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Burning the Notice of Extinction, 2022

A colour photograph of a Sinixt woman, dressed in traditional attire, throwing a rolled document into a specially built fire barrel. A person, holding a similar document, stands to the left. Blurred people observe behind a raised railing in the background. Trees in the background.

Mike Graeme Photography.

Shelly Boyd, Sinixt/Arrow Lakes Facilitator for Colville Confederated Tribes, is seen here at Nelson, B.C., June 10, 2022, throwing a rolled document into a specially built fire barrel. The document is a copy of an order from 1956 which declared the Arrow Lakes Band extinct in Canada for purposes of the Indian Act.

A 2021 Supreme Court of Canada decision affirmed that the Sinixt/Arrow Lakes people are Indigenous People of Canada. About 100 Sinixt people from Colville Confederated Tribes came to their traditional Canadian territory in 2022 to celebrate the decision and to bring people to come onto the land that they had been separated from for so long. Many of them joined Shelly in tossing the extinction papers into the fire.