======================================================================== 153 Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 16:35:49 -0500 Message-ID: <199412102135.QAA01838@Hydro.CAM.ORG> X-Sender: joan@pop.hip.cam.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: antowner@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu From: joan@CAM.ORG (Joan Miller) Subject: Book review for JWA (Tangled Webs of History) Cc: joan@CAM.ORG X-Mailer: Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries. Dianne Newell. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. 306 pp. np. Joan Miller, Marianopolis College, 3880 Cote des Neiges, Montreal, P.Q. H3H 1W1, Canada. joan@CAM.ORG Abstract: Tangled Webs of History provides comprehensive coverage, not only of Indians and law in Canada's Pacific Coast fisheries, but also of impacts of changing fish industry technologies on Indian fishing, of interlinkages between different ethnic groups, employers, and government agencies in the Pacific Coast fisheries, and of the consequences of shifting resource policies on those utilizing the resources. Beginning with the aboriginal fishery, Newell takes the reader to mid-1993. This book is essential for any student of peoples involved in Canada's Pacific Coast fisheries and has much to offer those interested in human rights, aboriginal rights, aboriginal/non-aboriginal linkages or impacts of evolving technologies anywhere. Dianne Newell's book provides a magisterial history of Canada's Pacific Coast fisheries: it is comprehensive and insightful; it offers conclusions which not only make sense of what happened historically but also suggest directions that future decisions should take; it raises numbers of questions which should keep future researchers, both historians and anthropologists, engaged for some years. The time period covered ranges from the pre-contact period to mid-1993. Newell begins with an introduction to the politics of resource regulation, its realities and myths, and the particularities of fish as a resource. Excellent maps and definitions, necessary to anyone not familiar with Canadian Indian policy, as well as a summary historiography complete the introduction. This is followed by an examination of aboriginal salmon fishing and management. I suspect many anthropologists will find this the weakest part of Newell's book. I did. I wanted more, especially after seeing what Newell could do with archival materials from later time periods. Perhaps, though, this absence of completeness tells more of the focus of prior ethnohistorical research than it does of Newell's competence, for Newell does make effective use of the available published historical materials. And, perhaps, this chapter will encourage ethnohistorians to give their attention to what must be incompletely explored archival records and archaeological site reports. Newell divides the approximately one hundred years between 1871 and 1968 into four periods: Indian fishery invented, 1871-1888; Indian labour captured, 1889-1918; battling a revolving door, 1919-1945; and cast adrift, 1946-1968. These divisions appear to represent real divisions for the peoples involved and not just conveniences for the historian. For each time segment, Newell clearly and consistently demonstrates how government laws, regulations and court decisions defined the context within which Indian fishers could act and shows that this context was often quite different from that of the public justification for these same laws, regulations, and decisions. Newell's choice of words, "invented", "captured", etc., show her to be attuned to contemporary thinking that explicitly sees culture, and history, as something constructed by humans. During the 1871-1888 period, Newell shows how, initially, salmon canning provided Indians with a new economic opportunity that built on their traditional ways of using fish. She also introduces the still unresolved linkages between fish resources and questions of land and shows how initial regulation defined Indians as "helpers" and not "competitors". During the 1889-1918 period salmon processing boomed, questions of resources and land rights were exacerbated, Indians were increasingly forced into roles of labourers -- as fishers or fish-processors -- for the canning companies, and Indian food fishing was brought under governmental control. During this period the Pacific Coast of Canada also saw the arrival of new ethnic groups (Chinese, Japanese, Norwegians, other Europeans) who competed with one another and with Indians for niches in the fishing industry. The interactions of ethnic groups, including the dominant English Canadians, is another aspect of Canadian history which I wished Newell could have explored more fully. However, that was not her primary focus and, as in the earlier time period, I suspect that the primary studies are lacking and that what Newell has done has been to expose another area where fruitful research might be done. In the 1919 to 1945 time period, Newell traces the responses of Pacific Coast fisheries to boom years, a world wide depression, a world war, and the removal of one labour group (the Japanese) from the work arena. Demands and markets changed; laws and policies attempted to establish order where order, given some of the broader stresses, was clearly difficult to attain. Indians interacted with these shifts and responded in ways that shifted gender roles, that began to accentuate divisions among them but also led them to organize for effective resistence. Indians also experienced even further restrictions of their food fishery. Anthropologists, familiar with the literature from this area, will appreciate being able to "place" James Sewid and others, known to them from ethnographic work, in the broader world in which they worked. In her treatment of the period between 1946 and 1968, Newell is especially good at exposing the impacts of a policy shift initiated by a change in commitment on the part of government economists and policy makers from a "common property" theory to a "bionomic equilibrium" theory of fishery management. And, as a historian specialized in explaining how technological changes influence other changes in resource usage, she is very convincing as she takes the reader through the many and diverse changes in fishing technologies and their impacts on other aspects of economic, social and political life. Newell also does an excellent job in showing that different Indians and Indian groups, experiencing changes in different ways, responded differently to the stresses and opportunities of this period. Again, I longed for even more detail and for the possibilities that that detail would offer for an even better understanding of the shared aspects of these responses and the causes for the variations that appeared. Newell, of course, could not do everything; her goal was to provide an essential comprehensive coverage. But she leaves unanswered questions that interested scholars will, hopefully, choose to seek answers to in the future. Newell's final historical period, 1969-1993, covers the period of the Davis Plan and Newell is masterful in her exposure of its impacts on Indian fishery activities and of the impacts of some of the attempts, such as those with cooperatives or Indian canneries, to address the problems it created. In 1990 the Supreme Court of Canada found, in Regina v. Sparrow, for the Indians in a case that tested the extinguishment of the Indian right to fish and Newell gives coverage to the early responses to this critical legal judgement. Before concluding, Newell also gives consideration to fisheries, especially halibut and herring, that have never had the importance of the salmon industry but which, at times, have presented Indians with important fishery alternatives. In her conclusion, Newell is masterful in a reflection upon conservation, Indians, and aboriginal rights. These issues are critical ones for Canada today and, beyond Canada, in sometimes similar and sometimes different ways, for the world. Newell has important things to say about them. That what Newell says is based on the broad and substantial scholarship so clearly documented in this book makes it important that others hear it. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Canada's Pacific Coast fisheries or the peoples involved in them, whether this person is a professional anthropologist or historian, a student contemplating possible research in this area, or a professional engaged in setting policy, applying policy, or resisting these policies. This book also belongs in the library of anyone concerned with Canada's First Peoples or with fisheries anywhere. Beyond these professionals, this book has much to say to a broader public. In her preface, Dianne Newell states that she wrote this book in response to her experiences as an observer and expert witness in court cases concerning BC Native land claims and that "...I decided that, as a scholar, I could contribute to the debate by publishing my research -- informing public opinion -- rather than by simply attempting to inform the court." I hope the "public" responds to Newell's efforts by making efforts of their own and reading this book. It is not "light" reading; however, the rewards to be gained from the reading amply repay the effort demanded.