Precedent and the Aboriginal Response to Global Incursions: Smallpox and Identity Reformation Among the Coast Salish

Aboriginal people’s responses to globalization have been varied and complex. This paper looks at one particular expression of globalism (contact-era epidemics among the Coast Salish of southwestern BC and northwestern Washington) and situates it within the context of earlier regional catastrophes as understood through legendary stories. In this way the paper reframes one of the standard interpretive paradigms of the field – that the epidemics were unprecedented and that they represented perhaps the most significant “break” in Indigenous history. The article shows the ways in which Coast Salish communities and individuals coped with disasters. It concludes that ancient stories provided people with precedents that then shaped their response to globalism. The article also illustrates the ways in which historians can learn from Indigenous modes of history, in which genealogies, myth-ages stories, and specific places play crucial roles.Les réactions des Autochtones par rapport à la mondialisation ont été variées et complexes. Cette communication examine une expression particulière de l’internationalisme (épidémies au sein de la Première nation Coast Salish du sud-ouest de la C.-B. et nord-ouest de l’État Washington par suite du contact avec les Européens) et le situe dans le contexte des premières catastrophes régionales telles que comprises aux moyens des légendes. De cette façon, l’article recadre un des paradigmes d’interprétation standard du domaine – à l’effet que les épidémies étaient sans précédent et qu’elles représentaient peut-être la plus importante « rupture » de l’histoire autochtone. L’article montre les façons dont les communautés et les membres de la Première nation Coast Salish ont affronté les désastres. Il conclut que les histoires anciennes fournissaient au peuple des précédents qui façonnaient ensuite sa réaction à l’internationalisme. L’article illustre comment les historiens peuvent puiser dans les façons de raconter des Autochtones, dans lesquelles les généalogies, les légendes mythiques et les endroits spécifiques jouent des rôles cruciaux

Coast Salish Textiles: From ‘Stilled Fingers’ to Spinning an Identity

When aboriginal women of south western British Columbia, Canada undertook to revisit their once prolific and esteemed ancient textile practices, the strand of cultural knowledge and expertise linking this heritage to contemporary life had become extremely tenuous. Through an engagement with cultural memory, painstakingly reclaimed, Coast Salish women began a revival in the 1980s that includes historically resonant weaving and basketry, as well as the more recent adaptive and expedient practice of knitting. This revitalization faces continuing cultural challenges as a new generation is presented with the opportunity to engage its heritage. Through interviews with principals in this movement plus an analysis of historical sources and artifacts, the revival and its current resonance and future prospects in Coast Salish communities are considered. In this interdisciplinary and interpretive study, textiles as historical sources, oral history and material culture are the tools employed to tease out details of a more nuanced history that can ameliorate marginalizations, especially those of aboriginal women. The “coercive and exclusive” acculturation (Goldberger, N. R.) of the past is shown to account for the loss of textile skill inseparable from culture. Agency, imbedded in ancestral knowledge, is identified as a means for textiles to communicate wisdom, history and identity in new contexts that value ‘ways of knowing’ in a decolonized (Smith, L. T. ) approach. The visual concept of contemporary women ‘spinning back in time’ serves a literal and figurative function that encompasses the mesmerizing ability of spindle whorls, the act of spinning and the sensing of an ancestral presence while standing at the loom, to reconnect with the past. The determination of a dominant culture to force indigenous peoples to discard tradition may have “stilled the fingers of the native women” (Oliver Wells cited in Gustafson, P.) but in a gravely challenged culture a revitalized textile language has extended a thread of empowering cultural memory to a subsequent generation of Coast Salish who may or may not grasp it

Le visage des Bébés des eaux et des Gens du ciel. Nouvelles perspectives sur le masque swaihwé

Le masque sx̌wó:yx̌wey (swaihwé) des peuples de l’île de Vancouver et de la vallée du Fraser a fait l’objet d’analyses virtuoses de la part d’anthropologues de renom (Claude Lévi-Strauss et Wayne Suttles). Pourtant, dans les deux cas, la structure plastique du masque est appréhendée comme un agencement ne représentant rien en soi. Nous cherchons, au contraire, à montrer que la morphologie du masque représente des non-humains surnaturels des origines, dont la nature est profondément hybride et soumise à un schème ontologique de transformation. À partir de ce changement de paradigme, nous montrons que le masque sx̌wó:yx̌wey des Salish côtiers cherche à figurer – quoique d’une manière différente de leurs voisins septentrionaux – les transformations incessantes des êtres surnaturels à partir de représentations plastiques de saillances et de constructions chimériques. Ces saillances visuelles et leur agencement particulier placent l’observateur du masque dans un état d’incertitude ontologique quand à la nature de l’existant représenté. Cet état de dissonance cognitive est le propre de l’état visionnaire chez les Salish côtiers.The masks of the Kwakiutl of Vancouver island and Fraser valley have been brilliantly analysed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Wayne Suttles. In both cases, however, the mask’s plastic qualities have been regarded as mere form, representing nothing in particular. This article, in contrast, aims to demonstrate that the mask’s morphology represents the original superhuman beings, whose profoundly hybrid nature partakes of a transformative ontological schema. It then moves on to show that the Coastal Salish’s mask seeks, albeit in a quite different way to that of their more northerly neighbours, to represent the ceaseless transformations of supernatural beings in its physical protuberances and chimeric constructions. The precise arrangement of these visible protuberances places the observer in a situation of ontological uncertainty regarding the nature of the being in question. This state of cognitive dissonance is also proper to visionary states among the Coastal Salish

Semantic Relations vs. Abstract Syntactic Relations: Evidence from Halkomelem

Based on a partial reanalysis of a corpus of data from Halkomelem (Salish) analyzed from the perspective of classical Relational Grammar in a series of works by Donna Gerdts, I argue for a relational theory with both revaluations of syntactic relations and alternative initial alignments of semantic relations with syntactic relations. First, I look at four kinds of constructions for which Gerdts appeals to revaluation analyses: passive, causative, antipassive, and applicative. I argue that a subset of these - namely the latter three - are better analyzed otherwise. Based on these results, I examine certain grammatical phenomena which might have been understood in terms of initial syntactic relations, if multistratal analyses of the constructions in question were available. Since they are not, however, it is necessary to formulate the relevant conditions in terms of semantic relations

Voice Syncretism Crosslinguistically: The View from Minimalism

Voice syncretism is widely attested crosslinguistically. In this paper, we discuss three different types of Voice syncretism, under which the same morpheme participates in different configurations. We provide an approach under which the same Voice head can convey different interpretations depending on the environment it appears in, thus building on the notion of allosemy. We show that, in all cases under investigation, allosemy is closely associated with the existence of idiosyncratic patterns. By contrast, we notice that allosemy and idiosyncrasy are not present in analytic passive and causative constructions across different languages. We argue that the distinguishing feature between the two types of constructions is whether the passive and the causative interpretation comes from the Voice head, thus forming a single domain with the vP or whether passive and causative semantics are realized by distinct heads above the Voice layer, thus forming two distinct domains.Peer Reviewe

An Indigenous court in S'ólh Téméxw: a transferability assessment

There have been several Indigenous initiatives established in response to the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the justice system and to deliver culturally appropriate services (Government of Canada, 2016, para. 7). Although there are two Indigenous initiatives in Chilliwack, including the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of BC and Qwí:qwelstóm Wellness, there are still gaps in connecting Indigenous people involved in the court system to community-based justice and wellness services. In 2018, Qwí:qwelstóm Wellness hosted a meeting and invited former Chief Judge Thomas Crabtree to present on the purpose of an Indigenous court and the feasibility of establishing a court in Chilliwack. When the proposed initiative was presented to the Stó:lō political leadership, they requested additional information, including the potential risks of having an Indigenous court in Chilliwack and assessing the transferability of existing models and practices to the proposed court in Chilliwack. A transferability assessment was undertaken to determine the extent to which practices from Indigenous court models found in British Columbia could be transferred to a proposed Indigenous court in Chilliwack. Qualitative research for this Major Paper was completed through interviews with the participants who have roles within Stó:lō Nation and some existing Indigenous courts. There are six common aspects of Indigenous courts that are believed to be essential to their success, including the inclusion of local Indigenous culture, the Elders’ role, the victim’s role, the strengthening of relationships between the court and the Indigenous community, the clients’ greater and easier access to community resources, and the consideration of Gladue principles. This major paper presents a transferability analysis and offers suggestions for consideration during the establishment of an Indigenous court in S’ólh Téméxw

Captain death strikes again: tuberculosis and the Stó:lõ 1871-1907

Tuberculosis has cast a long shadow on the history of Native-Newcomers relations in the Pacific Northwest. Malicious and deadly, it has dramatically affected the lives of thousands of Aboriginal people and become a permanent part of life in Stó:lõ communities. However, its history, especially the period 1871-1907, has been underrepresented in historical scholarship. Due to perceived scarcity of available quantitative information, scholars in general have paid little attention to tuberculosis, focusing instead on the early contact period, the sanatorium period that began in British Columbia in 1907, or on another disease altogether, usually smallpox. Moreover, when tuberculosis has been studied, it has been approached as a disease within a western bio-medical perspective. In contrast to much of this historiography, this thesis examines tuberculosis more holistically as an illness best understood culturally, as it has been experienced by communities as well as by the individual. Through story and song as well as a thorough reading of familiar government records under a different lens, this thesis engages the perceptions and understandings of both Aboriginal people and Euro-Canadians, patients and government agents, to produce a more balanced, meaningful, and culturally reflexive understanding of the history of tuberculosis. Following a historiographical discussion in the introduction, chapter two explores Stó:lõ oral archival sources to engage Stó:lõ people’s perspective of tuberculosis and illness. These stories and songs, generated by Stó:lõ people themselves, demonstrate the profound influence that tuberculosis has had on Stó:lõ communities throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. With this new framework in mind, chapter three re-examines the historical record and specifically government documents created by the Department of Indian Affairs and other preceding agencies. This more holistic interpretation of tuberculosis reveals that rather than alleviating the severity and prevalence of tuberculosis in Stó:lõ communities, certain DIA initiatives likely exasperated its affects. By thus addressing the historiographical gap in tuberculosis literature and by generating a more meaningful, balanced, and culturally reflexive analysis of the history of tuberculosis among the Stó:lõ, this thesis contributes to Canadian medical history, the history of Native-Newcomer relations, and the history of the Stó:lõ people

“I am an Indian and live on the Indian Reserve”: history, culture, politics, colonialism, and the (re)making of Chief Billie Hall

Exploring the experiences of one Aboriginal man, Chief William (Billie) Hall of the Tzeachten reserve (located within the City of Chilliwack, BC), as documented by him in his journals covering the period 1923-1933, this thesis argues that categories of class and gender, as well as Aboriginality, serve as windows providing insights into how Native individuals understood and experienced colonialism as they struggled to find a place for themselves in a rapidly changing world. This thesis examines gender and class differences within Stó:lô culture to interpret Hall’s experiences at a time during which the Stó:lô faced great change as a result of the imposition of new restrictions and boundaries placed upon Aboriginal people by the Canadian government and its Indian Act (1876) and the new economy developing in their territory. Beginning with an exploration of the historiography of Aboriginal men living their lives in a world rapidly being changed by colonial forces, the thesis continues with a detailed introduction to who Hall the man was at the time he began writing his diaries, placing his life history within a Stó:lô understanding of class and gender. The third chapter explores the effects of the Indian Act, which set out a definition of “Indian and imposed new forms of community governance, on not only Hall’s identity, but that of another man from his reserve, George Matheson. The fourth chapter examines Hall’s work as an “Indian boss” in the hop industry, an as yet unstudied role in which an Aboriginal man acted as steward for hundreds of temporary Aboriginal labourers and their families, and demonstrates interesting links between the wage labour economy and Aboriginal leadership. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates that Hall, in his engagement with colonialism, was able to achieve an identity for himself that was grounded in a local Stó:lô understanding of who an elite male, a leader, was and needed to be. Furthermore, this thesis argues that voices like Hall’s, which may not fit neatly with a broader meta-narrative about colonialism in B.C., in which Aboriginals were made victims, are nonetheless important to understanding the Canadian colonial past