Whose time has truly come
Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws: Yerí7 re Stsq’ey’s-kucw
by Marianne Ignace and Ronald E. Ignace
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025
$39.95 / 9780228026358 (paperback release)
Reviewed by Richard Butler
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Secwépemc People, Land and Laws was first published in 2017. A lot has happened since then to broaden and deepen Canadians’ sensitivity toward Indigenous people and the events which have beset them down through the years.
The catalyst was the announcement of underground anomalies at the residential school near Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc that might (or might not) be missing children’s unmarked graves. Shock waves spread out from there. So did controversy.
Whether or not such underground anomalies turn out to be graves, the cascading events rightly captured national attention and re-opened discourse in relation to the calls to action in the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Many of us were prompted to try to find out what really happened at the residential schools. Others were prompted to write memoirs of their experiences at those schools. Still others were prompted to debunk those stories.
The publication of Secwépemc People, Land and Laws in paperback form provides a timely and welcome occasion for calmer reassessment of the combined effects of colonization in Canada.1
This publication is timely because it invites us to take a step back from the headlines, narratives, and counter-narratives, and to learn who the Secwépemc people were and are; to appreciate their connection with their lands; and to understand the social relationships and responsibilities which foster mutual belonging in their communities.
It is welcome because it encourages a neutral, grounded shift in focus onto everything the Secwépemc (and other Nations) have lost through the process of colonialization—losses which undeniably included but clearly extend well beyond not knowing what may have become of the bodies of children who, for whatever reason, died at a residential school.2
It is welcome most of all because this book is an encyclopedic celebration of all that it is to be Secwépemc and an inspiring affirmation of their future as a People.
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As I have written elsewhere, part of the magic of this book lies in its mode of telling.3
Chapter 1 begins with Ron Ignace’s own story of tslexemwilc or “how he [came] to know as an individual and how individually, but in the end collectively, [he was] shaped by the knowledge and deeds of those before us,” including in relation to tmicw – “Secwépemc land in all its dimensions.”
That happened from stories he was told by his cousins, mother, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, who had in turn learned from stories they themselves had heard, going back generation by generation over many years.
The stories tell of the emergence and existence of the Secwépemc as a nation, “as narrated through the voices of past and present elders and knowledge keepers, at times in the context of observations made by guests and outsiders who came among Secwépemc people.” They include both ancient, handed-down narratives and personally experienced or handed-down memories of living experience.
The authors then “weave together [for us] the memories and stories of elders about events, people, the way things were done, and the laws behind them.”
They speak of laws (stsqey) which were “first written on the land in pictographs, rock formations, and place names thousands of years ago and which guided Secwépemc people’s social and political interaction and their spiritual relationships with all living things.” They speak of a second concept, law (tkwenm7iple7) which “lays out the fluid, mobile and forward-looking way that we can enact new laws and determine what is best for us as a people.”
Some of the Secwépemc stories have been “adapted by our ancestors to deal with concerns in the changing world.” There is, for example, a marvelous story about Coyote as lawmaker, offered as an illustration of that process of adaptation:
Coyote once met Old One (or Great Chief). Old One said, “You have used your excrements as a counsellor for a very long time. However, this method is very inconvenient. Each time you desire advice, you have to defecate. Also there is danger of your excrements getting cold. I will give you paper. When you need advice, consult it.”
Coyote carried it in his hands for several days, but he did not like to carry anything in his hands. One day when he was defecating, or otherwise engaged, he laid it down and forgot about it. Several days later he wanted advice about something and found he did not have the paper. He went back a long way and searched for it, but could not find it. Perhaps the wind had blown it into some hidden place. Coyote had to resort to consulting his excrements again for advice.
The moral of the story refers to the “political power of settler society to make written laws that disavowed Secwépemc ownership of the lands and decision making.” However, the authors go on to say there is more to the story than that:
The loss of paper has [Coyote] re-engaging with his senses, as opposed to relying on “advice” from the printed page, whose authority is removed from firsthand experience. … Each story … teaches us lessons about important values in society … and [m]ost importantly … give[s] us direction about our future as peoples, communities, and a nation.
In these passages, the authors describe a synchronicity of past, present, and future.
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Like the ancient stories, the Secwépemc language (Secwepemctsin) itself is multi-dimensional. Its words can include both a description of a thing as it is, a description of its place in the landscape in relation to the speaker and others, a description of its nature and place in past, present, and future time, and a metaphorical sense. It is (as Wade Davis has observed) “an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual responsibilities.”
It follows that the loss of language at school, where speaking Secwepemctsin was prohibited, or through assimilation into the wage economy and other aspects of mainstream North American culture, would have been devastating. Language had always been what stitched together the Secwépemc people, land, and laws.
In closing chapter 4, Marianne Ignace shares with us the hope for new generations of Secwepemctsin speakers, inspired by their still-living aunts and uncles, parents, and grandparents and by this book. Secwépemc culture continues to be embedded in the language, in the place names, in the ancient stories told in the original. It is a culture not only in historical memory but also in the manner and form of its telling, with language not as some sort of museum artifact but as living experience in the mouths and minds of the future.
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It is impossible to read Secwépemc People, Land and Laws and not be caught and charmed by the personality, sense of humour and candor of the book and its authors. Here is an example.
At the very end of the book, the authors come back to the story of Coyote and the Old One and using excrements for counsel. They write that the tale “was perhaps our way of saying that Coyote relied on his own ‘bullshit’.” They go on to say that “[i]n the Secwépemc hunting past—and still among those who are contemporary hunters on the land—it was extremely useful to have a retained understanding of what excrement can tell us.” They question whether “record keeping on paper in all aspects improves on scatology, itself a metaphor for experiential knowledge gathering and making sense of evidence.”
That is an approach to truth-telling which invites broader understanding. Broader understanding is the antidote for position-taking and a necessary predicate to reconciliation. In wholeheartedly recommending this book, I would highlight such truths for your open-minded consideration.
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Richard Butler lives on the traditional territory of the lekwungen-speaking Peoples, a retired lawyer and sometime law professor, and more recently a writer on various Indigenous subjects. He is the author of Taking Reconciliation Personally, I Dare Say… Conversations with Indigeneity, and the recent title What Is This? Who Am I?: Culturally Informed Appreciation of Coastal Peoples’ Artworks, published through A & R Publishing. [Editor’s Note: Richard Butler wrote the essay An Exercise in Futility and has recently reviewed the films Sugarcane & Racing to keep our language alive: H̓ágṃ́ṇtxv Qṇtxv Tx̌ (We’re all we got) and books by Philip Seagram, Val Napoleon, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Overstall and Debra McKenzie (eds.), Angela Cameron, Sari Graben and Val Napoleon (eds.), Adam Jones, and The Honourable Murray Sinclair CC, Mazina Giizhik for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster
- From my own research, I conclude that there was a whole suite of wrongs committed toward Indigenous people in the course of Canada’s colonialization project which caused past and ongoing harms. The residential schools were certainly a contributing factor to the harms, mainly in the loss of language and the cultural brainwashing which took place there (and elsewhere), together with the increased instances of abuse and disregard for physical health which undeniably occurred in those boarding school settings. However, in my respectful view, other factors such as a broader loss of connection with Indigenous people’s identity, land, and way of life were more potent and far-reaching. Factors such as compulsory reserve allocation. Racialized laws. Prohibition of the ceremonies which grounded community and made a connection between the present and a timeless ancestral past and future. Etc. ↩︎
- In saying so, I do not mean to discount the seriousness of that loss to the families and communities involved, but rather to place the whole issue of deaths at residential schools into its larger context. As, indeed, does this book. ↩︎
- Taking Reconciliation Personally, A. & R. Publishing, Amazon 2022/23, ch. 1. ↩︎