Ogopogo: the legend

Recent rumblings of the Ogopogo lurking Okanagan Lake may have many wondering where the legend of the lake monster came from.

Castanet searched out a knowledge keeper from the Penticton Indian Band to learn its origins. 

The life's work of Richard Armstrong has been to carry on the traditional knowledge of his people.

Armstrong has worked at the En'owkin Centre in Penticton since the 1960s and shared some of that wisdom on Thursday. 

"Ogopogo is not from our language. I'm not even sure where that came from," he said.

The traditional word, as close as English can come to spelling it, is Nha-ha-it-kw.

The first part of the word, 'Nha-ha,' is a reference to a creature that is as close as possible to being referred to as sacred. The last part, 'it-kw,' refers to that creature being 'of the water.'

Armstrong said the creature is sacred in the sense it is recognized as "very special" in First Nations culture, brought into existence by the Creator to let people know how great He is. 

"He can create anything He wants to, like that. And we recognize the power of that kind of thing," said Armstrong.

In form, the creature of legend is said to take two shapes. 

"It depends on the people who see it and what the creature is doing. When it's hunting or feeding, it has a different shape than when it's just travelling," said Armstrong. "Our people have always recognized a serpent-like 50 to 60 footer as one of the shapes.

"When it's not travelling, it's scrunched up and it's not 50 to 60 feet long, but maybe 20 or 30 feet long. It's like, I don't want to say a turtle, but it scrunches up its body so it's not streamlined to swim fast, like when it needs to."

Armstrong said the head is always described as looking like a horse or a dog with a square nose; not like a snake or a dragon.  

"As far as its reality, our people to this day still know that it always existed. It was always there, we knew about it," Armstrong said. "Our people have always, since time immemorial, fed that beast." 

Every year, certain people take a boat out and drop meat into the lake. 

"It's not a spectator sport. It's been happening for hundreds and thousands of years – and it still happens to this day," he said. "That kind of information is something the public is not aware of, because we mostly get a sense of ridicule when we tell people that."

Armstrong said that according to the elders, the creature is not confined to Okanagan Lake. 

"It's not always in the lake, it can be different places – it can be any place," he said. "It can be in Vancouver or out on the ocean or one of the other lakes anywhere. 

"We've heard of other places that other people have talked about sightings of something like the Ogopogo in other lakes, and our people have always said there's nothing strange about that. That's normal because they can go anywhere they want." 

The story harkens back to legend times for First Nations people. 

"Our legends tell us that these lakes are connected with an underground conduit of sorts. They can go from this country, to any country, Peru, or China, underground. 

"To understand that, the analogy is that these conduits are like blood vessels. These conduits flow through the Earth like that." 

In response to people saying the Ogopogo is a giant sturgeon or other beast of some sort, Armstrong says that is the result of cultural limitations.

"There's been many different people trying to explain it away, simply because people don't want to believe that there's something like that. Their culture doesn't allow them to have that knowledge, and they have to try and explain it with things they know of, which are sturgeon or a pack of otters or something like that."

The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources says it does "not have any evidence on record of sturgeon in Okanagan Lake – only anecdotal reports."

A 2003 report titled Okanagan Region Fish Species at Risk similarly did not note any sturgeon in Okanagan Lake. 

Kyle Girgan of the Summerland Trout Hatchery says: "None have ever been documented, but it depends on who you talk to.”

"But our people just know of its existence, and we're not trying to explain it away. We don't have to explain it away, because we know it exists," Armstrong said. 

Armstrong said there is a vast amount of knowledge archived at the En'owkin Centre, but it is protected for First Nations people. 

"Whether it's family stories, historical knowledge, we have that agreement, that it can be kept in that archive. But you have to have ancestry to this land, to this people."