It may come as a shock to many that a people can be declared extinct in Canada. But this is precisely what happened to the Arrow Lakes people who, rejecting this colonial name, refer to themselves as the Sinixt. In 1956, an order-in-council was passed by the government of Canada declaring the Arrow Lakes Band to be extinct under the Indian Act.
The international border between Canada and the United States partitions the traditional territory of the Sinixt, most of which lies in the southeast interior of British Columbia with only a small percentage of their land in Washington state on the American side. After first contact with European settlers in 1811, the Sinixt were gradually dispossessed of their land, pushed south of the international border and forced to seek refuge in the U.S. They were amalgamated by the U.S. government with 10 other tribes and settled on the Colville Confederated Tribes reservation. Today, the majority of the Sinixt live in the United States, where they a