Why these fish are significant to Indigenous people of the Okanagan

Years ago, kokanee salmon hatched from their small orange eggs along the creek bed of Deep Creek near Peachland.

Avoiding bears, birds, and other fish, they made their way to the vast Okanagan.

They spent time in the lake growing and turning a bright shade of red. But now, their instincts are telling them it’s time to go home and continue the cycle.

And that cycle was at the centre of the kikinee festival at Mission Creek Regional Park on Saturday; hosted by the Regional District of Central Okanagan to educate and celebrate spawning season for the culturally important animal.

Among those in attendance was K̓ninm̓tm̓ taʔ n̓q̓ʷic̓tn̓s Wilfred “Grouse” Barnes, an elder of Westbank First Nation, teaching the significance of the animal.

“Salmon plays an integral part in our ecosystem,” Barnes told Kelowna10. “They say our salmon feeds the bears and the bears poop on the land, and it rejuvenates the medicines and the berries and all the stuff that that grows close to the coast of the river.”

Barnes said the festival has grown over the past few years with more people and families learning about the important food source.

He said before contact with Europeans, about 85 per cent of the syilx diet was kokanee salmon.

Though after a dam was constructed on the Columbia River, the supply of salmon was cut off in the Okanagan.

Initiatives from Indigenous efforts have sought to rectify the damaged salmon population.

“Last spring, we put 750,000 of those small salmon into Mission Creek, Deep Creek, and Whiteman’s Creek in Vernon,” he explained. “All the creeks that come into the Okanagan river system.”

Because of their initiatives, species of sockeye salmon once again have access to the ocean, where they once did not.