The Indigenous Foundation of the resource economy of BC's north coast

Labour/ Le Travail

Volumn , Issue 61, 2008, Pages 131-149

  Menzies, Charles R ^a   Butler, Caroline F ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 46849098603     PISSN: 07003862     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. For many anthropologists, linguists, and others, the peoples of the north coast of British Columbia have been grouped together under the common name Tsimshian. This Euro-American designation reflects the intellectual history of K'mksiwah research, in which language, geography, and central foods were used to classify peoples. Tsimshian includes Nisga'a, Gitksan, Ts'msyen (in English, Coast Tsimshian and Skeena River Tsimshian), and Gitxaala peoples. In our paper we have adopted the more accurate distinctions made by the people themselves -Ts'msyen for when we speak of the people now living in Metlakatla; Lax K'walaams, or Kitsumkalum and Gitxaala, when we speak of the people whose territories are on the coastal islands from Prince Rupert south to just north of Milbank Sound, whose primary village is at Lach Klan (Kitkatla).
2. See Cole Harris, The Resettlement of British Columbia: Essays on Colonialism and Geographical Change (Vancouver 1997).
3. See, for example: James McDonald, People of the Robin: the Tsimshian of Kitsumkalum: a Resource Book for the Kitsumkalum Education Committee and the Coast Mountain School District 82 (Terrace) (Edmonton 2003);
4. Dianne Newell, Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries (Toronto 1993);
5. Antonia Mills, Eagle Down is our Law: Witsuwit'en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims (Vancouver 1994);
6. Jay Miller, Tsimshian Culture: A Light Through the Ages (Lincoln 1997). Each of these books attempts, in different ways, to take the perspective of indigenous peoples seriously and as a meaningful and significant lens through which to understand the region's past and the implications for its future.
7. While we are hesitant to highlight the subject position of the authors - one an indigenous academic and the other a resident and community member in the area of which we write - we understand that who we are does shape the ways in which we prioritize the importance of an indigenous perspective. While we will make no claim to represent a universalized Ts'msyen or GitxaaJa perspective, we do claim to reflect an important strand of an indigenous view and experience of the world and the development of industrial resource extraction. Both authors also have direct personal and professional experience in the resource-based industry of north coast British Columbia.
8. Charles R. Menzies, "Putting Words into Action: Negotiating Collaborative Research in Gitxaala," Canadian Journal of Native Education 28 (2004), 15-32;
9. Caroline F. Butler, "Researching Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Multiple Uses, Canadian Journal of Native Education 28 (2004), 33-48.
10. Charles R. Menzies and Caroline F. Butler, "Returning to Selective Fishing Through Indigenous Fisheries Knowledge: The Example of K'moda, GitxaaJa Territory," American Indian Quarterly, 31 (Summer 2007), 441-64.
11. Charles R. Menzies, "Reflections on Research with, for, and among Indigenous Peoples.," Canadian Journal of Native Education, 25 (Spring/Summer 2001), 19-36;
12. Menzies, "Putting Words into Action," 15-32;
13. Butler, "Researching TEK," 33-48.
14. Sm'gyigyet is the plural form of Sm'oogyit.
15. This observation is based upon our field research with members of Gitxaala Nation.
16. Some have argued that the paramount chieftainships of Ts'ibassaz, Shakes, or Legaix, for example, were a byproduct of K'mksiwah interventions (see, for instance, Andrew Martindale, "A Hunter-Gatherer Paramount Chiefdom: Tsimshian Developments through the Contact Period," in R.G. Matson, G. Coupland and Q. Mackie, eds., Emerging from the Mist: Studies in Northwest Coast Culture History (Vancouver 2003), 12-50).
17. Our research with Gitxaala suggests that the rise of paramount chiefs predates the arrival of K'mksiwah and further predates the so-called "proto-contact" effects. This point can also be documented in the accounts of early coastal traders such as, for example, James Collnett (1787), Jacinto Caamano (1792), or Charles Bishop (1795) where prominent local chiefs are clearly in existence and firmly established prior to the arrival of coastal traders. Sm'gyigyet, such as Ts'ibassaa, were quick to assimilate new technologies and knowledge and to wield these in their exercise of power and authority within their specific communities.
18. Kinship was and is important. However, this does not mean that in the absence of a kinship relationship, goods and services, interchange, trade, barter, etc., was impossible. One need merely take note of the many references within the journals of early Euro-American coastal traders to trade for various and sundry food items (such as, but not limited to, salmon, halibut, eulachon) to put to rest the inaccurate assumption that Ts'msyen or Gitxaala people would not trade fish like salmon with either Euro-Americans or other non-kinship.
19. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley 1982).
20. Eric R. Wolf, Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis (Berkeley 1999).
21. This thesis is more fully developed in a manuscript Menzies is currently writing that focuses on the social relations of production and the transformation from chiefly economies to industrial resource capitalism on the northwest coast.
22. James McDonald, "Trying to Make a Life: The Historical Political Economy of Kitsumkalum," PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1985, 322.
23. McDonald, "Trying to Make a Life," 327.
24. Hudson Bay Company, "Journals For Fort Simpson," 1834-1864, 15 January 1852, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg [herafter HBC, Fort Simpson Journal].
25. HBC Fort Simpson Journal, 6 December 1857.
26. Charles R. Menzies and Caroline F. Butler, "Working in the Woods: Tsimshian Resource Workers and the Forest Industry of British Columbia," American Indian Quarterly, 25 (June 2001), 409-430.
27. Robert Galois, "Colonial Encounters: The Worlds of Arthur Wellington Clah, 1855-1881," BC Studies 115-116, (1997-98), 105-47.
28. A copy of Clah's diaries was held by the now defunct Tsimshian Tribal Council and was reviewed in their offices by the authors in 1998.
29. See Menzies and Butler, "Working in the Woods."
30. Gladys Young Blyth, Salmon Canneries: BC North Coast (Lantzville, BC 1991).
31. For a thorough discussion of First Nations' labour in the canneries see Newell, Tangled Webs of History;
32. Rolf Knight, Indians at Work (Vancouver 1996);
33. and Alicja Mujsynski, Cheap Wage Labour: Race and Gender in the Fisheries of British Columbia (Montreal 1996).
34. Menzies and Butler, "Returning to Selective Fishing."
35. James McDonald, "The Marginalization of the Tsimshian Cultural Ecology: The Seasonal Cycle Native Peoples," in Bruce Alden Cox, ed., Native Lands: Canadian Indians, Inuit and Metis (Ottawa 1991), 208.
36. From field research with Gitxaała community members 1998-2008. See also Margaret Anderson, "The Allied Tribes Tsimshian of North Coastal British Columbia: Social Organization, Economy and Trade," Expert Opinion for Allied Tsimshian Tribes, July 2006.
37. From field research with Gitxaała community members, 1998-2008.
38. See British Columbia Archives, GR 435 (Box 16, file 137), Memorandum of Understanding between the Province of BC and the Federal Government of Canada, dated 9 November 1912 [hereafter BC Archives, Memorandum of Understanding].
39. Traces of this place can also be found in the K'mskiwah historical record. The late 1800s land commission reports and recommendation for the reserves of the Gtixaała were signed and dated at K'moda 10 July 1891, and one of the first north coast canneries was built there in the late 1800s.
40. Canada, Department of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December 1889, (Ottawa 1890), 149.
41. Cole Harris, Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver 2002), 65.
42. Newell, Tangled Webs, 56.
43. Newell, Tangled Webs, 56.
44. Harris, Native Space, 202.
45. Knight, Indians at Work, 306.
46. Harris, Native Space, 202.
47. BC Archives, Memorandum of Understanding.
48. BC Archives, Memorandum of Understanding.
49. BC Archives, Memorandum of Understanding.
50. McDonald, "Trying to Make a Life," 358.
51. British Columbia Archives, GR 1397, Records Relating to Whalen Pulp and Paper.
52. The names of respondents reported in this section of the paper are pseudonyms in accordance with the provisions of the certificate for research with human subjects that this research was conducted under. Names quoted in other sections of the paper are not pseudonyms.
53. McDonald, "Trying to Make a Life," 351.
54. John C. Pritchard "Economic Development and the Disintegration of Traditional Culture Among the Haisla," PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 1977, 13.
55. Pritchard, "Economic Development," 146-48.
56. Michael Kew, "Salmon Availability, Technology, and Cultural Adaptation in the Fraser River Watershed," in Brian Hayden, ed., A Complex Culture of the British Columbia Plateau Traditional Stl'atl'imx Resource Use (Vancouver 1992), 177-221.
57. See Knight, Indians at Work.
58. See, for example, Charles R. Menzies, "All That Holds Us Together: Kinship and Resource Pooling in a Fishing Co-operative," MAST: Maritime Anthropological Studies, 6 (1993), 157-179.
59. Muszynski, Cheap Wage Labour, 204.
60. From field research and interviews with Gitxaała fishermen, 1998-2008. BC Archives, Memorandum of Understanding. Due to a variety of rules, regulations, and legislation, aboriginal participation in the K'mksiwah commercial fisheries has been steadily declining since the first canneries opened on the north coast. At the same time, indigenous control and management of these same resources has been maintained within the communities. Current legal and political struggles are now starting to address these matters.