Wynja

As an artist, pow wow dancer, and in the kitchen, Sally Wynja knows how to keep herself busy. At age 82, she still regularly forages medicinal plants, crafting materials, and edible plants and mushrooms (even if, these days, family members are often there to help). When visiting with her daughter in Merritt, Sally goes out on the land for Ponderosa pine needles. Closer to home, her son in T’exelc joins her on treks for birchbark and spruce roots for making baskets. It’s clear that her family and her Secwépemc traditions are dearest to her heart.

Sally was born and raised in T’exelc. She ventured out to start a life for herself at age-15, growing tired of her often troubled family life at home. Sally worked various jobs around the region before she started cooking at St. Joseph’s Mission. It was while working there, at age 21, that she met the man she would marry. Sally’s Cousin introduced her to Casey Wynja, a heavyduty mechanic from Holland. As was the style in the day, they married quickly.

Casey travelled a lot for work and Sally would go along with him. They were together for 32 years and had four children before he passed away. Speaking lovingly of her late husband, she recalls “we had lots of laughs.”

Following Casey’s passing, Sally came back to T’exelc in 2007. She moved back to her dad’s place, just down the road from downtown Sugar Cane. From her front porch, she has a beautiful view stretching across the southern end of Williams Lake.

She got into creating arts and crafts to keep herself occupied while in recovery from alcohol. There was nobody in her life to teach her how to make traditional Secwépemc art, so she took to the internet to learn on her own. Sally dove in head-first, learning beading, buckskin, and pine needlework all at about the same time. It was around the same time that she got into pow wow dancing as well.

Sally spent the following years traveling around the province teaching art workshops. For a while, she taught cultural classes of Native arts in Sugar Cane as well. Eventually she decided to stop teaching formally, and keep her focus on creating art for her own enjoyment. These days, Sally spends the summer on the pow wow circuit, selling her artwork to earn “travel money.”

Over the years she’s experimented with different media. Currently, her pine needle work uses sinew to keep it all together. It adds a splash of colour and is easily accessible. A lot of the imagery Sally uses comes from her spirituality. “The Eagle means a lot to me, the animals mean a lot to me. I love the trees, I love the forest. I get my medicine from the forest, and I get my materials from the forest.”

Sally is a mother to four, a grandmother to eight, and a great-grandmother to five (plus one more on the way). Keep an eye out for Sally and her beautiful artwork on the pow wow circuit and at local fairs.