New book: Sto:lo/Coast Salish Historical Atlas

[terry glavin]

it ain't up for the b.c. book awards (won't know until next summer; awards
just passed), but my bet is it will win probably the roderick haig-brown
prize, maybe the bill duthie's booksellers' choice. it really is that good,
i hope people don't mind, but i think this book is important, and so i'm
pasting below the rough version of a review i recently wrote about it. i am
very rarely so full of praise when i write book reviews. i sincerely believe
the praise is thoroughly deserved.

tg


Within the pages of a new and lavish contribution to the literature of
aboriginal peoples in Canada, A Sto:lo - Coast Salish Historical Atlas,
something truly extraordinary takes place.

 The $65 book itself, a joint venture between the Sto:lo Heritage Trust,
Douglas and McIntyre, and the University of Washington Press, is an
historical event in its own right. It is a lush, richly visual, textured
work of art that will rank with any historical atlas published in the
English-speaking world.

 But there is something more taking place here. It is unlike almost
everything else you'll find on the ubiquitous "native issues" shelves of
British Columbia's bookstores. It is almost shocking in its honesty, its
integrity, and its self-confidence. While it is clearly and unashamedly a
book written from the aboriginal perspective, A Sto:lo - Coast Salish
Historical Atlas has no urgent political case to make, no big legal point to
prove, no victimhood to proclaim and no grievance to assert.

 In its 208 pages, the atlas manages to navigate the most turbulent waters -
residential schools, the potlatch laws, the expropriation of an ancient
people's lands, and so on - in ways that don't reprimand or admonish. It
just provides a glimpse of the world as it has been comprehended by the
Sto:lo people, which is a world bounded on the north by the mountain peaks,
on the south by the Skagit and the Nooksack rivers, on the west by the
Strait of Georgia, and on the east at Sailor Bar, a site in the Fraser
Canyon about nine kilometres upriver from Yale. It is within this landscape
that the majority of British Columbians live, and the atlas provides the
most comprehensive portrait of the ways that people have made sense of this
landscape for most of human history.

 "Sto:lo" literally means river, and by using the term the atlas embraces
the histories of about two dozen present-day Sto:lo communities, as well as
Musqueam, Katzie, and other people who speak the same language but don't
usually refer to themselves as "Sto:lo." About 62,000 of these people once
lived along the Fraser in dozens of towns, villages and hamlets. Epidemic
diseases have reduced the population almost tenfold, and the landscape
itself has been radically changed. But A Sto:lo - Coast Salish Historical
Atlas does not present a simple story of dispossession and loss.

  There are tragedies involved, but the story is also about a tenacious and
imaginative people confronting colonization in their own unique ways. They
expanded old trade networks, adopted new technologies and forged new
relationships to cope with a world that was changing beneath their very
feet.

 The book relies on more than 100 maps, more than 200 illustrations and
photographs, and a wide selection of essays touching upon several aspects of
Sto:lo resource-use, identity, spirituality, and social organization.
Although it builds upon the fine overview of 20th century Sto:lo history,
You Are Asked To Witness, which the Sto:lo Heritage Trust published in 1997,
nothing quite like this atlas has been attempted by aboriginal people in
B.C. before. It is a monument to the hard work and plain old talent among a
core group of researchers, historians and anthropologists and Sto:lo elders,
as well as academics with specific expertise in various fields who assisted
in the endeavour.

  History has always been important to the Sto:lo, and this book should be
seen as a modern-day function of the ska:sls, the traditional Sto:lo
historians, "those who keep track of everything." The Sto:lo oral tradition
includes archival records of long-ago events that are considered to be
charged with magic power. Although there can be several acceptable ways to
recount certain histories, many Sto:lo people insist that a speaker who
deliberately alters an historic narrative runs the risk of actually causing
physical harm to his listeners. In keeping with this distinct tradition, A
Sto:lo - Coast Salish Historical Atlas, under the guidance of
editor-historian Keith Thor Carlson, refuses to compromise in its approach
to the most contentious historical debates.

 Saint Mary's Mission boarding school - from which the city of Mission takes
its name - is quite appropriately considered in the context of the larger
colonial purpose of assimilation that it served. But the residential school
experience is not presented as something that was universally traumatic
among Sto:lo people. In the words of elder Mary Charles: "For myself, I can
only say that St. Mary's was good to me. It was strict, but so was
everything else in those days."

 Similarly, the so-called "potlatch laws", which were in effect between the
1880s and the late 1920s, are properly characterized as statutory
instruments deliberately aimed at destroying the key institutions of
aboriginal economic, political and social life. But the atlas does not
withhold evidence of the extent to which many Sto:lo people wanted the
potlatch stopped. Some of the most prominent Sto:lo figures of the early
20th-century enthusiastically supported the suppression of the potlatch.

 Aboriginal life prior to colonization, meanwhile, is not naively depicted
as peaceful and idyllic. In Carlson's analysis of the records of the Hudson'
s Bay Company at Fort Langley, Sto:lo people and their neighbours are shown
to have been involved in no fewer than 30 major conflicts during a brief,
three year period in the early 1800s. Many of these conflicts were
small-scale wars. Cowichans raided Chilliwacks, Lekwiltoks raided Katzie
villages, Kwantlens raided Musqueam villages, and so on.

 Even the vexatious Sto:lo fishing rights disputes that persist in the
Fraser Canyon, a controversial "internal" issue that Sto:lo politicians
generally keep from the public limelight, are explored in the atlas. Using
various diagrams and maps, the atlas treats the fishing-site disputes
openly, in the context of the breakdown of traditional dispute-resolution
mechanisms.

 A Sto:lo - Coast Salish Historical Atlas sheds light on matters that have
until now been considered private knowledge, and explores questions that for
too long have been considered too esoteric and complicated for the public to
understand. The atlas also accommodates the many nuances and contradictions
involved in the relationship between the Fraser Valley's aboriginal and
settler communities.

 The result is an unprecedented, balanced, rich and comprehensible
presentation of a people's history.




----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cleven <ironmtn at BIGFOOT.COM>
To: <CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 4:00 PM
Subject: New book: Sto:lo/Coast Salish Historical Atlas


> This is a preliminary post about a book I saw at Granville Books last
> night, which I'll probably get next week sometime and will post the full
> publication details then.  The title is as in the subject header and
> it's an intensive linguistic/toponymical geography and history of the
> Fraser-Straits; everything from the Ice Age onwards, and beautifully
> illstrated and mapped, with great write-ups.  Reminds me of the
> Historical Atlas of BC and the Pacific Northwest I posted about last
> year, except this one's _nicer_ and (hard to believe) far more
> detailed.  Lavish, even.  For linguists it has probably the most
> extensive compilation of the native toponymy that's in (readable) print,
> and I'd think that any Salishanist will want to have this on the
> bookshelf, and soon.  Apparently it's up for BC's Book of the Year Award
> (whatever it's called) and is likely to win.....
>
> MC