Ktunaxa (Kutenai)

The Ktunaxa, known in English as the Kutenai, Kootenay or Kootenai, are an Indigenous people of the Rocky Mountain trench, with homelands in south-eastern British Columbia, northern Idaho and north-western Montana. Their language is an isolate, unrelated to any of their neighbours' tongues or to any other known language. Today four First Nations in British Columbia, Canada, form the Ktunaxa Nation, while in the United States Kutenai people belong to the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana.

Ktunaxa is regarded as the most correct name for the people as a whole; its meaning is disputed. The English forms probably come from the Blackfoot word Kotonáwa. Kootenay is the usual spelling in Canada and Kootenai in the United States, as in the Kootenay River, called the Kootenai south of the border. Historically people identified mainly with their own band. The Ksanka, "people of the standing arrow", are the south-easternmost band, now in Montana.

How long the Ktunaxa have lived in the Kootenay country is debated. Quarry and tool-making sites near Creston, known as the Goatfell Complex, have been dated as far back as 11,500 years, and archaeologist Wayne Choquette has argued that the record shows no break, making today's Ktunaxa descendants of the first inhabitants. Others, such as Reg Ashwell, have suggested they crossed the Rockies from the plains in the early 18th century under Blackfoot pressure, pointing to Plains-style tipis, customs and religion. Some Ktunaxa did live east of the mountains for a time, near today's Fort Macleod, before Blackfoot attacks and smallpox drove survivors back west.

The people are loosely divided into Upper and Lower Kutenai, named for the stretches of the Kootenay River where their bands live: the Columbia Lake, ʔaq̓am, Tobacco Plains and Montana bands are Upper Kutenai, the Creston and Idaho bands Lower Kutenai. Upper bands crossed the Rockies each year to hunt bison. Lower bands lived chiefly by fishing with traps and hooks, travelled in the distinctive sturgeon-nosed bark canoe, which they shared with the Sinixt, and hunted deer, caribou, bear and waterfowl. Ceremonial life included vision quests, a Sun Dance, a Grizzly Bear Dance and a midwinter festival, and men belonged to societies such as the Crazy Dog and Crazy Owl lodges.

Christian ideas reached the Ktunaxa from as early as the 18th century, partly through a prophet called Shining Shirt and through Christian Iroquois whom the Hudson's Bay Company had brought west, and by the 1830s some had blended Christian elements into their ceremonies. The Jesuit Pierre-Jean de Smet toured the region in 1845–1846. A gold rush that began at Wild Horse Creek in 1863 brought miners and settlers, and Ktunaxa lands were cut down to reserves. Like most nations in British Columbia, they never signed a historic treaty and have been negotiating one with Canada for decades.

In Idaho the Kootenai Tribe had likewise never signed a treaty with the United States. On 20 September 1974, led by chairwoman Amy Trice, the tribe declared war on the United States and set up toll points on US Highway 95 through Bonners Ferry to raise money for its elders. The protest passed without violence, and the federal government granted 12.5 acres that became the basis of the Kootenai Reservation.

The four British Columbia nations are ʔakisq̓nuk (Columbia Lake), ʔaq̓am near Cranbrook, Yaqan Nukiy (Lower Kootenay) at Creston, and Tobacco Plains. The language is endangered: Statistics Canada counted 210 speakers in 2021, while the nation's own language programme reports 24 fluent speakers, all over 65. Communities have recorded Ktunaxa words and phrases on the FirstVoices website, built school curricula, and College of the Rockies in Cranbrook teaches introductory Ktunaxa.

Our 1492 map draws an approximate Ktunaxa homeland, labelled Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis, the Ktunaxa name for their homeland, astride the Rockies. It lies beside the Sinixt, Okanagan, Secwépemc and Spokane peoples, with the Blackfoot to the east and the Nez Perce to the south.