Profiles of Native Westerners: The Speckled Fish People

Bull trout, the "speckled fish" of the Sinixt people

I am a non-native living on an Indian Reservation; to be exact, the Colville Confederated Reservation in Northeast Washington State. We have been here for two and one-half decades. I followed my husband to the home of his father’s family after we completed collage at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA.

My husband and sons' band is the Sinyekst or Sinixt people.  This translates to the "Speckled Fish" people or Place of the Bull Trout.  They are currently referred to as the Lakes People. Here are five quick facts about the Lakes people:

• They originated from British Columbia.
• When the boundary was drawn between Canada and United States, extending to the Pacific Ocean, in 1849, it divided the upper and lower Lakes people. 
• The Lakes people on the lower end of the 49th Parallel were added to the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington State in 1872. 
• These were nomadic people: hunters, fishermen, and gatherers.
• The Lakes people spoke a dialect of the Interior Salish that is closely related to the Okanogan people, which is what is taught today.

Historic illustration of bull trout (once called Dolly Varden) from Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife

On my blog, I am posting a series on the life of the Lakes people as it has been taught to me before cell phones and video games. When children roamed the mountains and shores of the Columbia River learning to hunt and gather roots and berries. A simple life. A life fulfilled.   

Haiku Poem of the Speckled Fish People
Nomadic wander
To the Creator they pray
Life: hunt, fish, gather

A few words of the Lakes Language as taught to me by Elder Marguerite Ensminger:
Sinixt or Sinyekst:  Bull Trout or Speckled Fish People 
prounced: Sin-ikes-t
Hamis-hamis:  Morning Dove
huh miss-huh miss 

Carmen Peone has lived in Northeast Washington, on the Colville Confederated Indian Reservation for twenty-three years. She had worked with a Tribal Elder, Marguerite Ensminger, for three years learning the Arrow Lakes Language and various cultural traditions. With a degree in psychology, the thought of writing never entered her mind until she married her husband and they moved to the reservation after college. She came to love the people and their heritage and wanted to create a legacy for her sons.