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00:00Here we are in Osuya's Indian Band!
00:06Very quickly, just to clarify for people watching at home,
00:09because this confused me a little bit,
00:11Osuya's Indian Band, that can refer to the people,
00:15but also to the place, the land.
00:18Also, I should say, the word Indian.
00:21I'm told that that's what people here prefer,
00:23so that's what I'm going with.
00:27I was told specifically by one of your elders,
00:30who's very opinionated about it,
00:33an elder who we'll get to know in the episode,
00:35you guys already know her, Jane Stalkia.
00:42These are Indians! That's who we are!
00:46So, just in case there's anybody watching at home
00:49who might take exception to seeing me say the word Indian,
00:53I'm more afraid of Jane than I am of them.
00:55So...
00:59When you grow up in a small town in Newfoundland,
01:02you see the people have a sense of humor about hard times.
01:05I turned that into a career and hit the road.
01:07Mr. Johnny Harris!
01:09Now I'm on a mission to find the funny
01:11in the places you least expected.
01:13Canada's struggling small towns.
01:15Towns that are against the ropes, but hanging in there.
01:18Still laughing in the face of adversity.
01:21This is Osuya's Indian Band!
01:23In my life!
01:32We are in the desert.
01:35I feel like a lot of Canadians don't know that there's full-on deserts here.
01:40Canada's only desert.
01:45Although, despite the fact that you guys can get less than 25 centimeters of precipitation a year,
01:51it's not technically desert desert.
01:54Although, that's typical.
01:56Of course a Canadian desert would be like that.
01:58You're like, who, me? A desert?
01:59No, I wouldn't call myself a desert.
02:02Oh, no.
02:04I'm...
02:04Semi-arid shrubland.
02:06Maybe.
02:07Maybe.
02:07No.
02:07No.
02:08No.
02:15No.
02:16A few decades ago, this place was in hard times.
02:19Now you look around, there's a golf course, a cultural center, a resort, a racetrack.
02:26It's incredible.
02:30But to understand the boom, I needed to know the bust.
02:35And I spoke to mother and son ranchers Jane and Aaron Stalkaya.
02:43And they are still doing it the way the Osuyas Indian Band have been doing it for generations, on horseback.
02:50All the Indians on this reserve were good ranchers.
02:55The Indians and the horses go together.
02:59And back in the day, you didn't buy your horses.
03:01You caught wild ones.
03:03Right here where we're sitting, in those days, this was all covered with horses.
03:09They told me there was wild horses all up and down the valley.
03:13I mean, there still are, not as many.
03:15And Aaron was telling me it was tricky.
03:16For instance, that mountain up there, if you've seen a herd up there, you'd have to sneak around them.
03:22Once you're below the wild horse, they can out-climb you.
03:25Then they're gone.
03:26Yeah, let's go.
03:27And also, you can't lure them.
03:29You can't bait them in any way.
03:30You can't put some hay down, because it's a wild horse.
03:33A real wild horse doesn't even know what hay is.
03:36I thought that was kind of interesting, that a wild horse wouldn't recognize,
03:39hey, in fact, I'm going to put that into a song I wrote.
03:42I wrote a song about wild horses.
03:44Lots of people have, but I think mine, mine's going to be a bit more authentic now.
03:50And no, I'm not going to sing it for you here now.
03:52No, I'm not going to sing it for you here now.
04:20The other thing the Osuyus Indian Band is known for is a successful winery and vineyard.
04:26In the late 60s, Jane was a councillor, and she told me the community was approached
04:31by a winemaker from Ontario to lease 200 acres of banned land to grow grapes.
04:40They wanted to lease that land for $5 an acre.
04:44We all said no, so they left.
04:47And then I said, why don't we have a vineyard?
04:51That's how it came about.
04:54So in 1968, the community planted the first ever Indigenous-owned, Indian-owned vineyard in Canada.
05:04But starting a vineyard in the desert wasn't easy.
05:08And I was in charge of that.
05:11It was really hard work.
05:12The post has to be put in, and it's all done by hand.
05:17They had to clear trees and rocks.
05:21They had no irrigation.
05:22There's no water.
05:24Just think 200 acres.
05:26Everything was watered by buckets?
05:28Yes, yes.
05:29Oh, jeez.
05:29By hand.
05:30They had to water 200 acres of land with buckets.
05:33That's incredible.
05:34I think that's beyond incredible.
05:36In fact, the only other thing I can think of where a guy went into the desert and used water
05:40to make wine,
05:41some people said it was a miracle.
05:44But it worked.
05:46Aaron said that getting the vineyard started is what brought a lot of people back to the community.
05:52Realistically, they wanted to be home.
05:54Yeah.
05:54But they couldn't afford to be home.
05:56A lot of young men had to leave to find work across the border into Washington State,
06:01across the line, they called it.
06:02The vineyard created more jobs, so they started coming home,
06:05and then the more that were coming home, it needed more housing.
06:08And then it just, it started to snowball.
06:11It started to boom.
06:12And it all started out with the band deciding to build this vineyard.
06:17In a way, it's perfect.
06:19Like, what could be better than a vineyard to give the people a good Riesling to get the band back
06:24together?
06:40I wanted to know more about the winery.
06:43I heard a bit of it through the grapevine,
06:45but I got the finer notes from a state winemaker,
06:49Justin Hall.
06:54The name of this wine is interesting to me.
06:58But you're going to have to say it once.
06:59You've got to say it once now.
07:00Come on, give it to me once.
07:01I'm going to go with...
07:03In-In-In-Incomyp?
07:05Incomyp.
07:06Yeah, perfect.
07:06Incomyp.
07:07Perfect, yeah.
07:07Justin works at Incomyp Cellars,
07:10growing a huge variety of grapes
07:12and selling almost 150,000 bottles of wine every year.
07:18And in fact, they think maybe more this year
07:20because more people are interested in buying Canadian
07:23and because my producer, Barb, is here.
07:28The Okanagan Valley is such a huge, diverse place.
07:31I would say what makes Osuja's Indian Man land
07:35and Incomyp Cellars special
07:36is that it's the only desert in Canada.
07:39So we have extremely high heat days
07:40which make our reds super ripe and rich.
07:43But it's ironic.
07:44Justin told me when the reserve was created,
07:47he said the government's idea
07:49was to give you this bit of dry, dusty desert land
07:53because it was no good for farming.
07:55Thousand acres of desert, baby.
07:57Yeah.
07:57And I always use the oldest saying of all
07:59when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
08:02So maybe you wouldn't want to grow a tomato
08:04in that type of earth.
08:06But what can you do?
08:07He said it is the perfect place to grow grapes.
08:11They like it a little bit hot.
08:12They like a little bit of stress.
08:14They're fine in the desert.
08:15He said grapes thrive with a little bit of stress.
08:19And it almost reminds me of a girl I used to date.
08:22She loved the heat, always a bit stressed.
08:24And when she was pressed, turned to wine.
08:29There's a unique taste to the wines of this area.
08:34Some wine writers came through and they said
08:35there's a sage sweet character that comes through
08:39in the South Okanagan specifically.
08:41He said it comes from the desert soil.
08:44We call it sin'it timhulau.
08:46He said it means sweet smelling earth.
08:50Very specifically, sage is kind of comes through
08:52in this sweet smell of greasewood.
08:55But I was like, I never heard of greasewood.
08:57Antelope brush is another name?
08:59Antelope brush, okay.
09:00I was like, I've never brushed an antelope either.
09:04But I asked this and I said,
09:05so then what are the challenges of growing grapes here?
09:09Definitely the black bears.
09:10If they start to find your vineyard or holes in the fence,
09:13they can absolutely obliterate a crop.
09:16So you can lose thousands and thousands of dollars per week
09:19with a couple of bears.
09:21He said an adult black bear in one week
09:24can eat a ton of grapes.
09:26Like a literal metric ton of something like $5,000 worth of grapes.
09:30And then he said also, you know, this is the desert.
09:33We have scorpions.
09:34Oh my God.
09:35And I freaked out.
09:37This was the first time anybody mentioned scorpions to me.
09:40I was like, oh my God.
09:41I don't even want to know how many grapes a scorpion can eat.
09:50We got 50 mils of wine.
09:51We're going to take 25% phosphoric acid.
09:54This is going to help release the sulfur in the wine.
09:57He showed me a test for sulfur
09:58and another one that measured volatile acids.
10:01And he said, you've got to monitor this stuff.
10:03If it gets out of hand at all, it can ruin your wine.
10:06If it sits for too long, it becomes a mercaptan.
10:09Mercaptan.
10:10Mercaptans are particularly nasty.
10:12Cabbage, burnt rubber.
10:14You can end up with wine that smells like burnt rubber and cabbage.
10:19And I know for a fact that people don't like that combination,
10:24burnt rubber and cabbage.
10:26Because I was trying to impress a girl one time in my Camaro
10:29and I did a burnout, but I was so nervous, I farted.
10:35You're looking for 0.5 to 0.8 molecular.
10:37You know, it gets a little nerdy again.
10:39And I was starting to get confused.
10:41And he was using very big words, scientific terms.
10:43And I was like starting to feel insecure.
10:45I was like, oh, I'm dumb.
10:46I don't know anything about wine.
10:48But then he brought it right back down to a human level.
10:51He said, you can have wine when you're crying.
10:53You can have wine when you're happy.
10:56It's all about experiencing emotions.
10:59And then all my worry and confusion went away.
11:01And I realized, you know, I just had an estate winemaker tell me,
11:06you can drink wine when you're crying.
11:09And that means I've been doing it right all along.
11:27I met a local artist who studies the pictographs,
11:31ancient rock paintings found in this area.
11:34And she creates her own pieces that pay tribute to them,
11:38which perhaps makes her the best tribute rock artist in Canada
11:42since my cover band, Nickelbackman Triumph Overdrive.
11:48Taylor Baptiste Sparrow.
11:55A pictograph is a rock painting that's been left behind on the land
12:00made with ochre pigment paint.
12:03She said, these pictographs, they were done so long ago,
12:07it's hard to know or impossible to know really exactly what they mean.
12:11It's open to interpretation.
12:12And even if you visit the same pictograph several times,
12:15each time you might take something different from it.
12:18I love that.
12:19This is right up my alley.
12:20I did an art history class in university.
12:22And we were looking at a symbol, the ancient Greek Ouroboros.
12:26And our professor said, this represents the never-ending cycle
12:31of destruction and rebirth.
12:33And I said, well, what if the artist just thought
12:37it'd be funny to see a snake eating its own butt?
12:43We had a lot of conversations to figure out
12:46how we can keep these spaces protected
12:47because they are so delicate and historical.
12:50A couple of years ago,
12:52one of our most accessible pictograph sites was vandalized.
12:56Taylor told me about an incident in 2020
12:59where a local pictograph was spray-painted.
13:03It was defaced with racist graffiti.
13:06It hit me like grief.
13:07Like, it felt like losing a loved one
13:09and, like, losing that connection to our ancestors.
13:13And she said it was like losing a loved one.
13:15She said the band looked into the possibility
13:17of laser-removing this graffiti.
13:21We were very lucky to be able to get access
13:24to one of two lasers in the world.
13:26They were able to microscopically laser off the spray paint
13:29without damaging the ochre pigment left behind.
13:32No way.
13:33And I found this very intriguing
13:35because I got a tattoo.
13:36I had a dolphin on my ankle.
13:39I had a dolphin on my ankle, but then I didn't like it,
13:41and so I got to cover it up with a dragon.
13:43But now I don't like that.
13:44And I spoke to one place they could laser off the whole thing,
13:48but I kind of want to go back to the dolphin.
13:53But the ancient pictographs were painted with red ochre,
13:56and Taylor showed me how to make ochre paint.
13:59This is ochre, the way it's found naturally out on the land.
14:03So in our language, this is called toulamine.
14:06Toulamine.
14:06You grind it into a fine powder,
14:08and then you mix a binding agent,
14:11and that could be bear grease or fish oil or berry juice,
14:15or if you don't have any of that...
14:17You can use spit to make the paint,
14:19so you're going to fill that with spit.
14:21For real?
14:22No.
14:23I'm not going to fill this with spit.
14:24You wouldn't fill the whole thing,
14:26but you can use a little bit.
14:27Listen, I'm an artist, too.
14:29I know what it's like to put your blood, spit, and tears
14:31into your work.
14:33And so I spit into this cup,
14:36and then she mixed some bottled water in with it,
14:39and she poured it into the ochre,
14:41and 50 minutes later, sure enough,
14:43turns out I had COVID.
14:49Yeah, look at that texture.
14:50And so it's very staining.
14:52Like, this will wash off, don't worry.
14:54But you can see how it leaves behind its trace on the rocks
14:58for hundreds of years.
15:00But another interesting thing about Taylor's work
15:02is that they're inspired by the pictographs,
15:06but she does sculptures.
15:08She showed me one piece she did.
15:10It's of two eagles.
15:11So you've got an eagle and then, like,
15:12an upside-down eagle,
15:13and their talons are locked.
15:15I started bending it in different ways
15:17to figure out how to illustrate
15:19the mating dance that eagles do.
15:21So the sculpture will actually spiral.
15:24Yeah.
15:24It's almost like another dimension.
15:26It's like movement becomes part of that.
15:28Yeah.
15:28So it's like the two eagles are actually acting out
15:30the mating dance,
15:32which I thought was brilliant.
15:33And then I realized that she is a great ochre artist,
15:37but I will only ever be a mediocre artist.
16:00I thought they were just using some Gen Z slang.
16:09I thought they were just using some Gen Z slang.
16:10I tried to fit in,
16:11and I asked them if the fire party
16:12was going to be totally slay.
16:17Turns out they were talking about Fire Fridays.
16:21So I went over to Sen Pak Chin School,
16:24and I met up with Leah Powder and Levi Bent.
16:31Fire Friday is our chance to get outdoors,
16:33but being outdoors,
16:34it's an indigenous model
16:35because our ancestors were outdoors
16:37every day,
16:38all day.
16:39And the kids are so into it.
16:41They're so excited.
16:42I imagine for my generation,
16:44it would be almost like,
16:46do you remember when your teacher
16:47would wheel in the cart with the TV,
16:49VCR on it?
16:50Yeah, it's fast, right?
16:53You guys know the sumac plant?
16:55Yeah.
16:56If you use those berries
16:56and grind them up,
16:57it has a lemony flavor.
16:59They want to teach the kids
17:01the traditional ways
17:02of living off the lane
17:03that were almost lost.
17:05I'm first generation,
17:07non-residential school,
17:08so I didn't learn those skills.
17:10Right.
17:10I'm learning it now.
17:11We're learning it as we go.
17:12Through things like Fire Friday,
17:15it's slowly coming back.
17:16You can walk over here
17:17and you can get squina,
17:18no problem,
17:19but they got these little pokies.
17:21And a big part of Fire Friday
17:23is trying traditional foods.
17:25And while I was there,
17:26we roasted some prickly pear cactus.
17:29Did you want to try and roast one?
17:31Yeah, I'll give it a go.
17:32Now, when I was told
17:34we were going to roast cactus,
17:36I guess because I'm in the comedy world,
17:38I misunderstood.
17:38I thought we were, like,
17:39making fun of cactus.
17:41And I wrote some mean jokes
17:43about cactus.
17:45They're not even that good.
17:46It's mostly like,
17:48oh, check out these pricks.
17:53No, cactus, you're not fat.
17:55You're just retaining water.
17:59Not even very good.
18:03Myself?
18:03I'm not a fan.
18:05See, though, those strands,
18:06like, it's mucusy.
18:07Like, just oyster-like.
18:10She said the texture
18:11is something like mucus and oysters.
18:14I was like, okay, so snot.
18:21Way to go.
18:22Yeah.
18:23I do like it.
18:24She likes it, yeah.
18:25It's weird texture, for sure,
18:27but I think I need to have another one.
18:30I thought it would be like snot,
18:31but it's not.
18:32It's not.
18:33And maybe that's how you could market it.
18:35Like, I can't believe it's not snot.
18:45What a way I got to see
18:46some of the country
18:48that you have here.
18:49I went on the horseback ride
18:50for Jane's 95th birthday.
18:5795 years old,
18:59and she's out there riding a horse.
19:01My nan made it to 95,
19:03but she wasn't riding any horses,
19:05although she could rip through
19:06a pack of camels.
19:09There were dozens of us,
19:11and we're all on painted horses,
19:13and Aaron was leading the way.
19:15Every now and then, we would stop,
19:17and Jane would tell people
19:19about the old ways
19:20of the Okanagan people.
19:21We're going right, right
19:22by the pit houses.
19:24They're way underground.
19:26They lived underground.
19:28And I'm thinking, like,
19:29way back in the day,
19:30Jane, she was the one who said
19:32the Osuia's band
19:34should build their own vineyard,
19:36and now, here she is,
19:3850 years later,
19:40the community is thriving,
19:41and she's given history lessons
19:44on horseback,
19:45and I think it's just more proof
19:47that behind every great band
19:49is a great woman.
20:03This is my last day,
20:05but if my heart had any say,
20:07it would sing a song
20:08about how wild horses
20:10couldn't drag me away,
20:12about ancient earth
20:13and growing grapes,
20:15about thriving in the heat.
20:16Maybe the drummers
20:18from Fire Fridays
20:19could come lay down a beat
20:21about Canada's only desert
20:23and how anyone
20:24who never knew this
20:26should come see the place,
20:28meet the people.
20:29I swear,
20:30you'll fall a little bit
20:31in love with Osuia's.
20:32Thanks for coming out,
20:33everybody.
20:34You've been great.
20:37We'll definitely see you again.
20:38Take care, guys.
20:40Johnny, you're way more
20:41than mediocre.
20:43That is a glare.
20:45If looks could kill.
20:47They say shake,
20:48rattle, and mole,
20:48but why don't they say
20:50snake, rattle, and mole?
20:52Lim-lim, Johnny.
20:57I said he's a funny person.
21:00I'm grateful for that.
21:06We'll have to get rid
21:07of this horse.
21:07Rattle, you're a big block
21:09and they might follow you.
21:10What are they all?
21:11All right.
21:14We'll have to get rid of it.
21:24I'll have to get rid of it.
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