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

6. Randy Bouchard and Dorothy Kennedy
Their Ethnography and Ethnohistory in British Columbia’s Lower Kootenay/Columbia Hydropower
Region, 2000 appears to be an exhaustive synthesis of available documentation and ethnography
relating to the Lower Kootenay / Columbia Hydropower Region. It has close to 70 pages of
bibliography alone, indicating that a very wide range of material has been reviewed.
Bouchard and Kennedy, who also contributed a chapter on the Okanagan Indians in Volume 12 of the
Handbook of North American Indians, believe that the traditional boundary line of the western
portion of Ktunaxa territory runs relatively straight north as an extension of the Washington – Idaho
state border until it reaches Golden [Figure 7].
Following Teit’s practice as they have in other studies, 81 Bouchard and Kennedy cite “Lakes place
names” as evidence that the Columbia River and adjacent areas from Revelstoke to below the U.S.
border were Sinixt lands and lay outside Ktunaxa territory. In this, their analysis falls prey to the
same weakness as Teit’s, especially in that it does not appear to account for Ktunaxa names for such
places [see pp 26-27, above]. 82 However, the net result is that they essentially agree with Allan
Smith in a delineation of Ktunaxa territory that includes the study area.
81 Consistent with their usual approach, Bouchard and Kennedy’s register much of their work under the name “The B.C.
Indian Languages Project.”
82 It should also be pointed out that, although the historical research in their report is extensive, their selective
interpretation and use of documentation can be unfortunate. For example, in their enthusiasm to reconstruct the history of
a once extensive and powerful Sinixt nation, they slough off Ross’s account of meeting of people expressly identified as
Ktunaxa living in the Arrow Lakes in the 1820s as mistaken. Another concerns the 1861 report of Colonial Gold
Commissioner William Cox, implying in their reference that he only met with the Sinixt concerning troubles with the
miners. In fact, Cox not only met separately with the Lower Ktunaxa and acknowledged their presence at the mouth of
the Pend d’Oreille River, he marked out a reserve for them at the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers.
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