A Canadian Oasis: the dry grasslands and open pine forests of Southern British Columbia are an endangered ecosystem being threatened by the human settlement it attracts.

• Author: Brando, Aldo

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There is a place in British Columbia where a landscape of caves and semiarid wilderness harkens back to another era. Eagles hunt rattle snakes here, and horses gallop free amid sage, cactus, and dunes, as if in a scene from the Wild West. The wind blows across prairies that stretch out alongside intricate labyrinths of canyons, and the rocky terrain embraces a winding chain of glacial lakes--oblong fresh-water seas that reflect the oasis of their fertile banks like mirages.

"I haven't seen my horse for two months," murmurs our guide, Robert Stelkia, an indigenous native of Okanagan Valley. "He lives free in the desert." As Rob speaks, his dog "Pop" is sliding under a natural stone roof amid the rocky scenery. We are out looking for pictographs near Lake Osoyoos. But the paw prints on the sandy soil under the massive stone distract both of us: "This could easily be a mountain lion den during this time of year," Rob tells me, as he urges Pop to follow its trail. "It's a small cat, but we have to find my horse; he might be spooked by it. When he was born, he was attacked by a fox; that's why I call him Fox."

The dignified and genuine presence of this man, with his faithful cattle dog who appears and disappears blending into the rocky cave-filled landscape, opens a window on a world that takes us back in time as we move amid the natural vegetation of this "Indian country."

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The land we are travelling through as we search for the ancient paintings is reservation land given to the Indians in 1861 during the period of Governor James Douglas. Douglas was said to have been moved by the injustices committed against the Okanagan people by fur hunters and other Europeans coming in to explore and exploit the natural resources of the area. His intentions were nobler than his actual accomplishments, however. "As long as the sun shines, the rivers flow, and the imperial flag continues to fly over Great Britain," Douglas proclaimed before he left office, "these lands will belong to the Okanagan peoples." But the power of his words was consumed by colonization that was advancing like wildfire across the prairies. Much of the land that Douglas had reserved or promised to native peoples was lost as a new chapter was written in the natural and cultural history of British Columbia.

Suddenly, our guide stops and turns around near a massive wall of granite. There, under the natural cover offered by the slope of the...