Shelly Boyd Interview – Displacement
Produced by Revelstoke Museum and Archives. Filmed by Agathe Bernard.
An interview with Shelly Boyd, Arrow Lakes facilitator for Colville Confederated Tribes, where she discusses the displacement of the Sinixt.
Title Screen: Circular logo on a black backdrop. Logo is an image of four waves turning into wheat on the left end. The title “Stories Beneath the Surface” is circled around the image in capital letters.
Interview with Shelly Boyd – a Sinixt woman with dark hair in two braids, wearing an orange tank-top. She is sitting on a log in front of a river.
Revelstoke Museum and Archives logo in the bottom right hand corner.
Transcript of Narration:
You can’t separate us, even our name, Sn̓ʕayckstx. It’s the people of the place of the bull trout or the Dolly Varden.
I understand Dolly Varden are becoming harder and harder they’re becoming, uh, scarce themselves. But we are the people of this place.
When we’re taken away from here there is a part of us that dies [raises her left hand to her chest] and when we come back there’s a part of us that lives, and every time I come here I feel that. And every time someone else comes here they feel that.
I have a friend, she’s from up here, Crystal Spicer, and she said one of the things that struck her when she came to Inchelium, because she came to visit there, she said: you know there would be benches that said Arrow Lakes, there would be a community centre that said Arrow Lakes [raises her right hand to gesture].
All these places [looks around and gestures with both hands] that said Arrow Lakes on it she’d be like: why do they say Arrow Lakes? [Raises her hands, palms up]. We’re on the Columbia but we’re not on the Arrow Lak- she didn’t – we didn’t forget who we are [brings both hands to her chest] like kwu Snayckst Umselx (we are Arrow Lakes): Arrow Lakes.
Our blue card you know, it doesn’t say Colville, I mean at the top [raises her hands above her head to gesture] it says Colville Confederated Tribes, but it’s Arrow Lakes Band.
I think I could go on all day and talk about our connection to this land or the connection to this water [gestures to the river behind her], the connection to the sky [gestures above herself, to the sky], all of it, it just Axa i7 sniliten (this is our home): it feels like home.