“There’s nothing for you here, you have to leave this reserve.”
Mark Thomas clearly remembers these words of his granny Susan when he was growing up. She had witnessed the repression of colonialism on Indigenous people unfold before her eyes and mourned the loss of her culture, a loss profoundly linked to the loss of salmon in the upper Columbia headwaters.
“She lived through residential school and survived, she lived through having an Indian agent tell her when and if she can leave the reserve, she lived through the loss of salmon,” said Mark. “She told me ‘Go, there is nothing here for you anymore, go learn their language, go learn their culture’.”
A councillor with the Shuswap Band, the Chair of the Columbia River Salmon Reintroduction Initiative (CRSRI) Executive Working Group, and the Technical Lead for the Secwepemc Nation in the ongoing Columbia River Treaty negotiations, Mark has spent the majority of his 20 plus-year fisheries career focused on salmon restoration. In his view, salmon restoration is key to healing the cultural, spiritual, communal, and economic losses suffered by the Columbia Basin’s Indigenous people. Fighting for the return of salmon to the waters of the Canadian Columbia Basin is a legacy Mark continues, one that is commemorated in a salmon sculpture at James Chabot Provincial Park on the shore of Lake Windermere , which the Shuswap Band as a partner in Canadian Columbia River Inter-tribal Fisheries Commission (CCRIFC) had commissioned.
“It’s so sad now that I look back on it because I don’t know our language, our culture is dwindling, it’s almost gone because of our loss of salmon. Eighty-two years of loss of salmon has almost erased us,” said Mark. “That’s something we’re really trying to reinvigorate. Forefront and centre with salmon restoration is language restoration, cultural restoration, passing down knowledge and learning our ways of being. Historically, Seasonal Rounds were what guided Indigenous people and we are keen on re-learning the ways of our ancestors.”
Heeding his grandmother’s words and feeling the strong calling to work in the environmental field, Mark attended the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology’s Integrated Resource Management Program and the University of Lethbridge prior to being hired as the Natural Resource Coordinator for the Shuswap Band in 2001. Mark had previously worked with CCRIFC, which put him into association with long-time director Bill Green, who he worked under for quite some time. Today, Mark is an expert in the field of natural resource management with a portfolio of projects under his belt ranging from aquatics, fish and forestry to BC Hydro and housing.
“The Bill Greens of the world I really admire and look up to as mentors,” he said. “I was more geared towards the advocacy end of things and they taught me the actual physical workings, whether it’s stream restoration or riparian interactions. I’ve gained considerable knowledge and I hold my hands up to them — those are some of my non-Indigenous learnings.”
As a member of the current Chief and Council for the Shuswap Band, a four-year term that is coming to an end this fall, Mark feels his time has been very productive in terms of getting the new Territorial Stewardship Office off the ground and helping advance the band’s understanding around rights and title.
“We’re quite well-known for developing our reserve and trying to prosper that way, but the reserve is so tiny that it doesn’t make sense to give it away,” he said. “I’ve been more of an advocate for getting our resources from our land base not the reserve. The reserve is a colonial construct, but the land base is our traditional territory and has provided for us for thousands of years. That’s what we have to return to, that’s what we have to understand for prosperity again.”
Mark has also been instrumental in the development of CHARS (Columbia Headwaters Aquatic Restoration Secwépemc Strategy), a four-year project co-led by the Shuswap Band and Columbia Wetland Stewardship Partners to restore priority creeks in the upper Columbia River watershed. This project is recovering important habitat for two species at risk, Westslope Cutthroat Trout and White Sturgeon, as well as other keystone species that are benefiting from this restoration work.
“We have a covenant with the creator and the land. When we speak of all living things, it really means something. That’s what we really have reverence for, whether that’s a rock or a mountain, or elk or fish. Reciprocity is part of our covenant. The animals gave themselves to us and we must help them to best of our abilities.”
As a member of the Columbia River Treaty (CRT) Negotiating Advisories Team (NAT) made up of the Secwepemc, Ktunaxa and Syilx Okanagan Nations, and the Canadian and B.C. governments, Mark has also seen positive change. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Truth and Reconciliation are key components of Indigenous participation at the CRT, which has proven to be quite valuable to the negotiations and offer a different perspective of the issues.
He has been challenged by many different people on the feasibility of salmon reintroduction in the Canadian Columbia River and whether it’s worth the effort. Arguments against include climate change, rising water temperature, impacts to resident fish, brood stock availability and concern around salmon successfully navigating the many dams and reservoirs to and from the headwaters.
“The thing about salmon is their resilience,” said Mark. “And if we get one salmon back it’s worth the effort. If we get a salmon into the Canadian side and it only makes it to Arrow then it’s worth the effort. If it only makes it as far as Slocan, it’s worth the effort. It’s our inherent responsibility to bring the salmon home. That is one important step of reciprocating their sacrifice to us.”
He would like to see steps taken to protect the glaciers that feed the upper watershed of the Columbia to help keep it a cold water refuge for as long as possible, possibly similar to what’s been done in other parts of the world where glaciers have been blanketed to protect them from melting faster under the hot sun.
“Indigenous science and Western science complement each other in so many ways that we just don’t understand yet,” said Mark. “We will need both to accomplish the goal of restoration.”
