Setting:

Place: Okanagan (British Columbian State)

Time: colonial period
Characters:
Kyoti (personification of Coyote, a north American
wild animal of the dog family)
Themes:
colonization, migration, dream vs reality, tradition
vs change
Summary
'This a Story' by Jeannette Christine Armstrong is
about colonization and loss of the Okanagan culture
after the arrival of the Swallow people (colonizers).
The story revolves around Kyoti, a native of the
Okanagan and the dams built by the swallows. Kyoti
used to bring salmon to the Okanagan people and
leave them at the people’s villages. They were his
favorite people. Salmon symbolizes life and
existence of the Okanagan people.

After waking up from an unusual nap, Kyoti wanted

to visit the people in the Okanagan. While walking
along upstream, he noticed a lot of new things.
There were a lot of swallow people and they had
houses everywhere. He didn’t find any Okanagan
people. Kyoti came to a huge dam across the river at
Grand Coulee. He had no idea what it might be.

Kyoti saw another dam at Chief Joseph. Two people

were fishing there. He went up to them and waited
for a greeting and some respect. One of them tried to
speak the swallow language. He was sure that they
couldn’t understand the language of the Okanagan
people. These people told him that they were
Indians.

Kyoti went to Nespelum where he found that people

used words in swallow, lived in swallow houses and
ate swallow food. He asked one person who could
speak the Okanagan language properly was a very
old woman. She was from an old headman family.
She recognized Kyoti. She said that the swallows
came and did lots of worse things. She kept on
crying. She cried for a long time to express her bitter
experience she had after the Swallows built the
dams, and for Kyoti didn't come back to Okanagan.
She suggested him to meet their headman, Tommy.
Kyoti continued on up the river stopping at each
village. He knew that the people had moved into
Swallow homes. They were easy to find because
they looked more different than the way swallows
kept their houses. People were sick after they
consumed Swallow food. Even Kyoti himself was
pretty sick and gaunt from eating stuff that didn't
taste or look like food. For him the fresh salmon was
real food. The headmen suggested Kyoti to get out
of Okanagan. He also said that they wanted to get
money and have jobs for survival, and couldn't go
back to old times. They needed the Swallows.

Kyoti met a young man who was looking after the

river during Salmon-run time though there were no
salmons. He understood the native language and
greeted Kyoti. His father and grandfather were once
the Salmon Chiefs. The boy dreamt of clean water
and salmons, but in reality, there were no salmons.
Finally, Kyoti knocked at Tommy's door, and invited
all Okanagan people to break the dams so that they
could reestablish the salmon migration and save the
people of Okanagan.