The paradox of boundaries in Coast Salish territories

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 179-205

  Thom, Brian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Boundaries; Coast Salish; Counter mapping; Land claims; Territory

Indexed keywords

CONFERENCE PROCEEDING; KINSHIP; LAND RIGHTS; LAND USE; MAPPING; POLITICAL BOUNDARY; POLITICAL RELATIONS; TERRITORIAL DISPUTE;

BRITISH COLUMBIA; CANADA; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES; WASHINGTON [UNITED STATES];

EID: 63249100877     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474008101516     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (63)

1. The term Coast Salish is a generic name used to refer to speakers of several related languages who share strong social, economic, and cultural ties living in southwest British Columbia and northwest Washington State. My own research has been entirely with Halkomelem-speaking communities along the Fraser River and southeast Vancouver Island. Though there is significant regional variation in cultural practices, I do believe that the conclusions of this paper are broadly applicable within the Coast Salish region. In writing native-language terms, I have adopted here the orthography used by Island Halkomelem speakers, which I have described more fully in pages 426-8 of B. Thom, 'Coast Salish senses of place: Dwelling, meaning, power, property and territory in the Coast Salish World' [dissertation] (Montreal, McGill Department of Anthropology, McGill University, 2005).
2. F. Barth, 'Boundaries and connections', in A. Cohen, ed., Signifying identities: Anthropological perspectives on boundaries and contested values (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 17-36.
3. Barth, 'Boundaries', p. 17.
4. F. Myers, Pintupi Country, Pintupi self: Sentiment, place, and politics among western desert aborigines (Washington and Canberra, Smithsonian Institution Press and Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1991); T. Ingold, The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill (London, Routledge, 2000); T. Ingold, 'Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought', Ethnos 71(1) (2006), pp. 9-20, p. 20.
5. S Poirier, 'Ontology, ancestral order and agencies among the Kukatja of the Australian western desert', in J. Clammer, S. Poirier and E. Schwimmer, eds, Figured worlds: Ontological obstacles in intercultural relations (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 58-82.
6. T. Ingold, 'Territoriality and tenure: The appropriation of space in hunting and gathering societies', in T. Ingold, ed., The appropriation of nature: Essays on human ecology and social relations (Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1987), pp. 130-64, p. 156.
7. F. Myers, 'Always ask: Resource use and land ownership among the Pintupi Aborigines of the Australian western desert', in N. Williams and E. Hunn, eds, Resource managers: North American and Australian hunter-gatherers (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1982), pp. 173-95, p. 176.
8. Ingold, 'Territoriality', p. 150.
9. E. Semple, 'Geographical boundaries - I', Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 39(7) (1907), pp. 385-97, p. 396.
10. D. Culhane, The pleasure of the crown: Anthropology, law and first nations (Burnaby, Talonbooks, 1998), pp. 248-9.
11. R. Rundstrom 'Mapping, the white man's burden', The common property resource digest 45 (1998), pp. 7-8, p. 7.
12. N. Sterritt, S. Marsden, R. Galois, P. Grant and R. Overstall, Tribal boundaries in the Nass Watershed (Vancouver, UBC Press, 1998).
13. N. Peluso, 'Whose woods are there? Counter-mapping forest territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia', Antipode 27(4) (1005), pp. 383-406, p. 403.
14. D. Turnbull 'Mapping encounters and (en)countering maps: A critical examination of cartographic resistance', Knowledge and society 11 (1998), pp. 15-44, p. 38
15. M. Sparke, 'A map that roared and an original atlas: Canada, cartography, and the narration of nation', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(3) (1998), pp. 463-95.
16. J. Fox, 'Mapping the commons: The social context of spatial information technologies', The common property resource digest 25 (1998), pp. 1-4, p. 3.
17. Myers, 'Pintupi', p. 19.
18. N. Peluso, 'Seeing property in land use: Local territorializations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia', Geografisk tidsskrift 105(1) (2005), pp. 1-15, p. 2.
19. J. Fox, K. Suryanata and P. Hershock, Mapping communities: Ethics, values, practice (Honolulu, Hawaii: East-West Center, 2005).
20. Another 45 First Nations organizations representing other (non-Coast Salish) aboriginal communities in BC are also negotiating in the BC Treaty Process.
21. I have previously provided a more lengthy reflection of the intersubjective nature of this research, B. Thom, 'Coast Salish senses of place', pp. 36-59.
22. F. Boas, 'Zur ethnologie britisch-kolumbiens', Petermanns geographische mitteilungen 33(5) (1887), pp. 129-33; see also Thom, 'Coast Salish', pp. 341-50 for a more detailed discussion of the history of Coast Salish ethnographic mapping.
23. Changes in the occupants of territories, and their shapes and boundaries, are well recorded in the ethnographic literature. The lower Fraser River area had significant changes throughout the fur trade and early colonial period with, for example, the Kwantlen, who were very successful in controlling access to Fort Langley, expanding their territory (Hill-Tout 1902:406; Suttles 1955:8, 12). The Squamish (Ryan 1973:40-42), Semiahmoo (Suttles 1951:29; Suttles 1998:174) and perhaps the Sooke and Klallam (Suttles 1951:9-13) have also seen changes in the shape and size of their territories. See, C. Hill-Tout, 'Ethnological studies of the mainland Halkome'lEm, a division of the Salish of British Columbia', Report of the 72nd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1902), pp. 353-445; W. Suttles, Katzie ethnographic notes (Victoria, British Columbia Provincial Museum, 1955); J Ryan, 'Squamish socialization' [dissertation] (Vancouver, University of British Columbia, 1973); W. Suttles, 'The economic life of the Coast Salish of Haro and Rosario Straits' [dissertation] (Seattle, University of Washington, 1951); W. Suttles, 'The ethnographic significance of the Fort Langley journals', in M. Maclachlan, ed., The Fort Langley journals 1827-30 (Vancouver, UBC Press, 1998).
24. Ingold 'Principle', pp. 226-7.
25. N. Bird-David, 'Animism' revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology', Current anthropology 40 (1999), pp. s67-s91, p. s76.
26. Ingold, 'Rethinking'.
27. D. Kennedy, 'Looking for tribes in all the wrong places: An examination of the central Coast Salish social network' [Masters Thesis] (Victoria, University of Victoria, 1995).
28. For a full discussion of Coast Salish property systems see Thom 'Coast Salish', ch. 7; for a discussion of the importance of bilateral descent groups in other areas of Coast Salish economic, social and ceremonial life, see W. Suttles, 'The persistence of intervillage ties among the Coast Salish', Ethnology 2 (1963), pp. 512-25.
29. P. Amoss, Coast Aalish spirit dancing: The survival of an ancestral religion (Seattle, WA, University of Washington Press, 1978).
30. Suttles 'Affinal Ties'.
31. T. Ingold, 'The principle of individual autonomy and the collective appropriation of nature', in T. Ingold, ed., The appropriation of nature: Essays on human ecology and social relations (Iowa City, University of Iowa, 1987), pp. 222-42, pp. 229-34.
32. W. Suttles, 'Affinal ties, subsistence, and prestige among the Coast Salish', American anthropologist 62(2) (1960), pp. 296-305.
33. I have heard of prominent travelling people who held several names concurrently, some having been granted to the individual by distant communities which they had visited or lived in.
34. S. Snyder, 'Skagit society and its existential basis: An ethnofolkloristic reconstruction' [dissertation] (Seattle, University of Washington, 1964).
35. C. Scott, 'Hunting territories, hunting bosses and communal production among Coastal James Bay Cree', Anthropologica 28(1-2) (1986), pp. 163-73.; C. Scott, 'Property, practice and aboriginal rights among Quebec Cree hunters', in T. Ingold, D. Riches and J. Woodburn, eds, hunters and gatherers 2: Property, power and ideology (Oxford, Berg, 1998), pp. 35-51; Poirier, 'Territory', p. 107
36. A. Escobar, 'Whose knowledge, whose nature? Biodiversity conservation and the political ecology of social movements', Journal of political ecology 5 (1998), pp. 53-82, p. 71.
37. F. Myers, 'Burning the truck and holding the country: Property, time, and the negotiation identity among Pintupi Aboriginies', in T. Ingold, D. Riches and J. Woodburn, eds, hunters and gatherers 2: Property, power and ideology (New York, Berg, 1988), pp. 52-74, p. 65; F. Myers, 'Critical trends in the study of huntergatherers', Annual review of anthropology 17 (1988), pp. 261-82, p. 272.
38. Suttles 'Persistence'; W. Elmendorf, 'Coast Salish status ranking and intergroup ties', Southwestern journal of anthropology 27 (1971), pp. 353-80.
39. The word xutsten' 'marker' is clearly cognate with q'ulexutstun 'fence'. /q'ul-/ is the root meaning 'to go around/over something'.
40. B. Miller, 'The "really real" border and the divided Salish community', BC studies 112 (1997), pp. 63-79
41. D. Kennedy, 'Quantifying "two sides of a coin", a statistical examination of the central Coast Salish social network', BC studies 153 (2007), pp. 3-34, p. 23. pp. 3-34, p. 23.
42. Thom, 'Coast Salish', pp. 377-82.
43. T. Hukari, R. Peter and E. White, 'Halkomelem (seagull steals the sun)', International journal of American linguistics, native texts series 2(3) (1977), pp. 33-68.
44. S. Snyder Skagit, 'Society and its existential basis' [dissertation] (Seattle, University of Washington, 1964), pp. 389-91.
45. T. Ingold, 'Ancestry, generation, substance, memory, land', in T Ingold, ed., The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 132-51, p. 133.
46. C. Scott, 'On autonomy and development', in C. Scott, ed., Aboriginal autonomy and development in Northern Quebec and Labrador (Vancouver, UBC Press, 2001), pp. 3-20, p. 7.
47. Peluso, 'Seeing property in land use', p. 12.
48. The Indian Bands negotiating in the BC Treaty Process as aggregated groups (and their March 2008 registered populations) include: Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group (Cowichan (4196), Chemainus (1145), Penelakut (840), Halalt (208), Lyackson (189), Lake Cowichan (15)), Te'mexw Treaty Association (Scia'new (230), Malahat (258), Snaw-naw-as (217), Songhees (489), T'Sou-ke (216)), and Stó:lO Xwexwilmexw Treaty Association (Aitchelitz (40), Leq'á:mÉl (341), Popkum (8), Skawahlook (72), Skowkale (227), Tzeachten (387), Yakweakwioose (63)).
49. The independent Indian Bands negotiating in the BC Treaty Process (and their March 2008 registered populations) are: Homalco (456), Klahoose (79), Sechelt (1218), Sliammon (959), Snuneymuxw (1513), Katzie (494), Musqueam (1196), Squamish (3600), Tsawwassen (275), Tsleil-Waututh (442), Yale (145).
50. The Indian Bands who are not participating in the BC Treaty Process negotiations (and their March 2008 registered populations) are: Chawathil (521), Cheam (470), Kwantlen (197), Matsqui (233), Kwawkwawapilt (40), Scowlitz (107), Seabird (801), Shxw'owhámél (164), Soowahlie (351), Sumas (182), Peters (118), Union Bar (118), Shxwhá:y (319), Squiala (129), Chehalis (965), Skwah (464), Kwikwetlem (61), Semiahmoo (80), Qeqayt (9), Esquimalt (256), Qualicum (106), Tsawout (749), Tsartlip (571), Pauquachin (363), Tseycum (153).
51. Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples, Volume 5, Renewal: A twenty-year commitment (Ottawa, Canada Communication Group Publishing, 1996), p. 10.
52. J. Cruikshank, The social life of stories: Narrative and knowledge in the Yukon Territory (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 16.
53. The text of the Tsawwassen Final Agreement is available at http://www.gov.bc.ca/arr/firstnation/tsawwassen/default.htm.
54. Kennedy, 'Quantifying', p. 9.
55. Ingold, 'Rethinking', p. 13.
56. H. Barnett, The Coast Salish of British Columbia (Eugene, University of Oregon Press, 1955), p. xix.
57. Ibid., p. 18.
58. Ibid.
59. H. Barnett, 'The Coast Salish of Canada', American anthropologist 40 (1938), pp. 118-41, p. 119.
60. A cartography of this kind was recently suggested by indigenous scholar Sonny McHalsie, who mapped his own genealogy over the Stó:lÕ landscape. See K. Carlson, ed., A Stó:lO-Coast Salish historical atlas (Vancouver, Douglas & McIntyre, 2001), pp. 32-3.
61. Poirier 'Ontology', pp. 62-3; Poirier 'Territory' p. 107.
62. W. Suttles, 'Private knowledge, morality, and social classes among the Coast Salish', American anthropologist 60(3) (1958), pp. 497-507
63. See, for example, J. Fox et al., eds, Mapping communities: Ethics, values, practice (Honolulu, Hawaii, East-West Centre, 2005); D. Hodgson and R. Schroeder, 'Dilemmas of counter-mapping community resources in Tanzania', Development and change 33 (2002), pp. 79-100; Peluso, 'Seeing property in land use'.