The People

Voices of Salmon Nation

Jeannette Armstrong

JEANNETTE ARMSTRONG of the Okanagan Nation in British Columbia spoke at a November 2004 gathering of Native leaders on the importance of place.

I just want to pass on some words that have been passed on to me. I work with the interpreter's society among our people. And we're the people that interpret for the medicine people and community. I've been an interpreter since I was eleven or twelve years old.

I've accompanied our chiefs and our elders, and I interpret in our medicine ceremonies. Syilx speak a high language and that isn't spoken by others; I speak both languages and interpret for them. I also speak a number of other tribal languages from surrounding communities.

One of the things that I have come to understand in interpreting is that the Syilx language is who we are. The language is a living thing, like a person. And we're parts of that living thing; we're not separate from it.

We're an important part of the land and when we lose that understanding that we're a part of that place, then dangerous things can occur. And those dangers are toward us as a people.

I'll just share one word with you. In our language we call ourselves sqilxw and in the high language we call ourselves tmixw, which means we're the part of the body that's aware. We're the consciousness of the body, which is the earth, which is the land, the place that we come from.

And when you think about it that way, it's a tremendous responsibility that we have in being designated by the creator and being given that role by the creator. All the sacred spirits that reside and live on our land are representative voices: the plants, the fish, the birds, the animals, the insects, and the water and the fire.

We recognize all of those as our relatives. They are as close to us as our brothers or our sisters, and whenever any one of those clans is endangered or damaged then we have a responsibility to talk, to teach, to stand against the destruction.

We have to use our minds and our ceremonies and every tool that we can find, even the new tools that have been placed in front of us. And we know that there is no way that we as people, as an indigenous people in the place that we're at now, can act alone. And we never have acted alone in the past.

And whenever anything comes in front of us, we have to pick it up because it has a connection to what we must do in the future. It has to do with the living part of the land of which we are a member, our flesh, our bones, our molecules. The air we breathe, the water that runs through our body, all that was a gift from every living thing that lived in our land, none of it was put together by us, but every thing that lives on our land gave us the body that is standing right here. We cannot exist without them and we cannot ever forget that that's what we are.

The other part of it, the spirit part — I guess in English it'd be called our mind or consciousness — that part was given the same way, assembled the same way, reflecting all the different parts of the spirit world. What my grandfather said is that we're a reflection. We're a reflection of what we really are on the inside. We're all parts of what has been assembled together and we must not forget that. When we forget, then those things start disappearing around us. The salmon disappears, the deer, the plants — those things start leaving.

For each of us to be indigenous is absolutely critical — to pass that on to everyone, not just our children, not just our grandchildren, not just our community, but everyone who lives here. For me, it is my responsibility to try to build that sense of place. When we can give that to every person living here, then this place will be healthy, this place will be safe, and this place will be what we need it to be.

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