Our Box Was Full: An Ethnography for the Delgamuukw Plaintiffs

382 Pages·2005·66.27 MB·English

by  Richard Daly

Our Box Was Full
Richard Daly
Our Box Was Full:
An Ethnography for the
Delgamuukw Plaintiffs
■^1^
UBCPress Vancouver Toronto
© UBC Press 2005
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Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Daly, Richard Heywood, 1942-
Our box was full : an ethnography for the Delgamuukw plaintiffs / Richard Daly.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7748-1074-2 (bound); 0-7748-1075-0 (pbk.)
1. Gitksan Indians - British Columbia - Social conditions. 2. Wet'suwet'en
Indians - British Columbia - Social conditions. 3. Gitksan Indians - British Colum­
bia - Economic conditions. 4. Wet'suwet'en Indians - British Columbia - Economic
conditions. 5. Gitksan Indians - British Columbia - Kinship. 6. Wet'suwet'en
Indians - British Columbia - Kinship. 7. Gitksan Indians - British Columbia - Gifts.
8. Wet'suwet'en Indians - British Columbia - Gifts. 1. Title.
E99.K55D34 2004 305.897'2 C2004-906057-0
Canada
UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing
program of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry
Development Program (BPIDP), and of the Canada Council for the Arts, and
the British Columbia Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation
for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications
Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, and with a grant from the International Council of Canadian
Studies.
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Proofreader: Deborah Kerr
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To the coming Gitksan and Witsuwit'en generations
and in memory
of the lives and wisdom of those who went before
The people from the "Old World" cannot go back across the sea,
nor should they. And the mixed people born of both worlds can
have no other home. But the intruders and their offspring can at
least make room for the American peoples who remain. They can
offer true equality, not annihilations disguised as "integration" or
niestizaje, nor the fictitious liberty of citizenship in Euro-American
countries where the Indian will always be outnumbered and out­
voted. They can accept the right of American Indians to be free,
equal, and different.
The invaders can stop "conquering and discovering." And if
they begin to treat America as a home in which to live, not a
treasure house to ransack - a home for the First Nations as well as
themselves - they may, unlike Christopher Columbus, discover
where they are.
- Ronald Wright, 1992, Stolen Continents
Contents
Maps and Figures / ix
Foreword / xi
Michael Jackson
Foreword / xvii
Peter Grant
Preface / xxi
1 Introduction / 1
2 The Reciprocities of a Pole-Raising Feast / 57
3 A Giving Environment: Nutrition and Seasonal Round / 107
4 A Kinship Economy / 156
5 Production Management and Social Hierarchy / 190
6 Gifts, Exchange, and Trade / 211
7 Owners and Stewards / 237
8 Epilogue / 282
Afterword: Back to the Future I 299
Don Ryan, Masgaak
Notes / 305
References / 319
Index / 337
Maps and Figures
Maps
1 Gitksan and Witsuwit'en territories / xx
2 Gitksan and Witsuwit'en territories in relation to three major continental
biogeoclimatic zones / 116
3 Biogeoclimatic zones of Gitksan and Witsuwit'en territories / 119
4 Fishing sites: (A) Moricetown, (B) Gitsegukla, and (C) Gitwangax / 146
5 Gitksan House territories, including Gitanyow / 244
6 Witsuwit'en House territories / 246
Figures
1 Totem poles at Gitwangax I 48
2 Gitanyow in 1910 / 49
3 The paddlewheeler steamboat Hazelton, early 1900s / 50
4 Awaiting the arrival of the paddlewheeler at Hazelton/Gitanmaax I 50
5 Cartoon from the Delgamuukw trial / 51
6 Secret society gathering at Hagwilget, 1923 I 52
7 Totem poles at Gitwangax / 53
8 Hawaaw, a crest of Wilps Tenimget/Axti Hiix, Pdeek Lax Gibuu,
Gitwangax / 54
9 Drum by Haida artist Bill Reid / 54
10 Kwakwak'awakw Killer Whale Copper belonging to Mungo Martin / 55
11 Information blockade on Highway 16 on Witsuwit'en territory, 1990 I 56
12 Participant observation during the information blockade in Moricetown,
July 1990 I 56
13 Gitwangax totem poles, 1915/99
14 Timbered houses and poles at Kispiox, early 1900s / 100
15 Chief Ha'naamuxw, Joan Ryan, 1991 I 100
16 Sigid'm hanaak (female chiefs) assisting at a pole-raising / 101
17 The baxniaga, raising the pole I 101
18 Displaying ayuks at a pole-raising feast / 102
x Maps and Figures
19 Preparing for a funeral feast at Hagwilget / 102
20 Ha'naamuxw, Fanny Johnson, 1924 I 103
21 Guxsen, "The Gambler," in halayt costume / 103
22 Sketch of pole-raising, 1881 I 104
23 Gyedimgaldo'o's xwts'aan at Gitanmaax / 105
24 Scraping moosehide, Kisgagas, 1920 / 106
25 Sockeye basket trap, Hagwilget / 179
26 Winter in Hazelton, early 1900s / 180
27 Hagwilget, new village site / 181
28 Hagwilget, the original village down in Hagwilget Canyon / 182
29 Smokehouses in Kisgagas Canyon / 182
30 Old potlatch houses at Kisgagas, 1920 / 183
31 Woman cutting salmon, Glen Vowell / 184
32 Salmon drying, Kisgagas, 1920 / 184
33 Gaffing Chinook salmon, Moricetown / 185
34 First Hagwilget bridge / 186
35 Arthur Wellington Clah at Port Simpson, 1915 / 186
36 Rock rubbing of a petroglyph found at Anlaxsim'de'ex / 187
37 Petroglyph found at Kispiox / 188
38 Salmon, the Story of Our People, silkscreen print / 188
39 Simoogit Wii Muk'wilixw in his territory / 189
Foreword
Michael Jackson
Law and anthropology ought to be on speaking terms. Anthropology, like
law, builds upon an understanding of cultural, personal, and economic re­
lationships within societies. Law, like anthropology, has assembled an im­
pressive archive of case studies in the ordering of those relationships and
the processes and laws by which conflicts are addressed and resolved. The
most venerable centres of both law and anthropology are often the most
illustrious and well-known architectural landmarks, be they the US Supreme
Court and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, or the Museum of
Civilization and the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. Indeed, in
Vancouver, the Museum of Anthropology and the Vancouver Law Courts,
centres not only of anthropology and law but also symbols of West Coast
modernity, were designed by the same distinguished Canadian architect.
It is not, therefore, surprising when the hereditary chiefs of the Gitksan
and Witsuwit'en Houses sought recognition from the Canadian courts of
their rights to ownership and jurisdiction of their ancestral territories that
they sought a collaboration of the best in both legal and anthropological
scholarship. In Our Box Was Full Richard Daly aptly describes the role of the
Delgamuukw case in the hereditary chiefs' pursuit of a legal and political
settlement of their grievances and recognition of their rights:
They envisioned a case based upon postcolonial governance according to
long-standing principles of kinship and affinity - a form of reciprocal social
life marked by the richness, complexity, and historical depth of their two
traditions and culture. They entertained the possibility of establishing sets
of overlapping rights and jurisdictions with federal and provincial govern­
ments. They hoped to push back the boundaries of what constituted admis­
sible evidence. They hoped to call on Canada and British Columbia to redress
some of the injustices of colonial and postcolonial practices by recognizing
alternative Aboriginal ways of being human and the values to be found in
Aboriginal stewardship and management practices on the land. (3)
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