Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii

Life beyond Settler Colonialism

By Joseph Weiss

UBC Press

Colonialism in settler societies such as Canada depends on a certain understanding of the relationship between time and Indigenous peoples. Too often, these peoples have been portrayed as being without a future, destined either to disappear or assimilate into settler society. This book asserts quite the opposite: Indigenous peoples are not in any sense “out of time” in our contemporary world.

Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii shows how Indigenous peoples in Canada not only continue to have a future but are at work building many different futures – for themselves and for their non-Indigenous neighbours. Through the experiences of the residents of the Haida First Nation community of Old Massett on the islands of Haida Gwaii, Joseph Weiss explores these possible futures in detail, demonstrating how Haida ways of thinking about time, mobility, and political leadership are at the heart of contemporary strategies for addressing the dilemmas that come with life under settler colonialism.

From the threat of ecological crisis to the assertion of sovereign rights and authority, Weiss shows that the Haida people consistently turn towards their possible futures, desirable and undesirable, in order to work out how to live in and transform the present. His book breaks new ground in the exploration of the relationship between time and colonialism as experienced in the day-to-day lives of an Indigenous community.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Indigenous studies, particularly in anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and history. Researchers planning to work with communities will learn from the author’s reflections on conducting ethnographic fieldwork with First Nations.

RELATED TOPICS: Anthropology, BC Studies, Indigenous Studies, Regional Studies

[Shaping the Future] is a thought-provoking read, offering many important table-turning insights relevant to reconciliation and understanding any society’s resiliency through times of economic, political, and environmental uncertainties. Gillian Crowther, Canadian Journal of Native Studies

Weiss’s respect and relationships with the residents of Gaw and his commitment to ethical, reciprocal, and meaningful research comes through in this intriguing book. Molly Clarkson, Haida Gwaii resident, The Ormsby Review

Grounded in respectful experience, observation, and interviews with Haida citizens, this book provides scholars with a complex understanding and analysis of how one Indigenous community adapts to and maintains a commitment, however difficult, to imagining and enacting a futurity determined by themselves, not settler colonialism. It will be widely read in Indigenous studies circles. Kevin Bruyneel, author of The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations

In his highly original, carefully written, and theoretically grounded ethnography, Joseph Weiss describes how the people of Haida Gwaii engage in envisioning future-making, an aspirational and contested process that unsettles their own temporal displacement and potential erasure within settler colonialism … Shaping the Future points in a new direction and calls for a rethinking of ethnography as a method and the future of Indigenous nations within the state. Bruce Miller, author of Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts

An engaging, contemporary ethnography … this lively book, with its rich theoretical bases, has the potential to further reconfigure and unsettle problematic ethnographic and popular texts on the Haida, and Indigenous peoples more generally. Brian Thom, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria

Shaping the Future is erudite, sensitive, informed, and relevant. It is everything that one might ask for in a new-times anthropology book. HAGWIL HAYETSK (CHARLES R. MENZIES), Native American and Indigenous Studies

Joseph Weiss is an assistant professor of anthropology at Wesleyan University. This book is the result of five years of fieldwork in Old Massett and Masset with the people of the Haida First Nation. Dr. Weiss also maintains abiding interests in Truth and Reconciliation in Canada and research ethics in the social sciences. He has collaborated with the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History on the “Open Fields Project,” examining museum-Indigenous relationships.

Part 1: Pasts and Futures

1 An Introduction to Haida Future-Making in Old Massett

2 The Everyday Temporalities of Life on Haida Gwaii

Part 2: Home

3 Coming Home to Haida Gwaii: Haida Departures and Returns in the Future Perfect

4 Of Hippies and Haida: Fantasy, Future-Making, and the Allure of Haida Gwaii

Part 3: Care

5 Leading “from the Bottom of the Pole”: Care and Governance in the Haida World

6 Precarious Authority: Endangerment and the Political Promise to Protect Haida Gwaii

Conclusion: Unsettling Futures

Notes; References; Index