To celebrate her 95th birthday, qʷʕayxnmitkʷ xʷəstalk̓iyaʔ (Jane Stelkia) rode through her Osoyoos Indian Band community on horseback with her family.
The Elder is the oldest member of the syilx Okanagan Nation. She was honoured by leaders and community members with cake and speeches last week.
As roughly 100 people packed into the community clubhouse to celebrate on April 11 — “a real good turnout,” she said — Stelkia used her platform to share a speech of her own.
“I’m going to give a little talk — a talk from way back, so people can find out what it was like before,” she told IndigiNews.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, if I have a good big one, I’m going to bring out my speech about the Indians.’”
Stelkia asked a community member to read her speech on her behalf.
In it, she urged Indigenous people to assert a unified “Indian” identity, reclaiming the colonial label imposed by Christopher Columbus in 1492.
“For 532 years, we have been called Indians here, in what is now called Canada,” she said, in remarks delivered on her behalf. “Fight to put the Indian back.”
After dinner and birthday cake at the Nk’mip Campground’s Clubhouse in sw̓iw̓s (Osoyoos), Stelkia’s speech argued that Canada is attempting “to side-step the hell that the government put all us Indians through” by constantly changing the words used to describe sqilx’w (Indigenous) people — whether “Aboriginal,” “First Nations,” or “Indigenous.”
“They hope that in 50 or 100 years, no one will remember the Indians that went through hell. They want to erase that part of our history, because they couldn’t erase us,” said Stelkia.
“Since I was young, all I heard was that we were Indians. Until the past 20 years, I never heard the words First Nations or Aboriginals among us … Just another form of colonization.”
Nearly a century of historic changes
Stelkia, who is an nsyilxcən language speaker, has lived through monumental changes in her nearly a century of life.
When she was born in 1930, the country had just entered the Great Depression. King George V was “Canada’s” monarch, and William Lyon Mackenzie King its prime minister. At the time, Indigenous people were not yet allowed to vote in federal elections — unless they gave up any treaty rights and Indian status.
The notorious Duncan Campbell Scott still led the Department of Indian Affairs. In 1920 he made residential “school” attendance compulsory, saying his goal was “to get rid of the Indian problem” through total assimilation.
Just five decades before Stelkia’s birth, Canada’s 1876 Indian Act outlined that the term “Indian” means “any male person of Indian blood reputed to belong to a particular band,” or “any child of such person,” or “any woman who is or was lawfully married to such person.”
“We are Indians — we were called that from day one, so we gotta stick to that,” said Stelkia. “For 95 years, I’ve lived this and I know it.”
Reclaiming Indian identity also has legal implications. The controversial term was enshrined in 1982 in Section 35 of the Constitution Act, which declared that “Aboriginal peoples of Canada includes the Indian, Inuit and Métis peoples.”
She said governments have “always tried to get rid of the Indian” — and now she said they’re trying to get rid of the term “Indian” too.
“This is just a more indirect genocide of what was left,” she argued, “after the first genocide didn’t work.”
Over the decades, newer labels like “Aboriginal,” “First Nations,” or “Indigenous” have instead served to divide different nations once more unified in fighting for their rights, “and this is what the government wants,” she said.
She warned that if her people keep changing their collective names, decades in the future “nobody will know the history of wrong done to us.”
“The only way we can bring back our unity is if we are all Indians in the eyes of the government,” she said. “Divide and conquer is alive and well; now, the chiefs are having trouble having one voice.
“So have a voice by being Indians — because that’s what we are.”
A horse-riding birthday tradition
Before Stelkia’s dinner and speech, Stelkia began her birthday with a personal tradition: a horseback ride through her community, alongside her family.
Nearly 40 Indigenous and non-Indigenous horseback riders joined her as she rode from the Indian Grove Riding Stables up along a ridge outside of the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre.
She told her fellow riders “that’s where the ancestors are” — and reminded them her syilx Okanagan forebears depended on horses.
Those ancestors once lived in pithouses built into the earth along their route, she told the riders before setting off.
“They lived underground … for thousands and thousands of years,” she explained.
The group made its way along the ridge and past the cultural centre, where they circled a fountain at the nearby Spirit Ridge Resort, drawing the attention of tourists, before winding their way down to Nk’mip Campgrounds and the camp’s clubhouse.
Stelkia said she’s been riding horses since she was a baby.
“I was almost born on a horse, I guess,” she told IndigiNews. “Indian people, back then, had their kids on the horses. Horses mean a lot to the Indian people, because we didn’t have anything to travel on.”
She remembers a time where horses were the only mode of transportation, when all you’d find on dusty roads were saddles, and simple four-wheeled wagons called buckboards.
Reaching 95, and being the eldest member of her nation, is a milestone, but “I didn’t even pay any attention to it,” she quipped about her age.
Spirit, tenacity and grit
Attending Stelkia’s birthday party were four-of-seven chiefs from Okanagan Nation Alliance’s member communities, and each took to the microphone to share what the Elder meant to them.
It was also Sheri Stelkia’s birthday, so two cakes were brought out to honour them.
Chief Robert Louie, of Westbank First Nation, said he’d known Jane since the early 1970s.
“Jane, you’ve got the same spirit, the same tenacity, the same grit, the same person that you were when I first met you,” he said. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
Chief Keith Crow, of Lower Similkameen Indian Band, remarked about Stelkia still working with her hands at her age, for instance repairing fences.
“I see you’re doing everything at 95 years old,” he said. “I hope I can still be doing that at 95 — I hope I make it to 95 … You’re gonna go for 106.”
Penticton Indian Band’s Chief Greg Gabriel called her an inspiration throughout the nation and beyond.
“I’m just so happy to see you so young at 95,” he said. “Still riding, still working hard. You’re an amazing woman.”
Chief Clarence Louie, of Osoyoos Indian Band, praised Stelkia’s hard-working lifestyle, and for keeping the syilx Okanagan horse culture alive.
He also thanked her and other language speakers in the room for their efforts in keeping nsyilxcən alive.
“None of us remember a time without you around,” Louie said. “You remember a time where most of our people didn’t speak much English.”
He reminded attendees in her childhood the world was a very different place for syilx Okanagan people.
“Our people didn’t have electricity; they had to get water from the creeks,” he recalled. “They had to build a fire and stay warm in the winter time.”
But even though times were tough when Stelkia grew up, he said, she still reminds people that there were also good times, too.
“You remind us that we have to get back and not forget those times,” he told her with gratitude. “To remember those times, and to acknowledge where we come from, not just as a band but as a people and a nation.”
After the chiefs all spoke, attendees watched a video tribute of moments from Stelkia’s life on a big screen.
Between old pictures and footage, she narrated the eras of her lifetime, from her early years at the Inkameep Indian Day School, to her love of ranching, cattle and horses.
In her birthday tribute video, someone asked Stelkia how she deals with failures.
“I don’t know,” was her answer, saying failure simply wasn’t an option for her.
In the event’s closing words, she thanked her community for joining her celebration, telling everyone to stand strong.
“Be proud to be Indian,” she encouraged, “of our culture, your language and discipline.”
