Previously ignored or misunderstood by historians, the war between the Hwulmuhw or “People of the Land” and the colonial government of British Columbia remains of utmost significance in today’s world of unsettled First Nations land claims. Chris Arnett reconstructs the fascinating account of the events of 1863 using newspaper editorials, letters, and articles; government and police correspondence; and navy logs.
Boas, Teit, Hill-Tout, Barbeau, Swanton, Jenness, the luminaries of field research in British Columbia, are discussed herein, and their work in Indian folklore evaluated. Other scholars, amateurs, and Native informants of the past and present are given consideration, making this book a comprehensive survey of myth collecting in B.C. a valuable reference tool for beginning or advanced students of anthropology.
Volume III of The Salish People deals with the Mainland Halkomelem, the people of the Fraser River from Vancouver to Chilliwack, and includes the earliest account of B.C. archaeological sites. The Salish People collects for the first time field reports (circa 1895) written by ethnographer Charles Hill-Tout.
Many of the stories in Okanagan storyteller Harry Robinson’s second collection feature the shoo-MISH, or “nature helpers” that assist humans and sometimes provide them with special powers. Some tell of individuals who use these powers to heal themselves; others tell of Indian doctors with the power to heal others. Still others tell of power encounters of various kinds.
Johnson’s savagely funny [book] is a grunt’s-eye view of fear and loathing, arrogance and insanity in a dysfunctional, dystopian closed community. It’s like M*A*S*H on ice, a bleak, black comedy.”— The Times of London
Living by Stories includes a number of classic stories set in the “mythological age” about the trickster/transformer, Coyote, and his efforts to rid the world of bad people – spatla or “monsters,” but this volume also presents historical narratives set in the more recent past, which involve the arrival of new quasi-monsters – “SHAmas” (Whites).
Henry W. Tate (d. 1914), a Tsimshian informant to ethnographer Franz Boas, first wrote these stories in English before giving Boas Tsimshian equivalents between 1903 and 1913. Boas published them in the much-consulted ethnology classic, Tsimshian Mythology (1916). In Ralph Maud’s selection of the best stories, now preserved closer to the way Tate originally intended, Tate emerges as creative writer.