8.4°C Not observed 
Last month, Lillooet’s other newspaper, the St’at’imc Runner, reported that a half-ownership of the legendary Skookumchuck Hot Springs on the lower Lillooet River has been sold to Mike Sato, the Japanese-Canadian businessman and hot springs aficionado who did a beautiful job rebuilding the infamous Meager Creek hot springs on the upper Lillooet.
How this partial ownership has come about is unclear as the official transfer of the springs to the In-shuck-ch Nation is still pending band membership approval of the treaty that Gerard Peters has negotiated with federal and provincial governments on their behalf.
Even so, Sato plans to take the existing plumbed fibreglass tubs out and replace them with two new sets, one for “native people” and further along the heritage Douglas Trail that bisects the spring’s gold rush era campground, another “for all other purposes” because “it is the practice of non-native folks to get drunk and naked in order to use the hot springs.”
Although I am native to British Columbia, that is, born here and with no other cultural affiliation, by the Runner’s criteria, I would be classified as non-native.
I do not consume alcohol while soaking in the springs and would be the first to agree to banning it from the tubs. I have, I admit, been known to enjoy soaks as the Creator made me but that depends entirely on the circumstances.
I also understand why it is a sacred place for the local aboriginal peoples as, having experienced its healing powers, it is certainly a sacred place to me.
The Runner’s blanket assumptions about differences between “native” versus “non-native” people does make one wonder how indigenous people enjoyed healing soaks in the pre-Spandex era before settlers arrived with bathtubs.
Apparently, they didn’t. The traditional healing aspect of the springs was using its hot mud as healing compresses to draw toxins out the body systems as it dried on the skin. Undoubtedly, this practice is a powerful healer and cleanser but definitely not the same experience as soaking in a plumbed fibreglass hot tub. Or a reconstucted Japanese-style onsen.
In the late 1800s, Scottish immigant James Teit collected the local legend of Skookumchuck Hot Springs, also known as Tsek in the language of the In-shuck-ch people.
According to the legend, Tsek was created by the Transformers, supernatural beings who figure prominently in pre-contact histories throughout British Columbia.
According to an information board erected at Tsek, the Transformers were “sent down from the heavens by the Creator near the beginning of time to eradicate evil, reward good people and make corrections to the earth’s landscapes.”
This is how James Teit retells the legend:
“There are two springs - one hot and one cold, in the Lower Lillooet District. They were a married couple whom the Transformers changed into springs at their own request. They said ‘Let us be two springs, one hot and one cold, side by side. People who bathe in us and drink our water will become well.’”
Tsek initially passed into private ownership in 1859 when innkeeper William Stein applied for “pre-emption” of the land around the springs, known officially as Lot 1747, for the purposed of constructing a roadhouse on the newly completed Douglas Trail. Seven years later, Scottish immigrant Goodwin Purcell acquired the springs after paying $300 owed in back taxes and, in 1956, all shares in Lot 1747 were sold by the Purcells to Alan Trethewey for $5,000.
In 2007, the federal government purchased Lot 1747 from Trethewey for $1.7 million as a treaty related measure for the negotiations with the In-shuck-ch that have yet to conclude.
The Tretheweys practiced a very enlightened form of management and for decades shouldered all costs associated with maintaining the springs and left the campground open to the public, year round, free of charge.
When Trethewey heard the legend about the two side-by-side springs, he sought out the cold spring, piped its water into the hot spring terrace and the native legend saw fulfillment, that all people who came, regardless of race, could bathe in the co-mingled waters and be healed.
During the International Indigenous Leadership Gathering recently held here in Lillooet, many speakers highlighted native prophecies and their apparent fulfillment happening in current events.
Hopi Indian prophecies in particular speak not of the arrival but of the return of Pahana, the “true white brother.”
His symbol will be a cross, but a cross within a circle such as modern Celtic crosses. The sacred medicine wheel also follows the form of a cross within a circle. Within it, all four races are represented by white, red, yellow and black quadrants that balance in perfect harmony, with none dominating the others.
The origins of the medicine wheel are lost in antiquity but its use was widespread among prairie indigenous tribes when Europeans began to arrive.
Knit together by bonds of kinship and friendship, the population of British Columbia, like the sacred medicine wheel, now contains all four races.
At this point in our collective histories, allocating special rights to lands and resources previously held in common or segregating their use by race is going a long way back down the same road we have just travelled.
The answer to historic injustice and racism is not more injustice and racism.
