's just a bit of information about him and about the picture. It's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much. And the last thing I want to say before we all leave, I know that the idea was to move over to the gathering place now. Yeah, there will be fry bread and coffee and tea. Yeah, so we are going to make our way over to the gathering place. But before we go that way, I just want to say that... His thesis is quite easy to find online. I was able to find it. So believe me, if I was able to find it, it's easy to find online. And for some of you, it might be a little intimidating because of the number of pages. Don't be. It is a valuable read and a read that I think that, you know, if you are a person who calls this place home, you really should read it. So let's go have some fried bread and tea, hey? Jeez. That was good, man. Thanks for mentioning that, Joe. We'll include the link when we. Send out the YouTube link as well. Thanks.

Wesley to introduce our speakers. To share with us the history of Sam Steele in the Kootenays, I welcome Nasuken Joe Pierre and Sean McPherson. Joe really needs no introduction as he is well known to so many as the chief of the Acom community and a great storyteller. If you've not had a chance to hear Joe tell the Tunaha creation story, I encourage you to seek out an opportunity. It's both powerful and beautiful.

Joining Joe today is Sean McPherson. Sean is currently finishing a PhD in history at UBC and has worked collaboratively with the Tunaha Nation for many years doing research drawing on archival evidence of government correspondence to paint a more realistic history of colonialism in our region. We are thrilled to have him share with us today.

I came across Sean's master's thesis quite accidentally one day and his writing impacted me. with such significance that I set out to try to find how to track him down in the hopes of having an event just like we are having today. I am so grateful to both speakers for sharing their time, energy, and knowledge with all of us, and I'm grateful to all of you for attending. We are recording today's event, and we will email a link to the YouTube channel with the recording once it's available to the email address that you indicated on your registration form.

And now, over to you, Nasuk and Joel. Oh, is this working? Yep. Okay.

I just wanted to say I'm glad that Diane knew that I was going first. Sean and I just had lunch together and we played rock, paper, scissor. And I won, so I'm going first. No, actually, I'm just joking.

I'm really pleased to be here today. Ki Sokio Kiet, Kapi Neskiet, good day to you all. Ho Sokio Kokoni, Nausan Mietki, I'm very grateful for today.

Ho Sokio Kokoni. Nausan Miyitke, I'm very happy today. I'm grateful to be sharing the stage with Sean today and just getting an opportunity to share some of the work that he's done and some of the ideas that we've talked about.

Sean and I met, actually, you know what? I'm at that age now where if I say it was five years ago, it's going to be like 15 years ago, right? And so we met. We met a while ago, a while back, before he even started the work that led to the master's thesis, before he even cracked open that box with the letters. And so Sean and I met quite some time ago, and I'm just really pleased to be here today.

I wanted to get started by acknowledging that here at the College of the Rockies, in our community, which is the... to knock a name for this place. The way that I learned it when I was growing up was, I heard it kind of in two different ways when I was growing up.

Some elders would talk about the place where the two valleys meet. Others elders would talk about the place where the two creeks meet. You know, but I think that that kind of makes sense. And then there was even other elders that talked about the place of the two ram heads. But this place, the way that I first learned it, when I was first learning about the name of this place, this place was the place where the two creeks meet.

And of course, you know, we're all very, very familiar with Joseph's Creek. And the way the storytelling that I heard when I was growing up is that, in fact, Joseph's Creek, Joseph's Prairie, the way that I came to understand things is that that name Joseph was referring to a Tanakh, to a Tanakh chief. That, in fact, we could say Chief Joseph's Creek, and we wouldn't be wrong. But Akiskakhe, the place where the two creeks meet. Those of you who are long-time Cranbrook people might remember.

Again, if I say how many years ago, I'm going to be wrong. But it was about a decade ago. You might remember that summer where the street between where Savon is and that street that...

...towards where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is. You remember that summer when that all got dug up and that street was closed down, they were doing whatever work that there was. I remember there was one day where I saw a headline in the Townsend newspaper that said, Long lost... sidewalk was uncovered, was found. And so I read a little bit about, you know, long lost sidewalk.

Well, in that work that they were doing on the street that they had dug down and they had found, I guess, concrete that was about four or five feet wide. like a sidewalk that just went straight for a long way. A little bit later, a few days later, or maybe the following week, the townsman was saying that they've realized that actually what they've uncovered is a culvert, a concrete culvert. This is that second creek. People might not understand or realize, like if you think about the waterfowl crossing at Elizabeth Lake, right?

Elizabeth Lake, again, we know a man-made lake, right? It was made, you know, as a water... in the early days of this place here.

But in the development of our town over time, I mean, water, you can stop it to make a lake, but you can't stop it, right? It's going to continue flowing. And so there is a creek that comes off that lake, and it's what and why we have that waterfowl crossing by the ballpark, because that creek does go underneath the road there. But if you were to actually continue following that creek, You all know now, right?

It goes into that culvert underneath. And those two creeks do still meet. Akis Ka'ke'et, the place where the two creeks meet. That's the name for this place.

Not so long ago, it was started to be referred to as Joseph's Prairie, and I've already talked about, you know, in Tanaka history. Tunaxa storytelling, that's the way that I heard it, was that this Joseph that's being referred to, Joseph's Prairie, Joseph's Creek, was actually a Tunaxa. I've been told that it was a Tunaxa chief.

And then from what I understand from our local history is that it was 1905 that Cranbrook was incorporated as Cranbrook. So we are talking about just a very... Small, thin slice of history, aren't we?

But it is the history of our hometown. Or at least for a lot of us, I think, in this audience, the history of our hometown. But I do think that what Sean is talking about in the paper that he wrote, and for those of you who have read it, you will understand what I'm talking about, and maybe, hopefully, today's presentation will encourage you to read it if you haven't.

Because I honestly do believe that if you call yourself a Cranbrookite, Cranbrookian, Cranbrook person, You need to read this paper. If you are a leader within our community, you should read this paper. If you're just a person interested in our local history, you should read this paper.

Senator Sinclair talked about how it was education that got us into this mess, it should be education that gets us out of this mess. And I think that truthfully, what Sean has tried to do here, is he's tried to understand truth. from multiple angles and multiple sources.

And he's tried to understand how they connect together and sometimes how they don't even meet anywhere. They just kind of come close. But there's no real meeting of the understanding of the truths.

He talks about in his paper how former elder and residents of the College of the Rockies, Herman Alpine, We talk about our history or Tanakh history, what he'd refer to as Tanakh history, and our understanding of history. And I really do believe that what Sean has tried to do here, as a young man who grew up in Cranbrook himself, trying to just understand the mustache. For those of you who've read the paper, you'll know what I'm referring to.

I'm referring to Sam Steele's mustache. And why it became so important for this town. A mustache.

But just that importance of symbols and the importance that we give to symbols. And so I'm just so pleased today that so many people have showed up here wearing their orange. Thank you for being mindful of that symbol.

I'm just so pleased and grateful that so many of you have showed up here today to be surrounded by the very beautiful symbols that have just been placed upon these walls. I was moved to tears the first time I came in here and saw these murals. I'm so grateful to Darcy for her artwork, and I just want to acknowledge that.

And so really today, my piece in this is to be here to support Sean in what he's going to present today. I'm here to help him to answer questions if there are questions that are more appropriately answered by, you know, maybe myself or maybe even some of my Tanakhah relatives who are here in this audience. So glad that you're all here too.

It means a lot to me. I am very pleased that the college has decided to take this step and I don't want to I don't want to say anything more I really do want to get to Sean he does have a presentation we talked that there's likely going to be questions during his presentation and please We're ready for that. We do hope that this will come and then eventually will morph into that gathering and that meeting that is part of the poster as well. I must say that I'm so very impressed that so many people showed up with such a wordy poster. You know what I'm talking about.

You've seen the poster. I'm just so glad that so many of you have shown up. And I'm going to turn the floor over to Sean now. Is this working? Can you all hear me?

Thanks so much, Joe. Yeah, it couldn't have been that long ago that we met. But I remember, I'm from Cranbrook, and I remember...

You know, it's a funny one to begin. Like, I grew up in this town in the 80s and 90s, and, you know, I think it was a different place. Maybe not.

I don't know. I haven't lived here in a while, but I do come and spend time. But... You know, it was an interesting town, but it was also, you know, had a real dark side to it.

It was a pretty violent place growing up. I, you know, I witnessed myself seeing a lot of bullying and physical assaults, and there was a lot of drugs and alcohol, and, you know, there was a darkness here that I... think always stayed with me in a little bit of a way growing up and you know we tried our best to make the most of things in this town and we skateboarded and we played in punk punk bands and metal bands and, you know, really made the best of this place.

But there was always, there was always something about it that kind of, you know, affected me, I think, at a young age and with some of the things that, you know, we kind of saw here. And I always wondered why, you know, why was it like this? Like why, why am I seeing the things I've seen and why do people see so disconnected?

Because connected or from the community. It didn't, when I grew up, it did not seem to be a supportive community to us kids or to anybody kind of different. So.

But you know, I also love this town. In a really wild way. I defend it when I'm in the Kootenays and talking with other people from the West Kootenays and stuff.

I'm like, well, eh, I don't know, maybe Cranmer's the most significant town in the Kootenays. Yeah, it's a pretty important place. There's a lot of history that happened here.

And I think a lot of what's going on in the world today, you can see kind of ground central happening here. So Cranbrook's not very old. You know, it's like, I don't know exactly, 150 years, a little bit less than that. And I always found it was strange that it wasn't near the river, that it wasn't on the Kootenai River.

If you wanted to build a thriving metropolis, why wouldn't you situate it over the Kootenai River? Over on the river and we always had this like thing we would joke about that there's a parallel dimension where Cranbrook was on the river and it was like this amazing metropolis and you know and instead of just kind of being on this kind of a flat strip, what it ended up being. But that flatness makes Cranbrook important, and it's the reason why Cranbrook exists.

First of all, that flatness also... Where's my clicker? It was a site as settlers were coming in to the area, especially after and during the 1860s, during the gold rush, where there's a lot of American miners coming up. But there was also settlers coming up. Oh, Joe, do we want to talk about this more?

I'm going to get going on... Finish your thought and then... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This site, Akiskakliot, became a perfect place for Chief Isidor to build a ranch. And this is what he did. And he became a master rancher in a very quick amount of time. And there's archival evidence of surveys and stuff at the time by the Indians.

agent, what they called the Indian agent then, where he had about 500 head of cattle, which is like a pretty huge amount, and in a very short amount of time. So he was building on his way to being like an incredibly successful rancher, and at the head of like the biggest ranching empire maybe in BC at the time, or what could have been, maybe on his way to rival the big four in Alberta. But all that was taken away from him.

This flatness that Cranbrook sits upon that was perfect for ranching also made it an ideal spot to build a railway or to imagine a railway. And this is the real reason why Cranbrook exists today. Did we want to talk about the...

Yeah, let's situate... the ranch in Akaskakli in a bigger Tanuka context. So what I've shared with... Is my mic on? Yep.

Okay. So what I've shared with Sean over the years and in the conversations that we've had is... what Diane was referring to.

I am known for sharing the creation story with folks, or what we know as kind of what we call the modern-day creation story of the Tunaxa folks or people. And I say modern day version because I've been told by people, again, I'm going to reference my dear old mentor, elder, friend of mine, Herman Alpine. As a modern version, the version that we tell, he would tell me that if we were to really look at the Tanakhic creation, it would probably take multiple days, three days maybe, of coming together and singing and dancing and feasting and storytelling to really understand the fullness of the Tanakhic creation.

of the Tanakhic creation story. But what I share these days are that modern version. And really, if you've heard me tell the modern version, a big piece of the story you'll remember is the place names that exist throughout our homelands.

And those place names take, and that story itself takes place along the two rivers and the way that those two rivers join together. And so really, you know, a modern map, a modern version of our homelands. And I say modern because... because we've got the U.S.-Canada border there.

We've got the provinces there, right? So this is a modern version of the Tanakh world as we know it now. Amakas Tanakh, Tanakh Amakas. You've got it both ways there, Sean.

That's awesome. Because he was actually just asking me just a little while ago, I understand that Tanakh, and we've had debate within Tanakh back and forth about do we say Amakas Tanakh or do we say Tanakh Amakas. I don't know.

I kind of say it both ways myself. And it's just trying to, it's an understanding of how exactly do we translate that into English, or how do we understand that in the English language. I don't know if we need to.

Tanakha Amakas, Amakas Tanakha. It's the homelands of the Tanakha people. And so we have produced this map.

The way the storytelling or the history that I have been told is that it was just after his residential school days when he was a young man. There's a Tanakha man in our nation. by the name of Wilford Jacobs.

His Tanakhic name was Nixik Akham. And so the way that the story... Or, if you will, the way that Tanakhic history tells it, is that when Wilford was a young man, he undertook a journey around the homelands, and he was going to his elders of the time.

So, Herman was an elder for me, but he was going to his elders. who are still alive, you know, people in the 1970s. Like someone like my grandfather, Andrew Michelle, who was born in 1891. This would have been an elder for Herman.

And so he went around our nation speaking to people, and what I've been told is that the... or the main question, the idea that he was looking for was, can you please share with me the stories that you were told before you went to residential school? I want to hear those stories that you know and remember from before you were a student at that school. And so the elders were sharing with him Tunakha story, Tunakha history. And it was during this undertaking of his, this traveling around of our nation and visiting with our nation elders, that he started to hear similar stories.

And he started to hear stories that were connected. Maybe the end of this story connected to the beginning of this story. And what he was starting to understand was what we call our creation canon of stories. And so really, I think that in that journey that what Wilford was able to come out with was this, what we call our modern version of the Tanakhic creation story.

His piecing together of all of those stories. Because there are so many more place names. that are just simply beat out of us now.

I mean, honestly, they were at the residential school. There was a lot that was beat out of us. And so there's a lot of place names.

There's so many more place names than we have left today. But at that time, in the 1970s, I mean, the residential school had already been open for several decades. And a few generations of Tanakh had gone through that school.

And so, you know, the elders that he was asking, he was trying to get as much as he could from them. And so he was able to put this together. And not so long after his journeys, in 1981, the Tanakh Nation came out with what we call our Tanakh Land. declaration.

Declaration of what we understood our nation to be, our homelands to be. And so that's eventually what came to be this map. And really it is the headwaters of the Columbia River, including that Kootenai River arm of the Columbia River.

And what I love is that in that creation story it talks about a time, a time before human beings, a time when those two rivers were actually joined together in the Columbia Valley. valley. And then the really cool thing is, is a few years ago, I got this book, and it's a geology book, written from the point of view of science, geology, the science of geology. And in that book, they talk about the formation of the Rocky Mountains, you know, the plates running into each other, pushing up, you know, this kind of thing. But in that book, the geologists, the scientists acknowledge that they believe that in the distant past, maybe just after the Ice Age, that those...

two rivers were adjoined together. And I'm in a conversation with some science teachers at Mount Baker, and we're talking about this very thing. And one of the science teachers says to me, oh, so they got it right.

And my response to the science teacher is, who do you mean by they? Because I think that that scientific geology stuff was written after the creation story was being told and shared. That young science teacher had a tough time thinking about who did he mean by they. I think that's what I'll share about the map right now.

Shooting it back over to Sean. So Cranbrook, in comparison to this really long, continuous history here that was attempted to be kind of broken up by the residential school system, is a pretty recent creation, right? 150 years or so. And it was founded by a guy. This is sort of what some of the cleared lands would have looked like.

And so the town was formed by this guy, Colonel James Baines. Baker. Have you maybe heard that name before? It's kind of all over the place.

The Main Street, the Mountain, the, what's the Tanaka name for? Akinmi. Akinmi, what Akinmi has been called.

The high school. He's around. And I think that that's him on the mural.

Does anybody actually know for sure? I think it's supposed to be him. Okay, it is him.

Okay. Well, your husband did a great job. I love that mural. Anyway, Colonel Baker, he's, I mean, there's nothing really that remarkable about him.

I call him a typical colonial guy. There's this kind of, during this time, like the mid-19th century, there's this class of like... bourgeois, maybe aristocrats that haven't been able to scale the old hierarchy of British society, but want to really make a name and a legacy for themselves.

And the way that they do that is they go down to the colonies. I call them the landed gentry. It's this kind of upper middle class bourgeois people that usually joined the military, was a part of this.

And it's like everywhere, every town, almost in Australia, South Africa, here, the United States. A lot of these guys are going out throughout the Commonwealth, especially at this time. Maybe not so much in the United States, but early on.

You know, and doing this kind of thing. And it really struck me that this is like an exercise in ego in a big way. in creating a name for yourself, you know, rather than something that really, really you need to do for your family. Or, you know, people are really caught up in these, like, visions of grandeur of what they could create for themselves. So, I don't know, he spent some time in the military.

He went all over the place, and then he came here, and then this is where he decided to stay, He had some connections in the government. He became the MP, I think the first MP of the Kootenays. Maybe I'm wrong. And he kind of made friends with other landed gentry like William Ferny.

And, you know, these names are all over the Kootenays. William Bailey Groman, who comes through Creston. And, you know, the Tanaka view of Baker was always really suspicious that he was coming to try to take lands away.

And... And local settlers were kind of suspicious of Baker, too. In the Fort Steele Prospector, there's article after article in the op-ed that the editor there would write about Baker, and it was corrupt. He'd call it his Italian hand at work because he was always trying to get some kind of a deal or take advantage of something. And he ends up starting this...

railway company here, right? But before he could do that, he had to get rid of Isidore, who was here on the land. So...

I'm just going to fast forward. When Baker finally gets everything here, he calls it Cranbrook. Cranbrook, the actual name Cranbrook is like an old English name that means cranes come to the brook. And as far as I know, I've never seen a crane. around here.

But, you know, and then after that, after Baker does all that, well, he does what a lot of these guys do, and he just leaves. That's it. You know, he got his town, he got his name, and that was it.

Today, Cranbrook, as you all know, is known by a lot of different names. They called it the Key City for a while. When I was a kid, we called it Cranhall. And then, like... The millennials called it Dink Town.

Which is hilarious. And I think the choice, the shop, made a shirt about that, which is awesome. You know, and it's a pretty typical town. Oh, there's the railway.

And, you know, here it is today. And I chose this picture because it kind of reflects the intention of Baker way back then, you know? There wasn't a thought into building, like, a real thriving, sustainable community. It was to create, like, this transport hub that, like, made money, that generated money, generated income.

And it's kind of the way the town is designed. And I feel in some way that geography, like, influences a place. And, like, I mean, I don't have the answers at all of, like, what Cranbrook is, you know, as an entity. Like, maybe there is no answer for it. But I feel like it's part of this feeling of, like, no, you're meant to go through it.

Or you're meant to, like, extract something from it. I don't know. That's certainly what we thought when we were young.

and we all just wanted to get out as fast as possible, and the strip seemed to encourage us to do that. But like a lot of settler communities, These, like, we don't have a definitive thing to define ourselves with, right? Like, what, like, what, how do we identify ourselves as community members of Cranbrook, of settler community members, right?

And this is a problem throughout. Canada, the United States, everywhere. And you see municipalities, usually at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce or a history heritage society, trying to come up with things that define a town.

And these can range from... you know, quaint to the bizarre, right? Like, we've got Vulcan that's like a Star Trek town for some reason.

Or the giant Easter egg. Or, like, happy Hans. You know? And at some point, we have to think, well, what does that actually have to do with us? You know?

So Cranbrook decided to go with the Mountie. And it's not like that obvious, but when you look for it, it's there, right? Mountie, Sam Steele, and the Northwest Mounted Police.

You know? It's Sam Steele. It's at a Ford Steel. It's at the Sam Steel Strip Club.

It became a thing that was somehow like, oh, that's kind of who we are, but like, you know. And this is like a process that I think is how myths work too, is that they're not like super obvious. They're not, oh yeah, that is who we are.

They kind of exist in the background a little bit. There's messages that they contain that are really, really a lot more important than we think. Yeah, so Steele, he's a, he's a, oh, I already went through all that.

And that's kind of like, when we look at Fort Steele, for instance, right? We go out there, and I used to work out there, I had like a dishwashing job, and like, what is Fort Steele? It could be anywhere, right? Like, I remember there were actors around, but they'd have like accents, they'd have like old-timey accents, there'd be...

wax, there'd be ice cream. And it was like, what does this have to do with the place where really Fort Steele was a military outpost for the RCMP to come and prepare to like, if they had to attack the Tanaha, right? But today, it's ice cream and old-timey accents.

And this is what I call settler mythology at work, where the history of a place, and the particular crammer here, is never fully told, but signs are presented as if they are. And what they suggest, or they encourage us to think, is that remembering the past, like history, is wholesome, and it connects us. to this place and that that connection is a good thing but like what it is specifically is kind of left out and I think this is how myths work is they allow us to remember while we simultaneously forget where am I there's Sam Steele There's another Mountie. Do you know what's so funny is like this was on, I was sleeping in my hotel last night and this show, Due South, came on for some reason. I was like, oh, I got to put this in it.

But it kind of reflects that same myth of the Mountie, right? Of this idea of like just, fair, honorable. Good looking. Good looking.

Right? And but like where did those ideas come from? And the thing is that those were created by historians.

And they were created by the RCMP, because the RCMP wrote their own autobiographies. And those autobiographies became the sources that historians used when they were writing about history. So one of the big ones in Cranbrook, the big historical stories that I think was the reason that they ever picked Sam Steele to represent anything here or at Fort Steele or whatever, is this.

historical event called the Kootenai Uprising. That's what history books call it. Oh, there's St. Steel Days. There's Fort Steele.

I'm a little bit behind on my slides. So books like this. East Kootenai Chronicle.

It's got like the longest subtitle there. It's a history of settlement lawlessness, mining disasters, fires stretching across southern British Columbia and the Alberta border to Creston on Kootenai Lake. And these histories, people, like these historians were kind of doing their best with the information that they had. So I don't think, you know, particularly that David Scotter, Edna Hanich, I think that's a, I think that's how you say it.

say it, were trying to like mislead people anyway. They were kind of going with what they had and maybe operating with the biases that they had at the time. And they were trying to make it exciting too. So this book is actually has some really problematic stuff in it.

You're introduced to Chief Isidore in this book as like a bloodthirsty tyrant that is like whipping a pregnant woman. There's no archival evidence for that. They just embellished it to make it exciting to get caught up in this story.

They also kind of became one of the most widely used sources. So if you go to the library and you want to find out about East Kootenai history or Cranbrook history, this will be 100% for sure a book that's there. There's a couple other ones, too. There's This is the Kootenai, Clara Grant.

I think, who did a bit of a better job. But, you know, this is the main one. This is like the most published one.

So their story, what they say about the Kootenai uprising, which again is a misleading term, we'll get to that. to that is that after the gold rush, a miner was killed, and a Tunakha man named Kapla was arrested for the murder, and Chief Isidore and a group of warriors rode into town, and they broke him out of jail, and panic ensued, and the settlers feared for their lives, and then Sam Steele and the Northwest Mounted Police, they came riding in to save the day. Now, they have this twist here that Steele dismisses the case against... the accused Tanaka murderer in this justice or in this like gesture of justice and impartiality and then he leaves as being respected by Isidore that's like that's that's been the historical version of the story for ever that's it the quote from it is Isidore was pleased and impressed with the big Mounties fairness so here again right this myth of like uphold this higher standard of like impartial universal justice somehow. But what this book doesn't tell you is that that's not the reason that Sam Steele was here.

Sam Steele was here to force Isidore and the Achaemenid people onto the reserve. So part of the way that I like was able to kind of unpack this history, what we've told as history, is like these letters. So as I started my MA at UVic, my supervisor was like, oh hey this archivist just found this box of letters about the Kootenays.

Do you want to look at it? I was like, yeah, sure, of course. And then as I started to read them, I was like, okay, holy shit.

This is Sam Steele's in it, Johnny McDonald's in it, Colonel Baker's in it, and they're all writing back to each other about what to do about it. what they're calling an uprising. So I'm just, I think, going to go through a little chronology of kind of how I interpreted them. And I've shown these letters to other Tanuka people, too, that found a real value in substantiating their version, their history of events, which they've maintained continuously, too, which has not been written in our settler histories. But anyway, I'll just...

started off, the first letter gets sent out that the jail's been broken open and this prisoner's been released. And Colonel Baker, now that we kind of can see back that, and we have these documents of him planning this takeover for the CPR line that was originally intended to go to actually where Fort Steele is, ironically, he took this opportunity to turn John John A. MacDonald and the newly formed NWMP towards Isidore. And he writes a letter that says, Isidore, the Indian chief, has taken up such a dictatorial position, and I kind of think that that's...

Sorry, I do a lot of sidebars here. I think that that's kind of where the historians wrote about Isidore as this dictator. Actually, just use this word here.

here and went from there and was like, oh no, we're going to really paint him. as like this villainous dictator, right? But Baker's saying this in a really misleading way. So this is Baker again. Isidore, the Indian chief, has taken up such a dictatorial position that he's practically a master of the situation.

and he has lately openly defied the law by rescuing an Indian prisoner at the head of 25 armed men and it's evident that such a state of affairs cannot be permitted to exist and that the only way of establishing the law order and personal security for white settlers is to introduce such a force of mounted police as would effectually overawe the Indians and thus prevent any chance of arising. And he says, unless this is done, I'm confident an outbreak will take place and probably a massacre of white settlers. So... Baker here is like really advocating for a violent intervention and this is really the first call to bring the Northwest Mountain Police in. Now, I'm going to talk about this later.

but the Northwest Mounted Baker knows the Northwest Mounted Police happen to be in Edmonton right now because they just the Northwest resistance happens in one year before, 1885 1886 culminating in the largest hanging of Indigenous leaders in Canadian history in Battleford. So they're all there. This is the context kind of for this too, is that there's a military force available to come into the Kootenays.

I would say that the Tanaka were completely aware that this was happening. The Moccasin Telegraph, if you will, would have definitely brought that news to the Tanaka people. They would have absolutely been aware of what happened in Battleford. Right, so, and also this word over, like there's a lot of keywords in here that I think are really significant and that end up influencing like, you know, history, the version of history we're talking about. Like over, this word of overawing.

is, again, I think we should talk about that too, because this was like a tactic that the RCMP or the Northwest Mounted Police were using, was they would show up, like, in some of the treaties, like Treaty 7 with Siksika, the Blackfoot. they would show up and, like, run artillery drills, like, while they were meant to be signing a treaty, and they'd be like, you know, you'd be hearing cannons and bombs in the background while this supposed, like, peaceful treaty process was happening. And I think you have a...

Yeah, I actually shared with Sean not so long ago that... I loved when this actually came out through the letters and when Sean told me about this because when I was young I remember driving towards Wausau with my grandmother, her name was Malian Michelle, and we were just... past the Fort Steele and the Fort Steele farms, you know, on that straight stretch, kind of goes up and down a little bit, you're heading north towards Wausau. And you, so we're heading north, and so out the right-hand side, side of the car or the east side, there's a few kind of like gullies that happen there.

You know, Bummer's Flats is down here, but those gullies are there. I remember when I was just a teenager, one of those drives, my grandmother pointed to one of those gullies and she said, the storytelling that she knows or the stories that she remembers from when she was a little girl is that if you went into these gullies, you could find the cannonballs from Sam Steele. Because our people talk about how he had been set up on the other side of the river so.

so the Akam or the St. Mary's side of the river, where my community is. And that they were firing their cannons from there into those little gullies. This was a part of his visit here, right?

They would have known what happened out on the prairies. And then they would have been faced with this show of force. That was from Tanakhah history, Tanakhah storytelling, that came to me when I was just a teenager, and now clearly enforced by these letters. Yeah, and this was not limited to the prairies. This would also happen out on the coast, too, where gunships would pull up and shoot their cannons out into the water to threaten coastal Salish villages.

It was a tactic of the government and the RCMP and before the military manifestations, before they were the RCMP. But while pressure mounted for this police invasion, The term uprising didn't accurately represent the state of affairs because right after the jailbreak, Isidore meets with local settlers. And this is like a thing to understand contextually too. Like I think this happens over and over in the story of colonialism, is that there's always like a different way things could have gone, you know.

There was always some settlers at the beginning that wanted to live peacefully. and work together, but over and over again, and Indigenous people that are willing to share and work collaboratively, and over and over again, settlers breaking that trust through government institutions and other institutions, over and over again. that's the pattern.

And you see every time it could go a different way and it never did. It never did once. But our like alternative possible history of how this could have gone I think shows here when a bunch of local settlers support Isidore.

And these are landowners, these are like this is a really significant list because this would be like the heads of the household, the male heads of the household at the time. And big and the landowners and significant settlers that had been living in the community. And they all kind of came on his side and wrote a petition that was like, Isidore is not a threat to us. There's no massacre of white settlers happening.

In fact, he grabbed Kapla from jail because there was no evidence that Kapla killed this miner. But furthermore, there was evidence that Tanaka people had been killed. killed.

And Isidore had been petitioning the government through the Indian agent Michael Phillips to have a trial for these murdered Tanaka people. And that was not happening. So when his family member got taken in with little evidence, this is what prompted him to kind of break his relative out.

And he was very clear to all the local settlers that this is not directed at you. We actually want justice too. So we welcome the province to come here and do a trial. And we'd like to see charges brought against the people that have murdered our people. I think what's significant here, what people need to think about and to remember, is that contact for the Tanaka people didn't really happen until the early 1800s.

1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. There was 300 years of contact in other parts of this continent before they actually got here. And so the...

attitude that was brought here was one of the frontier. That was the Tanaka experience with contact. It wasn't, you know, this story that we understand about North America where the indigenous people were welcoming them ashore and helping them out, right?

We know that story too. But the attitude that was brought here by that time, I mean, most of the people that were coming into this area were coming up from California, Oregon, Gold Rush. I mean, they were just ripping things apart and trying to grab... grab what they could.

That's what Isidore was faced with. I had an elder by the name of Leo Williams when I was growing up. And again, I'm going to use that terminology, Tanakhic history, because that's what I was learning from my elders, was Tanakhic history.

And Leo would talk to me about how he heard from his elders that in the 1800s, it was half the Tanakhic people gone, and then half again. Now this was mostly to do with things like smallpox. But this is what Isidore was faced with by the time he was a leader.

Knowing that there were so many Tunaxa people. In fact, about three quarters of the Tunaxa people had been killed off in the 1800s. He was trying to find some justice.

And it wasn't happening. So he went to get his own man. He was going to put his own man on trial himself.

Yeah, and colonial authorities, they were aware this petition got to them. So after Baker's request, this got to Peter O'Reilly, who I think is the head of the Department of Indian Affairs at the time. And they would have seen this petition, right? So they know that there's not a massacre.

So that pretense to... send in the RCMP is bullshit. Actually what's happening in the context behind this is that two years earlier they send one of their guys, I think it's Peter O'Reilly again, that goes ...crossed BC one time, maybe twice.

Because they kind of plan it too, when a lot of Tanaka people went down south for the wintertime to the big village in Libya, Aksuar. But they weren't here when he came through. Chief Isidore wasn't here.

David wasn't there in Tobacco Plains, and that's when they drew up the reserves, the final reserve boundaries. So this is at the same time. So Isidore has already been presented with these new reserves and has rejected it. So this is the year before, 1886, is the real context of why the RCMP are getting sent, the NWMP are getting sent into.... Um, the country.

Uh, so where am I? Yep, so Baker would, Sam Steele would come, and they conducted, they built a military barracks, they conducted artillery drills, uh, they were walking around fully armed. There's a quote by the priest, uh, uh, Kokola. Francis Coquilleau, I think.

Maybe that's not his first name. But where he tells them that you have to leave your guns at home if you're coming to church. He has to tell the RCMP that, because they're threatening people.

They're walking around, they've got knives and guns in there. And they're certainly not like a professional force, really, at this time either, right? This is kind of like a ragtag militia. But Baker would kind of get his way. This suited Johnny MacDonald's sort of plans for the West and plans to expand the Canadian state.

And Sam Steele would come, and they forced Isidore from his ranch. This is the account of Sam Steele himself. of his experience with Isidore.

Sam Steele states that the chief was very much against giving up the land at Colonel Baker's. So he's already calling it Colonel Baker's, saying that he was justly entitled to it. Isidore wished to meet the involved parties face-to-face. Again, Isidore is like being of good faith and wanting to meet and talk it through.

But they refused to meet with him. Nobody would even meet with Isidore about this. And Steele says, the matter has to be decided at once. There's no appeal from the decision of the Indian commissioners, and he'll have to leave as soon as Colonel Baker could pay whatever prices offered for the improvements. Isidore refuses this.

At which point, Steele instructs him to leave with more of a threatening, and this is in Steele's words, so you can imagine maybe what had happened in person. It would be a different exchange. But Steele says that, I advised Isidore that if he broke the laws and proved obstruction, as he was doing now that he would be deposed and another of a more law-abiding and reasonable nature appointed. So that's a really polite way, basically, of saying that we're going to take you out if you disagree.

agree with us. So Isidore had a heavily armed militia at his doorstep, but Isidore wasn't just simply going to accept that either, and there had been calls down to the south for the allies in the Flathead and farther, the allies, Tunaka allies to the south, of whether to go to war or not. And there's evidence about this in letters from Idaho and Montana and stuff that people had been preparing.

those nations down there had been preparing for war. So there was this imminent kind of conflict brewing. And if it would have happened, it would have been very much a decisive victory for the Tanaka and their allies because they vastly outnumbered the group of RC and NWP that was here. So I think, yeah, these letters, they show a different story than the historical myth of Sam Steele. Like, where is the Steele here that shakes Isidore's hand and leaves when they're both impressed with each other's manhood and integrity?

You know, this isn't the same person. This is a different facet of history. Anything you'd like to...

Well, again, too, the storytelling that I heard is that Isidore was burnt out three times. He was actually burnt out of Joseph's Prairie three times. I've also been told that, you know, in the understanding at that time for settlers was that the lands were available if they were not being put to a civilized use. Well, Isidore in the record shows, and it's in...

it's in the record that he had cattle, that he had a ranch, that he was rivaling some of the local settlers in the size of the herd that he had. And so, you know, the way that... that it is kind of shown or talked about in our local history is that there was some kind of agreement that Isidore would leave.

But Tanakh history talks about him being burnt out three times. There's also this So many hypocritical parts on the side of the colonial government, right? And this other one is this idea of preemption, right?

So they have these laws of preemption that went in in the 1860s, and essentially... The land was deemed free if it wasn't being used, and if you built something on it, then it was yours. So this law was being honored for white settlers, but even if you had taken away the ancestral claims... of Isidore and his family here, he was still legitimately preempting the land because he had built on it.

So there's this real double standard of what was going on here. And this was a time where you could really see what the government wanted to do. They did not want indigenous people to be successful in the economy.

And they wanted to exclude them from private property ownership and to push them onto the reserve system. So this is fully... this confluence of all these things happening in this example of history.

Fully encouraged through the residential schools, fully encouraged towards things like agriculture, and then laws passed where you couldn't buy any of the agricultural that was produced by Indigenous people. And you know something that I really think about because I spend a lot of time in Calgary after I left Cranbrook I too had a love-hate relationship with this place Right, absolutely love the area and love saying that I'm from here, but hated the fucking place when I was a kid and just wanted out of here. If you don't hate it when you're a kid, then I don't believe you're from Cranberry.

From Cranberry. Right? So the place that I went was right across the mountains to a place that we call Achnook.

Ak-Nuk-Tap-Tzik. Ak-Nuk-Tap-Tzik. Some of you might have figured out I'm talking about Calgary. The elbow, right? In their language over there, and I'm talking about our neighbors, the neighboring nation.

In their language, they actually call it elbow as well. But I don't know the word because it's Blackfoot and it's not my language. But what I do know is that Ak-Nuk-Tap-Tzik is the Tanakh name for that place.

That's where I went. So I actually stayed within the homelands of Tanakh, but I got away from here. It's interesting to me the way that those kinds of things work and the way that those kinds of things happen, right? Place names and understanding of where you're going.

I loved and hated this place too. And I needed it, you know, somewhere to get to. And I didn't go that far.

I ended up still in Tanaka World. But it was far enough away. It was far enough away for me at least to have comfort at that time. One of the...

One of the fascinating parts of these letters, though, is that they contain these, like, unbeknownst to Baker at the time, I'm sure he'd be cringing at it right now, but he actually provides this evidence of, like, oral transcriptions and statements from Isidore. So, one, he, like, quotes word for word what Isidore says. Oh, this is, I guess I got to it earlier. This is the context.

context right of the hangings in battleford where the the northwest mountain police was involved in um but um i knew i should have left it earlier but so this is what what he writes do you want do you want to read it out no no you you go ahead okay um so this is what baker's saying isidore the chief spoke in reply and became exceedingly insolent He dashed his staff on the ground. He took a pistol and placed it by his side and said it was for him to say what lands he would grant the queen and not that she should dictate to him. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. No, that deserves some applause, right? I think...

That right there is the... is the... the Tunaca terms that Isidore is saying that's been recorded in history in a... a potentially legal document now that is saying I don't agree to relinquish any of these lands to you that... that the queen can't ask for these lands, these Tanaka lands, and that he's not giving them away.

So that's a declaration of unceded territory that has never been interrupted, and there's something that Baker unknowingly recorded, which is a fascinating part of these letters. And the reason why, Sean, that I said, no, you go ahead and read it, is because that's from Baker's letters. That's Baker's words, right?

Um, But what I love about it, though, is that he is making a statement. He's saying that, no, these are Tanakhic homelands. And I think that Tanakhic people, myself included, but my relatives that are here with me, we continue to say these things to this day. We've not stopped saying this, even during the Dark Ages.

And the Dark Ages are the... the 1900s, by the way, for the Tunakha people. I'm not talking about the European Dark Ages. Even during the Dark Ages here in the Kootenays, the Tunakha people continued to say what Isidore was saying, and we continue to say it to this day.

Yeah. I think that some of the really powerful perspectives I was able to hear about this work. I brought these letters to Tanaka Nation, I don't know, a while ago.

But not too long ago that it makes me seem old. And I was fortunate enough to be really, you know, encouraged by Joe with this work and Bonnie Harvey, I don't know if she's here, and Christopher Horsief. And I was able to present this to the Tanaka elders group, and I kind of went through this whole presentation, and nobody said anything. I was like, okay. And then I left, and then they're like, oh, well, you got invited back.

I was like, oh, okay. And then we started to kind of talk about more. And I think one of the main things that the elders group Wanted to share about like what reading these letters did for them is they wanted to talk about those dark ages and they wanted to talk about What came after this because this I think was a symbol. I don't want to you know, totally speak for them, but was a bit, it became apparent it was a symbol of, this was kind of the beginning of this really dark chapter in Tanaka history. And right, your mom told me this story of up until I think as late as the 1960s that Chinooka people weren't allowed in the town of Cranbrook and weren't allowed to eat at restaurants here and the only place they could go was in a Chinese restaurant in the back behind a curtain up until the 1960s or maybe That is definitely my mom's experience and Faye I know it's your mom's experience and Jason your family's experience I know that this is in our history parents'lifetime here in the town of Cranbrook.

We could only go in just a few certain places. And it was usually those Chinese folks that let us in. But it was through the back door. You know, sometimes we can be comfortable in talking about history because it's, you know, what I'm talking about is, like, people who remember.

people who this actually happened to. At one of the meetings, the late Herman Alpine came up to me and he wanted to share a story about it to share with... other people when I presented this, to include in my master's anyway, and to share it with people. But he had said that, I don't know, I've got a picture of, there's Herman there.

Oh, there you go. And that... Well, he told me of this dream that he had, because he wanted to tell me about Isidore.

And he told me this dream that he had, and Chief Isidore was there talking to Herman and Tanaka. And Herman said... around that time in the 1880s when Steele was entering the territory and faced with a grave decision on how to respond to this threat Isidore had to decide whether to lead his people to war to attack Steele's militia militia or try to negotiate and we the tanaka had the numbers and we knew the country and we had many allies with the flathead to the south and could have easily wiped steel out but isidor spoke to the great nupika and the nupika told isidor that he could kill all the sam steel's men and all of the settlers in this land if he wished but if he did so there would be a terrible price and great sorrow and death would follow and it would be the end of the people uh so caring for the lives and the future of the people he was in charge for isador decided to negotiate so um that yeah that dream was spoken all in tunaca to herman he told me um and you know i i uh i think that i might tell you how important uh isador is today to the region and what's what's funny right is we can see sam steel we can see these you know bakers and stuff like that but we don't the name Isidore in our settler history is not as prominent is it right and I knew you know a lot of Tanuka people that I talked when I was doing this research were thinking of a time when we might when there might be an Isidore days um I think that's that's It covers most of the letters and stuff right now. And I also have to give a mention to Liz Gravel, too, who spoke a lot with me about this kind of history.

And there's a similar one that I don't maybe have time to get into today about in Tobacco Plains. and Chief David at the time, who the same thing had happened to in his lands, were taken away. And that reserve there got moved into the smallest, tiniest bit that's right... right near Kukanusa, but doesn't even touch the shore. So that's a whole other story too.

But yeah, so I just, I want to say thank you so much for Tanooka Nation for trusting me and sharing your history with me. This was another concept I got really used to doing this, was Herman and Liz and many other elders were like, well, you have your history, but let's just... that's just your history.

We have our history. We have Tanaka history. And those histories are, we've kept ours.

And I think what they've appreciated was trying to come to the truth in our own settler history, which is full of untruth. So in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, I think that that's a good place for all of us as settlers to start. I'm so grateful to Sean for taking on this work and being brave enough to take on this work.

And I'm grateful to the elders, the elders groups that did sit with him and talk to him. Herman was such an important man in my life. And I know, you know, the other elders like Liz that you spoke with, just in my life, my entire life. And so when I heard that Sean was being invited, invited back.

Oh, he must have something. And then I heard Sean was getting invites to like people's homes to actually go to Liz's home and sit with Liz. I thought, oh, he must be actually saying something to my respected elders that are having him invited back and having him to actually sit and have tea with Liz in her home before she passed. So I'm just so grateful that that you undertook this work, Sean, and I'm grateful in the way that he wanted to approach it.

I've been saying to folks now for a while, and maybe you've heard me utilize this analogy, but I'm going to utilize it again. Because I think it's very, very true. Truth and reconciliation.

Our country has been blanketed. Absolutely blanketed with that idea of reconciliation. Right?

One coast to the coast to the other coast. Just blanketed with reconciliation. But like a blanket.

Reconciliation is thin. There's no depth to that blanket. I'm afraid that reconciliation has got so focused on the residential school, which it should be, there should be focus there, but that's not the only place where focus should be. Focus for truth should be on these stories. I absolutely believe that Liz was telling me the truth whenever I sat with her.

That Herman was telling me the truth. That Leo was telling me the truth. That all those other elders that I haven't listed just yet were telling me the truth. And so it's this attempt to try to combine... You know what, he had been presented with those 300 pieces of correspondence, because I don't know, did he say the number?

Inside that box were actually 300 letters, all to do with the Kootenai uprising. and not a single one of those letters was from the pen of a Tunaxa person. Every single one of those 300 letters were from the settlers here, Baker himself, Steele.

Like he said, there's even letters in there from John A. MacDonald. but in his reading of the letters he's not Tanakhah but he grew up here in his reading of those letters he could see what Baker was saying about Isidore and Sean was trying to listen to so what was Baker saying or what was Isidore saying that made Baker write those words down When I share the creation story with you. I really do want to entertain. I am trying to entertain.

I want you to feel like you have been entertained in my telling of the story. But at the same time, I am trying to repeat what Isidore was trying to say. I am trying to repeat what my mom tried to do. I'm trying to continue to voice Our sovereignty in our homelands. And I must say that this violent place that you grew up, this place that my dad has talked to me about, like Jim Whitehead have talked to me about, Gangs that they needed to run in just to protect themselves in this town here.

That violence has taken on kind of a different form now, a different shape now. You know, we Canadians, right, can't say genocide, we've got to say cultural genocide. That seems nicer, doesn't it?

Just fucking genocide is what it is. But even here in this town, in the last 365 days, I, my council, Jason, my councillors, I and my council were in a conversation with a local elected official. And that local elected official tried saying to me and my council, But you must admit, there were good things about colonization.

He was trying to force me and my council to what? Accept modernity? That this is what's better about the places because we've come into this world of modernity?

Forgetting that what colonization actually was for the Tanakhic people. Half and half again. postage-sized stamps that are called reserves.

The demonization of our beliefs. And he's trying to say to me and my council, well, you've got to admit... Remember this, Jason?

It was offensive. We've got to admit there were some good things about colonization. Modernity?

The sickness that we find our mother, the earth, in right now? Is this what he's referring to? The ability to drive from here to Fernie in an hour. Is this the good stuff?

All those animals that are dying out there because of cars and trains. Is this what he wants me to call the good things? This was within the last 365 days, folks. It happened this past year.

This is the violence that's still being perpetuated here. Yeah, maybe we weren't getting kicked in the nuts. That's a really devious kind of violence, right? Couched in that, isn't it good? It's good, right?

Colonization, it was good, wasn't it? There's some good stuff. Some good stuff. This is one of your elected officials, folks.

Smokey, you had your hand up. 24 that was the MP. Saying their names, saying, you have all heard these stories now. Thank you.

Michelle?. I'm just kidding.. No, not...

The light is on. Thank you. Does this work? Many of you know me. My name is Michelle Sam.

I am a descendant, a direct descendant of Isidore. I would like to ask other descendants of Isidore to stand up because this is actually part of our Tanakhah history as we are alive. We are still here.

We're still going to say things and be disruptive, disruly, all those great things that keep getting talked about us, spoiling our relationships with other people. Without giving us a chance to be heard for who we are and our leadership, we come from Isidore. And I just want to acknowledge too, Eldeen Stanley isn't in the room. She retired from the RCMP.

She's now leading the elders in Akiskanuk. And I want to acknowledge her for bringing back Isidore's song. reminding us of our role and our responsibilities.

And Jo for acknowledging, and I'm saying this publicly, those three fires. She's been through two. Hey. No, the microphone will pick up the recording. Yeah, thank you.

I don't know if I can do this then, but I'll try. Ah! Know your colonial history. Know your colonial history.

1885, Brandon, Manitoba. During the Métis uprising, my first European relative was born there. This poem I'm going to share with you is called Steam and I think it relates to that steam engine that went across coast to coast that decimated many and the steam poem also relates to when we hear something or some message that we don't particularly want to relate to.

So at least I've given you a little advanced blurb. I'm my own human being running on my own steam. Restlessness lives in my bones. I have my own mind. I try to be kind.

In time, I will own my own home. I try to be fair. I really do care. I don't think that you understand.

This type of talk makes no sense. It's full of pretense, and I'd prefer. Oh, yes, I'd really, really prefer. I'd prefer if you'd leave me alone. So unless there's any other questions, Dana, Diane, we'll turn it back to you, I guess.

Yeah, thank you. I'll speak into this for a sec. So thanks again, thank you very much for that powerful dialogue and for giving us that knowledge that we have a responsibility to share and to honour. So I'll just have another round of applause for Sean and Joe. So we just have a couple of gifts for Sean and Jo and then we'll have Nicole explain her gift.

Go ahead. So thank you very much. That was great. So kisukukit, kukaklik Nicole Kapel.

I'm the director of the lands and resources. ...sector at the Tenochtitlan Nation Council and just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was asked to be a messenger. So I was asked to provide this gift to you, Sean, from the elders group that you spoke to over the past, we don't know how many years, but I'll say a few. And so they had told Christopher Horsethief that they wanted to give you something and he didn't know when you'd be in town and then he randomly saw you. at lunch at the prestige and then randomly saw me and it all kind of worked out and so I'm here to say that the elders really wanted you to have a gift from the Tunica Nation and from the elders as a thank you for presenting for finding those letters and presenting that information to them and they really really appreciated it and so we just have a present from the Tunica Nation elders for you.

Do I open it here? Oh wow. So this is a photograph by one of our young Tunica artists Blaine Burgoyne and his pictures can be purchased at SkinCoutts.

And there's just a bit of information about him and about the picture. It's beautiful. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And the last thing I want to say before we all leave, I know that the idea was to move over to the gathering place now. Yeah, there will be fry bread and coffee and tea.

Yeah, so we are going to make our way over to the gathering place. But before we go that way, I just want to say that... His thesis is quite easy to find online. I was able to find it. So believe me, if I was able to find it, it's easy to find online.

And for some of you, it might be a little intimidating because of the number of pages. Don't be. It is a valuable read and a read that I think that, you know, if you are a person who calls this place home, you really should read it.

So let's go have some fried bread and tea, hey? Jeez. That was good, man.

Thanks for mentioning that, Joe. We'll include the link when we. Send out the YouTube link as well.

Thanks.

Transcript for:Exploring Sam Steele's Legacy in Kootenays

Transcript for:
Exploring Sam Steele's Legacy in Kootenays