BOOK Not Extinct: Keeping the Sinixt Way, 1st Edition

By Marilyn James and Taress Alexis 

In this book, Sinixt storytellers and knowledge-keepers Marilyn James and Taress Alexis address the reality of their living culture in the face of Canada’s bureaucratic genocide of their people, the Sinixt, in 1956.

Through lively story and discussions by the authors, each chapter illuminates the Sinixt relationship with the upper Columbia River watershed and their quest to reclaim their rights and responsibilities in their x̌aʔx̌aʔ təmxʷúlaʔxʷ, their sacred homeland. Gorgeous illustrations and reflections by regional settler and Indigenous artists and writers give readers further opportunities to engage with the stories. Their perspectives represent the interest of increasing numbers of people in developing respectful and decolonizing relationships among Indigenous and settler peoples and to inspire the work of reversing the Sinixt extinction. Join them all to meet the trickster Snk̓lip and the other Animal Beings who people the stories of the captikʷɬ, the Sinixt oral history.

Full-page colour and black and white illustrations by 17 different regional artists help illuminate the Sinixt ancestral and contemporary relationship with the land and waters of the Upper Columbia River watershed.

Each chapter is rounded out by a reflection on the story and/or discussion by one of 10 settler authors. The illustrations and reflections by these contributors give readers further opportunities to engage with the stories.