Count the frat-boy bros of the Kootenay Mountain Cult among the local power-players who have chosen to pretend that the Autonomous Sinixt as the legitimate matriarchal authority in our region do not exist, or at least do not merit mention of any type in their self-serving media coverage. When the new Sinixt Confederacy office from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation opened up in the White Heritage City last year, the Kooky Mountain Cultists wrote their predictable article accompanied by a photo of five men and no women which pointedly ignored Marilyn James and her anthropologically essential leadership role because the Autonomous Sinixt do not support or cooperate with the anti-ecological corporate industrial agenda of most governmental, cultural & societal bodies.

Despite giving an extensive rundown detailing how much the Sinixt territory exists within the borders of Canamerica Incorporated, the Kooky Mountaineers do not bother to bring up any personal elements of the Sinixt peoples north of the Disunited States because the KMC cultists know that their advertisers are just as much a part of the billionaire brotherhood enhancement program as anyone else in the oligarchic revolution, which has claimed our future well-being for their own personal gains. Even though Rich Mitch and the KMC gang can crow about how you can’t get their magazine in Mal-wart, etc., they’re still in cahoots with the Republicanazi-sympathizing Chamber of Commercialism, for in order to survive they need the copious advertising dough from all the moneymaking entities whose future profit margins depend on selling more and more junky stuff while never caring to reduce their environmental impact on our increasingly imperiled planetary big house.

At the end of their latest fluff-piece to boost the powerful campaign that perpetuates what Marilyn James calls the “ongoing genocide” of her besieged peoples in and around the Valley of the Lost Souls, the KMCers share a link to their previous story about the Colville Tribes in which they’ve added an arrogant editorial update that brushes aside the notable fact that when their biased “story first appeared in our winter 2021/22 issue of Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine (it) received some feedback asking why we didn’t interview Sinixt members currently residing in Canada”. The Korny Mountain Cult’s colonial response was to whitewash Marilyn James and her peoples’ established matriarchal authority by imperiously mansplaining that their one-sided “story is specifically about the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington and its decade-long legal battle… (which is) a significant piece of a much larger overarching Sinixt story that will have ramifications for all First Nations with traditional territories that straddle the Canadian-American border”. While that may or may not be true, according to one’s perspective, it cannot be denied that the Kooky Mountain Cult has never written a story that mentions Marilyn James and the existent Autonomous Sinixt before or since.

Contrast the Kooky Cultists’ typical white male power approach exemplified by the christo-fascist campaign to still lord over this stolen land using their damn dams with the enlightened rightfulness of the Land of Ross’ museum, which isn’t afraid to credit the Autonomous Sinixt’s recognizable authority in the Place of the Bull Trout, along with Kootenay Coop Radio’s Sinixt Stories series and the Blood of Life Collective’s mission. It is possible to talk about the one-of-a-kind Sinixt story while crediting the Autonomous Sinixt’s inalienable right to be the foremost aspect of their tragic yet inspirationally resilient tale, instead of a mere footnote or something not even worth talking about, let alone celebrating, in your glossy paean to a misogynistic mountain culture that only worships the wealthy interests of profiteering-at-all-costs and aristocratic materialism above all other spiritual, humanistic and herstorical considerations.