BOOK REVIEWS Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush: Songs and History Jean A. Murray Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1999. 440 pp. Illus., music, compact disk. US$35.95 paper. By Michelle Mulder University of British Columbia CAREFULLY AND EXTENSIVELY by both "the music lover and the his­ researched work, Music of the tory buff" (x, xiii). As such, the book is AAlaska-Klondike Gold Rush a success. It does indeed offer a wealth provides a musical and lyrical depiction of potential entertainment and food of goldmining settlements, their culture for thought, conveniently organised and concerns. Jean Murray's intro­ and practically indexed. Prospective duction explores the history of the gold academic purchasers should note, how­ rush, comparing the hopes of miners ever, that this work is not intended before they left home with the general primarily for scholars. Its documentation disillusionment of those in the mining is extensive enough to provide a helpful settlements for some time. Murray base for scholarly work, yet Murray asserts that music held a prized place openly admits that selection of music in the lonely, often monotonous lives for the compilation was at times based of the miners. Her compilation evidences on personal preference (x). Moreover, the wide range of music common in she does not engage in interpretive com­ the camps, providing examples of bar­ mentary about individual songs. She room choruses, fiddle solos, and does occasionally step in to change a melancholy ballads such as "Billy Pike song's diction when she feels that it of Klondike." Murray introduces each includes "gratuitous racial slurs that piece individually, citing her sources, were an unthinking part of the milieu." as well as contemporary commentary (For example, in "The Cat Came Back," seen in diaries or songbooks of the she changes the term "nigger" to "fella" time. Often, Murray also includes bio­ [xiii].) Her basis for determining what graphical and anecdotal information is and is not a slur is unclear, as she about characters strongly associated herself freely refers to "Eskimo" rather with each piece. Maps, illustrations, than "Inuit" (54) and does not comment and the book's accompanying thirty- on the degrading depictions of women five minute CD provide a sense of pervasive throughout the songs. each piece's original place in the Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush Alaska-Klondike gold rush. is highly useful to those interested in a The book's preface states Murray's comprehensive survey of music of the hope that Music of the Alaska-Klondike time. For those who love sing-along songs, Gold Rush will be "used and enjoyed" Murray's book is well worth perusal. 96 BC STUDIES American Indians in the Marketplace: Persistence and Innovation among the Menominees and Metlakatlans, 18J0-1920 Brian C. Hosmer Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. 309 pp. Illus., maps. US$35 cloth. By Margaret Seguin Anderson University of Northern British Columbia /t M ERIC AN INDIANS in the Hosmer's approach is grounded in f-w Marketplace compares two world systems theory as developed in ^L JL interesting case studies of how Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern Aboriginal communities engaged with World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the emerging market economies of the Origins of European World Economy their regions during the late nine­ in the Sixteenth Century (1974) and teenth and early twentieth centuries. adapted to American Indian history by These case studies involve, respectively, Richard White in Roots of Dependency the Menominees (Wisconsin) and the (1983). Through a detailed analysis of MetlakatlaTsimshian (Alaska). Brian changes that took place over fifty years Hosmer presents detailed analyses of in these two communities, Hosmer how these two communities sought to demonstrates the usefulness of this participate in economic development approach to understanding the active through the marketplace and to temper agency of Aboriginal communities in the effects of the market economy on the interplay of economic and cultural their cultural values. He argues that they change and the persistence of cultural were not simply active participants in values. the emerging market economies of Hosmer takes communities as his their regions but that, along with other unit of focus, examining the ways in Aboriginal communities, which market enterprises were de­ veloped and shaped to community they understood that market purposes. Readers will find some capitalism encouraged and similarities to the approach taken in rewarded individualistic, entre­ Sarah Carter's study of Aboriginal preneurial values, along with ranching in the Prairies (Lost Harvests: modes of behavior that tended to Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and separate persons from their Government Policy [1990]). Furthermore, community. Perceiving these Hosmer's focus on communities rather influences as corrosive to than on individuals complements the fundamental values that pre­ approach taken by Rolf Knight in served, sometimes even renewed, Indians at Work (1978). Knight's argu­ community and identity, some ments about the significance of Abo­ Indians, Menominees and riginal labour in building the economy Tsimshians in this study, ex­ of British Columbia focused on the plored means to conform eco­ contributions of Aboriginal people as nomic change to their needs, (xi) Book Reviews çj workers but did not explore the role mary clans among the GitkVta (116). of Aboriginal communities in shaping In fact they were Blackfish and Eagle, economic participation to meet their as stated in what appears to be his pri­ own ends. mary source onTsimshian culture, Jay Readers of BC Studies will be most Miller's Tsimshian Culture: A Light interested in the detailed discussion through the Ages (1999,56). There are also of the economic history of Metlakatla, some orthographic errors with regard which includes a twenty-page chapter to the use of Tsimshian terms ("walp" on the Tsimshians of British Columbia or "waab," not "waalb"; "Gitga'ata" or (including Gitxsan and Nisga'a com­ "GitkVata," not "GitkVta" [116]). munities). Hosmer has cited many of Though readers should treat Hosmer's the available published and archival discussion of Tsimshian ethnology sources and presented a competent with some caution, even specialists synthesis, although specialists will will find that the history of the have some quibbles with it. For in­ economic enterprises that he has stance, Hosmer states that Blackfish studied provides some new material and Raven were the original and pri- and an interesting synthesis. Haa Aaniy Our Land: Tlingit and Haida Land Rights and Use Walter R. Goldschmidt and Theodore H. Haas Thomas F. Thornton, editor Seattle: University of Washington Press and Juneau: Sealaska Heritage Foundation, 1999. 219 pp. Illus., maps. US$30 paper. By Charles R. Menzies University of British Columbia HERE IS A SIGNIFICANT body of and Theodore Haas, is one such report. anthropological work lan­ Its purpose was to determine Tlingit Tguishing in the no man's land and Haida land rights in southeast of the unpublished report. Available Alaska in anticipation of the nation­ to the general public briefly, if at all, wide hearings of the Indian Land these reports disappear quickly and Claims Commission and the impending quietly into the depths of waiting statehood of Alaska (xxiii). However, archives. Sometimes they may have a it long outlived its initial purpose. As life beyond the initial aims and ob­ editor Thomas Thorton explains, the jectives of the agency that commis­ report came to be regarded by the sioned the report. "Possessory Rights Tlingit and Haida as a "remarkably of the Natives of Southeastern Alaska," useful study [that] was almost always originally commissioned by the United the starting point for further research States Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1946 [into questions of] customary and tra­ and written by Walter Goldschmidt ditional uses" (xiii). That the report 98 BC STUDIES has been co-published by Sealaska with the lawyer Theordore Haas and Heritage Foundation with the Uni­ Tlingit researcher Joseph Kahklen, versity of Washington Press speaks to they embarked on a whirlwind tour of the regard with which it is held by Tlingit and Haida villages in southeast contemporary Tlingit and Haida com­ Alaska. The entire report, from research munities as a useful anthropological to final draft, was completed within work. three months. "It is a source of sur­ HaaAani'is an important document prise to me," Goldschmidt comments, that has significance for First Nations "that we managed as well as we did, in British Columbia and all those with and of great pride that the Report is an interest in Tlingit and Haida seen fifty years later as of such value relations to their land and resources. that its republication is sponsored by This is so in two particular ways. First, the Tlingit people themselves" (xxv). the original document itself is an As an academic positioned between exemplary example of how to research life as a social anthropologist and and write a report concerning Abo­ family ties to the very people being riginal land rights and use along the chronicled, I found the transcripts of Northwest Coast. Second, and per­ the elders' and community knowledge haps even more important, the report holders' interviews especially powerful. is an example of how anthropology as In particular, the words of the elders a discipline and a methodology can be from Tongass Island, a small island employed by and on behalf of First just across the BC/Alaska border, took Peoples. I will expand this point me back to memories of my child­ below, but first allow me a few words hood. I was born and raised in Prince on the actual contents of Haa Aani. Rupert, barely a half day's boat trip The republished report contains an south of Tongass Island, and I grew introduction by Thorton, a reflective up listening to stories about my essay by Goldschmidt (one of the family's history and how my great- original researchers), and the complete grandmother and her family left the transcripts of the original testimony village on Tongass Island in the late of the elders and community leaders 1800s during the US Army occupation interviewed in 1946.