Sinixt canoe journey on Arrow Lakes and Columbia River, 2022
Mike Graeme Photography.
In June of 2022, about 100 members of the Sinixt Confederacy came to Canada from their homes in Washington State to celebrate the 2021 Supreme Court of Canada decision affirming the Sinixt as Indigenous people of Canada. The celebration included a Columbia River/Arrow Lakes canoe journey, with several people from the Sinixt and other First Nations paddling through traditional Sinixt territory.
In this photograph, a sturgeon-nosed canoe is paddling behind a larger dugout canoe, flying the Sinixt flag. The boats are paddling towards the former site of Arrowhead, which was an important village and fishery site for the Sinixt.
Shelly Boyd, Sinixt/Arrow Lakes facilitator for Colville Confederated Tribes, said, “I have a dream that every one of our people who want to go home to our Northern Territory will have the chance, even if it’s just to take a drink from one of the many creeks you can still drink from, to feel the power of the many waterfalls or the medicine of one of the hot springs that healed us so many generations ago. I have a dream that one day that line (the international border) will be invisible to all of us. This is the home we have been missing for a hundred years. Someone said on the journey, “I didn’t realize I was homesick until now that the sickness has gone away.”