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REVIEWS
TO HARVEST, TO HUNT: STORIES OF RESOURCE USE IN THE AMERICAN WEST
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by Judith L. Li
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| Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2007. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 200 pages. $18.95 paper. |
| Bioregional histories are a recurrent theme in environmental history. Examinations of the ways different peoples create different "places" in the same geography reveal how different groups define and manage resources as well as the impacts those definitions and management actions have over time. Li has adopted a different approach in her collection of stories, To Harvest, To Hunt. First, rather than focusing on a relatively confined region such as the Pacific Northwest, California, or the Great Basin, the fourteen stories range broadly over the West, stretching from King Island (Uguivak) in the Bering Strait (Deanna Kingston, "Walrus Hunting in a Changing Arctic") to Taos, New Mexico, (John Nichols, "Aamodt, Schmaamodt: Who Really Gets the Water") and the Gila River in Arizona (Patty Sakurai, "In the Wind and Sand: Landscape and the Reading of Gila Internment Camp"). Second, the collection ranges widely among the diverse ethnicities that characterize the West, telling stories of Aleuts, Basques, Chinese, Haida, Hispanics, Japanese, Mexicanos, Miwok, Ohlone, Pomo, Quinaults, Siletz, Tlinget, and Ugiuvangmiut. Finally, the authors are less concerned with resource exploitation and its ecological impacts than with the cultures that centered on the resource. Thus, one story (Charles Wilkinson, "Return of the Canoe Journey") examines the recovery of the Quinault Tribe's legacy of constructing ocean-going canoes and the concomitant cultural revitalization that spread throughout Pacific Northwest Coastal peoples. Another (Jim LeMonds, "Logger Poetry and Music: The Culture of Harvest") reviews the role of poetry and music in forging groups of "fiercely independent men" into "a distinctive brand of occupational ethnicity" (p. 10 2). |
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Collections frequently are uneven, and To Harvest, To Hunt is perhaps moreso than most — though the unevenness is more in the tone than the quality of the materials. Some chapters are traditional academic pieces, using the formal conventions of historical scholarship. Erlinda Gonzales-Berry's history of Mexicanos in Oregon during the twentieth century is an example: it traces the presence of Mexicanos and the exploitation they faced from the early twentieth century through the braceros program up to the present with multiple sources and a concise style. Others are stories that convey their information far more informally. Margaret Mathewson, for example, uses a Sunday excursion to explore the continuing importance to California Indian basketweavers of harvesting native plants. The excursion allows her to present her people's perspective on both the cultural importance of baskets and the often visceral hostility that harvesters face while pursuing their treaty rights. To Harvest, To Hunt is defined by its variety — of styles, perspectives, and peoples. As such, it has a potential role in undergraduate courses on the history of the West. |
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| Dale Goble
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| University of Idaho |
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