BOOK REVIEWS

“Opposition on the Coast”: judges, the best available material from The Hudson’s Bay Company, these kinds of sources. American Coasters, I was not familiar with the work of the Champlain Society before I reviewed the Russian American Company, this book, and I was looking for more and Native Traders on the of a storyline than it aims to provide in Northwest Coast, 1825–1846 its publications. Its goal is to advance knowledge of Canadian history by James R. Gibson, editor publishing primary records of historical value, such of those presented in Gibson’s Toronto: The Champlain Society, “Opposition on the Coast.” I was looking 2019. 295 pp. $99.00 cloth. for a work of historical synthesis, a learned analysis of this transition period Howard Stewart Denman Island in the history of the northeast Pacific shore, a kind of maritime version of Richard White’s The Middle Ground: im Gibson has assembled a collection Indians, Empires, and Republics in the of primary sources: twenty-seven Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Instead, I documentsJ from the Hudson’s Bay found a fascinating collection of primary Company Archives (HBCA), the sources that required me to do most of British Columbia Archives (BCA), the analysis. Even Gibson’s eighty-page and microfilm of Russian-American introduction is mostly a guide to the Company (RAC) records from the US primary material that follows, which I National Archives. A significant part expect is what the Champlain Society of his contribution is the translation wanted from him. of RAC documents from the original What these sources reveal is hardly a Russian. As Gibson points out, the “middle ground” but, rather, a depressing material from all three sources presents chapter in the history of ever-expanding exclusively the views of the white male Euro-American exploitation of the rich managers who prepared the original resources of the continent. Like White’s reports, letters, journals, and memoirs. seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Though skewed in favour of their race, Great Lakes region, the Northwest Coast gender, and class, they are, Gibson in the early nineteenth century is also bc studies no. 206, Summer 2020 121 122 bc studies in transition. But the main players on to ply its trade the way it had in the heart our coast – the Hudson’s Bay Company of the continent during the eighteenth (HBC), RAC, and the American and century. But the HBC’s game plan is Indigenous traders – never reach any increasingly ill adapted to this new kind of enduring accommodation such maritime place and new century. So, as emerged, for a while, in the pays d’en by the time it has prevailed in the haut back east. Against a backdrop of Northwest Coast fur trade, the prize rapidly depleting fur supplies, the HBC is disappointing, with the sea otter in particular schemes and connives to gone and the beaver hat rapidly being achieve the kind of absolute control of replaced by silk. Before long, the HBC trade to which it had become accustomed. would find itself marginalized by new With these sources Gibson offers the actors who played the mid-nineteenth- reader/researcher many glimpses and century game of rapid colonial conquest insights into this time and place that set and industrial-scale exploitation of the scene for the emergence of modern raw materials like fish and wood, and British Columbia. Repeated references whose commerce on the coast the old to the brutality with which certain company had pioneered earlier in the HBC managers carried on their business century, even as it struggled to make remind one of Dan Clayton’s account the fur trade work (see Mackie 1997). of the way control was exercised within and beyond the HBC’s rudimentary References establishments and of the central role of violence therein. The importance of Clayton, Daniel. 2000. Islands of Truth: The the slave trade is also highlighted, as Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island. is the degree to which external traders Vancouver: UBC Press. Mackie, Richard. 1997. Trading beyond the stimulated and participated in this large Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the and lucrative commerce, where slaves Pacific. Vancouver: UBC Press. were acquired mostly around the Salish White, Richard. 1991. The Middle Ground: Sea region and then sold or traded Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great farther north. We are also reminded Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge: Cam- of the highly vulnerable nature of the bridge University Press. British, Russian, and American trading ventures on this coast at a time when a few hundred Canadians, Americans, Brits, Hawaiians, and Asians far from Nothing to Write Home About: home mingled with many thousands British Family Correspondence of Indigenous inhabitants who only tolerated them as long as they were and the Settler Everyday in useful. The seeds of coming change British Columbia are visible when outbreaks of smallpox, for example, diminish the ability of Laura Ishiguro Indigenous suppliers to meet the visitors’ Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019. requirements. The future can be seen at 308 pp. $34.95 paper. Fort Langley, too, so poorly located for the fur trade but so richly appointed in Kristine Alexander fish and timber and agricultural soil. The University of Lethbridge overall picture is one of an increasingly dominant player, the HBC, determined Book Reviews 123

he history of colonial British noticed what settler letters didn’t say, Columbia is, in many respects, Ishiguro decided to look closely at what well-troddenT ground. Over the past they did. She finds that, in their letters, few decades, scholars like Jean Barman, settler correspondents focused especially Cole Harris, and Adele Perry have made on two things: their trans-imperial family multiple transformative contributions ties and various unremarkable aspects of to our understanding of how settler their everyday lives – all of which worked colonialism and Indigenous survivance together to frame the settler presence in have shaped the past and present of British Columbia, and British imperial Canada’s westernmost province. As a power more broadly, as natural and historian of Canada and colonialism “normal.” whose work doesn’t focus on British Ishiguro’s innovative and careful Columbia, I continue to be impressed reading of family letters is enriched by by the volume and quality of research her discussion of the postal system as that exists about this place. I might networked infrastructure that was crucial also have wondered to myself, in a to the construction and maintenance less-than-generous moment, if the most of Britain’s global empire. The ease important arguments about this “edge and affordability of maintaining long- of empire” and its history had already distance relationships in writing, she been made. notes, was also what “made … migration I am happy to report that Laura and [family] separation thinkable, even Ishiguro’s Nothing to Write Home About: attractive, for many Britons” (54). After British Family Correspondence and the discussing the imperial postal system Settler Everyday in British Columbia has and demonstrating that separation across proven me wrong. Focusing on the years vast distances was “not an aberration” between the 1858 discovery of gold in the for British families in this period Fraser Valley and the start of the First (62), she then devotes two chapters to World War in 1914, Nothing to Write Home settler boredom and food. Focusing on About is a beautifully written and original these issues, Ishiguro tells us, allowed contribution to the historiography of correspondents to ignore other aspects settler colonialism, British imperialism, of life in late nineteenth- and early and family ties in British Columbia twentieth-century British Columbia, and beyond. Family letters, a rich and including Indigenous life and settler surprisingly underexamined body of violence and vulnerability. The book’s archival evidence, comprise the book’s third and final section turns to what subject and primary source base. It was Ishiguro calls “faultlines,” or instances of while reading several thousand letters “epistolary rupture, conflict, or secrecy” exchanged by members of fifty families (27). This part of the book includes a (mostly middle-class British settlers in chapter about death and an especially rich British Columbia and their kin in the case study focused on correspondence by United Kingdom), Ishiguro writes, that and about Michael Phillips, a British she came to a surprising realization: settler who chose not to tell his English the topics that dominate the extant relatives that he had married a Ktunaxa scholarship on this time and place – woman named Rowena and had twelve including violence, the creation of racial children with her. Epistolary silence and hierarchies, and Indigenous resistance gossip, Ishiguro writes, could be effective – were not what settler correspondents “strategies for maintaining relationships chose to write home about. Having in circumstances when colonial and 124 bc studies metropolitan lives, and families of the same surveyors over the next seven origin and marriage, seemed otherwise years, focusing on BC commissioner irreconcilable” (27). A.O. Wheeler’s struggles to survey Reflections on silences and the partial the height of land northwest of Howse nature of the colonial epistolary archive Pass and Alberta commissioner punctuate the book, as do welcome R.W. Cautley’s efforts to demarcate the reminders that letters are material boundary line along the 120th meridian, objects as well as textual evidence. I from the Continental Divide towards appreciated Ishiguro’s authorial voice its northern terminus at the 60th throughout as well as her positioning parallel – work that British Columbia of herself as a scholar who is “also a hoped would facilitate agricultural descendant and direct beneficiary of development in the Peace River Block. … [the book’s] subjects” (217). Nothing Building on the work outlined in the to Write Home About, in sum, is a first volume, these prodigious efforts sophisticated and rewarding study that produced five thousand additional will be of interest to readers of BC landscape photographs, the first and Canadian history, settler colonial detailed topographic maps of the central studies, British imperial history, family Rockies, and dozens of permanent history, and epistolary studies. boundary markers erected in the high mountain passes and at regular intervals along the 120th meridian. Readers familiar with Surveying the Surveying the 120th Meridian Great Divide will find more of the same and the Great Divide: from Sherwood’s sequel. Following three The Alberta-BC Boundary scene-setting chapters, which, frankly, reproduce much of the biographical Survey, 1918–1924 information and discussion of survey Jay Sherwood techniques found in the previous book, Sherwood provides seven chapters Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, detailing the myriad adventures and 2019. 160 pp. $29.95 paper. adversities these surveyors confronted each field season. As Wheeler and Jason Grek-Martin Saint Mary’s University Cautley usually worked separately in these later years, most chapters start with Wheeler and his team, offering n this, his ninth monograph on evocative accounts of the daily ordeals surveying in British Columbia, Jay associated with surveying the complex SherwoodI returns with the second terrain of the central Rockies. In contrast, of two volumes on the work of the these chapters often conclude with a Alberta-BC Boundary Survey in the more truncated summary of Cautley’s early twentieth century. The first fieldwork, reflecting the fact that, while installment, Surveying the Great Divide arduous, the work of blazing a boundary (Caitlin Press, 2017), documented line along the 120th meridian generated the substantial collaborative effort far fewer incidents of note. As with the to demarcate the southern portion previous volume, Sherwood supplements of the provincial boundary along the his narrative with a handsome series Continental Divide between 1913 and of black-and-white photos, some 1917. This subsequent volume follows documenting the surveyors at work (or Book Reviews 125 play!), others offering up the beguiling When Days Are Long: high-altitude landscape views captured Nurse in the North through Wheeler’s phototopographic work. In later chapters, several of these Amy Wilson historical images are again juxtaposed Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, with contemporary “repeat photographs” 2019. 168 pp. $24.95 paper. taken as part of the Mountain Legacy Project, documenting notable changes Geertje Boschma to these alpine landscapes over the past University of British Columbia century. In addition, for the first time, Sherwood includes reproductions of n this book, first published upon several of the map sheets published by the her retirement in 1965, Amy Wilson Inter-Provincial Boundary Commission presentsI a biographical history of – key outputs from the surveys that reveal her career as a public health nurse in the conceptual gap that lies between the northern British Columbia and Yukon often chaotic vicissitudes of fieldwork and during the 1950s and 1960s. Upon the polished and placid cartography that completion of her nursing education in resulted. Calgary around 1930, Wilson went to Alas, some familiar shortcomings work at remote Northern communities, from the previous volume resurface here. initially in northern Alberta. In 1949, she Like its predecessor, this work is long on started her public health work along the detail and short on context, particularly Alaska Highway in British Columbia with respect to the broader political and Yukon. Drawing from notes kept and economic motivations driving during her career, Wilson provides these surveys in the postwar period. a vivid account of her experiences as Sherwood does briefly touch on these a public health nurse. She wrote the wider issues in places, but the narrative book with a view to drawing public remains tightly fixed on the trials and attention to the lives and circumstances tribulations of fieldwork throughout. of the remote Indigenous communities Such a circumscribed focus calls out to which she regularly travelled to for a series of large-scale reference treat people’s illnesses and to prevent maps, tracing the peripatetic journeys contagious diseases, such as diphtheria made by the various survey parties and tuberculosis. She also conveys how each season. Unfortunately, while the she went out to help women in childbirth reproduced map sheets provide some and to provide vaccinations or treat welcome geographical context, they are injuries. Her stories are interspersed rendered too small to be fully utilized as with accounts of the everyday lives a reference for tracing these movements. of the Indigenous people with whom Still, Sherwood has certainly produced she interacted and the connection a worthy successor to Surveying the she built with the communities and Great Divide, once again delivering a local leaders. She also describes their comprehensive account of the demanding health care and occasionally comments fieldwork required to etch the “longest on the use of traditional medicine. interprovincial boundary in Canada” 13 Her story clearly communicates her ( ) into some of this country’s most commitment to respecting Indigenous intractable terrain. communities while also maintaining her responsibility to alleviate sickness 126 bc studies and to promote health in a remote area also sought to convey people’s resiliency of the country she increasingly learned and the supportive communities they to love. The book relates an essential were able to establish in the face of part of British Columbia’s health challenging social circumstances and history. living conditions. The book gives a In several chronological and thematic vivid description of one nurse’s response chapters, Wilson provides a nuanced and to remote emergencies – a nurse who vivid story of her work and experiences, was deeply concerned and committed starting with an account of a diphtheria to bringing people nursing care within epidemic during which she utilized a social circumstances over which she dog sled to bring medicine to the people. had only limited control. It is a timely In the next chapter, she reflects on her historical account that shines light on upbringing, her nursing career, and her public health nursing work in British commitment to the Northern people. Columbia in the context of epidemics In subsequent chapters, she talks about and the health and lives of Indigenous challenging travel conditions and her communities. It is both historically and interactions with Indigenous and white currently relevant. people at settlements and trading posts scattered along the Alaska Highway (as well as their health and ways of New Ground: A Memoir of Art living). She responded to remote health and Activism in BC’s Interior emergencies, organized vaccination programs and X-ray surveys, and Ann Kujundzic engaged with Indigenous families. Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, She worked in close collaboration with 2019 264 $24 95 local communities and organized her . pp. . paper. travel with help from the RCMP, bush Alifa Zafirah Bandali pilots, local traders, and, occasionally, University of British Columbia with officers of Indian affairs. She also Okanagan collaborated with nurses and physicians from outposts or from the community hospital in Whitehorse. The book ew Ground: A Memoir of Art and conveys how she was deeply committed N Activism in BC’s Interior (2019) is to understanding the daily lives of more than just a memoir about Ann Indigenous peoples and was well aware Kujundzic’s life – it is a beautifully of the often difficult circumstances in crafted encounter with Kujundzic and which small communities sought to all of the histories that make her up. survive and adapt to social, geographical, Beginning in her early years with what and material challenges. Some intriguing she refers to as “Scottish Roots,” we photographs illustrate the geographical meet Kujundzic and her family and context of Wilson’s public health work. get a sense of the early memories that In a new introduction, added to the informed her growing up in and around 2019 republication of the 1965 book, Amy Scotland. Here, she tells readers about Wilson’s great-niece Laurel Deedrick- herself in her writing, which covers Mayne provides further context to her landscapes from the Depression era to great-aunt’s intention to draw public (before and after) the Second World attention to Indigenous peoples and their War. One of the most compelling difficult circumstances. Her great-aunt aspects of the book is its ability to think Book Reviews 127 through and make sense of Kujundzic’s society work for the benefit of all, not life across time, space, politics, and just the privileged few” (262). deeply personal histories that are As politically engaged as Kujundzic expressed through poetics, images, and is, I wish she had shared more stories reflective writing. and experiences around how she came to Each section of the book captures activism and social change. As a reader, I periods of Kujundzic’s life. The text wondered about some of her experiences is organized to chronicle important surrounding race and indigeneity in moments of her lived experience. her early encounters in Canada and the It contributes to fields such as feminist United States. I wanted her to give readers theory and literature as it centres on the more of a sense of what Indigenous life histories of a woman who breaks solidarity means to her and what this through gendered boundaries on her looks like for her living in Canada. own terms. Kujundzic gives readers the Moreover, how did she understand race feeling of why stories matter, what we operating in the United States when she can do with them, and how experience spent time in Pennsylvania? That said, has a significant role to play in writing. I appreciated Kujundzic’s honest memoir Although Kujundzic’s text may not be a and her ability to let readers into her life typical scholarly work in the sense that it – one filled with family, love, politics, is not set to present “data on something,” and countless encounters with folks met her work contributes to feminist theory across the world during her many travels. and practice as she plunges herself into her writing. It illustrates how she transgressed and challenged gendered Planning on the Edge: roles and norms at different points in Vancouver and the Challenges of her life. This is why I am captivated by Reconciliation, Social Justice and Kujundzic’s writing. She is not someone Sustainable Development I had previously encountered. But after reading about her life, I feel I know Penny Gurstein and her more intimately. She connects with Tom Hutton, editors readers who find themselves resonating Vancouver: UBC Press, 2019. with her experiences. Kujundzic doesn’t 352 pp. $99.00 cloth. shy away from sharing difficult moments in her life. This is demonstrated in how Ian Rocksborough-Smith she thinks about her activism, especially University of the Fraser Valley in the chapter titled “Motherhood Should Be a Choice,” in which she shares her personal testimony in order to break the lanning on the Edge: Vancouver and silence around the question of abortion. P the Challenges of Reconciliation, Social In the Afterthoughts, she also notes: Justice, and Sustainable Development “My sense of social justice only gets (2019) is a compelling edited collection stronger as I witness more of the written from an interdisciplinary struggles our world faces. We need perspective. The book treats the state of to retool our individual and collective metropolitan Vancouver’s development behaviour to respect the earth, which as a unique, cosmopolitan Pacific Rim provides our most basic needs, and share cityscape poised between visions of our diminishing resources to make our sustainable, equitable urban regionalism 128 bc studies and unsustainable inequalities beholden peoples and new immigrants, this reality to unchecked building development and is clearly unsustainable and does little to real estate speculation. According to offset the ostensibly eco-friendly visions University of British Columbia regional of civic boosters and promoters who planning scholars Penny Gurstein and have made it to Vancouver and Metro Tom Hutton, the purpose of the volume Vancouver’s city halls in recent decades. is to “offer a constructively critical and The book is divided into eleven balanced perspective on Vancouver’s chapters from a variety of contributors. development record, with an emphasis These include Musqueam Nation leaders on aspects of growth and change since and researchers as well as social planners the 1980s” (11). and scholars mainly associated with In an incisive prologue written the University of British Columbia’s by the late and influential scholar of School of Community and Regional urban studies John Friedmann, the Planning. Topics covered in the volume social importance of the work in which include a section titled “Situating Planning on the Edge engages is well laid Vancouver in Space and Time,” which out. As Friedman suggests, a critical features both Indigenous and settler consideration of Vancouver’s development scholar perspectives on Vancouver’s future is crucial since the metropolitan distant and recent urban pasts. It also area is likely to reach a population that features an important middle section exceeds 4 million by the mid-twenty- titled “Sustainability and Resilience in first century, second only to Toronto as Metro Vancouver’s Urban Systems,” “Canada’s largest urban constellation” (3). which features some helpful studies of Moreover, Friedmann notes from 2011 transportation infrastructures, water census data that “half the families in management, and urban design and places such as Vancouver and Langley governance. A final section, titled have to manage their lives with an annual “A People-Centred Approach to Planning median income per person that falls and Development in Vancouver,” offers below $22,000 for the first and $19,000 excellent case studies for strategies for the second,” which for many is a life that might address inequities in the on the “edge of poverty” (6). Friedmann city’s infamously poor Downtown highlights “short-range ‘imperatives’ that Eastside neighbourhood as well as the have to be brought into balance within promotion of housing and immigrant the overall planning frame, such as fully support policies that might lessen the integrating – socially, economically, burden placed on people forced into culturally – the hundreds of thousands precarious livelihoods by the cost of of immigrants from abroad who will be living in metropolitan Vancouver. The arriving in the regional city in expectation book ends on a hopeful note with urban of a better life, or serving the still unmet and Indigenous studies scholar Leonie imperatives of social justice by reducing Sandercock’s epilogue. Sandercock existing inequalities that range from focuses on the ways non-Indigenous First Nations’ claims to opening up urban planners need to learn from new channels for social mobility via Indigenous leaders and thinkers about educational and other reforms specifically how best to decolonize and offer not only aimed at the younger generations” (8). In Vancouver, but also Canada, a hopeful a city (and indeed metropolitan area) of and sustainable future – a future not increasingly unaffordable housing stocks based on continuous development and that disproportionately affect Indigenous profit for the few. Book Reviews 129

The Co-op Revolution: with CRS across many of its projects, Vancouver’s Search for Food including the Tunnel Canary Cannery, Alternatives Queenright Cooperative Bee Keepers, Uprising Bakery, East End Food Co-op, Jan DeGrass and Fed-Up, a food wholesaler that would later become Horizon Distributors. The Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2019 240 $24 95 text includes a play-by-play narrative of . pp. . paper. the ins and outs of the life of a co-op Diandra Oliver worker and organizational founding Simon Fraser University member, while also offering a sobering reminder of the sheer level of financial, emotional, and physical labour required hen growers, producers, and of those at the front of the co-op practitioners self-organize movement. Even capturing the foibles aroundW shared interests in the local and follies of the co-op (e.g., a truckload foods economy, their social and of honey spilling down a hill on Great economic actions – whether through Northern Way), DeGrass offers readers a farmer’s market, buying co-op, or a close look at the organizational anarchy the production of local food – can that sometimes accompanies do-it- feel tenuous on the ground. Even yourself business and community actions, though the intention is to localize making careful mention of the financial the food source and democratize operations of the co-op and its reliance business processes, the impact of the on members’ ongoing contributions. In work is intangible: it is measured in doing so, however, DeGrass’s attempt to relationships and the general feeling fill the gap and write holistically about of “getting by.” Regardless, over the the food co-op movement in British past fifty years, these actions have had Columbia skirts around important enough of an economic impact to strike discussions about neoliberalism and fear into the heart of the commercial corporate pressure in the food landscape. grocery industry, resulting in a mix of While she admits that “the ‘new wave’ co-option (Save-On-Foods 2018) and of co-ops did not bear out their initial smear (Desrochers 2019). Jan DeGrass’s promise of transforming society” (159), 2019 memoir, The Co-op Revolution: DeGrass delicately champions the work Vancouver’s Search for Food Alternatives, of CRS for propelling organic whole shares how a community of like-minded foods into the mainstream (158). folks initiated many of these activisms Although time serves as the main in British Columbia, developing the thematic organizer of the text, the food co-op movement and shaping the movements to which DeGrasse was a way many people in the province grow, major contributor are chronicled in a sell, and eat food. vacuum. While she accounts for the The main narrative of DeGrass’s ecosystem of co-ops in British Columbia, memoir follows her own timeline as she of which she was a part, this orientation describes her experiences working in the centres what she describes as white bread: different parts of Collective Resource and “mostly all-white and mostly middle- Services (CRS) Worker’s Co-op between class” men and women (124). Her erasure 1975 and 1984. Already interested in co-op of movements led by Indigenous people organizing and working, she moved west and people of colour who co-existed in from Ontario in the mid-1970s to work the same geography at the same time – 130 bc studies for example, the Native Alliance for Red as her own involvement with the co-op Power (NARP), the American Indian wanes. Unfortunately, we miss out on Movement (AIM), and the Canadian so much about DeGrass’s own life and Farm Workers Union – reflects the perspective as the text fizzles and the food movement’s inability to wrestle challenging parts of her experience go deeply with what might be at stake for unexplored. those communities of which it is not a part (Maracle 1990; Simon Fraser References University n.d.). Because of this omission, readers might forget that DeGrass is Alkon, A. 2012. Black, White, and Green: speaking alongside robust bodies of work Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green concerned with decolonization, food Economy. Athens: University of Georgia Press. justice, and locally grown economies 2011 Cultivating (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010; Alkon and Alkon, A. and J. Agyeman. . 2011 2016 Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. Agyeman ; Kepkiewicz et al. ). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. While there are times in the text where Desrochers, Pierre. 2019. The Myths of Local DeGrass relies on hindsight to bring Food Policy: Lessons from the Economic and up these complexities, in each of these Social History of the Food System. Van- instances – like the time she recalls couver: Fraser Institute. 2010 Food Justice performing a micro-aggression towards Gottlieb, R., and A. Joshi. . . an Indigenous customer at Uprising Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kepkiewicz, L., M. Chrobok, M. Whetung, Bakery and was called out by a staff M. Cahuas, J. Gill, S. Walker, and S. member who is identified as a person Wakefield.2016 . “Beyond Inclusion: Toward of colour – she spends no more than an Anti-colonial Food Justice Praxis.” a paragraph or two wrestling with her Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 5, no. 4: 99–104. complicated feelings and experiences 1990 Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel (123–24). Maracle, Lee. . . Toronto: Women’s Press. The meaningful lessons DeGrass Save-on-Foods. 2018. Meet Our Local Canadian attempts to pass on through the text about Growers. https://www.saveonfoods.com/ collaboration, resilience, and ingenuity local-growers/. are thus disjointed and soaked in a racial Simon Fraser University. n.d. “Canadian Farmworkers Union Chronology 1978 and class privilege that, while typical of 1997 many economic and social activists of the to .” https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/ branches-depts/special-collections/ca- time, does not necessarily benefit either nadian-farmworkers-union-chronology. the history of the BC co-op movement or the possible strengths available to DeGrass in her own memoir. This region’s shared struggles against the industrialization of the food system go nowhere if those with privilege, like those in DeGrass’s own co-op community, refuse to explore the deepest parts of their privilege and how these get in the way of food justice. Because the text is a memoir, one could forgive DeGrass for this, but by the time she admits that members of the co-op were feeling burned out in the early 1980s, the book itself burns out Book Reviews 131

A Reconciliation without are directly involved in such events or Recollection? An Investigation who have examined the issues in greater of the Foundations of Aboriginal depth. There have been a number of books Law in Canada and articles by Indigenous authors Joshua Ben David Nichols dealing with politics, law, and Indigenous peoples in Canada. These include Toronto: University of Toronto books by Harold Cardinal and William Press, 2020. 408 pp. $49.95 paper. Wuttunee in response to Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 White Paper, which proposed the termination of Indian status. Some Unsettling Canada: writers, such as Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, A National Wake-Up Call Glen Coulthard, Kiera Ladner, Tracey Lindberg, and Dale Turner, deal with Arthur Manuel and Grand philosophy and political theory. There Chief Ronald M. Derrickson are also books by legal theorists such Toronto: Between the Lines, 2015. as John Borrows, Gordon Christie, and 288 pp. $29.95 paper. Sákéj Henderson. Probably the best known book is The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North The Reconciliation Manifesto: America by Thomas King 2012( ). Recovering the Land, One book that successfully combines personal experience with the history of Rebuilding the Economy Indigenous peoples in British Columbia Arthur Manuel and Grand under colonization is Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival (2016) by Bev Chief Ronald M. Derrickson Sellers. Another is Unsettling Canada: 2015 Toronto: Lorimer, 2017. A National Wake-Up Call ( ) by the 312 pp. $22.95 paper. late activist Arthur Manuel, who died in 2017. It has a foreword by Naomi Klein Jim Reynolds and an afterword by Grand Chief Ronald Vancouver Derrickson, and it covers the period between the 1969 White Paper and the 2014 esource developments in British Tsilhqot'in decision, the first ruling RColumbia, especially the Trans to hold that Aboriginal title exists over Mountain and northern BC LNG particular lands. Unsettling Canada also pipelines, have led to nationwide discusses Indigenous politics and, in opposition from some Indigenous particular, the differing perspectives of groups as well as support from others. some Indigenous leaders: those who are There have been many attempts by willing to surrender Aboriginal rights to journalists and others to explain the get quick deals and those who are not. background to these events. These The book is especially helpful in setting attempts seem well intended, although out clearly and incisively the perspective somewhat superficial given the of those who see the BC treaty process as limitations of space and deadlines. a form of extinguishment and doubt the Many readers will have wished for sincerity of non-Indigenous governments. more detailed information and analysis, Just prior to his death, Arthur Manuel especially from Indigenous authors who completed another book. Anyone wishing 132 bc studies to understand recent events in British cannot, finally, admit that the Crown Columbia and Canada should read The has no legal basis to our lands because Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the the court is itself part of the Crown … Land, Rebuilding the Economy. It provides and would therefore undercut its own the required context for events going back legal basis to exist” (110). Meaningless, to early European settlement up to the no-strings-attached “reconciliation” Trans Mountain Pipeline. Like Cardinal is cynically used to cover “any and all fifty years ago, Manuel is clear and direct manipulation or diminution of our rights and does not mince words. The Liberal and title” (200). The final chapter offers government of Justin Trudeau (including a six-step program of decolonization then minister of justice Jody Wilson- based on recognizing the right of self- Raybould) is denounced for its sleight determination and meeting “our rights of hand in claiming to adopt the United as title holders and decision makers on Nations Declaration on the Rights of the land and our economic and cultural Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) but then needs” (278). recasting it so that it “would apparently The books by Arthur Manuel are change nothing in Canada because it was excellent general introductions to designed to conform to existing Canadian Aboriginal law. Joshua Nichols, who is laws and policies” (55). UNDRIP has yet an assistant professor in the Faculty of to be recognized under federal law (it has Law at the University of Alberta and is been affirmed in British Columbia), and of mixed-roots Anishinaabe ancestry, this discussion will be of direct relevance offers a much more detailed discussion when the government finally introduces of many specific issues. In contrast to this long-promised legislation. Manuel’s volumes, A Reconciliation Manuel writes that politicians like without Recollection: An Investigation Justin Trudeau ignore fundamental of the Foundations of Aboriginal Law rights to self-determination and land and in Canada demands a lot of the reader merely “offer mea culpas for Canada’s past and is for the specialist rather than the behaviour and call for reconciliation, as generalist. It is a work of outstanding if all we needed was a bit of counselling, scholarship, drawing upon the author’s ‘an honest conversation’” (57). Canada as background in philosophy (in which a society is still in denial about historical he received a PhD) as well as law (in and current colonialism (62). It “was and which he received another). Although remains a thoroughly colonial country, the topics covered as well as some of the built on the dominance of one race over conclusions reached will likely be familiar another for the purpose of seizing and to those with a detailed knowledge of occupying their land” (65). Colonialism Aboriginal law, the range of references means that Indigenous people “either live in both law and philosophy is staggering in poverty or assimilate and disappear and the depth of analysis is profound. completely into the settler society” (80). This book is by no means an easy read, The legal underpinnings of Crown but it is very rewarding for those willing title are problematic and Canada is to invest the time and attention to founded on legal quicksand (89–92). retrace what may seem to be familiar Leading cases in Aboriginal law are routes in order to see them from an welcomed as moving the yardstick unfamiliar viewpoint. I found especially towards recognizing Aboriginal rights penetrating the suggestion that “indirect and title, but a political deal is needed rule” rather than “reconciliation” better to finally decolonize because “the court fits the framework that the Supreme Book Reviews 133

Court of Canada is using to mediate Talking Back to the Indian Act: the relationship between the Crown and Critical Readings in Settler 290 Aboriginal peoples ( ). The Supreme Colonial Histories Court is engaging in the novel application of a system of colonial administration Mary-Ellen Kelm and associated with the British Empire in Keith D. Smith parts of Asia and Africa. This and many Toronto: University of Toronto other insights (often contained in page- 2018 248 $31 95 length footnotes) certainly deserve the Press, . pp. . paper. often overused expression “thought- David Milward provoking.” University of Victoria A key argument reflected in the title of Nichols’s work is that the courts istory repeatedly assert and never question as an academic discipline that the Canadian state (the “Crown”) recognizes that how we understand has sovereignty, legislative power, and theH past is no more than that. It is how underlying title to land. “There is no we understand the past, not necessarily historical moment that can be referred what actually transpired in distant to that could possibly explain how times of which we were not a part. the Crown acquired these powers; The historian’s trade, and how he or therefore, there can be no recollection, she gets published, is very often one of no memory, and no context for them” challenging established understandings (288). This is a judicial process whereby of past events. This also means that the the Crown’s unquestioned power over primary sources of historical study – “Indians” and their lands allows it to archives of past correspondences and unilaterally reconcile the duties flowing descriptions of events – are constantly from recognition of existing Aboriginal subjected to a critical eye. And that and treaty rights in section 35 of the critical eye needs training to become Constitution Act, 1982. “If this is what effective. The potential to misapprehend we are calling reconciliation, then it is a the past without that trained critical eye game whose outcome is fixed in advance,” can have important ramifications. and Aboriginal people live under a vast A well-known example is the administrative despotism (289). Shared Indigenous land title case R. v. sovereignty, or “treaty federalism,” should Delgamuukw, which saw the trial replace it. judge, Justice McEachern, dismiss a Eighty years ago, Leonard Barnes constitutional Indigenous land rights suggested that the then fashionable claim out of hand, along with every language describing imperial rule as a piece of evidence in support of that 1 trust for Indigenous peoples was “a vague claim. Two of the many criticisms that and decorative notion to which anyone have been made of Justice McEachern’s can attach any meaning he pleases” (“The handling of the evidence are that he had Empire as Sacred Trust: The Problem of a tendency to snip isolated quotes from Africa,” Political Quarterly 9, no. 14 [1938]: source materials and then take those 503). Manuel and Nichols suggest that quotes at face value. Seen through the “reconciliation” is the modern Canadian lens of academic history, both are cardinal equivalent. sins. From the historians’ perspective,

1 R. v. Delgamuukw, [1997] 3 SCR 1010. 134 bc studies a quote is an integral part of a broader Talking Back to the Indian Act whole: it cannot be properly understood provides numerous excerpts of past without situating it, and understanding correspondences, historical archives, its place, within a much broader whole. public speeches, and legislative debates The historian also weighs the words of the that in some way relate to the Indian documents against the broader contexts Act. The excerpts include not just settler that would have shaped the production Canadian actors but also Indigenous of those documents. Who drafted them? peoples who were trying to take a position What was important to the authors? against the “legalities” of colonialism. The What motivated the authors to draft the book itself is an invitation to the reader documents? What social forces or cultural to develop the capacity to ask the broader expectations were in the background questions that a historian does. Although that may have shaped the wording of the I appreciate the authors’ intentions, I do documents? To take an isolated part of wonder if it is possible for laypersons to a document and take its wording at face engage in that exercise without having value is, from the historian’s perspective, first acquired the specialized knowledge likely to lead to an errant conclusion as it and training of the historian. does not even begin to engage with the broader questions that the historian is 2 constantly asking. Indigenous Repatriation Talking Back to the Indian Act: Critical Readings in Settler Colonial Histories is Handbook written by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Keith Smith, history professors at Simon Jisgang Nika Collison, Fraser University and Vancouver Island Sdaahl K’awaas Lucy Bell, University, respectively. The book itself and Lou-ann Neel is an attempt to bridge the cognitive Victoria: Royal British Columbia chasms in knowledge and understanding Museum, 2019. 174 pp. $29.95 paper. between historians and laypersons. The focus of their efforts is theIndian Act, Anna De Aguayo the primary piece of legislation that Dawson College regulates relations between the Canadian state and Indigenous peoples. Kelm and he First Peoples of the Pacific coast Smith invite us to view the Indian Act are at the forefront of Indigenous as something far more than a piece of museologyT and repatriation scholarship. legislation that Parliament occasionally While some communities might be just tweaks during legislative sessions. The starting to tangle with the complex invitation is to gain an appreciation for politics and strategies of reclaiming the act as a living historical force that cultural heritage from international evolves over time. The act is a living museums and galleries, many in British phenomenon that is the site of decades- Columbia have been running their own long struggles between the Canadian museums, curating collections, and state’s efforts to exert colonialism over bringing Ancestors home for well over Indigenous peoples and the latter’s fifty years. resistance to those efforts. The three authors who prepared the 2 Robin Fisher, “Judging History: Re- Handbook are very well known in the field. flections on the Reasons for Judgment in Jisgang Nika Collison heads the Haida Delgamuukw v. BC,” BC Studies 95 (1992): 43–54. Gwaii Museum, which houses many Book Reviews 135 repatriated objects and photographs study concerns the Haida Repatriation, returned from around the world. the advice is both generally applicable Sdaahl K’awaas Lucy Bell, also from and useful. It is well matched with the Haida Gwaii, is the head of Indigenous documentary film Stolen Spirits of Haida Collections and Repatriations at the Gwaii. Royal BC Museum and helped bring The links, addresses, and contact five hundred Ancestors home from the names provided will change in future, United States, the United Kingdom, and the authors are clear that this work and Canada. Lou-ann Neel, an artist will be updated in future editions. It and arts administrator for over thirty would be great to see future editions take years, keeper of the Kwakwak’wakw on the issues of rights to publication and names of K’idithle’logw, Ika’wega, and royalties concerning photography, sound, Gaa’axstalas, has also guided objects on and video usage. The image of Jaalen their journeys home. and Gwaai Edenshaw doing research for The handbook was created as a the first Haida-language filmSgaawaay response to a 2017 symposium, K'uuna (Edge of the Knife) (65) reflects “Repatriation: Moving Together the importance of the educational and Forward,” held in Victoria. With over cultural lives that objects and stories two hundred delegates, it brought continue to provide. It was great to read together international scholars, activists, the stories of young people encountering and heritage leaders from all continents. their Ancestors for the first time and With the rise of online sources such as of Elders working to add depth to the collection catalogues, what used to take written histories found in collections. years to track a lost piece can now take The optimism and genuine enthusiasm minutes. It is for this target audience – in the text is important and deliberate as Indigenous community members who very difficult moments emerge during a wish to bring their heritage and Ancestors repatriation process. home, that the handbook was written. To further expand the dialogue, it At seventy-three pages, the Indigenous would be interesting to combine a reading Repatriation Handbook is short and of this book with a reading of Maureen succinct, but its appendices – running Matthews’s ethnography of the complex to eighty-nine pages – are truly mighty. repatriation of a Northern Manitoba From checklists on calling your first Water Drum (Naamiwan’s Drum: The community meeting (Don’t forget the Story of a Contested Repatriation of refreshments!) to templates of letters to Anishnaabe Artefacts and the 2003 NFB a holding museum to handling border film,Totem: The Return of G’psgolox Pole, crossing with human remains and Oral about the repatriation of a Haisla pole History Release Forms for Elders, it is from a Swedish museum. here that the impact will be strongest. REferences The handbook is divided into seven short sections, such as “Organizing a Kevin McMahon. 2005. Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii. Toronto: Primitive Entertainment. Successful Repatriation,” “Conducting Maureen Matthews. 2016. Naamiwan’s Drum: Research,” and “For Institutions Wishing The Story of a Contested Repatriation of to Repatriate Indigenous Peoples of BC.” Anishinaabe Artefacts. Toronto: University Interspersed with photos, quotes, and of Toronto Press. art, it is clearly written and well laid out. Gil Cardinal. 2003. Totem: The Return of While the emphasis is on the Royal BC G’psgolox Pole. Montreal: National Film Museum’s experiences, and the central case Board of Canada. 136 bc studies

Waterlogged: area for scrutiny. Where a theoretical Examples and Procedures for tack is taken in the book it is most Northwest Coast Archaeologists welcome, and it is invariably innovative. There are salient connections between Kathryn Bernick, editor Indigenous knowledge and archaeological interpretations. Nonetheless, there are Pullman: Washington State instances where authors could have University Press, 2019. 256 $32 95 explored the meaning of results or pp. . paper. patterns more fully, as have researchers working at wet sites on the Northwest Paul A. Ewonus 2010 Vancouver Island University Coast and elsewhere (e.g., Losey ). Chapters are grouped into three parts. Part 1, “Discovery and Recovery,” aterlogged will find its way to is a valuable component of the volume, W the bookshelves of almost every becoming of increasing relevance to field practising archaeologist in British and laboratory archaeologists as the two Columbia. It succeeds in bringing chapters that comprise it progress. The together experience and innovation opening chapter, by Morley Eldridge, in a single source. A mix of advice for reads as much as a memoir as it does as field archaeologists, empirical research a guide to finding wet sites, its stated results, and, critically, theoretical goal. Eldridge’s approach emphasizes interpretation of wetland and wet sites his personal story, incorporating a sets this book apart from the usual number of anecdotes. His chapter is edited volume. Several of the chapters repetitive and it reiterates the history of provide preliminary reports of projects. Northwest Coast wet site investigation This, however, does not result in any that Bernick presents in the book’s great reduction in the value of the introduction. Instead of organizing book. There is enough theory included the chapter (which becomes somewhat in its chapters to afford the collective disjointed by the end) around his work, with a balanced introduction by own discoveries during his career in Kathryn Bernick, a likely place among consulting archaeology, he would have the more influential publications on been better off presenting his information Northwest Coast archaeology. as a thematic guide, according to, for Its contribution to wet site archaeology example, microenvironment or site is not limited to this region of the globe. type. Additional illustrations of the key The procedures and some of the examples materials that are initial clues to the will be of interest much more widely presence of wet sites would have been within the discipline, and there are also more helpful than those of an excavation’s sections of the book that will appeal to more striking perishable finds. Not only sociocultural anthropologists, historians, is Bernick’s chapter on the recovery and geographers. Vancouver-based and care of wet vegetal artefacts prior Bernick is perhaps British Columbia’s to professional conservation clearly foremost expert in archaeological presented, but it is also a good blend of basketry technology, with decades of describing procedures and using examples experience studying Northwest Coast to explain the importance of the proper waterlogged cultural material. recovery and temporary wet storage of One of Waterlogged’s strengths, its waterlogged material assemblages. The mix of theory and practice, is also an guidance included in this chapter, and in Book Reviews 137 this section overall, is of particular use It would improve the volume if the first for early-to-mid-career archaeologists chapter of Part 1, the guide to finding (including students) working in areas wet sites, were divided into two separate with the potential for wet sites. chapters: (1) a straightforward guide In some ways, the significance of to locating wet sites and (2) a detailed the book turns on the initial chapter in examination of one or more of Eldridge’s Part 2, “Fresh Perspectives.” Genevieve example projects. The new case study Hill offers a well-written presentation chapter would fit well in Part 2 or Part 3, of archaeological site distribution data strengthening either of these sections. in Cowichan territory on Vancouver Waterlogged as a whole, however, meets Island; ethnohistorical information its aims and offers us something unique relating to local wetlands in the form in its integration of practical explication of oral histories, place names, and and current research while providing an traditional ecological knowledge; up-to-date view of wet site archaeology and a clear, subtly critical, theoretical in the northeast Pacific. argument. Hill’s chapter lends the book a strong interpretive and regional-scale REFERENCE approach that is picked up in several of the following chapters, such as Stan Losey, Robert. 2010. “Animism as a Means Copp et al.’s on the lower Fraser Valley of Exploring Archaeological Fishing Carruthers site investigations and Structures on Willapa Bay, Washington, USA.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal Jenny Cohen’s on the early Holocene 20, 1 17 32 Kilgii Gwaay wet site on Haida Gwaii. no. : – . An additional and unconventional strength of Cohen’s chapter is her useful description of the process of learning wood and plant macrofossil (primarily seeds) analyses, which provides insight into the discipline of paleoethnobotany for the non-specialist reader. In Part 3, “Unexpected Finds,” we are offered the results of several modest research projects, some of which are preliminary. The work led by Duncan McLaren, described in two chapters, stands out as particularly well organized and presented. The early-to-mid- Holocene waterlogged artefacts from two central BC coastal sites are important finds. The chapters by Farid Rahemtulla, and Deidre Cullon and Heather Pratt, provide initial results of the investigation of atypical wet sites: one located in an understudied region of interior British Columbia, the other a fish weir site located in a lesser-known environmental setting.