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Reviews
Singing the Songs of My Ancestors: The Life and Music of Helma Swan, Makah Elder
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by Linda J. Goodman
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University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2003. Illustrations, photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 356 pages. $44.95 cloth.
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Reviewed by Sandy Johnson Osawa
Independent filmmaker/writer and Makah Tribal member
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| The makahs have been blessed with many grand old ladies, and Helma Swan clearly falls into this tradition. Swan's story, told in her own words, spans from 1918 to 2002 and was recorded by her co-author, Linda J. Goodman, over a twenty-year period. Goodman's introduction attempts to establish a context for Swan's story by providing an overview of Makah history. The footnotes convey important information and perhaps should have been integrated into the story. A section at the end details ten Swan family songs, which will be of special interest to ethnomusicologists. In noting the significance of this story, Goodman explains that Swan "has been an astute observer and active participant in Makah culture for the largest part of the twentieth century" (p. 18). |
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Swan's early recollections convey nostalgia: cranberry-picking, baling hay, wearing her first shoes, and making toy cars out of kelp within a more responsible, orderly lifestyle. Her brief description of the club of women who got together to eat seafood and would pinch any man who got too close is priceless. Swan also speaks candidly about infidelity and poverty in her first marriage and wife-beating in her second. Too much time may have been spent on proving her link to three chiefs rather than on her subsequent journey to relearn and retain her family songs, which seems to be the real strength and heart of the story. |
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The Swan family has beautiful dances, including two of my favorites, the spiritual dance and the changing mask dance. Photographs of the beautiful Swan sisters dancing should have been included, and the images of Arnie Hunter do not really do justice to one of our most handsome men in one of the most dramatic of dances. It diminishes the power of these dances and of the potlatch activities to have snapshots rather than professional photographs, which would enhance the dignity of this important family. The caption for the first illustration in the book should be corrected. The man seated next to Chief Peter Brown is actually Charlie White. |
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The book claims that the first marriage of Chief Peter Brown's son, Chestoqua, to Ellen produced a son, Charlie Swan. This would make Helma Swan a great-granddaughter of the chief, since she is Charlie Swan's daughter. An interview with Chestoqua's only living daughter, Helen Peterson, would have been both considerate and useful, reducing the need to rely on rumors. Goodman, cites a "rumor" that Chestoqua was unhappy with his life and decided to leave Neah Bay with his son, James. The father and son left on a sealing ship in the 1920s and were never found again. The family should have been allowed to dispute the "rumor" that their father ran away, and they might also have provided photographs of Chestoqua and a wider sense of who he was. In a letter to his close friend Chestoqua, James G. Swan refers to Charlie Swan only as "Ellen's son." Goodman should have tried to clarify why James Swan, a close friend, failed to refer to Chestoqua as Charlie's father. She may have been handicapped by her promise not to inform anyone she was writing a book, because there are no footnotes from other Makah elders to either support or dispute the discussions regarding chiefs, relationships, song titles, potlatch protocol, and other sensitive cultural issues. |
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Much of this book deals with Helma Swan's ties to three chiefs, and it is here that Goodman needed a Makah writer more familiar with the culture and less afraid of challenging every family's "chiefly" ties. She uses a non-Indian source (James G. Swan) to indicate that there were no more Makah chiefs by 1894 and probably earlier. No Makah viewpoints are presented on this matter. Lack of awareness also shows when she writes, "With these economic changes [the move to a cash economy], a Makah man no longer had to work to support the wealth and position of his chief, instead he could work to benefit himself and his own immediate family" (p. 36). This inaccurately implies that there was a hierarchy at work in which the workers gave what they made to their chief. Actually, it was the opposite. The more the chief made, the more he gave, so wealth was distributed throughout the community |
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As the fabric of Indian life was being systemically dismantled in the nineteenth century, the traditional chiefs were also being displaced, questioned, divided, and sometimes ignored. It is also likely that the term "chiefs" had different meanings in white and Makah cultures and that the emergence of white power helped change those meanings. Traditional leadership roles may have adapted to such changes or may have continued to function underground, like many other aspects of the culture. The minutes related to the Makah Treaty of 1855, for example, indicate that the Makahs were asked to select a chief and that the Makahs present said they were unable to do so because they were all of equal rank. On the other hand, it is possible to trace those functioning as chiefs into the 1950s. Jongie Claplanhoo's obituary in the 1950s, for example, identifies him as a chief, and he was the first person selected as a leader when the non-Indian concept of tribal councils was introduced in 1934. |
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Goodman clearly heard a good story in the wealth of Helma Swan's audio recordings, and credit must be given for her twenty-year effort to produce this book. It is equally admirable that Swan overcame adversity and succeeded in maintaining her songs. The life of this important story got buried, however, somewhere in the avalanche of research and among the separate voices of the Indian, the anthropologist, and the ethnomusicologist that are represented. By trying too hard to prove ancestry and ownership, Goodman may have lost that simple, strong Indian story that Helma Swan was relying on her to tell. |
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