When the fire came to the Okanagan Indian Band on Aug. 1, Sienna Belanger’s first instinct was to catch her horses.

Winds reached 115 kilometres per hour, with sustained speeds of 80 kilometres per hour, according to the BC Wildfire Service. Six-foot-tall flames ripped through the grassland, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people.

“I only managed to get one of my horses,” she said. “Then we just opened up the gate and ran with them down to our bottom field. They got loose. All I could do was hope and pray.”

Sienna did not know the syilx word qwilmiʔst when the Bradley Creek wildfire came, but she lived it. The teaching describes a person who pulls together their physical skills, their sharpest thinking, their deepest intuition and their spiritual awareness and acts without hesitation. 

It is what the Old People call on when facing anything serious. To hold back part of yourself is to risk everything. To give your whole self is how you meet the unknown.

As the fire grew closer, the flames were everywhere. Sienna ran through the smoke, through the flames, to turn on the water at her mother’s barn. 

She started dousing the flames. She does not remember making the decision, but she remembers her body moving.

“It was just like that adrenaline moment where you do something or you freeze, and my loved ones froze, and I just couldn’t in that moment myself not do anything,” she said. 

“I just felt like a different switch turned on, and I was like, ‘Okay, there are things to do, things I need to organize.’ ”

She was not thinking or hesitating, she was qwilmiʔst. All of herself was in motion.

A land worker, a horsewoman, a dreamer

Sienna has remained at home on the Okanagan Indian Band since the fire came over the hill on Aug. 1. She and her neighbours at Abel Cove were under evacuation order, but with such a short time to leave, they chose to stay.

Her papa had always been intentional about who lived in this community.

“My papa did really good in picking his people for his community,” Sienna says. “He chose people that would be helpful, that would be a good contribution to his family and an extension. And so all of these families who have stayed have been people who I’ve known my whole life.”

Even though he’s gone, she says, his efforts are still here. The people he chose knew how to fight fire. They knew how to hold their ground.

So, with no time to flee, or to pack, it was just Sienna, the fire, the wind and her horses.

The Bradley Creek wildfire has destroyed or damaged an estimated 245 structures on Okanagan Indian Band land, according to a formal assessment by Canada Task Force 1, a specialized search and rescue team deployed in urban environments. The team examined 513 structures over three days. As of Aug. 19, the fire was classified as “being held,” with more than 100 firefighters and six helicopters still working the perimeter.

For at least two weeks, there was a constant presence of blades chopping, of shadows of helicopters crossing the sky, of the distant rumble of bombers dropping fire retardant on the hillside above Sienna’s mother’s place and her grandmother’s house at the beach.

Sienna, 25, is a syilx sqilx’w youth born and raised at the Okanagan Indian Band. Her nsyilxcen name is xixʷutm, a name she carries from her great-granny Mary.

Sienna and her mother, Mariel Belanger, own and operate Studio Síspl̓k on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve, welcoming community organizations, schools and wellness programs for workshops that bring together storytelling, visual arts, land-based learning, food forest knowledge sharing and n’syilxcen language. It’s the kind of work she’s been doing for years: creek rehabilitation, forest restoration, plant identification, seed harvesting — work that has always been about connection. 

That work is rooted in the nsisúlaʔxʷ Food Forest Project, a living, land-based classroom and gathering place where Sienna’s food plants, medicines and community are able to grow in kinship with one another. She’s also been on a language revitalization journey for six years, learning to speak the words her ancestors spoke.

She has been building a food forest on 10 acres of her family’s property, dreaming of a space where her people could harvest berries and medicines.

The fire took Sienna’s food forest. More than 100 plants, berries, medicines — the careful work of years— reduced to ash. It took her prospector tent and a platform she had built for outdoor education. It took her plans for a creative space.

Coyote is destroyed. Fox gathers the bits. Coyote comes back to life.

In the captikʷɬ, the syilx law story system, there is a pattern that repeats again and again. Coyote is destroyed through his own foolishness, through greed, through ignorance. And Fox always comes along to gather the bits, the hair, the bone, the fragments of what remains, and breathes them back to life. Something is lost. Something is gathered. Something is brought back. These stories are how knowledge is renewed. These stories are how people survive.

Sienna does not talk about the loss of her food forest with self-pity. She talks about it with survivor’s guilt.

“Even though my work burned, we survived compared to the rest of the community, who’ve totally lost everything,” she says.

And yet, just two weeks after the fire, she says, “There are some parts of my food forest coming back. I’ve been checking on it every day and am seeing new life already, little green shoots are starting to come up.”

Sienna is Fox. She is gathering the bits. She is watching for the green shoots. She is breathing new life into what remains.

Sienna’s grandmother has been staying with her through all of this, offering emotional support. She has watched Sienna work herself to exhaustion, caring for the horses, checking on the food forest, organizing supplies, making sure everyone else was okay before she ever stopped to breathe.

One day, she sat Sienna down and told her something Sienna is still trying to hold onto.

“My grandma recognized what I was going through and told me, you are allowed to accept kindness right now.”

Sienna’s grandmother has seen fire take what her people built. She has seen them rebuild. She knows survivor’s guilt is heavy, and that accepting help is part of the ceremony of healing.

Grief needs a witness

On the morning after the fire passed by her house, a chestnut stallion appeared at Sienna’s fence. She recognized him.

Her cousin Devyn McMillan runs Rewild Ranch, which provides equine-assisted therapy — workshops and events where people can connect with horses. 

“I sent my cousin a message,” Sienna says. “I was like, ‘Hey, your red stallion’s here. He’s okay. I hope you guys are okay.’ I had no idea at that time that her house was gone until my grandma told me that her family barely escaped.”

It was then that Sienna and her grandmother decided it was time to go look for her cousin Devyn’s horses and to finally go and acknowledge themselves what happened to her family’s homestead. 

As they passed what had been the family homestead, there was nothing left but chimneys standing against the sky. Her grandmother started crying.

“We wanted to look away, we didn’t want to see what happened,” Sienna says, tearing up.

But they looked together. That is what you do. In syilx teachings, you do not turn from grief. You face it and let it be witnessed.

Sienna cried too. She let the tears come down, but she did not stop; she knew she had work to do.

She drove to her cousin’s property and saw the horses standing there. 

“I got there and started counting, one, two, three, four, there were 12 of them, and I had one of the stallions at my house, it was 13, I was so happy, it was all of them,” she said.

Sienna grabbed a bucket and a lead rope and walked into the field. She caught one horse and led it into the sand arena. Then she went back for the rest.

“At that time, my heart just totally broke for my cousin because it’s such a hard thing to go through, to lose everything,” Sienna says. “She had built her hopes and dreams on those horses, and I understand because we both love horses in the same way.”

Sienna doesn’t see herself as the hero of this story. She didn’t know a convoy was already on its way; she just knew what needed to be done. She also noticed something that said everything about Devyn’s horses: they were still together, still standing in the place they knew. Scattered horses run. “That’s how you know they are well-trained horses,” Sienna says. “They know to stay together. They know home.”

Friends and family came together anyway. Neighbours organized a supply run with 16 bags of horse feed and a box of groceries. It was the Old Way. The people came together, and what one could not carry, many could.

“It was truly that moment when a village came together to help,” Sienna says. “I just felt so blessed and touched.”

Sienna is also quick to acknowledge the community that surrounded her. Mary’s Emerald Bay, she says, is where people stuck to the teachings her papa passed down about fire safety. They came together in their time of need, saving themselves, saving their neighbours and saving the animals. They even rescued a burnt kitty.

Of the 21 homes at Mary’s Emerald Bay, only one has minimal fire damage. The rest survived because of the people who knew what to do and did it together.

‘If I can fight flames, I can get on the back of a horse again’

As of mid-August, helicopters were still flying. Evacuation orders are slowly being lifted, but Sienna and her community are still under an evacuation order zone. They’ve been actively trying to get permits to leave, but technically, they’re still stuck, unable to leave for two weeks now. The waiting is the hardest part.

“Since being stuck here and being isolated, it’s been a little hard on our mental health,” Sienna says. “The land work was a way for me to keep busy and keep all my mental health issues at bay. Fire really has done a number on that.”

And yet, being isolated has also given her time to return to something she thought she had lost: horse training. Years ago, her horse Lily kicked her in the head, fracturing her skull and leaving her deaf in one ear. The accident left her with lingering brain damage, with issues that still follow her today. She has not been able to fully get back on Lily since.

But she says something changed in her after she walked through the flames.

“In my mind, if I can fight flames, I can get on the back of a horse again,” she says.

She has started slowly, partially sitting on Lily for brief moments. She has not been able to do that since the accident.

She is learning to trust her body again. To trust the horse, and to trust that she can survive what has already happened to her. The fire taught her that if she could face the flames, she could face her fear. She could get back on. “It’s been so rewarding,” she says. 

She is still planning: packaging seeds she harvested from the food forest, traditional sunflowers and vegetable garden varieties for a seed sale. A concert with music collective Kinfolk Nation that she is hoping will still happen in September. Black, Indigenous and queer artists, coming together on the land. Food harvested from the land, cooked on the land.

“My dream was to create a space that was organic for plant material, for berries, for harvesting, for all of our people’s traditional uses,” she says.

She has been sketching a new design for her food forest. Since her tractor survived, she has the ability to move soil, to transform her place again.

“I’ve been trying to step out of that guilt so I can get back to what I was doing,” Sienna says.

The fire could not take her, or her horses. It could not take the green shoots pushing through the ash of her food forest, and it could not take the teachings her grandmothers and papa passed down. It could not take the courage she found in the smoke, and it could not take her dream.

So she is still here, moving, and gathering the bits and breathing them back to life. And now, she is sitting on Lily’s back again, learning to trust herself and the horse, because if she could fight flames, she could get back on, so she did.

That is qwilmiʔst. That is Fox. And Sienna will still be here — breathing new life into what remains.

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The Bradley Creek wildfire ignited on reserve lands at nk̓maplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake) on Friday, July 31. More than 30 band members have lost their homes, while around 200 homes and structures belonging to non-band members are also gone. kelsie, who was evacuated and has not yet returned home, shared her reflections in the midst of the evacuation. This story was co-published with IndigiNews.

Saturday, Aug. 1, started like any other day.

I woke up early with my partner. We sat on the front deck, coffee in hand, watching the morning unfold. We talked about the day ahead, my son Skookamina’s graduation party and my grandmother’s 83rd birthday. There was meat to smoke, cakes to bake, tables to set. The day felt like a blessing because we had so much to celebrate.

I checked my phone. A small fire had started the night before, nothing unusual for this time of year. Our Okanagan Indian Band fire department is amazing. I figured it’d be out by noon, so I kept moving.

I seasoned the meat, I lit the smoker, and I sang while I cooked, the way I always do in my kitchen.

But I kept checking my phone, as we had family that was traveling in for the event.

Mid-morning, we decided as a family to move the party from the beach in town to my uncle’s house in the community. Some of our family had community obligations they’d need to tend to if the fire got out of control. We wanted to be close.

Everyone was there. My grandmother sat in her chair, full of joy as each person arrived. Skookamina was surrounded by his cousins, and the sound of our family filled the air, aunties laughing loud, making outlandish jokes, the familiar banter of people who know each other’s rhythms.

For one hour, we were just a family celebrating, living our lives the way we always do.

Then, one by one, family members started picking up their phones.

Some stood up. They’d been put on evacuation alert. They had to go home, pack, and wait. I watched them go, first one, then another, then a handful until the room thinned. The laughter quieted and my grandmother sat in her chair, watching her grandchildren leave, one by one. She didn’t say much, she didn’t need to, she knew this dance, she’d done it before.

Eventually, I had to leave too.

We packed the rest of the food. We hugged. We said “see you soon,” and we meant it. Then everyone went home. My father had to evacuate with only minutes to spare. I raced to my dad’s house and we helped him pack what we could as the fire grew at an alarming speed toward him. He was evacuated two minutes from my house, so I knew I was next.

By the time I got home, our family friends were already there, packing for me. They’d already been evacuated without time to take anything with them. Now they were saving us while their own home burned behind them.

One minute I was laughing with my son. The next minute I was grabbing what I could carry. I was not thinking about taking what was valuable, I only grabbed what was irreplaceable. Old ceremony blankets, medicine necklace materials, baskets, photographs, my computers with language recordings and the eagle feather my son gave me. Everything else I left.

On my way out, I looked back, and the smoke was climbing toward us. Flames moved over the ridge toward my house, and the sky was turning black. I felt an overwhelming need to just get out, this fire had taken on a life of its own. I could tell this fire doesn’t know our names the way our cultural burns do. It was consuming everything equally, the sacred and the ordinary, the medicine plants and the invasive brush. 

But, even as I watched the fire consume everything in its path, I realized this is exactly what my people prepared me for. This is why they taught me about grief.

They taught me that grief is not a destination, it’s like a creek — you don’t stop it. You discipline yourself to sit beside it, make kin with it, let it flow, and let it carry away what it needs to carry.

They taught me that grief has a shape. They taught me that grief is so special to us that it has its own ceremony, its own songs, its own prayers for specific losses. I was always told, “Name your grief, give it boundaries. Tell it, I see you. You are welcome here. But you will not take me with you.”

They taught me that the deeper you love, the deeper you grieve. That grief and joy are not enemies. That you can weep and laugh in the same breath. That you can feed people even when you can’t eat yourself.

My people taught me that a community that grieves together stays together. To suppress grief is to go against our own syilx intellect, against the very way we are made to commune with the world. Feeling is not weakness, we are to honour that it is our Way of Knowing. It is the thread that connects us to what we love, to cut it is to sever ourselves from the land, from each other, from the truth of what we carry.

My people taught me that grief is not something to outrun. It is something to sit beside, to name, to sing, to let drip into each other’s minds, drop by drop, until a shared truth emerges. The image of that process is enowkinwixw, the syilx word for a gentle way of coming to understanding together. The word itself conjures liquid being absorbed drop by drop through the mind, filling in gaps, softening resistance, building a common picture. The process is about finding clarity, where each person is offering what they know, no matter how small, until the whole circle sees more clearly. That is how we hold the loss in the centre of the circle and face it together.

So now I think about that morning. Coffee on the deck, with my partner beside me. The sun rising over the valley. I didn’t know it would be the last ordinary morning for a while. I didn’t know I would spend the next few days learning what my people have always known, that you can lose everything and still have everything that matters.

Okanagan Indian Band Chief naspəpʕásəs Dan Wilson confirmed as of Aug. 5, more than 30 band members have lost their homes to the fire, and numerous other structures are also gone. Some families have been contacted directly, and others are still waiting, still hoping, still not knowing if their homes are standing. 

He told IndigiNews, “Our loss is measured in the family histories that have been lost — especially the Elders who have lost their homes. The old pictures, the memorabilia; the Salish baskets.”

As I write this, it’s Aug. 6. I wash dishes in someone else’s sink. I cook without my grandmother’s tools. Today, I am learning to grieve the way my people taught me, by sitting with it, and letting it flow like the little creek that runs beside my house.

Tomorrow I will wake up and make coffee. I will stand on whatever deck I am given and be grateful for it. I will look out at whatever sky is above me and I will remember that I am grateful to be sqilx’w in these times, I am blessed to be syilx, and I am proud to be from the Okanagan Indian Band, proud to have called it home my entire life. Now, I have both the responsibility and the profound honour to continue dreaming, as we have been directed by our Creator to do, and that does not end when the smoke clears.

 If you are a member of the Okanagan Indian Band and are struggling, help is available through the OKIB Mental Health and Wellness team at 250-540-7416. Resources are also available from First Nations Health Authority and Interior Health.

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“Uncle, want to do the safety check?” Tim Lezard says to his nephew Weston Roberds.

The two men review their personal protective equipment, checking for gloves and garbage bags. The safety check is a critical part of their work, and the first task of each day before they head out on the land. 

As land Guardians for the Penticton Indian Band, Lezard and Roberds are caretakers of sn’pink’tn (Penticton). One of the seven First Nations that comprise syilx Nation, sn’pink’tn spans more than 46,000 acres and stretches across the northern tip of the Great Basin Desert. 

It’s one of the most sensitive and ecologically diverse places in what has been briefly known as Canada, and its three reserves encompass a varied topography of gentle hills, rocky cliffs and everything in between. Nestled in the southwestern Okanagan Valley, close to Highway 97, sn’pink’tn also borders the cities of Summerland and Penticton. As sqilx’w peoples, Lezard and Roberds continue the tradition of stewarding sn’pink’tn, a responsibility handed down across the generations since Creation. 

For me, a sqilx’w (Indigenous) woman from my syilx Homelands who was born and raised in n’qmaplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake), it was exciting to observe the land Guardians in action. For two days this past summer, I witnessed the Guardians’ commitment to our syilx teachings on how we go about navigating the land, respecting protocols and fulfilling their responsibilities as caretakers. 

sn’pink’tn is one of more than 170 First Nations that have Guardians programs, which recognize our unique responsibilities as caretakers of the land. The rise of Guardians programs reflects a growing recognition of the need for Indigenous-led stewardship. 

What makes the Penticton Indian Band’s approach distinct is its unwavering focus on stewardship within an urban context. The impact of colonization and human activity has profoundly altered the landscape, as well as the scope of responsibilities for its caretakers. In addition to monitoring owl nests, sacred sites and salmon spawning creeks, the Guardians spend their time collecting trash to protect the sensitive ecosystems and dealing with encampments. 

“When people leave things we can’t just leave it, no matter how disgusting it is. We can’t just leave it, we pick it up,” Lezard explains. “Our [personal protective equipment] is a big part of being able to do our job, having puncture resistant gloves, and such.” 

Picking up discarded needles and clearing out abandoned campsites isn’t what comes to mind for most people when they imagine First Nations caring for the land. But for the Guardians of the Penticton Indian Band, those acts are equally important and meaningful ways of showing their love and respect to their Homelands.

The many responsibilities of Penticton Indian Band’s Guardians 

The land Guardians, which operate through the Natural Resources Department of the Penticton Indian Band, began as a team of two in 2016. 

“It all started because we were having a lot of garbage dumped so we would go and take pictures of garbage being left,” Lezard says. “There was a lot of trespassing, camps and drug-use.” 

The land Guardians serve as “the eyes and the boots on the ground,” according to their website. In addition to stewarding the landscape, they also engage in public outreach and education, greeting visitors to their Homelands and building relationships through their patrols. 

While many Guardians programs receive funding and support from the First Nations National Guardians Network, which was established in 2018, the Penticton Indian Band program is an example of a grassroots initiative that has been wholly led by the community.

Over the past seven years, the team has grown in both numbers and in the area they cover. There are now three teams of land Guardians. Roberds and Lezard are the territorial team, and their work is complemented by an on-reserve team and an Okanagan Valley team, each comprised of two members. 

Part of the work of the on-reserve Guardians has been building relationships with the City of Penticton and the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen. As a result of those efforts, the city is now partially resourcing the on-reserve program, recognizing the impacts to the Penticton Channel. The seven-kilometre channel, which winds through the reserve, is a popular recreation site for Penticton residents and tourists alike — leaving the Guardians to manage the problems created by so many visitors. 

Together, they now cover all of syilx Homelands on the northern side of what sqilx’w peoples call the imaginary line: the border dividing Canada from the U.S., which intersects many First Nations along the 49th parallel. The syilx Homelands extend south into what has briefly been called Washington State, and encompass a vast area of approximately 69,000 square kilometres.

“[Penticton Indian Band] is interesting because it’s so big,” James Pepper, the natural resources manager for the community, says. A biologist by training, he has spent his career working alongside Indigenous communities. His role is listening to what the community wants and then finding the funding resources to make it happen. 

“So the Guardian program is part of the overall community lands protection and responsibilities,” Pepper says. “We have many other programs as well, such as a restoration enhancement program, forestry assessment program, a crown consultation program, we have a water focus, fisheries focus, all sorts of stuff going on.” He emphasizes their bottom-up approach, where they engage with the community to understand their needs and proceed with initiatives based on these grassroots requests.

The responsibilities of the Guardians are diverse and informed by the community, Pepper explains. They include restoration and rehabilitation, and preventing further destruction to vulnerable areas, like the banks of the Penticton River Channel. 

“It’s not just all about garbage and stuff, but saying, here’s a pictograph, we need to check on it and make sure that nobody’s messing with it, and covering it up so that it will be hidden. They also look at if there’s a logging company and they’ve spilled some oil, and they’re not cleaning it up like they should, then we’re talking to conservation officers, we’re making sure there is compliance because the province really doesn’t have any enforcement.”

Pepper highlights that a significant portion of the Guardians’ projects originate from their witnessing of the land’s needs and bringing that information back to the community. The Guardians also take part in several community initiatives, which have strengthened kinship connections and in turn strengthened the program, he explains.

“We help with the fish distribution when that comes around, and we also trade fish with a local beekeeper whose bees utilize our community flowers to make honey,” Lezard says. “So we have local honey and pair fish and honey with [produce from] our local community garden and give that out too.”

Another responsibility of the Guardians is caring for the burrowing owls. In collaboration with The Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC, the Guardians have cared for endangered owls bred in captivity and raised by the community before being released on their homelands. The Guardians feed owls, monitor nests and document sightings and migrations. When they see an injured owl, they contact the South Okanagan Rehabilitation Centre for Owls so it can be cared for and hopefully released back into the wild. 

Penticton Indian Band brings youth into Guardians work

The Guardians program thrives on community support, and youth involvement is a key focus. Weston Roberds represents a new generation passionate about land stewardship. He’s been a land Guardian since May 2023, working alongside his uncle. Roberds says his passion for the work comes from the love for his home, which was nurtured from a young age, particularly at Outma Sqilx’w Cultural School, which centres nsyilxen and culture.

“I went to Outma my whole life and we had a lot of time out on the land. I just saw that this was a job opportunity that was close to that experience and so I saw it come up and applied,” he says. 

The land Guardians program has grown thanks to the desire among young people in the community to be involved. The Natural Resource Department is made up of 40 staff from the community, and seven of them are under 30 years old. The department has also developed a mentorship program, inviting youth to come on ride-alongs with the Guardians in order to see the work that is being done on the land. 

“If a young person came to us and wanted to work with us, we would find a way,” says Pepper, who also expressed they are currently looking at how to build more of that engagement among youth.

While climbing steep and rocky terrain, Roberds keeps a close eye on the land, watching out the window for any shifts or changes in the environment. Noticing a fire nearby, he asked his Uncle to stop the truck so they can jump out and take photos. Later that evening, those images are uploaded to the Guardians’ Facebook page for community members to see.

On any given day, their Facebook page is updated by the three Guardians teams with their findings and activities. You might see a post about the progress of the burrowing owl reintegration program, or maybe a truckload of garbage being hauled from a sensitive area. Often you’ll see the recovery of abandoned or stolen vehicles, alongside documented findings of a plant shifting through its life cycles in an atypical way. Posts often end with the sign-off, “way’ good day on the land.”

In syilx Homelands the structure of governance is egalitarian, with deep ties to the teachings of voice equity on things that impact land and life. That’s one reason why the Guardians have focused on transparency, sharing daily updates on Facebook. 

Pepper says initially, the page was private, but making it public has garnered a lot of support and engagement from the local area. It has just shy of 1,000 followers, a group that includes Penticton Indian Band members as well as the non-Indigenous community. 

“People [will] say, ‘Hey, I saw someone going up this hill with a truck full of garbage,’ and stuff like that,” Pepper says. “I’d say I probably get 35 messages a week even from non-members, just from the public telling us about stuff they see.” 

He stresses that the Guardians do more than just post to Facebook; they also meet with Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and host in-person community meetings. 

But Facebook allows them to share images of the land for those who aren’t able to access it. 

“A lot of our people who don’t get to go out on the land follow our Facebook and look at our pictures. I think it’s very encouraging for them. And then getting feedback from them, it helps a lot for our people,” says Lezard.

syilx responsibilities in action

When the territorial team heads out early in the morning, they set off to the highest points of the lands. Binoculars in hand, they keep sight on the Homelands in all directions.

Lezard and Roberds know our Homelands intimately. Along our drive, they stop to track the wildlife moving through the area, and point out to me where they have already documented garbage, cultural markings or illegally poached animals. Their memories for the movements happening on the land intertwine with the syilx teachings, which tell us to know your land like you know your own skin.

As we drive by a large mining truck tire that appears to be abandoned on the side of a mountain road, they point out the smallest details. They’ve left it on the hillscape, they explain, because life has taken root around it and removing it will cause more damage. But they will know if that one tire has moved, changed or shifted since they last saw it. 

This attention to detail is part of the practice of Indigenous science, which is based on traditional ecological knowledge and accumulated over generations. This knowledge is highly specific to place-based environments and ecosystems, and often encompasses sustainable resource management practices that are critical for the health of ecosystems. Being out on their Homelands each day and documenting each change, no matter how tiny, is a critical form of data sovereignty. 

“It’s intellectual property,” Lezard says. By collecting and maintaining data sovereignty, or control over the information they collect and store about the land, the Guardians continue to add to the traditional ecological knowledge of the syilx Peoples. 

“For the territory Guardians it’s all about people knowing we are out on the land, that we’re making tracks on our own land, enacting Title and Rights, and building that up with ensuring everything we do is documented, digitized and tracked,” Lezard says. This ultimately informs and supports sustainable resource use and conservation for their people, now and in the future.

But it’s equally important to the Guardians that the sqilx’w people in their community are checked on, in the same way the land is.

“We really check on the people who mostly live on the edge of the reserve. We call them up and ask them, ‘Is anyone bothering you? Has anyone been trespassing?’ ” Lezard says. “I do that usually once a month, give them a call, and they really appreciate people taking time for them and asking how they’re doing.”

“They call me now too,” he says.

As the territorial team, who range beyond the edge of the reserve, Lezard and Roberds engage with different people: often hunters, hikers, tourists and sometimes people living in the backcountry. 

syilx teachings tell us that every member of a community should have equitable access to life’s essentials, and those essentials include joy and happiness. One of the responsibilities of the on-reserve team, Lezard says, is connecting unhoused community members with help and support. 

“We worked with the Brain Injury Society, and they have these books called Little Red Book. It’s a handbook you give them so if they have any problems [it lists] people that can help you see, the social services for mental health or addiction issues, food, like soup kitchens and everything like that,” Lezard explains.

While driving through the mountains above sn’pink’tn, Lezard points out an area where he found a father and son who were living out of their vehicle, and reflects on how compassion is central to his work out on the land. 

“Some of those people with mental health issues, they don’t drink or do drugs. It’s just that they have nobody to care for them wherever they’re from, or their family or their split apart from their family. You have to be compassionate. We always try to understand where they’re coming from.”

‘I love the land and the land loves me’

Dean Schreiber, one-half of the on-reserve Guardians team, embraces his daily responsibility of caring for both the land and its people with honour. Each morning, he wakes up with a sense of purpose, preparing to venture into the lands of his own community. 

Schreiber swiftly jumps from his truck to open the gate along the Penticton River Channel, an area under his care. After passing through the gate, he nimbly leaps out again to close it. His passion for making a positive impact is evident. 

As he heads down to the channel for his first patrol of the day, he’s reflective. “I just love making a difference. And we hear it from the people on the channel. ‘Gosh, you guys do such a good job.’ We pick up garbage as we go, and we’re not garbagemen, but we do a little bit every day. If everybody did that, the whole world would be that much better, that much cleaner, right?” 

In the summer, the Penticton Channel is one of the liveliest places in the area, and it’s always Schreiber’s first stop of the day. Connecting kɬúsx̌nítkʷ (Okanagan Lake) and Skaha Lake, the channel attracts thousands of annual visitors who come to tube its shallow length. Often the crowd is made up of local families and tourists. 

During the summer, littering by both folks who live unhoused and visitors along the channel is rampant. People will abandon their belongings, floats and garbage on Penticton Indian Band land, creating unsafe conditions. Schreiber tells me he’s found sleeping bags, clothes and once even a hundred needles in a single area. Still, he loves patrolling the area because it gives him a chance to build relationships.

“I love it on the channel because when I see people, white people too, I’ll say, ‘way’’ (greetings). And so now they say it to me first, you know, ‘way’! Or we’ll say, ‘way’ slaxt’, (hello friend,) ‘xast xusalt,’ (good day!)” 

“Now that’s reconciliation, when they are trying to learn our language. It doesn’t get any better than that,” he says.

As dust fills the road behind us, Schreiber points the truck toward the Penticton Indian Band sacred sites. We rumble up the road, as he recalls how one day, a man brushed off his greeting, grumbling, “Ah, I don’t speak Indian.” Schreiber, who often sees this man on his patrols, didn’t take offence. Instead, he says, he turned the moment around and made a joke. “Luckily I have thick skin, and I said some little smartass comment back because we have that kind of relationship,” Schreiber says. “And I see him the next day, and the same guy says, ‘way.’ And oh, that got me. I said, back to him, ‘way’ limtlemt’ (hello, thank you.)” 

“And you know, it doesn’t take much to change people’s mindsets,” he adds. “People just want to be heard, is all.”

Each conversation he has is a chance to teach someone about the land they’re on — an interaction that might prompt them to consider their own responsibilities, or at least to think twice before leaving their trash behind. 

As the sun rises higher, we leave the channel and drive through the dusty backroads of the reserve, where pine trees and sacred spaces lay undetected, thanks to the work of the Guardians.

syilx Peoples understand the land to be a kin. It’s important that we visit our land, especially in our sacred places so that the spirit of those places, known as tmixʷ, don’t get lonely. And in our visits, we are reminded through place that we must honour the land like our own skin, because in many translations of nsyilxcen the land and our bodies are tied.

For Schreiber that’s something that his work embodies. 

We slow down as our truck approaches barbed-wire strewn about on the road. Stepping out of the vehicle, Schreiber puts on his gloves and begins to roll up the barbed-wire. He does this several times while talking about his responsibilities to the animals. 

“Part of what I like to do is get rid of this barbed wire that is laying around. Our horses have to come through here, and the moose and the deer, and they cut themselves especially in the wintertime. So I get my wire cutters and wind it up and hang it on a tree,” he explains as he expertly rolls up the wire. 

“I love the land and the land loves me” is a syilx saying that holds so many nuances and layers of teachings. It is said that when syilx Peoples come together on the land to share love, laugh and joy, the land is happy, and it reciprocates that love through its offerings. And when you have to turn to the land in times of grief or despair, it has plenty of space to hold that for you too. 

As the sun begins to sink toward the horizon, Schreiber and I jump out of the truck into the pine-scented air, and he shows me different types of culturally modified trees. They tell the story of how this one area has been used by our people.

When the Guardians wrap up another day on the land, they step into the other roles that they play in their family and community. That might be going to the council chambers for a meeting for Lezard, who also serves as a band councillor. Or maybe they bring their dogs out for a long walk like Schreiber, or head home to spend time with their loved ones like Roberds.

Either way, they go home feeling fulfilled in the work they do. Knowing it’s making a difference. Knowing they are living out what it means to be sqilx’w.

As for the future of the work, they remain open and engaged with other communities through syilx Homelands, strengthening kinships and sharing knowledge.

Lezard dreams of the day that the people and land will reunite, and reconcile their bond. 

“I hope we don’t need to have land Guardians,” he says. “I hope we have more people who are wanting to be on the land, I hope we have more people communicating to one another and I hope we have more people being brought up to take care of the land.”

Reporter’s note: According to some n̓syilxčn̓ language keepers, there are no capitalizations in the spellings of any n̓syilxčn̓ words. In an egalitarian society, capitalization insinuates there is something that holds more importance over another, and that does not fall in line with syilx ethics.

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