About KPHI

Rooted in place. Looking ahead.

Old routes. New possibilities.

Kootenae Plains Holdings Inc. brings Ktunaxa-inspired food, creative work and a vision for more resilient living into a modern trading enterprise.

KPHI is 100% Indigenous-owned.

Our name looks to Kootenay Plains (k̓unanuqǂiʔit) in Alberta and the journeys of Ktunaxa travellers and traders across the Rocky Mountains, in the Crown of the Continent. For founder Troy Hunter, those routes connect the Alberta foothills with the Columbia River and the greater Columbia Basin: places of gathering, exchange and enduring relationships with land.

Kootenay Plains lies on the east side of Howse Pass, a sheltered place in the mountains and a way through to the buffalo. As Troy writes, bison and salmon were the main foods of the Ktunaxa, and Ktunaxa travellers crossed the Rockies several times a year to hunt.

Ktunaxa place names

Kootenae Plains takes its name from Kootenay Plains in Alberta, k̓unanuqǂiʔit in Ktunaxa. Ktunaxa homelands and travel routes reached east of the Rockies, and other Ktunaxa place names carry a larger story.

Troy shares that, in the Ktunaxa Creation Story as he tells it, a giant named Naⱡmuqȼin fulfilled a prophecy, stood up, struck his head against the sky, and fell, and that his body became the Rocky Mountains. In Troy’s account, the giant’s feet are at Jasper, Ya·ⱡiki, the word for feet; Calgary’s Ktunaxa name, ʔa·knuqtapȼik̓, is the word for elbow, as at Elbow River; Lethbridge’s name, ʔa·kwum, is the word for belly, as at Belly River; the Glacier and Waterton area is spoken of as the heart of Kootenai territory; and the giant’s head lies near Yellowstone.

From fish and bison to teepees and food preparation, that inheritance inspires a contemporary ambition: useful products and experiences that carry knowledge forward while meeting the needs of today.

Explore the vision taking shape.

Our founder

Meet Troy Hunter.

Troy is a band member of ʔaq̓am and a member of the Ktunaxa Nation.

A lawyer with a master’s degree in constitutional law, he brings knowledge of Indigenous and Aboriginal law alongside his work as an award-winning photographer and videographer. He articled in Jakarta and worked with law firms in Bangkok and Jakarta on banking, finance and international contracts.

Troy also holds a diploma in Cultural Conservation from the University of Victoria, where he studied with ethnobotanist Dr. Nancy Turner, who taught him the art of steam-pit cooking.

His creative work brings cultural memory and practical ideas together.

As Troy recalls, his photography honours include recognition in Canoe Magazine for A Look Back, featuring Richard Jacobs and photographed with a Hasselblad 501C (circa 1997), and an honourable mention at the International AIDS Conference in Durban for portraits of Patsy Benallie and her two daughters (circa 2000).

Heritage & inspiration

Many journeys. A shared table.

As the late Elder Wilfred Jacobs explained, kuǂni means to travel by water. Troy believes that is how the Ktunaxa came to be known in English as the Kootenay.

Troy proudly carries his Morigeau, Kinbasket, Walkley, Oberhauser and Hunter family lines: Kinbasket and Ktunaxa heritage alongside European roots in France, Switzerland, England and Scotland. These stories of butchers, explorers and travellers shape who he is and the work he does, connecting the Swiss Alps and the Canadian Rockies.

Troy names François Morigeau as his seventh-generation grandfather. François is remembered as the first permanent white settler in the Columbia–Kootenay region. He intermarried with the Kinbasket clan—in Troy’s family account, François and Elizabeth Taylor’s son Baptiste married Felicity Kinbasket—and his descendants are very much a part of the Ktunaxa Nation today.

Troy’s maternal great-grandmother came from Switzerland and married into the Walkley family. Together, they started Walkley’s Meats in the Cranbrook (ʔa·kisk̓aqǂiʔit) and Kimberley area—a family food story that gives his Swiss Alps inspiration a place at the table.

One Hunter family story recalls Scottish carriage builders who supplied royalty but declined an opportunity to join the Buick family, convinced that horse travel was here to stay. Troy carries it as a family story—a reminder to value tradition while staying open to change.

Discover the food heritage inspiring KPHI.