When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations

368 Pages·2006·1.339 MB·English

by  Mr. Robin Ridington, Jillian Ridington

When You Sing It Now, Just Like New

When You Sing It Now,
Just Like New
First Nations Poetics, Voices,
and Representations
Robin Ridington & Jillian Ridington
University of Nebraska Press Lincoln & London
Source acknowledgments for previously
published material appear on p. 335.
©2006 by the Board of Regents
of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the
United States of America
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ridington, Robin.
When you sing it now, just like new: First Nations
poetics, voices, and representations /
Robin Ridington and Jillian Ridington.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-8032-3959-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-8032-3959-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-8032-9009-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-8032-9009-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Tsattine Indians—British Columbia—Interviews.
2. Tsattine Indians—British Columbia—Songs and music.
3. Tsattine Indians—British Columbia—Social life and customs.
4. British Columbia—Social life and customs.
I. Ridington, Jillian, 1936– II. Title.
e99.t77r54 2006
305.897(cid:2)2—dc22
2006006204
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface ix
part one: Actualities
Introduction to Part One 1
1. Memories and Refl ections: Learning from Dane-zaa Women 3
Jillian Ridington
2. Hunting for Stories in Sound: Sharing Ethnographic Authority 16
Jillian Ridington and Robin Ridington
3. Soundman: A Guide to Field Broomfi eld and Stories from the Field(cid:3) 28
Jillian Ridington and Robin Ridington
4. Keynotes from the Dane-zaa: A Guide to In Doig People’s Ears(cid:3) 50
Robin Ridington
5. Why Baby Why: A Guide to Howard Broomfi eld’s Documentation
of the Dane-zaa Soundscape 78
Jillian Ridington and Robin Ridington
6. Maintaining Dane-zaa Identity: Those Story I Remember,
That’s What I Live By Now 95
Jillian Ridington and Robin Ridington
7. Contact the People: A Guide to a Video on Dane-zaa Change
and Continuity 113
Jillian Ridington and Robin Ridington
part two: Poetics and Narrative Technology
Introduction to Part Two 125
8. Models of the Universe: Musings on the Language of
Benjamin Lee Whorf 127
Robin Ridington
9. Voice, Representation, and Dialogue: The Poetics of Native
American Spiritual Traditions 148
Robin Ridington
10. That Is How They Grab It: Celestial Discourse in Dane-zaa
Music and Dance 171
Robin Ridington
11. Dogs, Snares, and Cartridge Belts: The Poetics of a Northern
Athapaskan Narrative Technology 188
Robin Ridington
12. Tools in the Mind: Northern Athapaskan Ecology,
Religion, and Technology 207
Robin Ridington
part three:Re-Creation in First Nations Literatures
Introduction to Part Three 221
13. “You Think It’s a Stump but That’s My Grandfather”: Narratives of
Transformation in Northern North America 229
Robin Ridington
14. Fieldwork in Courtroom 53: A Witness to Delgamuukw v. A.G.(cid:3) 246
Robin Ridington
15. Theorizing Coyote’s Cannon: Sharing Stories with Thomas King 266
Robin Ridington
16. Happy Trails to You: Contexted Discourse and Indian Removals in
Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water(cid:3) 288
Robin Ridington
Epilogue 313
Appendix: Playlist of Audio Actualities and Compositions 317
Bibliography 319
Source Acknowledgments 335
Index 337
Illustrations
Photographs
Following page 124
Molly Apsassin
Mary (Daeda) Davis and Molly Apsassin with children
Mary (Daeda) Davis
Nora Apsassin and child
Charlie Yahey with Dreamer’s drum
Tommy Attachie with his father Murray returning from bear hunt
Billy Attachie
Howard Broomfi eld, Jillian Ridington, Robin Ridington, 1984
Table
A Model of Hunter-Gatherer Culture and Creation 219

Preface
All these songs, how many years ago.
Makenunatane yine and Aledze.
Maketchueson, Naachan [John Notseta].
How many years ago.
Old prophet.
When you sing it now, just like new.
—Tommy Attachie, July 7,1998
When You Sing It Now, Just Like New is a collection of essays about our read-
ings of First Nations oral and written literatures. It is a narrative about
hearing stories, recording stories, and sometimes even becoming charac-
ters in them. It is a story about sharing stories and contextualizing them
within anthropology. The stories describe forty years of working with the
Athapaskan-speaking Dane-zaa, “real people,” of the Peace River area,
who are also known as Beaver Indians. Over these years we have made
hundreds of hours of audio recordings and thousands of photographs;
recently we have added video recordings to the collection. Thanks to a
digital archive grant from the British Columbia Museums Association,
this Ridington/Dane-zaa archive of actualities has been transferred to
digital format. A complete catalogue of original recordings and images is
available online by searching for the Dane-zaa archive. The site also pro-
vides access to many texts and transcriptions. The fi rst section of the book
makes reference to audio fi les containing recordings and compositions
realized from the archive. These are available on the University of Ne-
braska Press Web site at www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/audio/audiolist.jsp.