Book Reviews
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BOOK REVIEWS Home Truths: Highlights from Encountered” relies heavily on BC History archaeological and ethnographic Richard Mackie and Graeme studies, as well as on the reports of the Sproat and McKenna-McBride Wynn, editors commissions, to describe the rapid transition from a densely settled canyon Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2012 460 $26 95 in the early nineteenth century to one . pp. paper. in which the Indigenous population J.I. Little was radically reduced in size as well as Simon Fraser University culturally dislocated. Daniel Clayton, also a historical geographer, shifts the focus northward to the lower Skeena, s co-editors of BC Studies, examining how the Coast Tsimshian Richard Mackie and Graeme “became ordered as objects of discourse” WynnA surveyed all the articles published in the three major settlements of Fort in the journal since it first appeared in Simpson (a fur trade post), Metlakatla 1968 before deciding to focus on what (a missionary settlement), and Port they concluded were two dominant Essington (a salmon-canning town). and complementary themes for this That discourse shifted from an interest volume of “highlights” – namely, the only in Aboriginal peoples’ collective search by newcomers for a home and economic motivations to an expressed the concomitant struggle by Aboriginal desire to change their daily lives as peoples to resist dispossession in individuals and, finally, to attempts to the face of the colonialist onslaught. subject them to government regulation. Reflecting the fact that BC Studies is an With Michael Thoms’s chapter on interdisciplinary journal, the majority fishing and colonialism at Pennask of the eleven chapters in Home Truths Lake, we have a worthy example of were not written by historians, but – in the exciting work being done by the keeping with the subtitle – the approach province’s environmental historians. in most cases is a historical one. The story Thoms relates is not only one To begin with the four chapters of the displacement of a traditional on Aboriginal history, Cole Harris’s Native food fishery by a group of wealthy skilfully written “The Fraser Canyon American sport fishers in 1929 but also bc studies, no. 80, Winter 03/4 165 166 bc studies of the hubris involved in attempting to century Irish and Scots who migrated engineer the lake to produce larger fish in kin groups to the eastern part of the for the fly rod. The displacement theme country as economic refugees – many shifts to Vancouver, with Jean Barman’s of those coming to British Columbia article on the “unsettling” of Kitsilano were seeking to escape the confines of and Stanley Park. She describes how the “Home.” The fictional characters whom Squamish families on the eighty-acre Bowering discusses may be looking (32 hectares) Kitsilano Reserve (known for a home, but it is generally one that as Snauq) were essentially cheated out of is utopian or Arcadian in nature and, their land by the provincial government therefore, not attainable. in 1913, and how the Kwakiutl totem The utopian theme is central to poles erected on Brockton Point in the Finnish settlement of Sointula 1923 marked the removal of the last of on Malcolm Island, though Mikko Stanley Park’s Aboriginal residents as Saikku’s article describes how that ideal well as replacing what Barman refers was eventually abandoned by those to as “indigenous Indigeneity” with a who sank roots there. As we learn from sanitized Indigeneity imported from Nelson Riis’s article on Walhachin, the elsewhere. It is rather ironic, then, environment proved to be even more that the Squamish recently decided challenging for the genteel English to generate revenue by erecting giant settlers who attempted to create an commercial billboards on the ten acres Arcadian orchard economy in the arid (4 hectares) they reacquired from the Thompson Valley prior to the First Canadian Pacific Railway under the World War. Victoria’s Chinatown was Burrard Bridge. certainly no Arcadia or Utopia, but the In choosing the theme for the other article by Dunae, Lutz, Lafreniere, part of this collection, the editors were and Gilliland applies GIS technology inspired by George Bowering’s literary to demonstrate that, in 1891, it was also essay, included in the volume, which far from being the insular ghetto of argues that the “unifying and informing popular imagination. In their words, symbol” for this province’s culture is it was instead “a transactional space “Home, or more specifically, the attempt for social and commercial interactions to find or make a home” (53). This would between Victoria’s Chinese and non- seem to be a given for any colonization Chinese residents” (212). Twenty-five zone, but Bowering himself points to percent of the city’s Chinese residents what I (as an “immigrant” from eastern lived outside Chinatown, presumably Canada) feel is more characteristic motivated by the same desire for home of the non-Indigenous population of ownership that made Vancouver what this mountainous continental fringe Deryck Holdsworth’s article describes – namely, a sense of rootlessness. as a low-density suburban landscape. Referring to the principal characters The frequency with which Vancouver in the novels he examines, Bowering addresses were changed, however, writes: “People in BC are less likely to suggests that owning a house did not feel trapped in their families than to necessarily bring an end to the sense of be several thousand miles from them dissatisfaction and rootlessness. or working with them on a patch of And the sense of rootlessness was land out of sight of the next family” particularly marked among the men (54). Implicit in this statement is the described in this volume’s final two sense that – unlike the early nineteenth- articles. Megan Davies studies the Book Reviews 167 problems faced by, and posed by, the strong sense of time and place but also “lonesome prospector,” as well as the stimulate readers to think about the many unmarried loggers and fishers, cultural identity of this province. once they reached old age. She suggests that the state provided relatively generous assistance to these old men Discovering Indigenous Lands: in recognition of their pioneering role The Doctrine of Discovery in the in the province’s extractive industries, but she also finds that it began to English Colonies play a more intrusive role in their Robert J. Miller, Jacinta Ruru, lives with the professionalization of 1930 Larissa Behrendt, and social work in the late s. Finally, Tracey Lindberg we have Peter Harrison’s first-hand sociological account of the summer Oxford: Oxford University Press, he spent in a logging camp on Haida 2012. 320 pp. $us40.00 paper. Gwaii in 1979. The key elements of the subculture he found there were an Daniel Clayton emphasis on toughness, or “manliness,” University of St. Andrews the insistence on a degree of freedom or independence at work; and the sense that work was central to the men’s self- his brilliant volume of identity. The older men, in particular, comparative law is written by expressed little interest in the search for fourT distinguished Indigenous legal “home,” at least if one defines it as life academic specialists, from the United with a wife and children in a permanent States (Eastern Shawnee Tribe), New or semi-permanent residence. In fact, Zealand (Maori – Ngati Rawkawa and there is not a single article in this Ngati Ranginui), Australia (Eualayai/ collection that focuses on the theme of Gammilaroi), and Canada (Cree – family or domestic space. Neheyiwak). It is concerned with the In short, while I can agree with historical and ongoing significance of the editors’ claim that “the struggle the Doctrine of Discovery in European, to belong, to overcome the sense of and principally English, colonialism, homelessness, has been particularly and each of the authors has two chapters acute” (42) in British Columbia, I on his or her respective country. would add that there is considerable Historians have written much about evidence in these articles that the how the legal armature of European newcomers also placed a high value on conquest and colonization in the New independence and material gain, and World and elsewhere shaped and that many continued to feel restless served processes of “othering,” with and dissatisfied long after arriving Indigenous peoples deemed to lack what here. In fact, one inescapable feature Europeans possessed – Christianity, of this province, surely, is the degree law, government, civilization, ideas to which owning a home outside the of private property, and a commercial First Nations reserves has represented (profit) ethic. In the Introduction, a speculative investment in real estate. Robert Miller shows that the Doctrine But the editors are to be congratulated of Discovery was (and remains) at for selecting essays that not only provide once a legal tenet and an ideological broad geographic coverage and create a (ethnocentric and racial) façade at the 168 bc studies heart of these processes. The volume particularly eye-opening. In the examines the evolution of the Doctrine Canadian context, Tracey Lindberg’s from the fifteenth century onwards two chapters are richly documented and how it provided Europeans with and politically salient reminders of commercial and property rights in the “the degree to which presumptions of lands of Indigenous peoples, even while infidel/Indigenous inhumanity were recognizing their continuing right to captured and perpetuated in Canadian occupy and use land. Miller sees the law,” running roughshod over both definition of the Doctrine in the1823 US Indigenous legal sensibilities and Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh contemporary Canadian multicultural as a legal milestone in this regard (3-6, rhetoric (124). 52-58). Yet title and ownership rights I was hoping for a fuller evaluation of construed on the basis of the Doctrine the relations between the legal cultures were not developed in identical ways in and commercial and geopolitical orders different parts of the English colonial of empire (the type of analysis pioneered world, and the authors argue that by historians such as Anthony Pagden differences between the Indigenous and Lauren Benton).