Academic literature on the topic 'Coast Salish Indians – Religion'

The Coast Salish Indians studied here have lived with pervasive financial insecurity. Most Indians have coped partly through preaching and practice of a collective ethic of sharing. Some with relatively high earned income have moved in the direction of a more narrow, competitive individualism. Those with social assistance incomes maintain a broad sphere of assistance with kin and community. Families who are strongly committed to Spirit Dancing and the Shaker Church keep alight the most broadly defined generosity towards kin and Indians in need.

Abstract The standard interpretation of Washington Territory’s “Indian War” of the mid-1850s is not only east-west in its orientation, it also leaves little room for Indian auxiliaries, let alone mercenaries-for-hire from the north Pacific coast. “Northern Indians” from what later became northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska provided crucial productive, reproductive, and military labor for early Euro-American settlers. Because Coast Salish communities on both sides of the border had experienced decades of raids and conflicts with various groups of northern Indians by the 1850s, Euro-Americans’ hiring of northern Indians in particular illustrates the importance of intra-Indian geopolitics to subsequent events. When placed in this larger context, the “Indian War” of 1855–56 in western Washington must be seen as part of a longer continuum of disputes involving distant Native groups, intra-Indian negotiations, and forms of Indigenous diplomacy. A closer look at how the key players involved attempted to manipulate these connections for their own purposes complicates our understandings of the military conflicts of the mid-1850s and reveals the significance of evolving Native-newcomer and intra-Indian relations in this transformative decade.

The opening of tobacco plantations in East Coast Sumatra in 1870 became a major factor in the creation of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in there. All the Malays there were Muslim, then the Europeans came with their Christianity, which was followed by most of the Batak people, the Indians brought Hinduism and Sikhism, and the Chinese brought Buddhism. East Coast Sumatra is a pluralistic region, but there has never been a conflict between ethnicities or religions. Very interesting. However, the reality of the religious life of the people at that time had never been revealed in detail. Furthermore, during the 1930 census it was recorded that there were 4.293 Europeans in Medan and 2.001 of them were women, but their presence in the religious sphere has not been exposed. Therefore, this study aims to narrate the image of colonial women in religion in East Coast Sumatra. The images of colonial women in this study are all forms of mental, spiritual, and daily behaviour expressed by women in religion, including the outward appearance that appears in women and their religious activities in East Coast Sumatra in the period 1870-1942. This study uses the historical method, and the primary data are the Dutch Colonial Government Report (verslag),Volkstelling 1930, maps, newspapers, bulletins and magazines, photographs depicting the religious life of the people of East Sumatra in the period 1870-1942.

This paper is a reflection on the ritual incorporation of ayahuasca, an Amazonian psychoactive ritual substance, by members of a Guarani Indian village on the Atlantic coast of the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Their shamanic leaders have adapted the use of this beverage into their ritual practices and recognize it as part of their culture and tradition. This process of appropriation is a result of the formation of a network that involves various actors, among them the Guarani Indians, members of Sacred Fire of Itzachilatlan, followers of the Brazilian ayahuasca religion Santo Daime, and a health team employed to provide primary attention to Indian communities. Based on this case study, we demonstrate that shamanisms today emerge out of specific political and historic contexts. If the concept of shamanism is useful as an analytical paradigm, it must be thought of as a dialogical category constructed through interaction between actors with diverse origins, discourses, and interests.

For the state of Washington's one-hundredth birthday, in 1989, Native peoples there decided to revive a distinctive mode of transportation—long-distance journeys by canoe—along with an entire culture associated with it. Born as the "Paddle to Seattle," during the past two decades these canoe journeys have become a summertime staple for Native peoples as well as for thousands of non-Indians who follow the "pullers" in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. The Tribal Canoe Journey has become a metaphor for community, drawing peoples together over a large area. The annual Canoe Journey also represents a revival of indigenous culture and, to some extent, indigenous languages. The canoe journeys (and the land-based events associated with them) might be compared with powwows in other areas. The carving of canoes has been revived, along with the structures of canoe families that maintain them, along with songs, clothing, and other aspects of traditional culture. The Tribal Canoe Journey is neither a race nor a contest, although it is something of a feat of physical endurance, recalling a time when canoes were one of the central attributes of Coast Salish cultures. Canoes were vital for the gathering of much of people's food, the conduct of social relations, and the waging of war. Like many maritime peoples around the world, seaborne transport framed culture and invoked deep spiritual beliefs in life and death. Canoe culture also teaches respect for ancestors' survival skills to city-bred youth, forging bonds between generations. Young people are learning how to get along with others and how to stay clean and sober during journeys in which they represent their peoples. The young people also learn how to deal with conflicts that arise from living in close quarters and pulling canoes for hours at a time, day after day. The Tribal Canoe Journey thus revives culture while sustaining and improving modern Native life in the Pacific Northwest.

Leland Donald, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, US$40). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 520 20616 9.George W. Dorsey, The Pawnee Mythology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £20.95). Pp. 546. ISBN 0 8032 6603 0.Frederic W. Gleach, Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £52.50). Pp. 241. ISBN 0 8032 2166 5.Richard G. Hardorff (ed.), Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £9.50). Pp. 211. ISBN 0 8032 7293 6.Michael E. Harkin, The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £38). Pp. 195. ISBN 0 8032 2379 X.Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £35, US$49.95). Pp. 224. ISBN 0 521 56172 8.Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £15.95). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 8032 9431 X.In the contemporary United States there are 556 American Indian groups in 400 nations. Given that survival story, the tired myths of the disappearing redman or wandering savage which have distorted our understandings of Indian history are being revised. The reasons for our nearly four-century-long gullibility are manifold. The religion of winners and losers, saints and sinners, combined effectively with the scientific racism inherent sine qua non in the secular beliefs of winners and losers expressed through Linnaean and Darwinian conceptions of order and evolution. After colonizers cast their imperial gaze through lenses made of the elastic ideology of “City Upon a Hill,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Young America,” and “White Man's Burden,” most Euro-Americans rationalized a history and present in survival of the fittest terms. By 1900, the near-holocaust of an estimated ten million Indians left only 200,000 survivors invisible in an overall population of 76 million. The 1990 census count of two million Native Americans affirms resilience not extinction.

Como nos séculos passados, os povos indígenas continuam resistindo para sobreviver em meio a uma sociedade preconceituosa que nega o direito de ser diferente. O presente trabalho versa sobre os indígenas Tabajara da Paraíba, expropriados do seu território, no litoral sul paraibano. Nos tempos hodiernos vivem num processo de etnogênese, reivindicando seus direitos e reelaborando suas tradições. A problemática do estudo se refere aos Tabajara fiéis à doutrina Protestante, que convivem com uma nova realidade: a de exteriorizar seus sinais diacríticos ou sua religiosidade Pentecostal. O estudo está fundamentado nos autores: Barcellos e Farias (2012; 2014), Mendonça (1989), Wright (2004), dentre outros. Utilizou-se da metodologia qualitativa para adentrar no universo de significados, crenças e valores desses indígenas. Foi usado na coleta de dados a observação participante e entrevistas abertas. O resultado da pesquisa revela as transformações ocorridas na vida desses indígenas, convertidos às denominações religiosas pentecostais após a diáspora ocorrida no século XIX. As in past centuries, indigenous peoples continue to resist to survive amid a prejudiced society that denies the right to be different. This paper deals with the ParaíbaTabajara Indians, dispossessed of their territory in the south coast of Paraiba. In modern times they live in ethnogenesis process, claiming their rights and reworking their traditions. The study of the problem relates to Tabajara faithful to Protestant doctrine, living with a new reality: to externalize their diacritics or his Pentecostal religion. The study is based on the authors: Barcellos and Farias (2012; 2014), Mendonça (1989), Wright (2004), among others. We used qualitative methods to enter the universe of meanings, beliefs and values ​​of these indigenous. It was used in data collection participant observation and open interviews. The search result shows the changes occurring in the lives of indigenous people converted to Pentecostal denominations after the diaspora occurred in the nineteenth century.

Full TextThe first law enacted in Canada to protect existing Aboriginal rights was section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.2 The first law in Canada to recognize the rights of non-human animals as anything other than property has yet to be enacted. The first Supreme Court of Canada (hereafter referred to as the Court) case to interpret section 35 was R. v. Sparrow.3 The 1990 case confirmed an Aboriginal right of the Musqueam peoples of British Columbia to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes. Since this precedent-setting case, many similar claims have been brought before the courts by way of the fluctuating legal space created by s.35. Many of these cases have been about establishing rights to fish4, hunt5, and trap non-human animals (hereafter referred to as animals). The Court has developed, and continues to develop tests to determine the existence and scope of Aboriginal rights. These tests primarily embody cultural, political and, to a surprisingly lesser degree, legal forces. One of the principal problems with these tests is that they privilege, through the western philosophical lens, the interests of humans. Animals are, at best, the resources over which ownership is being contested. The Euro-centric legal conceptualization of animals as 'resources' over which ownership can be exerted is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the relegation of animals solely to a utilitarian role is antithetical to Indigenous-animal relationships and therefore demonstrates one of the fundamental ways the Canadian legal system is ill equipped to give adequate consideration to Indigenous law. Second, failure to consider animals' inherent value and agency in this context reproduces the human-animal and culture-nature binaries that are at the root of many of western Euro-centric society's inequities. This paper argues that Aboriginal peoples' relationships with animals are a necessary, integral and distinctive part of their cultures6 and, therefore, these relationships and the actors within them are entitled to the aegis of s.35. Through the legal protection of these relationships, animals will gain significant protection as a corollary benefit. If the Court were to protect the cultural relationships between animals and Aboriginal groups, a precondition would be acceptance of Indigenous legal systems. Thus, this paper gives a brief answer to the question, what are Indigenous legal systems and why are animals integral to them? The Anishinabe (also known Ojibwe or Chippewa) are Indigenous peoples who have historically lived in the Great Lakes region. The Bruce Peninsula on Lake Huron is home to the Cape Croker Indian Reserve, where the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation live. The people of this First Nation identify as Anishinabe. The Anishinabek case of Nanabush v. Deer is a law among these people and is used throughout the paper as an example of Indigenous-animal relationships. Making the significant assumption that s.35 has the capacity to recognize Indigenous law, the subsequent section of the paper asks why we should protect these relationships and how that protection should be achieved. Finally, the paper concludes that both the ability of s.35 to recognize Indigenous-animal relationships, and the judicial and political will to grant such recognition, are unlikely. Indigenous-animal relationships are integral to the distinctive culture of the Anishinabek, however the courts would be hesitant to allow such an uncertain and potentially far-reaching right. This is not surprising given that such a claim by both Indigenous and animal groups would challenge the foundations upon which the Canadian legal system is based. There are many sensitive issues inherent in this topic. It should be noted the author is not of Indigenous ancestry, but is making every effort to learn about and respect the Indigenous legal systems discussed. While this paper focuses on a number of Anishinabek laws; it is neither a complete analysis of these practices, nor one that can be transferred, without adaptation, to other peoples. Finally, Indigenous peoples and animal rights and Indigenous law scholars, such as Tom Regan and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, respectively, may insist on an abolitionist approach to animal 'use' or reject the legitimacy of s.35 itself.7 These perspectives are worthy and necessary. This paper positions itself amongst these and other sources in order to reflect upon the timely and important issue of the legal status of Indigenous-animal relationships. I:WHAT ARE INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? The Law Commission of Canada defines a legal tradition as “a set of deeply rooted, historically conditioned attitudes about the nature of law, the role of law in the society and the polity, the proper organization and operation of a legal system, and the way law is or should be made, applied, studied, perfected and taught.”8 Indigenous legal traditions fit this description. They are living systems of beliefs and practices, and have been recognized as such by the courts.9 Indigenous practices developed into systems of law that have guided communities in their governance, and in their relationships amongst their own and other cultures and with the Earth.10 These laws have developed through stories, historical events that may be viewed as ‘cases,’ and other lived experiences. Indigenous laws are generally non-prescriptive, non-adversarial and non-punitive and aim to promote respect and consensus, as well as close connection with the land, the Creator, and the community. Indigenous laws are a means through which vital knowledge of social order within the community is transmitted, revived and retained. After European ‘settlement’ the influence of Indigenous laws waned. This was due in part to the state’s policies of assimilation, relocation and enfranchisement. 11 Despite these assaults, Indigenous legal systems have persevered; they continue to provide guidance to many communities, and are being revived and re-learned in others. For example, the Nisga’a’s legal code, Ayuuk, guides their communities and strongly informs legislation enacted under the Nisga’a Final Agreement, the first modern treaty in British Columbia.12 The land and jurisdiction claims of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations ultimately resulted in the Court’s decision in Delgamuukw,13 a landmark case that established the existence of Aboriginal title. The (overturned) BC Supreme Court’s statement in Delgamuukw14 reveals two of the many challenges in demonstrating the validity of Indigenous laws: “what the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en witnesses[es] describe as law is really a most uncertain and highly flexible set of customs which are frequently not followed by the Indians [sic] themselves.” The first challenge is that many laws are not in full practice, and therefore not as visible as they could be and once were. What the courts fail to acknowledge, however, is that the ongoing colonial project has served to stifle, extinguish and alter these laws. The second challenge is that the kind of law held and practiced by Indigenous peoples is quite foreign to most non-Indigenous people. Many Indigenous laws have animals as central figures. In Anishinabek traditional law, often the animals are the lawmakers15: they develop the legal principles and have agency as law givers. For instance, the Anishinabek case Nanabush v. Deer, Wolf , as outlined by Burrows, is imbued with legal principles, lessons on conduct and community governance, as well as ‘offenses’ and penalties. It is not a case that was adjudicated by an appointed judge in a courtroom, but rather one that has developed over time as a result of peoples’ relationships with the Earth and its inhabitants. An abbreviated summary of the case hints at these legal lessons: Nanabush plays a trick on a deer and deliberately puts the deer in a vulnerable position. In that moment of vulnerability, Nanabush kills the deer and then roasts its body for dinner. While he is sleeping and waiting for the deer to be cooked, the Wolf people come by and take the deer. Nanabush wakes up hungry, and out of desperation transforms into a snake and eats the brains out of the deer head. Once full, he is stuck inside the head and transforms back into his original shape, but with the deer head still stuck on. He is then chased and nearly killed by hunters who mistake him for a real deer. This case is set within the legal context of the Anishinabek’s treaty with deer. In signing the treaty, the people were reminded to respect beings in life and death and that gifts come when beings respect each other in interrelationships.16 Nanabush violated the rights of the deer and his peoples’ treaty with the deer. He violated the laws by taking things through trickery, and by causing harm to those he owed respect. Because his actions were not in accordance with Anishinabek legal principles, he was punished: Nanabush lost the thing he was so desperately searching for, and he ended up nearly being killed. This case establishes two lessons. The first is that, like statutory and common law, with which Canadians are familiar, Indigenous law does not exist in isolation. Principles are devised based on multiple teachings, pre- vious rules and the application of these rules to facts. That there are myriad sources of Indigenous law suggests that the learning of Indigenous law would require substantial effort on the part of Canadian law-makers.17 The second is that animals hold an important place in Indigenous law, and those relationships with animals – and the whole ‘natural’ world – strongly inform the way they relate to the Earth. II: CAN CANADIAN LAW ACCEPT INDIGENOUS LEGAL SYSTEMS? If there were a right recognized under s.35 concerning the Indigenous-animal relationship, what would it look like? Courts develop legal tests to which the facts of each case are applied, theoretically creating a degree of predictability as to how a matter will be judged. Introduced in Sparrow, and more fully developed in Van der Peet, a ‘test’ for how to assess a valid Aboriginal right has been set out by the Court. Summarized, the test is: “in order to be an Aboriginal right an activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture of the Aboriginal group claiming the right.”18 There are ten, differently weighted factors that a court will consider in making this assessment. The right being ‘tested’ in this discussion is the one exemplified in Nanabush v. Deer: the ability of Indigenous peoples to recognize and practice their laws, which govern relationships, including death, with deer and other animals. The courts have agreed that a generous, large and liberal construction should be given to Indigenous rights in order to give full effect to the constitutional recognition of the distinctiveness of Aboriginal culture. Still, it is the courts that hold the power to define rights as they conceive them best aligning with Canadian society19; this is one way that the Canadian state reproduces its systems of power over Indigenous peoples.20 The application of the Aboriginal right exemplified in Nanbush v. Deer to the Sparrow and Van der Peet tests would likely conclude that the Anishinabek do have an integral and distinctive relationship with animals. However, due to the significant discretion of the Court on a number of very subjective and politically sensitive factors, it is uncertain that the Nanabush v. Deer case would ‘pass’ Van der Peet’s required ten factors.21 This is indicative of the structural restraints that s.35 imposes. 22 The questions it asks impair its ability to capture and respect the interrelationships inherent in Indigenous peoples’ interactions with animals. For example, the Court will characterize hunting or fishing as solely subsistence, perhaps with a cultural element. Shin Imai contends these activities mean much more: “To many…subsistence is a means of reaffirming Aboriginal identity by passing on traditional knowledge to future generations. Subsistence in this sense moves beyond mere economics, encompassing the cultural, social and spiritual aspects for the communities.”23 Scholar Kent McNeil concludes that: “regardless of the strengths of legal arguments in favour of Indigenous peoples, there are limits to how far the courts […] are willing to go to correct the injustices caused by colonialism and dispossession.”24 It is often not the legal principles that determine outcomes, but rather the extent to which Indigenous rights can be reconciled with the history of settlement without disturbing the current economic and political structure of the dominant culture. III:WHY PROTECT THE ANIMAL-INDIGENOUS RELATIONSHIP? Legally protecting animal-Indigenous relationships offers symbiotic, mutually respectful benefits for animals and for the scope of Aboriginal rights that can be practiced. For instance, a protected relationship would have indirect benefits for animals’ habitat and right to life: it would necessitate protecting the means necessary, such as governance of the land, for realization of the right. This could include greater conservation measures, more contiguous habitat, enforcement of endangered species laws, and, ideally, a greater awareness and appreciation by humans of animals and their needs. Critical studies scholars have developed the argument that minority groups should not be subject to culturally biased laws of the mainstream polity.24 Law professor Maneesha Deckha points out that animals, despite the central role they play in a lot of ‘cultural defences,’ have been excluded from our ethical consideration. Certainly, the role of animals has been absent in judicial consideration of Aboriginal rights.26 Including animals, Deckha argues, allows for a complete analysis of these cultural issues and avoids many of the anthropocentric attitudes inherent in Euro-centric legal traditions. In Jack and Charlie27 two Coast Salish men were charged with hunting deer out of season. They argued that they needed to kill a deer in order to have raw meat for an Aboriginal religious ceremony. The Court found that killing the deer was not part of the ceremony and that there was insufficient evidence to establish that raw meat was required. This is a case where a more nuanced consideration of the laws and relationships with animals would have resulted in a more just application of the (Canadian) law and prevented the reproduction of imperialist attitudes. A criticism that could be lodged against practicing these relationships is that they conflict with the liberty and life interests of animals.28 Theoretically, if Indigenous laws are given the legal and political room to fully operate, a balance between the liberty of animals and the cultural and legal rights of Indigenous peoples can be struck.29 Indeed, Indigenous peoples’ cultural and legal concern for Earth is at its most rudimentary a concern for the land, which is at the heart of the challenge to the Canadian colonial system. If a negotiated treaty was reached, or anti-cruelty and conservation laws were assured in the Indigenous peoples’ self government system, then Canadian anti-cruelty30 and conservation laws,31 the effectiveness of which are already questionable, could be displaced in recognition of Indigenous governance.32 Indigenous peoples in Canada were – and are, subject to imposed limitations – close to the environment in ways that can seem foreign to non-Indigenous people.33 For example, some origin stories and oral histories explain how boundaries between humans and animals are at times absent: Animal-human beings like raven, coyote and rabbit created them [humans] and other beings. People …acted with respect toward many animals in expectation of reciprocity; or expressed kinship or alliance with them in narratives, songs, poems, parables, performances, rituals, and material objects. 34 Furthering or reviving these relationships can advance the understanding of both Indigenous legal systems and animal rights theory. Some animal rights theorists struggle with how to explain the cultural construction of species difference: Indigenous relationships with animals are long standing, lived examples of a different cultural conception of how to relate to animals and also of an arguably healthy, minimally problematic way to approach the debate concerning the species divide.35 A key tenet of animal-Indigenous relationships is respect. Shepard Krech posits that Indigenous peoples are motivated to obtain the necessary resources and goals in ‘proper’ ways: many believe that animals return to the Earth to be killed, provided that hunters demonstrate proper respect.36 This demonstrates a spiritual connection, but there is also a concrete connection between Indigenous peoples and animals. In providing themselves with food and security, they ‘manage’ what Canadian law calls ‘resources.’37 Because of the physical nature of these activities, and their practical similarity with modern ‘resource management,’ offering this as ‘proof’ of physical connection with animals and their habitat may be more successful than ‘proving’ a spiritual relationship. Finally, there are health reasons that make the Indigenous-animal relationship is important. Many cultures have come to depend on the nutrients they derive from particular hunted or fished animals. For example, nutrition and physical activity transitions related to hunting cycles have had negative impacts on individual and community health.38 This shows the multidimensionality of hunting, the significance of health, and, by extension, the need for animal ‘resources’ to be protected. IV: HOW SHOULD WE PROTECT THESE ABORIGINAL RIGHTS? If the Anishinabek and the deer ‘win’ the constitutional legal test (‘against’ the state) and establish a right to protect their relationships with animals, what, other than common law remedies,39 would follow? Below are ideas for legal measures that could be taken from the human or the animal perspective, or both, where benefits accrue to both parties. If animals had greater agency and legal status, their needs as species and as individuals could have a meaningful place in Canadian common and statutory law. In Nanabush v. Deer, this would mean that the deer would be given representation and that legal tests would need to be developed to determine the animals’ rights and interests. Currently the courts support the view that animals can be treated under the law as any other inanimate item of property. Such a legal stance is inconsistent with a rational, common-sense view of animals,40 and certainly with Anishinabek legal principles discussed herein.41 There are ongoing theoretical debates that inform the practical questions of how animal equality would be achieved: none of these in isolation offers a complete solution, but combined they contribute to the long term goal. Barsh and James Sákéj Youngblood Henderson advocate an adoption of the reasoning in the Australian case Mabo v. Queensland,42 where whole Aboriginal legal systems were imported intact into the common law. Some principles that Canada should be following can also be drawn from international treaties that Canada has or should have signed on to.43 Another way to seek protection from the human perspective is through the freedom of religion and conscience section of the Charter. Professor John Borrows constructs a full argument for this, and cites its challenges, in Living Law on a Living Earth: Aboriginal Religion, Law and the Constitution.44 The strongest, but perhaps most legally improbable, way to protect the animal- Indigenous relationship is for Canada to recognize a third, Indigenous order of government (in addition to provincial and federal), where all three orders are equal and inform one another’s laws. This way, Indigenous laws would have the legal space to fully function and be revived. Endowing Indigenous peoples with the right to govern their relationships would require a great acquiescence of power by governments and a commitment to the establishment and maintenance of healthy self-government in Indigenous communities. Louise Mandell offers some reasons why Canada should treat Aboriginal people in new ways, at least one of which is salient to the third order of government argument: To mend the [E]arth, which must be done, governments must reassess the information which the dominant culture has dismissed. Some of that valuable information is located in the oral histories of Aboriginal Peoples. This knowledge will become incorporated into decisions affecting the [E]arth’s landscape when Aboriginal Peoples are equal partners in decisions affecting their territories.45 V: CONCLUSION A legal system that does not have to justify its existence or defend its worth is less vulnerable to challenges.46 While it can be concluded that s.35 has offered some legal space for Indigenous laws and practices, it is too deeply couched in Euro-centric legal traditions and the anthropocentric cultural assumptions that they carry. The most effective strategy for advancing Indigenous laws and culture, that would also endow many animals with greater agency, and relax the culture-nature, human-animal binaries, is the formal recognition of a third order of government. Lisa Chartrand explains that recognition of legal pluralism would be a mere affirmation of legal systems that exist, but which are stifled: “…this country is a multijuridical state, where the distinct laws and rules of three systems come together within the geographic boundaries of one political territory.” 47 Revitalizing Indigenous legal systems is and will be a challenging undertaking. Indigenous communities must reclaim, define and understand their own traditions: “The loss of culture and traditions caused by the historic treatment of Aboriginal communities makes this a formidable challenge for some communities. Equally significant is the challenge for the Canadian state to create political and legal space to accommodate revitalized Indigenous legal traditions and Aboriginal law-making.”48 The project of revitalizing Indigenous legal traditions requires the commitment of resources sufficient for the task, and transformative change to procedural and substantive law. The operation of these laws within, or in addition to, Canadian law would of course cause widespread, but worthwhile controversy. In Animal Bodies, Cultural Justice49 Deckha argues that an ethical relationship with the animal Other must be established in order realize cultural and animal rights. This paper explores and demonstrates the value in finding legal space where cultural pluralism and respect for animals can give rise to the practice of Indigenous laws and the revitalization of animal-Indigenous relationships. As Borrows writes: “Anishinabek law provides guidance about how to theorize, practice and order our association with the [E]arth, and could do so in a way that produces answers that are very different from those found in other sources.”50 (see PDF for references)

CairnsIn Denmark, the term stenkast (a ‘stone throw’) is used for cairns – stone heaps that have accumulated in places where it was the tradition to throw a stone. A kast (a ‘throw’) would actually be a more correct term, as sometimes the heaps consist of sticks, branches, heather, or peat, rather than stones – in short, whichever was at hand at that particular place. A kast could also consist of both sticks and stones.The majority of the known Danish cairns were presented by August F. Schmidt in 1929. Since then, numerous new ones have been discovered, and we now know of around 80 cairns, cf. the list on page 264 and map Fig. 3. It appears from the descriptions that the majority – a total of 65 – are actual cairns, 14 are heaps of branches, whereas two are described as either peat or heather heaps.Geographically, the majority – a total of 53 – are found in Jutland, with most in North and Central Jutland (Fig. 3). Fifteen are known from Zealand, four from Lolland, four from Funen, and five from Bornholm.Topographically, they are found – naturally – where people would normally be passing: next to roads and in connection with sacred springs, chapels, and places of execution. However, they also occur in less busy places, in woods, along the coast, on moors, and on small islands.A few cairns have been preserved because they are still “active” as reminiscences of customs and habits of past times. This is the case of the cairn called Røsen (“røse” being another Danish term for a cairn) on Trøstrup Moor (no. 45, Fig. 1-2), of Heksens Grav (“The Witch’s Grave”) (no. 27, Fig. 4), and of the branch heap in the wood of Slotved Skov (no. 14, Fig. 5), which was recently revived after having been almost forgotten. Other cairns are maintained as prehistoric relics, as is the case of the branch heap by the name of Stikhoben (“The Stick Heap;” no. 10, Fig. 6) and Kjelds Grav (“Kjeld’s Grave,” no. 59, Fig. 7). Although heaps of stones and branches are included in the Danish Protection of Nature Act as relics of the past worthy of protection, so far merely the two latter have been listed.Whereas the remaining ’throws’ of organic material have probably disintegrated, it is still possible under favourable conditions to retrieve those made from more enduring materials – unless they have been demolished – even if they have practically sunk into oblivion (Figs. 8-10).The oldest known cairn is almost 500 years old. It was situated by the ford Præstbjerg Vad in Vinding parish near the Holstebro-Ribe highroad. Tradition says that the stone heap came into existence as a memorial of a priest in Hanbjerg, who died in the first half of the 16th century following a fall with his horse.Such legends of origin are connected with most of the Danish cairns. They usually tell of some unhappy or alarming happening supposed to have occurred at the place in question. However, they are often so vague and stereotype that they can only rarely be dated or put into a historical context. Indeed, on closer examination several of them turn out to be travelling legends. Apart from the legend of the murdered tradesman, they comprise the legend of the exorcised farmhand and that of the three sisters, who were murdered by three robbers, who turned out to be their own brothers. The latter legend, which is also known from a folksong, is connected to the so-called Varper on the high moor in Pedersker parish on Bornholm (no. 7). Until the early 20th century, it was the custom to maintain these cairns by putting back stones that had fallen down and adorn them with green sprigs. Early folklorists interpreted this as a tradition going back to an old sacrificial ritual, although the custom also seems to have had a pure practical purpose, as these stone heaps were originally cairns marking the road across inland Bornholm.A special group of the Danish cairns are connected with the tradition that someone is buried underneath them, such as a body washed ashore, a murdered child from a clandestine childbirth, a murdered person, several persons killed in a fight, an exorcised farmhand, a suicide, a murderer buried on his scene of crime, or witches and murderers buried at the place of execution. In all these cases, the throwing of a stone was supposed to protect the passers-by against the dead, who was buried in unconsecrated grounds and thus, according to public belief, haunted the spot. Another far less frequent explanation was that the stone was thrown in order to achieve a good journey or luck at the market. In some places, the traveller would throw the stone while shouting a naughty word or in other ways showing his disgust with the dead witch, criminal, or infanticide buried in that particular place. In rather a lot of the cases, as explained by the context, the cairn was merely a memorial to some unhappy occurrence, and the stone was thrown in memory of the deceased.In an article on Norwegian cairns written by the folklorist Svale Solheim, the author attached importance to achieving a clear picture of the position of the cairns (kastrøysarne) in the landscape. A closer examination showed that almost all were situated by the side of old roads – between farms and settlements, through forests, or across mountains – in short, where people would often walk. “The cairns follow the road as the shadow follows the man,” Solheim writes and gives an example of an old road, which had been relocated, and where the cairns had been moved to the new road. Furthermore, the position of the cairns along the roads turned out to not be accidental; they were always found at places that were in one way or other interesting to the travellers. This is why Solheim thought that the stone heaps mostly had the character of cairns or road stones thrown together at certain places for a pure practical purpose. “For instance,” he writes, “we find stone heaps at places along the roads where there is access to fine drinking water. These would also be natural places for a rest, and numerous stone heaps are situated by old resting places. And so it came natural to mark these places by piling up a stone heap, and of course it would be in every traveller’s interest to maintain the heaps.”The older folklore saw the tradition as a relic of pagan rituals and conceptions. As a reaction to this, Solheim and others took a tradition-functionalistic view, according to which most folklore, as seen in the light of the cultural conditions, was considered rational and the rest could be explained as pseudo beliefs, for instance educational fiction and tomfoolery.However, if we turn to our other neighbouring country, Sweden, it becomes more difficult to explain away that we are dealing with sacrificial rites, as here, the most used dialectal term for the stone and branch piles were offerhög, offervål, or offerbål (“offer” is the Swedish word for sacrifice), and when someone threw stones, sticks, or money on the pile, it was called “sacrificing.” An article from 1929 by the anthropologist Sigurd Erixon is especially interesting. Here, he documents how – apart from the cairns with a death motive (largely corresponding to the Danish cases mentioned above), Sweden had both good luck and misfortune averting sacrificial stone throwing (Fig. 13).Whereas the sacrificial cairns connected to deaths were evenly distributed across the whole country, Erixon found that the “good luck cairns” occurred mainly in environments associated with mountain pasture farming or fishing. Based on this observation and desultory comparative studies, Erixon formed the hypothesis that the “good luck cairns” represented an older and more primitive culture than the cairns associated with sacrifices to the dead. “The first,” he writes, “belong rather more to the work area of hunting, fishing, and animal husbandry, roads, and environments, whereas the death sacrificial cairns seem to be closer related to the culture of agriculture.”The problem with the folkloristic material is that most of it is based on reminiscences. In order to study the living tradition, one must turn elsewhere. However, as demonstrated by James Frazer in “The Golden Bough,” this is no problem, as the custom of throwing stones in a pile is known from all over the world, from Africa, Europe, and Asia to Australia and America (Fig. 14).Customs last, their meanings perish – the explanation why, for instance, one must throw a stone onto a stone pile, may be forgotten, or reinterpreted, or get a completely new explanation. The custom probably goes back further than any known religion. However, these have all tried to tally the stone throwing with their “theology.” In Ancient Greece, the stone piles by the roadsides were furnished with statues of Hermes (in the shape of a post with a head and sometimes a phallus). As an escort for the dead, Hermes became the god of the travellers, and just as the gods had thrown stones after Hermes when he was accused of murdering Argus, people could now do the same.With the introduction of Christianity, the throwing of stones was denounced as superstition, and a standard question for the penitents in the so-called books of penance was: “Have you carried stones to a heap?” All across Europe, crosses were planted in the stone heaps – which must have caused problems as it was considered a deadly sin to throw stones after a cross. In the culture connected with pilgrimage, the cairns got a new meaning as markers of important places. For instance, enormous stone piles outside Santiago de Compostela mark the location where pilgrims first spotted the towers of the city’s cathedral (Fig. 15). At many places, the cairns were consecrated to saints, so that now people would carry stones to them as a sacrifice or a penance. The jews also adopted the custom. The Old Testament mentions stone heaps gathered over murdered persons or placed around a larger stone, as the “witness dolmen” built by Jacob and his people to commemmorate his pact with Laban, his father-in-law. However, there is no mention of throwing new stones onto these heaps. However, the latter occurs in the still practiced Jewish custom of placing stones on the gravestones when Jews visit the graves of their dead (Fig. 16).Stone throwing in a Muslim context is illustrated by Edward Westermarck’s large investigation of rituals and popular belief with the Berbers and the Arabs in Marocco in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, it only comprises cairns connected to Muslim saints, but even with this limitation, the investigation gives an idea of the variety of applications. If the stone heap is situated near the grave of a saint, it may mark the demarcation of the sacred area, or it may have come into existence because the wayfaring have a habit of throwing a stone when they pass the grave of a saint, which they do not have time to visit. If the heap is situated on a ridge, it is usually an indication of the spot on a certain pilgrim route where the sacred places become visible for the first time. Other stone heaps mark the places where a holy man or woman is supposed to have been buried, or rested, or camped some time. By a large crossroads outside Andira, Westermark was shown a stone heap, which indicated that this place was the gathering place for saints, who met there at nighttime. The sacred cairns in Marocco are often easily recognized by the fact that they are chalked white at intervals. At some places, the cairns may also be marked with a pole with a white flag symbolising the sacred character of the place.Even Buddhism struggled against the stone heaps, especially in the form of the oboo cult, which was repeatedly reformered and reinterpreted by Buddhist missionaries. And in early 17th-century South America, the converted aristocratic Inca, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, made sarcastic remarks about Indians, who “even now” had preserved the bad habit of [sacrificing to] stone heaps (apachitas).”Historically, the Danish cairns can be documented from the 16th century, but the tradition may well be older. Seen in a larger, comparative context, heaps of stones and branches represent an ancient tradition rooted in the deepest cultural layers of mankind. Thus, as cultural relics, they are certainly worthy of preservation, and we ought to put a lot of effort into preserving the few still existing.Whereas it will probably be difficult to establish possible prehistoric stone heaps using archaeology, the possibilities of documenting hitherto unknown stone piles from historical times is considerably higher, if special topographic conditions are taken into consideration. In connection with small mounds on tidal meadows or stone heaps along stretches of old roads and by fords, old places of execution, springs, and grave mounds used secondarily for gallows, one should pay attention to such structures, which may well prove to be covering a grave.In a folklore context, the Danish stone heaps must be characterized as mainly “death sacrifice throws,” whereas only few were “good luck throws.” Due to the limited size of the country, and early farming, cairns and other road marks have not played the same role as a help for travellers and traffic as it did in our neighbouring countries with their huge waste areas.If the stone piles are considered part of a thousands of years old chain of traditions, they belong to the oldest human “monuments.” The global distribution of the phenomenon endows it with a mystery, which, during a travel in Mongolia, Haslund-Christensen caught with a stroke of genius: “We stood before an oboo, one of the largest I have ever seen...one of those mysterious places of sacrifice which are still secretly preserved, built of stone cast upon stone through many generations; a home of mystery which has its roots in the origin of the people itself, and whose religious significance goes much further back in time than any of the religions in the modern world.”Gustav HenningsenDansk Folkemindesamling Jesper LaursenMoesgård Museum Translated by Annette Lerche Trolle

This study addresses the question of the nature of indigenous people's connection to the land, and the implications of this for articulating these connections in legal arenas where questions of Aboriginal title and land claims are at issue. The idea of 'place' is developed, based in a phenomenology of dwelling which takes profound attachments to home places as shaping and being shaped by ontological orientation and social organization. In this theory of the 'senses of place', the author emphasizes the relationships between meaning and power experienced and embodied in place, and the social systems of property and territory that forms indigenous land tenure systems. To explore this theoretical notion of senses of place, the study develops a detailed ethnography of a Coast Salish Aboriginal community on southeast Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Through this ethnography of dwelling, the ways in which places become richly imbued with meanings and how they shape social organization and generate social action are examined. Narratives with Coast Salish community members, set in a broad context of discussing land claims, provide context for understanding senses of place imbued with ancestors, myth, spirit, power, language, history, property, territory and boundaries. The author concludes in arguing that by attending to a theorized understanding of highly local senses of place, nuanced conceptions of indigenous relationships to land which appreciate indigenous relations to land in their own terms can be articulated.

Narratives serve many functions within a given cultural group. As well as reflecting and transmitting the social values of that group, narratives provide children with a cognitive framework that is an important factor in the learning process. Although the structure of narratives has been described for mainstream children, there is some debate as to whether different cultures share the same narrative structure. A culturally-based difference in narrative structure may contribute to the fact that Native Indian children (as well as children from other minority cultures) are overrepresented among those children who have difficulty in school. The present study set out to investigate whether there was a discernable difference in the structure of narratives told by five Coast Salish children aged 5;0 -8;6 and those told by mainstream children reported in the narrative development research literature. Two types of narratives (personal experience and fictional) were collected and analyzed according to three analysis procedures: high point analysis, which emphasizes evaluation of events; episodic analysis, which emphasizes goal-based action; and poetic analysis, which emphasizes the poetic form of the narratives. The high point analysis revealed that the Coast Salish children ordered events in their stories in a different order than mainstream children do. Both the high point and the episodic analyses showed that the Coast Salish children expressed relationships between events implicitly more frequently than mainstream children. The poetic analysis was the most revealing of potential intercultural differences. This analysis revealed that falling intonation, grammatic closure, lexical markers and shifts in perspective (reference, action, focused participant, time frame, comment, etc.) defined structural units in the narratives of the Coast Salish children. This evidence of structural unit markers was consistent with predictions based on research by Scollon & Scollon (1981, 1984). The results of this investigation have implications for educators and speech-language pathologists in their interaction with Native Indian children. In addition, the results provide a useful indication of the necessary considerations and appropriate procedures for carrying out a more focused study of the narratives of a larger group of Native Indian children.
Medicine, Faculty of
Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of
Graduate

This thesis describes the aboriginal and contemporary social organization of the Coast Salish people of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington State, with a focus on the Squamish Nation whose Reserves are situated in North Vancouver and the Howe Sound area. It is based on field research undertaken over a 30-year period and on published and unpublished sources. The thesis explores the construction of kinship and social groups among the Coast Salish, and the transformation of these relationships over time and in various historical circumstances, from the mid-19th century to the present day. Drawing upon the theoretical approaches of William Davenport (1959), Raymond Firth (1963) and Anthony Cohen (1985), among others, the thesis discusses key components of Coast Salish social organization and identity, including a group's contrasting identity and relation to the groups within its ambit of comparison, the association of specific social units with territory, and the expression of status in both traditional and contemporary society. Specific findings document a shift to nuclear family households, the adoption of English kinship terms, the development of hereditary and elected leadership, and the emergence of the Tribe and the First Nation as primary symbols of identity in the 20th century. Some current issues resulting from the impact of change are examined in the context of naming ceremonies and disputes over inherited property, including ancestral names. The thesis argues that the diversity and complexity of neither the traditional nor transformed expressions of Coast Salish social organization find congruence with models of aboriginal society being deployed by contemporary Courts and Treaty negotiators. Issues of territorial "overlap" presently impeding treaty negotiation among BC's Coast Salish peoples were nevertheless predictable, for like some of the world's other cognatic societies, the Coast Salish could hold discrete notions of identity simultaneously. In conclusion, the thesis examines briefly the application to the Coast Salish of Lévi-Strauss' "House-society" as a specific form of social organization.

This thesis examines the impacts of indigenous dispossession from lands and resources by utilizing a concept in ecology, that of ecological keystone species, and extending it to species that play a key, characterizing role in a particular culture or society. A storytelling methodology is used to determine the presence of cultural keystones in stories and place names of Tla'amin peoples, a Northern Coast Salish group whose traditional territory is located along the coast 130 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia. I extend the storytelling methodology to encompass film and video projects that exhibit characteristics of Fourth World Cinema and discuss how such films can be used to empower indigenous communities and reclaim cultural and political rights.

Coast Salish coiled basketry has been a much-neglected area of research. Previous investigations into this topic have been primarily concerned with geo-cultural distributions, and discussions pertaining to stylistic attributes. In recent years several scholars have turned their attention to the topic of Salish weavings, but they have focused their efforts quite narrowly on textiles made from wool and other similar fibres to the exclusion of weaving techniques such as basketry which utilise local roots and barks. This thesis will focus exclusively on one type of Salish basketry - coiled basketry. In this thesis I explore different ways of identifying, or "knowing", Coast Salish coiled cedar root basketry. I specifically focus on Sto:lo basketry and identify three ways in which Sto:lo basket makers "know" these objects. First I discuss the Halkomelem terminology and what insights it provides to indigenous classification systems. Secondly, I situate coiled basketry in a broader Coast Salish weaving complex in order to discuss how basketry is influenced by other textile arts. This also enables me to explore how Sto:lo weavers identify a well-made object. In the final section I discuss ownership of designs by individuals and their families. This research draws primarily from interviews conducted with Sto:lo basket makers between May and September 2000 in their communities and at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. It is supplemented by interviews with basket makers from other Salish communities and by the ethnographic literature on this topic.

This thesis focuses on the production and display of weavings made by a small number of Musqueam women, who in the 1980s began weaving in the tradition of their ancestors. It addresses the way in which these weavings, positioned throughout Vancouver and worn in public settings, build a visual presence to counter the exclusion of Coast Salish cultural representations from the public construction of history in Vancouver and the discourse of Northwest Coast art. The Vancouver International Airport and the Museum of Anthropology at the University o f British Columbia both share with Musqueam a history of place. A distinct relationship fostered between Museum staff and members of the Musqueam community has yielded several exhibits since the first, Hands of Our Ancestors: The Revival of Weaving at Musqueam, opened in 1986. The presence of Musqueam material at the Museum is part of an extensive history of interaction and negotiation between Canadian museums and the cultural communities whose histories, traditions and material culture are represented - a history which encompasses issues of representation, authorship and authority. The Vancouver International Airport is also situated on Musqueam traditional territory. Designed by representatives from the Musqueam Cultural Committee and the Airport project team, the international arrivals area features works of contemporary Musqueam artists which are intended to create a sense of place with an emphasis on the distinctiveness of its location. Travelers cross several thresholds in the terminal - the sequence o f these crossings carefully choreographed so that deplaning passengers pass from the non-space of international transience to a culturally specific space marked by Musqueam's cultural representations, and then past Customs into Canada. Certain incidents at these sites indicate that visibility and self-representation do not in themselves answer the problems of power and history. When the Museum of Anthropology hosted a meeting for leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Community in 1997, a newly implemented protocol agreement between Musqueam and the Museum was broken; and in a number of instances, achievements at the Airport have also been impaired. Despite these limits, weavings are not examples of token native inclusion as some critics argue. Rather, they are cultural representations strategically deployed by the Musqueam community. Enlarged from traditional blankets to monumental hangings, these weavings participate with other more recognized monumental Northwest Coast forms. They are visual, public signifiers of Musqueam identity which, without violating boundaries between public and private knowledge, carry messages from the community to a broader audience - messages intended to mark Musqueam's precedence in Vancouver's past as well as to claim visibility in the present.

The concern of this thesis is the position of people of alternative genders in Coast Salish culture, not only in the past, but in the present. How were individuals with such a difference treated? What forces constrained them? What factors afforded them opportunity? Were such genders even recognized? With these questions in mind, field work was conducted with the permission of the Std: Id Nation throughout the summer of 1998. This paper is based on interviews conducted then and subsequent interviews with people from other Coast Salish groups. In addition, local ethnographic materials—with reference to field notes whenever possible—and traditional stories were analyzed from the perspective of Coast Salish epistemology. Alternative genders need to be understood foremost in the cultural contexts in which they occur, only then can comparisons proceed from a secure foundation. Research revealed a paradoxical situation. Oral traditions in which the alternately gendered are despised, occur side-by-side with traditions in which such people were honoured for the special powers they possessed. Individuals and families operated in the space generated by this paradox, playing the "serious games" to which Ortner alludes (1996:12-13). The absence of a "master narrative" in Coast Salish culture accounts for some, but not all of these contradictions. Equally relevant are persistent patterns of secrecy, personal autonomy, kin solidarity, differential status, and differential gender flexibility that both restrict the social field and offer stress points that were, and are, manipulated in individual and collective strategies. Given a world view in which transformation was the norm, and in which the disadvantaged could become powerful overnight by revealing the power they had hidden, some alternatively gendered people were able to maximize their potential and become significant forces. No formal roles offered sanction, instead an ad hoc approach marked the response to alternative genders and the outcome rested on the position of the individual and her/his family, and their ability to maneuver within multiple constraints. It was this potential to transform a stigmatized status into an honoured role that made the position of the alternatively gendered paradoxical.

In the study of the economic and labour history of the West Coast Native people of British Columbia most research has centered on activities such as fishing, farming and forestry. This thesis turns the attention from what was primarily men's work in the dominant society to the Coast Salish wool working industry where women worked with the help of their children and husbands. I examine the significant economic and cultural contribution Coast Salish woolworkers had on West Coast society, the meeting place woolworkers' sweaters provided between the Coast Salish and the newcomers and the changes which took place in the industry during the last century. This story includes many voices most of which are recorded in newspapers, correspondence and journals, and in the memories of those that lived and worked in the industry.

Abstract Successive colonial interventions in Nicaragua by Spain, Britain, and the United States left a legacy of chronic domestic instability. Throughout the 1980s, one of the surrogate conflicts of the Cold War pitted the Soviet-supported Sandinista government against the U.S.-backed contras. Sometimes developing in parallel to that confrontation, sometimes intersecting it was a different type of conflict. The Sandinistas, upon coming to power in 1979, had failed to comprehend the culture of the Indians of the East Coast and had infringed on their sovereignty. Many Indians fled to neighboring Honduras and Costa Rica from which they waged a war of resistance, a fight for regional autonomy from the Sandinista government.