Дисертації з теми "Coast Salish Indians – Medicine"

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.

In this thesis I investigate social processes that motivate the contemporary reproduction and public dissemination of older Central Coast Salish spindle whorls. In a case study, I develop a cultural biography of spindle whorls to examine how material culture produced by past generations informs contemporary activity. Visual materials, first- and third-person accounts and writings in three areas—material culture, the social nature of art and colonialism—are drawn together to demonstrate that spindle whorl production and circulation is grounded in social and historical contingencies specific to Central Coast Salish First Nations. I propose that in using spindle whorls, Central Coast Salish people are drawing on the past to strengthen their position within current circumstances.

Landscape is a medium of expression and a reflection of the beliefs of the people who inhabit it. It carries symbolic meanings that emerge from the values by which people define themselves; values grounded in culture. These symbols stem from elements of the natural environment, stories passed on through generations, or from experiences interacting with others. The indigenous peoples of Canada have a culture rich in traditional art, ceremony, and sustainable development and holistic integration of landscape. Contemporary First Nation culture draws from this past to inform the future. This phenomenon exemplifies the necessity for cultural expression in First Nation landscapes of today. The Semiahmoo First Nation in Lower Mainland British Columbia is a Coast Salish group occupying approximately 380 acres of land on the Pacific coastline. River and estuarine habitats, significant species richness and dense vegetation characterize the area and identify the primary motive for Semiahmoo traditional encampment on its shores. Changes in the past century have included colonial settlement to the region, periods of industrial and resource economies, a decrease in band population and subsequent decline in cultural practices. Current increasing recreation and development interests have created urgency for the reawakening of cultural expression in the landscape. Initial literature research about First Nations in Northwest Canada and a biophysical analysis provided introductory information, followed by community discussions which provided a deeper understanding of the people and of the place. A design vocabulary of traditional and contemporary elements was composed to guide and unify the program and spatial components of the design. The resulting design focuses on the public realm of the Reserve clearly defining Semiahmoo identity and sense of place. Land use issues were addressed and delineated public and private areas, ecological enhancements and displayed potential for growth on the site. The design respects the bicultural interface of the Reserve while providing cultural and environmental education. The First Nation value system possesses a tangible and spiritual quality; rooted in the creatures and elements of their surroundings. Expression of the Semiahmoo peoples' beliefs and values in the landscape enriches the experiential qualities of the place and reverence for its past and future.

This ethnographic research project examines the re-creation, performance and dissemination of identity through performance (storytelling, song, and dance) at a tourist site, Hiwus Feasthouse. In general, this thesis examines how the Salish negotiate meaning and significance through performance. The overall objective is to explore what Hiwus, as a site for creating and performing identity, means to the Coast Salish people who work there. This thesis demonstrates how the Salish at Hiwus have a great deal of agency in terms of the content of performances, unlike many other tourist sites where the corporation often controls the program. I suggest that the Salish employees express layers of a "meshed identity" - local, ethnic-tribal, Canadian, and pan-Indian - at different times throughout the performances. I also suggest that the First Nations people at Hiwus deconstruct the "imaginary Indian" via performance and valorize their own re-imagination of history and identity. I propose that they do this by drawing on Salish epistemology and world-views. In particular, I demonstrate how Salish understandings of "place" and the use of a "ceremonial framework" at Hiwus provide the Salish a way of sorting through multiple zones of contact. This thesis contributes to the anthropological literature on tourism in that it focuses on First Nations people's agency, views, and perspectives. I also challenge problematic terms such as authenticity, "staged authenticity," and tradition. The current literature on tourism lacks a workable theoretical framework for examining the dialogical interactions at tourist sites. I attempt to deal with this dilemma by drawing on my own ethnographic data, complemented by the existing ethnographic literature, to examine how the Salish perform identity and culture at Hiwus.

This dissertation historicizes and explains the tensions that arose between localized and regionally dispersed expressions of group affiliation and political authority among the indigenous people of the Lower Fraser River watershed after European contact. It accomplishes this by directly engaging indigenous historiography and epistemology. The period examined covers the late eighteenth century, just prior to the first smallpox epidemic, through to 1906 when a delegation of Salish men met with King Edward in London on behalf of all the Native people of British Columbia. I argue that Aboriginal collective identity and political authority are and were situationally constructed products of complicated negotiations among indigenous people and between Natives and newcomers. Multiple options were always available and the various expressions that shared identity assumed never were the only ones possible. Consequently, among the local indigenous population, history has always been regarded as an important arbitrator of identity and disagreements over competing historical interpretations highly contentious. To a greater extent than has been appreciated, changes in the way Native collective affiliations have been constituted have been informed by reference to ancient sacred stories and an ongoing process of interpreting past precedence. They are also intimately linked to migrations. Over time and across geography, different indigenous people have used these stories to different ends. Gendered and class-based distinctions in the way these narratives have been applied to either the creation of innovative collective identities or to the defense of older expressions reveal the tensions within Aboriginal society and between Natives and newcomers that arose as indigenous people struggled to make sense of a rapidly changing colonial world. The uncertainty following pivotal historical events allowed these submerged tensions to assume more public forms. Examined here are the important identity shaping historical events and migrations that indigenous historiography has emphasized: Creation, the Great Flood, the 1780 smallpox epidemic, the establishment of local Hudson's Bay trading posts in 1827 and 1846, the 1858 goldrush, the imposition of colonial reserves, the banning of the potlatch, the 1884 hostile incursions into Canadian Native communities of an American lynch mob, and the government policy to transform Salish fishermen into western-style farmers. Ultimately, Western ideologies, colonial authority and global economic forces are considered as forces acting within indigenous society, and not merely as exogenous powers acting upon

This thesis documents the employment history of Sne-nay-muxw women. The Sne nay-muxw, a Coast Salish peoples, live on the southeast coast ofVancouver Island close to the city ofNanaimo. Nanaimo was established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1852 as coal mining town. Coal dominated the economy until the early 20th century when forestry related production became important. Today a service economy has eclipsed both the primary and secondary industries. Within these economies a distinct gender, race and class segregation structured Sne-nay-muxw women’s employment opportunities. This study examines the nature of this segregation, the Sne-nay-muxw domestic economy and the gender ideology that promoted both women’s inclusion and exclusion in. wage labour. A central question posed in this thesis is why Sne-nay-muxw women today perceive their traditional roles to be within the home despite their historical participation in the labour force. Feminist anthropology provides the theoretical and methodological approach used for this study. It is accepted that women’s experiences in the labour force are different not only from men but also from other women based upon relational inequalities ofrace and class. Historical data was collected from a variety of sources; published and unpublished government reports, missionary accounts, letters and journals. Nineteen women and eight men were interviewed in the community for both historic and contemporary accounts of employment experiences. History reveals that during the mining economy Sne-nay-muxw women were excluded from working in the mines and limited to employment as domestic servants. The introduction of Chinese labour, decreasing coal demands and increased technology forced many women to migrate with their families to the canneries on the Fraser river and the hop fields in Washington state. In the forestry related production economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities were limited despite the expansion of employment for women in the service sector. State policies and inferior education were significant factors in this exclusion. At this time Sne-nay-muxw women continued to migrate with their families to the fish camps on Rivers Inlet and the berry fields in Washington state. In the last two decades the service economy has dominated in Nanaimo. Sne-nay-muxw women have found increasing job opportunities on and off reserve in administration, management and professional service delivery programs. While this employment is part of the wider trend for women in the service economy, Sne-nay-muxw women’s opportunities remain segregated by gender, race and class. Women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be linked to the organization of their domestic economy. Before 1920 this economy incorporated both subsistence production and farming with seasonal wage labour. After this time the Sne-nay-muxw became increasingly dependent upon wage labour. However, extended family and kinship networks have remained important for support and cooperation. This form ofhousehold organization did not constrain women’s participation in the labour force. Today extended families remain the central organizing principle in Sne-nay-muxw lives. Sne-nay-muxw women’s identity and opportunities for education and employment remain linked to their membership in these families. Shifts in women’s participation in the labour force is shown to be accompanied by acceptance of a domestic ideology. During the mining economy when women actively sought wage labour, they acquired domestic skills needed for wage labour but did not accept an ideology that promoted their dependency upon men. Historical evidence indicates that they retained a significant degree of autonomy in their lives. With men’s increased security of employment in the forestry economy, the idealized role ofwomen as housewives was promoted. Families that were able to realize women’s exclusion from the labour force gained status and prestige in the community. Finally, in the service economy, the Sne-nay-muxw gender ideology includes women’s participation in the labour force to occupations linked to their domestic and nurturing roles.

In the past, the Ministry of Social Services and Housing has placed many native children from the Seabird Island Band, a Salish band in the Sta’lo Nation, in permanent placement or adoption off the reserve. Government agencies imposed a system of child welfare that superseded Seabird Island adoption practices. The Seabird Island Band members would prefer to see these children placed within the band through ‘custom’ adoption. In apprehension and placement court cases, the band social worker has needed documented information defining ‘custom’ adoption, and data regarding the benefits of this Seabird Island process. This thesis investigates and documents the process and results of adoption on the Seabird Island Indian Reserve. This thesis begins with a brief history of Canadian adoption policy as it applies to First Nations people. The thesis is based on detailed taped interviews with Seabird Island Band members who had experienced foster care and/or adoption. This fieldwork was the result of negotiation with the Seabird Island Band to discover the type of research that they needed. The thesis documents four kinds of adoption experience of the Seabird Island members: foster care, closed legal adoption, open adoption, and ‘custom’ adoption. In my analysis of these adoption experiences, three main themes occur: (1) issues of ethnic identity, (2) power and the child welfare system, and (3) the definition and functions of ‘custom’ adoption. The thesis concludes that the imposed system of child welfare based on Euro-western ideas of appropriate child care may have destroyed or seriously damaged some Seabird Island Band members’ sense of ethnic identity. As well, it may be a factor in the break-up of the extended family. ‘Custom’ adoption, as defined by Seabird Island Band members, offers an alternate model for keeping apprehended Seabird Island children within the band. Open adoption, as defined by the pilot project documented, is an alternative for those children who cannot be returned to the band. I have made several recommendations in the conclusion for the Seabird Island Band’s consideration.

In addressing the necessity of cultural transmission from one generation to the next, this ethnographic study examines ways that Indigenous canoe journeys enable communication of ancestral teachings and traditions, particularly to Kw‟umut Lelum youth. The objective is to identify how experiences and interactions within Indigenous canoe journeys, specifically Tribal Journeys, can connect youth to traditions, environments, Elders, other individuals, and each other. Drawing on interviews with adults and participant observation, I consider relational themes of self and identity to explore the cultural impact on the young people as they participate in Tribal Journeys 2010 and symbolic ceremonies within it. Through qualitative inquiry and inductive reasoning, this interpretive epistemological approach includes concepts specific to the Indigenous research paradigm and uses a performative narrative to present results. Kw‟umut Lelum Child and Family Services is a society committed to the well-being of Indigenous children residing within nine Coast Salish communities on Vancouver Island. The agency focuses on family, community, and sacredness of culture as guided by the Snuw‟uy‟ulh model, which uses the teachings of the present to unite the past and future. Tribal Journeys is a significant cultural event that upholds the Snuw‟uy‟ulh principles while facilitating the communication of ancestral teachings and traditions. Keywords: Indigenous, canoe, youth, culture, tradition, Coast Salish, narrative, perform