From a colonized consciousness to autonomous identity: Shifting relations between the Kwakwaka'wakw and Canadian nations

Dialectical Anthropology

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 137-158

  Saunders, Barbara ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN   (Belgium)

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EID: 0142233376     PISSN: 03044092     EISSN: 15730786     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006812732754     Document Type: Article

References (105)

1. While the term nation comes from the Latin, deriving from the past participle of the verb nasci, meaning to be born, the noun nationem connoted breed or race. When introduced into the English language in the thirteenth century, its primary connotation was of a blood related group. However, by the early seventeenth century, nation was also used to describe the inhabitants of a country regardless of that population's composition, thereby becoming a substitute for categories such as the people or the citizenry. See, W. Connor, "A Nation is a Nation, is a State, is an Ethnic Group, is a . . . ." in J. Hutchinson and A. D. Smith eds., Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). The grip of the nationalism discourse can be seen in the name chosen to designate the people once called "the Kwakiutl': Kwaka'wakw. In the circular logic that characterizes this discourse, Kwakwaka'wakw means "speakers of the Wakashan language."
2. See M. M. Steedly, "The Importance of Proper Names: Language and 'National' Identity in Colonial Karoland," American Ethnologist, Vol. 3, No.3 (1996), pp. 447-475.
3. See G. W. Stocking Jr. ed., A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911 (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1974).
4. I owe much to E. Benner (E. Benner, Realty Existing Nationalisms: A Post-Communist View from Marx and Engels [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995])
5. Stocking (G. W. Stocking Jr. Ed., Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition in History of Anthropology 9 [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996]) for these passages.
6. J. G. Herder, "Reflections of the Philosophy of the History of Mankind," in O. Dahbour and M. R. Ishay eds., The Nationalism Reader (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995).
7. Stocking, A Franz Boas Reader, p. 70.
8. Geist is Hegel's term for a reflective form of life, an instancing of a set of practices and shared standards with its own specific history and a set of institutions whose function is to reflect on the authoritative conceptions that distinguish that form of life. See T. Pinkard, "Hegel on History, Self-Determination, and the Absolute," in A. M. Melzer et al. Eds., History and the Idea of Progress (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995).
9. While Boas paid lip-service to these notions in prounding particularism as the basis for what anthropologists did in the field, he held a different view for whas anthropologists should do at home. As B. Kirshenblatt Gimblett ("Spaces of Dispersal," in Cultural Anthropology Vol. 9, No. 3 [1994], pp. 339-344) argues, Boas believed that in a perfect world, difference would disappear.
10. Stocking, A Franz Boas Reader, p. 11.
11. Franz Boas, "The Decorative Art of the Indians of the North Pacific Coast," in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 9 (New York: AMS, 1897a);
12. The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island, Publications of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition Vol. 5, Part 2, pp. 301-522;
13. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 8, part 2 (Leiden: Brill; New York: Stechert., 1909);
14. Kwakiutl Tales, Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1910),
15. th Annual Report, Parts 1 and 2 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1921);
16. Religion of the Kwakiutl, Columbia Univeisity Contributions to Ahtnropology Vol. 10, No. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930);
17. Kwakiutl Tales N.S. Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 26 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935);
18. H. Codere ed., Kwakiutl Ethnography (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1966).
19. Franz Boas, "Sixth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada 1890," Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London: Murray, 1891), pp. 553-715;
20. "Vocabulary of the Kwakiutl Language," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 30 (Philadelphia: Mac Calla, 1892), pp. 34-82;
21. "Sketch of the Kwakiutl Language," American Anthropologist 2 (1900), pp. 708-721,
22. also in Stocking, A Franz Boas Reader,
23. "Kwakiutl," in Handbook of American Indian Languages, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 40 (1), pp. 425-557 (Oosterhout, Netherlands: Anthropological Publications, 1969 [1911]);
24. "A Revised List of Kwakiutl Suffixes," (with P. E. Goddard) International Journal of American Linguistics 3 (1924), pp. 117-131;
25. "Notes on the Kwakiutl Vocabulary, International Journal of American Linguistics, 6 (1931), pp. 163-178;
26. H. Boas Yampolsky and Z Harris eds., "Kwakiutl Grammar with a Glossary of the Suffixes" Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S. 37 (3) (1947), pp. 203-377.
27. Franz Boas, "Indian Skulls from British Columbia," Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 8 (1888), pp. 115-116;
28. "Deformation of heads in British Columbia," Science, 13 (1889), pp. 364-365;
29. "Schadelvormen von Vancouver Island," Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellshaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 22 (1890), pp. 29-31;
30. "The Decorative Arts of the Indians of the North Pacific Coast"; "Census and Reservations of the Kwakiutl Nation," Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1897b), pp. 225-232,
31. "Kwakiutl Texts," (with George Hunt), Publications of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. 3 (1905);
32. The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island; Primitive Art (New York; Dover Publications, 1955).
33. I have adapted this way of putting it from Steedly ("The Importance of Proper Names,"). The aim of a Kwakwaka'wakw noble was to acquire names (roles) as a means of preserving the spiritual power of the ancestor spirits and this acquisition required expertise in juggling, moral action with social position. The aim of a noble was to win names through inheritance, marriage and warfare, and, then, over the course of his life, to divest himself of these to his heirs, preserving all names for a new generation, and to die a commoner. See J. Masco, "'It is a Strict Law That Bids Us Dance,". Cosmologies, Colonialism, Death, and Ritual Authority in the Kwakwaka'wakw Potlatch, 1849-1922," Society for Comparative Study of Society and History (1995), pp. 41-75.
34. T. Pinkard, "Hegel on History, Self-Determination and the Absolute," pp. 36-37.
35. Boas suggests: "It seems fair to assume that the direct descendants of the ancestors form the nobility, others accepted as members [of the village] from the common people . . ." See Kwakiutl Ethnography.
36. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991).
37. T. Vaughan and B. Holm, Soft Gold: The Fur Trade and Cultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America (Portland: Oregon State Historical Society, 1982).
38. R. Fisher, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia 1774-1890 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1977).
39. R. Fisher, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia 1774-1890 1977). Ibid.
40. Chatterjee claims that the modern regime (liberal democracy), made more productive, effective and humane through the self-disciplining of normalized individuals, throws up three variants of itself. First, the principle applies to all societies regardless of history or cultural specificities; second, it is tied to the specificities of Western societies and cannot be exported; third, historical and cultural difference can eventually be overcome by processes of education. However, all three are produced within the same discursive field and remain available today, easily sliding into one another and employing "the rule of colonial difference." Therefore, the "rule of colonial difference" is part of a common strategy for the deployment of modern forms of disciplinary power. The history of the colonial state is not therefore accidental, but of significance to the past, present and future of any modern state. See P. Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial a Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 17-18.
41. See Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial a Postcolonial Histories ibid., p. 19.
42. This was effected by 1876.
43. See A. Giddens, "The Nation as Power-Container," in J. Hutchinson and A. D. Smith eds., Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
44. R. Galois, Kwakwaka'wakw Settlements, 1775-1920; A Geographical Analysis and Gazetteer (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1977).
45. B. M. Gough, Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and the Northwest Coast Indians, 1846-90 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984),
46. quoted in Masco, "It is a Strict Law That Bids Us Dance," p. 50.
47. Galois, Gunboat Frontier.
48. However, Boas' first scientifically reasoned attempt to construct the standardized "language" would only appear in 1911. Prior to that (as G. W. Stocking Jr. says in "The Boas Plan for the Study of American Indian Languages," in D. Hymes ed., Studies in the History of Linguistics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974a),
49. nd ed. with charts, 1880), working largely in terms of regional surveys, vocabulary lists, grammatical "notes" and problems of classification of "language stocks." In compiling his 1882 word lists, Boas drew on his own vocabularies collected in 1886, 1888, 1889 and 1890 (published 1892). Although he says the literature on the Kwakiutl language (Wakashan) was very scanty, he drew on Tolmie and Dawson, Dawson and Hall.
50. (See W. F. Tolmie and G. M. Dawson, Comparative Vocabularies of the Indian Tribes of British Columbia with a Map Illustrating Distribution [Montreal: Dawson Brotheys, 1884],
51. G. M. Dawson, "Notes and Observations on the Qwakiool People of the Northern Part of Vancouver Island and the Adjacent Coasts, Made During the Summer of 1885," Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings and Transactions, Vol. 3, No 2 [1887]. Reprint, Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1973;
52. A. J. Hall, "A Grammar of the Kwagiutl Language," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 2 (1888), pp. 59-71). While his Handbook of American Langauges (1911) represented a departure from the tendency to classify in lexical, rather than morphological terms, nonetheless Boas retained the geographical and territorial implications of that method.
53. in Kwakiutl Ethnography (1966, 41-3), however, there is the following comment: "The tribes are groups inhabiting one winter village each and acting on many occasions, as in war rituals, as units. They are village communities often bearing the names of the locality they inhabit." Common village names indicated "perosn of a certain place," "one whose occupation is," or "they arc." However, he also recognized that increasingly frequent shifts of location had required a different naming strategy so that mythical ancestors, ancient visitors or honorific titles could also serve as names for the community.
54. See H. C. Taylor and W. Duff, "A Post-Contact Southward Movement of the Kwakiutl, Research Studies of the State College of Washington, 24 (1956), pp. 56-66.
55. See Masco, "It is a Strict Laws That Bids Us Dance."
56. Masco, "It is a Strict Laws That Bids Us Dance." Ibid.
57. F. Boas, The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians. Based on Personal Observations and on Notes made by Mr. George Hunt, Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1895 (1897), pp. 311-738.
58. In 1887, Boas had published "Census and Reservations of the Kwkaiutl Nation," Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 19 (1887), pp. 225-232 (with map).
59. See Boas, "The Indians of British Columbia," The Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Section II (1888a), pp. 47-57.
60. In F. Boas, The Indians of British Columbia, Bulletin of the American Geogiaphical Society, 27 (1896), p. 231, he says, "On several of my trips I had visited a tribe who bore the proud name of Kwakiutl, the 'smoke of the world'."
61. In The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians (p. 553), he quotes a chief who says, "That is why we are called Kwakiutl - that means the smoke of the world." Such comments of course relied on the virtuosity of Hunt to translate them. Interestingly, in Boas and Hunt Kwkaiutl Texts, qwaqwala is translated as "blackened," q'waxw - blackened;
62. while Lincoln and Rath (N. Lincoln and J. Rath, North Wakashan Comparative Root List, Canadian Ethnology Service Paper No. 68 [Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1980]), provide qwxw "dust," "dusky," "powdery"; qwaqwa "to darken (by smoke)"; qwxwa "dust," "powder," "to put powder on"; kwaxwa (Haisla) "slime." However, I am inclined to think far too much weight is placed on the significance of isolated words in the colonial story. See also Codere's Introduction in Boas' Kwkaiutl Ethnography for further musings on the meaning of the name.
63. J. Berman, "George Hunt and the Kwak'wala Texts," Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 36, No. 4 (1994), pp. 483-514, points out that Hunt was to some extent raised as a Tlingit and though considered an Indian, was nonetheless perceived to be foreign. He was also a shaman
64. (J. Berman, Anthropological Linguistics, ibid., p. 486), which would have located him in the rank order of a commoner.
65. See Masco, "It is a Strict Law That Bids Us Dance",
66. see I. Jacknis, "George Hunt, Collector of Indian Specimens," in A. Jonaitis ed., Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1991), p. 181, on Hunt's second wife, Francine.
67. See Jacknis, "George Hunt, Collector of Indian Specimens," p. 181.
68. It was later released under the title, In the Land of the War Canoes.
69. J. Cannizzo, "George Hunt and the Invention of Kwakiutl Culture," Canadian. Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1983), pp. 44-58.
70. M. Gidley, "Edward Curtis and Pacific Coastal Encounter." Paper read at the Annual Meeting of the Aboriginal Studies Circle of the British Association for Canadian Studies, York, U.K., October 1996.
71. In white terms, it would be more correct to speak of Dan Cranmer as Agned Hunt's "common-law" husband at this time, as they were married "in the white way" in a ceremony for thirty to forty couples in 1938 (interview Agnes Cranmer, original in Alert Bay Library and Museum). It is difficult to know whether they were married "in the Indian way," as no Potlatch is remembered as having been performed for them.
72. The Indian Agent, Halliday, sold the first choice of artifacts to the American George Heye, who was in the area collecting. See D. Cole, Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985);
73. see also B. A. C. Saunders, "Contested Ethnie in Two Kwakwaka'wakw Museums," in . MacClancy ed., Art, Identity and Politics in the Modern World (Oxford: Berg, 1997).
74. Boas provided the justification for placing it in a museum. He said, "We collect these [specimens] because they are the foundation of scientific study . . . [as] the essential function of the museum [is to be] . . . a scientific institution to preserve for all future time . . . the valuable material that has been collected, and not allow it to be scattered and deteriorate." See F. Boas, "Some Principles of Museum Administration," Science, 25 (1907), pp. 921-933. For Boas, the mission of the ethnographic museum was to preserve in perpetuity what could appropriately be fitted into the universal scientific categories of colonial difference.
75. The importance of the political impact of native labor organizations, increasing control of a bureaucratic ethic, the importance of landclaims litigation, and the residential school experience should not be diminished in this context. See P. Drucker, The Native Brotherhoods: Modern Intertribal Organizations on the Northwest Coast, Smithsonian Institution Bureau of Ethnology Bulletin 168, United States Printing Office: Washington, D.C. (1958);
76. R. Knight, Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Indian Labour in British Columbia 1858-1930 (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1978);
77. C. Haigh-Brown, Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School (Vancouver: Tillacum Library, 1988);
78. P. Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990);
79. P. Tennant, "Native Indian Political Organization in British Columbia, 1900-1969: A Response to Internal Colonialism, BC Studies, 55 (1982), pp. 3-49.
80. One "dance apron" can be attributed to Dan Cranmer. See Saunders, "Contested Ethnie in Two Kwakwaka'wakw Museums."
81. Regalia can be identified as originating from the communities of Mamalilikulla (at Village Island), Lekwiltok (at Cape Mudge, Campbell River, Salmon River, Philips Arm), Kwagiutl (at Fort Rupert), Nimpkish (at Alert Bay), Tlawit'sis (at Tumour Island), Da'anaxda'xw (at New Vancouver), Dzawada'enuxw (at Kingcome Inlet), and Kwikwasut''inux (at Gilford Island) and Maamtagila (Turnour Island).
82. Details of the original meeting of Lekwiltok where it was decided to surrender Regalia, and the names of those who agreed to the decision, can be fond in the R. C. Scott Papers File 1/4 B.C. Conference Archives in the School of Theology at the University of British Columbia.
83. D. Sewid-Smith, Prosecution or Persecution (Cape Mudge: Nuyumbalees Society, 1979).
84. See Scwid-Smith, Prosecution or Persecution. Also conversations with Kwakwaka'wakw people (1989-1990; 1995).
85. Conversations with Kwakwaka'wakw people at Fort Rupert, Cape Mudge, Campbell River and Alert Bay in 1989-1990 and 1995.
86. E. Renan, "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?" in J. Hutchinson and A. D. Smith eds., Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
87. In 1980, crates containing Regalia whose former "owners" were mainly from Village Island and whose descendants were undecided whether to favor U'mista or the Kwagiulth Museum, were "inadvertently" delivered to U'mista. By spring 1995, the Regalia of the Hanusc lineage and of Sam Charlie (both of Village Island) had been removed from the Kwagiulth Museum and transferred to U'mista. "Due to lack of display space," this Regalia had been placed in the storage area. The Regalia of Abraham, Price Bruce, Sam Charlie, Amos Dawson, Hawas, Harry Hanuse, Harry Mountain, Sam Puglas, Sam Scow, Bond Sound, and Joseph Speck, all of Village Island, is now in the U'mista Center. Of these, only the descendants of Bruce, Mountain, Puglas and Speck chose to place it (here (conversations with Kwakwaka'wakw people 1989-1990, 1995, with Dr. W. Taylor 1993; Potlatch File, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec).
88. The political ambitions and aspirations of U'mista are currently realized by its involvement in a series of virtual projects amongst which are a data base for its holdings, a new dictionary of Kwakw'ala in conjunction with Simon Fraser University, and marketing art on the World Wide Web (fieldwork 1995).
89. A. Lattas, "Nationalism, Aesthetic Redemption and Aboriginally," The Australian Journal Of Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1991), pp. 307-324.
90. Giddens, "The Nation as Power-Container."
91. C. Duncan and A. Wallach, "The Universal Survey Museum," Art History, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1980), pp. 448-469.
92. See E. Curtism The North American Indian, 10 (Kwakiutl) (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1970 [1915]);
93. Taylor and Duff, "A Post-Contact Southward Movement of the Kwakiutl",
94. Galois, Kwakwaka'wakw Settlements.
95. See E. Benner, Really Existing Nationalisms: A Post-Communist View from Marx and Engles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 181, who points out that to absolve the victims of colonialism from the same ethical and political standards which condemned their victimizers is to continue to denigrate the agency of a people who have been debased. In adopting this positioning vis à vis the Kwakwaka'wakw communities, I recognize that I open myself to a variety of charges.
96. By "identity," I mean the desire to be recognized by others as worthy of respect, to belong to a community that confers that recognition, which in turn is recognized by members of other communities. See Benner, Really Existing Nationalisms, p. 247.
97. Benner, Really Existing Nationalisms, p. 168.
98. Benner, Really Existing Nationalisms;
99. J. Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1995).
100. Benner, Really Existing Nationalisms;
101. C. Lasch, "The Age of Limits," in A. M. Melzer et al. eds., History and the Idea of Progress (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995);
102. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments;
103. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991).
104. J. Clifford, "Diasporas," Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1994), pp. 302-338;
105. M. Bilig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).