Evidence on the Adequacy of First Nations Consultation - BC Hydro ...

2. James Teit
Around the turn of the last century, this early ethnographer spent a number of decades c.1900 living
with the North Thompson Shuswap people, mastering the language, gathering oral traditions,
studying their way of life and travelling throughout Salishan territory. While his important work The
Salishan Tribes of the Western Plateaus does not appear to treat with the Ktunaxa directly, it is
valuable for its examination in some detail of their historical Salish neighbours. His assessment of
aboriginal territory [Figure 6], perhaps influential in Shuswap territorial claims, shows a very
expansive Shuswap component compared to other ethnographers, in that it entirely encompasses the
Big Bend area up the Columbia to the vicinity of Windermere and down the Columbia to include the
Arrow Lakes.
Figure 6. A portion of Teit’s map (1909:450) reproduced from Smith (1984), defining the Ktunaxa-Shuswap
boundary as of the mid-nineteenth century. The letter ‘D’ by the upper Columbia denotes the Kinbasket
people of the Upper North Thompson Band.
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