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Reviews
OUR BOX WAS FULL: AN ETHNOGRAPHY FOR THE DELGAMUUKW PLAINTIFFS
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by Richard Daly
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University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 2004. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 400 pages. $85.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.
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| RICHARD DALY, an independent anthro-pologist living in Norway, gave the most extensive ethnological expert opinion regarding Aboriginal rights and title ever heard before a Canadian court in the landmark case known as Delgamuukw (decided in 1997). This evidence was given on behalf of the heads of the Gitksan house chiefs and members. This First Nation, together with the neighboring Witsuwit'en, began to negotiate a comprehensive land claim in 1977 and, making no progress, entered into the litigation process in 1982. Daly began his work in 1986, with a particular focus on the oral traditions of the community. Our Box Was Full is his expert report together with a preface, introduction, and epilogue that place the report in context, particularly the production of ethnological knowledge under the conditions of litigation. In this, Daly is marvelously candid and thoughtful, and his is perhaps the clearest statement in print of the issues facing anthropologists engaged in legal testimony. |
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The ethnographic study itself, which comprises the body of Our Box Was Full, is situated within the field of hunter-and-gatherer studies and the literature on gift-exchange societies. Daly takes the position that "hunter and gatherer," the term often applied to peoples of the North Pacific Coast, is a condition or enterprise within a variety of social formations, and he develops and uses a relational approach rather than relying on essentialized categorizing. His argument is that this approach allows for the study of the penetration of capital into indigenous societies. Notably, it is his contention that it is not axiomatic that simple entities, such as foraging societies, become culturally obliterated when encountering more complex ones, such as capitalist state societies. More generally, he argues against a "simple-complex" distinction. This is important because it underlies his view that the Gitksan and Witsuwit'en social systems, particularly the chiefly and House systems, have persisted and are relevant to the pursuit of land claims. |
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Daly writes that the House crest stories, orated for the trial by those with the hereditary prerogative, constitute an overlapping web — and hence a system of social relations — over the area of those who mutually participate in ceremonial feasting. The feasts system depends on a system of intentional "misrecognition" which obscures the political calculations beneath the ceremony and the respect relations (p. 34). Further, the feast system engages a code of honor and subsequent challenges to honor, which create and contest symbolic capital and allows for a form of domination without physical coercion. In making his case about Gitksan society, Daly provides an example of a totem-pole raising feast, which is paradigmatic of social relations between matrilineal kin groups. |
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This discussion of gift-giving and Bourdieuian social capital allows Daly to argue that his expert testimony and the subsequent book, Our Box Was Full, are forms of gift-giving. His testimony, he says, gifted the public with information, ideas, and relationships, but the recompense is of a delayed nature. Seen from another angle, the contents of Our Box Was Full were given to the court but returned unopened by a trial judge who was unable to grasp the meaning of the contents. By writing this book, he hopes, the ring might not be broken and a community of understanding might yet emerge. |
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The epilogue is itself a box of treasures. Daly writes that the two decades after the trial process began have yielded unproductive treaty talks, and the pattern of removal of wealth (in the form of natural resources) from Gitksan and Witsuwit'en territory continues. Meanwhile, the litigation process has changed perceptions such that what was once seen as a system of fluid, ongoing social relations has now come to be seen more as immutable truths. The names of chiefs and the maps of territories have taken on a rigidity that does not allow for further discussion. The Houses have become reified, and this new discourse has become internalized, disruptive of other social processes and deconstructive of local kin relations. He makes a good point. These sorts of damaging outcomes of litigation processes have shown up elsewhere in Aboriginal North America and beyond because communities have been forced to produce shallow renderings of their own social and cultural practices in order that they might be understood by the court. But here is a special irony. In the form of lengthy oral histories given by chiefs to the courts, the Gitksan and Witsuwit'en provided the richest accounting in Canadian — and perhaps contemporary world — history of their communities, yet they still suffer from the effects of misunderstanding and reification. It is to Daly's credit that he brings this so clearly to our attention. What happens as a consequence should be a matter of considerable interest. |
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| BRUCE GRANVILLE MILLER
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| University of British Columbia, Vancouver |
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CORRECTIONS
The Winter 2005 Oregon Historical Quarterly (106:4) included errors on pages 556 and 586. On page 556, it is noted that Lewis and Clark visited the village at Cathlapotle and presented its chief with a medal on their outbound trip in 1805. Lewis and Clark actually visited the village twice and presented the medal on their return trip in 1806. On page 586, Howard Vollum is said to have died in a plan crash in 1986. Tektronix co-founder Jack Murdock actually died of a plane crash in 1971; Vollum died in 1986 of natural causes. The editors regret the errors.
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