From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Ktunaxa/ in collaboration
Traditionally, the survival and prosperity of the Ktunaxa depended on a certain amount of versatility in making use of the resources found in all parts of their territory, from the valley floors through higher elevations, and even to the tops of some mountains for the right kinds of stone to make arrowheads. There was the sense that these resources were to be used collectively by the people of the community, a sense that continues to this day.
The Ktunaxa’s territory has been described as one of the world’s greatest game preserves, and the Ktunaxa people used the entire region for hunting and for the gathering of other natural resources. Deer – both whitetail and blacktail – were hunted throughout the territory. Elk were important particularly for the Eastern Ktunaxa. At high elevations, there were mountain goats and bighorn sheep, and, for the Western Ktunaxa, there were caribou. Water fowl were especially plentiful seasonally on Kootenay Lake and communal duck hunts were important for the western, Down-River Ktunaxa. Men did the hunting, but the catch was evenly distributed to everyone who was in the camp at the time, even casual visitors.
The Eastern Ktunaxa conducted a large summer buffalo hunt on the prairies, one that reportedly could involve as many as eighty households as well as other tribes. The Spokanes and Coeur d’Alene are prominently mentioned as accompanying the Ktunaxa on these hunting expeditions, but the Ktunaxa could also find themselves on the prairies with Kalispels, Montana Salish, and Nez Perce, all pitted against the Blackfoot. There were also smaller fall buffalo hunts and a short winter one, done entirely on foot with snowshoes. There was good fishing in rivers and lakes throughout Ktunaxa territory. Both men and women fished. For the Western Ktunaxa on Kootenay Lake, fishing was especially important; they used fish traps and fish weirs, as did the Eastern Ktunaxa. In addition to the kinds of fish found throughout the region, including the salmon who managed to come all the way upriver into Ktunaxa country, there were landlocked kokanee salmon and also sturgeon in Kootenay Lake.
The traditional Ktunaxa house was a canvas-covered tipi, which is still occasionally used, especially for tribal gatherings. This type of house was completely portable, consisting of lodge-poles forming a conical frame with a fitted covering. In an earlier era, for the Eastern Ktunaxa, the covering was made of buffalo hides, resulting in a plains-style tipi. There were both winter and summer configurations of the basic design. In the early historic period, the Ktunaxa built log houses which compared favourably in terms of warmth with winter-style buffalo-hide tipis.
For the Western Ktunaxa, the same frame of lodge poles as used to make the plains-style tipi had a fitted covering of reed mats. For both the Eastern and Western Ktunaxa, there are ethnographic descriptions of a larger, more permanent kind of winter longhouse, dug into the ground, about a foot deep, with a wooden frame and reed-mat coverings.
The portability of Ktunaxa houses meant that entire villages were also highly portable, at least seasonally. This made possible a pattern of seasonal movement from one resource to another. At winter village sites located at the valley floor, fishing was conducted between March and May. The Western Ktunaxa relocated to particularly advantageous fish-weir locations in the spring. At Tobacco Plains, tobacco was planted in the spring. About May, women dug camas roots and bitterroots, when they were ready and where they were to be found. Mid-June was a time for the Eastern Ktunaxa to mount the summer buffalo hunt. After returning, women picked berries, as they ripened at different locations, especially serviceberries, huckleberries, and chokecherries. For the Western Ktunaxa, a task leader was appointed to organize a communal deer hunt. At Tobacco Plains in the summer, tobacco plots were harvested. There is a report that each band made its own distinctive blend of tobacco for its council meetings and to trade with other bands. The Eastern Ktunaxa hunted elk. After all of the food accumulated in the summer was processed, caches of it were made in the forks of trees in time for the Eastern Ktunaxa to lead the fall bison hunt into the prairies. Just before the first snowfall, this expedition returned and set up winter quarters. In the winter, before the short winter bison hunt, men repaired snowshoes.
After the early fur-trading era, ranching – including the keeping of dairy herds – was an important occupation for the Ktunaxa until the open range beyond reserve lands was no longer open to them. In more recent times, farming and ranching declined to the point where non-Ktunaxa people actually leased reserve lands for their ranching operations, but that trend has been halted and today reserve lands are again managed by Ktunaxa people, although this creates employment only for a few individuals.
For the Lower Kootenay, fruit picking has been a source of employment locally, and, for the Ktunaxa in general, agricultural work farther from home was once a source of seasonal employment. The harvesting of Christmas trees is now a major industry on some reserves, with Ktunaxa people from Canada taking truckloads of trees as far as Arizona to sell them at locations rented from year to year for the purpose. There is a long tradition of Ktunaxa people fighting forest fires, and recently this has led to forest-management activities of a more general nature. For the Lower Kootenay band, at the southern end of Kootenay Lake, an arrangement with the conservation group Ducks Unlimited has been profitable.
