Secwepemc Culture

When Europeans reached the Secwepemc, their territory extended from the Columbia River Valley in the east to the Fraser River in the west and from the upper Fraser region in the north to the present Arrow Lakes in the south. A vast and diverse  land of 56,000 square miles or 145,000 square kilometers. These ancestral territories remain unceded to this day.

The First Nations operated separately and independently but also worked together economically with trade routes throughout the territory and shared a common language, Secwepemctsin. They were traditionally semi-nomadic people influenced by seasonal food resources and living conditions. They had designed warm semi-underground kekulis (pit houses) for winter comfort and cooler more mobile summer residences made of reeds called “mat house”. 

Their economy was based on fishing, hunting and trading and their diet consisted mainly of meat, fish, berries and roots. Life style reflected a coexistence and respect for all things in nature and the cultivation of skills and traditions handed down for generations by oral tradition. Many of the traditional ways were changed with the arrival of Europeans and the diseases they brought with them, though the resiliency, pride, and holistic worldview of the Secwepemc remain strong. 

The diseases especially smallpox, introduced by white traders, prospectors, missionaries, miners and settlers decimated the Indigenous population, completely destroying 32 Secwepemc villages. Shortly thereafter the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly ended, the British crown authority took over and Indian reserves were established. 

It has been a very difficult period from this point through the 1900’s. From residential schools, the destructive effects of alcoholism, high mortality rates for babies, loss of children to adoption programs outside their communities, and high incarceration rates. It is a saga of overwhelming odds where many would have given up and perished but the tide is turning.