"Chinook" [= winter] dances

[David D. Robertson]

Thanks to listmember Deane Osterman for kindly providing a copy of Randy
Bouchard & Dorothy Kennedy, "Ethnogeography of the Franklin D Roosevelt
Lake Area" (BC Indian Language Project, January 1979), which contains (page
105) this:

"[One Native consultant] recalls that a well-known Sanpoil Indian doctor
named John Tom, /xiw'il'x/, lived year-round in a type of dwelling
excavated in the side of a natural earth bank.  This dwelling was 'about 40
feet long by 20 feet wide by 8 feet deep' and had a low-pitched log roof
covered with dirt.  [The consultant] points out that there were logs for
walls and the dwelling had a dirt floor.  [He] was inside this dwelling
several times, when he was 'about 9 or 10 years old', to attend 'Chinook'
(winter) dances."

Anyone else know of the term "Chinook dances"?  The reasoning behind the
label might be an association with warm, westerly wintertime "Chinook
winds" in this region (east of the Cascades Mountains in northeast
Washington State).

Incidentally, the kind of house described above sounds like what they call
a "keekwillie house" or "kickwilly house" in BC, doesn't it?