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

DRAFT REPORT: Rights and Title Interests in the Columbia Valley Transmission Project Area
Alice Belleau of Alkali Lake also opined that she did not know of any Shuswap-wide
organization that united the bands, but that their relations were friendly. 304 Other respondents
supported the concept of the totality of unbounded band lands comprising the territorial holdings
of the Secwepemc people.
Pierre Squinahan of Alkali Lake responded to the question about individual band boundaries
before Europeans came by saying:
There was no real boundary. The different bands lived in different places
by the land belonged to all the Shuswap. 305
David Johnson also distinguished access to hunting grounds, available to all Shuswap people,
from access to fisheries and to village sites, the property of a residential group, but he, too,
stressed the undifferentiated territory associated with the Shuswap speech-community:
There was no fixed boundary. Each band had its special fishing places
and places where it used to build its winter villages, but the land was
belonged to all the Shuswap and anyone could hunt where he wanted. 306
Teit also concluded that each band "had its common recognized hunting, trapping and fishing
places, but members of any other bands were allowed to use them without restriction, whenever
they desired." 307 Each family was relatively independent and was able to procure and process
what it required, with equal access to the same resources as other families.
Apart from the recognition of a common territory occupied by Shuswap-speaking people, and the
association of bands or kin-groups with particular territories, there is some data available
concerning specific hunting locations that were regulated. Fragmentary data concerning such
stewardship is provided in the ethnographic literature. Boas reports that among the Shuswap,
"tribes [i.e., bands] and families had separate hunting grounds originally" but at the time of his
investigation among the Kamloops Shuswap [in 1889], this practice was all but forgotten. 308
Boas contrasts this with the communal ownership of the resource and states:
It seems that the various tribes of the Shuswap had no separate hunting
grounds, but that they hunted over the whole territory, wherever they
liked...Disputes arising between members of the same tribe were
generally settled by arbitration. For instance, where a number of men had
driven deer into a lake, and a dispute arose as to who had driven one
304 Brow 1972, page 52.
305 Brow 1972, page 46.
306 Brow 1972, page 49.
307 Teit 1909, page 572.
308 Boas 1891, page 86
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