Spuzzum
296 pages, 6 1/4 x 9 1/4
39 b&w illustrations
Living on the banks of the turbulent Fraser River, the Nlaka'pamux people of Spuzzum have a long history of contact with non-aboriginal peoples. They watched as Hudson's Bay Company employees hacked a path through the mountains for the fur brigades, and over time they found themselves in the path of the Cariboo road, the CPR, and virtually every commercial and province-building initiative undertaken in the region over the past two centuries. Juxtaposing historical narratives and cultural interpretation from the community of Spuzzum with archival information, this book explores the history of Spuzzum in the light of concepts central to the Nlaka'pamux definition of family, political authority, land, and cosmos.
Awards
- 2000, Winner - Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine
This text is lucid and jargon-free, and the photographs interesting and well placed ... Spuzzum will certainly be of interest to anthropologists, local historians, and specialists who have been following the debate on the writing of Native history.
A sympathetic re-creation of the native side of that history. This is a model ethnohistory and a superb commentary on the complexities of being both historian and anthropologist ... This finely crafted book boasts good maps, numerous illustrations ...
This book stands as part of an ongoing awareness of Native cultural persistence, alongside a long history of adaptation to the Euro-Canadian economy and society.
Andrea Laforet is director of the Canadian Ethnology Service at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Annie York (1904-91) was born in Spuzzum and lived there most of her adult life.
Acknowledgments
Note on Authorship
Fraser Canyon Histories: Introduction
1 Spuzzum
2 Song for Simon Fraser, Song for Mount Baker: Strangers in the Land
3 Land and Cosmos in a Shifting Economy
4 Nlaka'pamux Thought and the Christian Church
5 Families, Identities, and a War Widow's Pension
6 Chiefs and Land
7 A Pause in the Story
8 Postscript: Approaching the Past
Bibliography
Appendix: Place Names
Glossary
Index
