What do we mean by tmixʷ-centered?

“The Syilx language, when it talks about the land and describing place names on our territory, it’s a verbal map. That verbal map is so descriptive you know exactly where that place is they’re talking about.

Those kinds of words, using the descriptions in our territory, you can’t go wrong to where you’re going – there’s no mistaking where that is and what that is. So, to me, the Syilx language is that kind of language that is really descriptive, where it doesn’t have that in English.”

Richard Armstrong (Syilx Okanagan Elder and nsyilxcn speaker)

The concept of tmixʷ is found across 25 distinct Salishan nations.

The term “tmixʷ” is applicable to a syilx informed and situated university writing guide because the guide was created in the syilx territory and with an idea about tmixʷ and it’s connection to the nsyilxcn word concept for a type of story called captikʷɬ that produces an image in the syilx worldview of starting with an ignited spark of a burning ember that guides learners into the future. This writing guide was created with the concept and an understanding of tmixʷ, and from an Indigenous Peoples’ perspective and ethics and integrally with Land in the salishan sense of tmixʷ should be a required part of any learning endeavour in Syilx Peoples’ realm including the university and how we cite knowledges and how we cite the new understandings that we gain from our studies.

We wanted to walk our talk, that is we want to embody what we say, we want to be being and doing and enacting what we are presenting and propounding our readers to do.  This is a part of our application of an Salishan Peoples land-based pedagogy that was envisioned even before the spark ignited.

Three Syilx Okanagan scholars and Knowledge Keepers and storytellers, Dr. Jeannette Armstrong, Dr. Bill Cohen and Delphine Armstrong Derickson explain the concept of tmixʷ further.

In her doctoral dissertation, Contructing Indigeneity: Syilx Okanagan Oraliture and tmixʷcentrism, syilx scholar and Knowledge Keeper, Dr. Jeannette Armstrong explains the meaning of tmixʷ is from high and old nsyilxcn (nsyilxcn is the name for syilx Peoples’ language): “The argument is that this Syilx view of land is an ecological or a dynamic systems view rather than a mental picture of the geography with its plants and animals” (Armstrong, 150). Tmixʷ constitutes all of life and life energy.

Tmixʷ is interwoven within and expressed through the kind of Syilx Okanagan stories called captikʷɬ. Captikʷɬ are a type of Syilx Okanagan story but they more than stories, rather they are ancient mythological narratives that have been told and retold through millennia.  In conversation with Dr. Charnley, Dr. Armstrong explained (November 28, 2023) that within the meaning of captikʷɬ is an image and idea of a spark or an igniting of knowledge into the future.  In her Ph.D. dissertation, Dr. Armstrong elaborated on the interrelationship of tmixʷ and captikʷɬ:

captikʷɬ story, positioned in the context of a continuum of knowledge bound to its origins in the living things of the land illustrates how captikʷɬ acts as tongue and so as organ of speech of the tmixʷ from which it springs forward into the mouths of its human tellers. The position taken is of Syilx oralitture as being Indigenous as a voice of the land and a record of the way land itself established how the human, over the generations, is to speak the land‘s required realities. The Syilx relationship to land as a social paradigm, characterized as Indigeneity, is an unqualified regenerative relationship arising out of an ethos carried in the captikʷɬ . (Armstrong, 44)

Syilx Okanagan scholar from Head of the Lake, Dr. Bill Cohen, explained to Dr. Charnley in conversation (November 29, 2023), paraphrasing Delphine Armstrong Derickson, that the root of the word for captikʷɬ expresses an image of a spark igniting and showing light into the future.  In other words captikʷɬ express teachings that offer guidance for navigating not only the past and the present but also very much for the future.

While Indigenous Peoples have always cited the Land and the tmixʷ as sites of knowledges, Indigenous scholars and students are increasingly citing the land as a source of knowledge in their academic work.

How to cite the tmixʷ or the Land?

In academic assignments it is imperative to acknowledge, give credit to and cite who or where one found the knowledge or understanding that one is writing about.  Students are expected to cite in all their assignments. This is considered academic integrity.  The opposite of academic integrity or the failing of academic integrity is called academic dishonesty and plagarism. Universities and academic scholarly communities within and attached to universities take academic integrity, academic dishonesty and plagarism very seriously.  Similarly Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers and scholars take story and knowledge integrity and the citing of where knowledges come from and it is imperative to cite who shared and gave permision to tell a given captikʷɬ  to the current teller very seriously.

Aligning with academic integrity and Indigenous storytelling, captikʷɬ and knowledge integrity, as authors of this writing guide, we cited the land in the first section of this circle. Similarly, we credit the other sources of the knowledge that we bring into our writing.

Next Steps:

Continue to the next chapter or jump to a different chapter in the Guide: “The Healing Power of Storytelling: Reading and Writing as Medicine in University.”

See Circle 2 and Chapter 4 for “Emergent and Traditional Indigenous Citation Practices and Academic MLA Style Citation” in this Guide and the section on site/ation and site:ation.