Early Coastal Ethnology
Handouts:
Lecture 3 Outline
Film Questions for ‘In Search of the Hamat’sa’
Lecture Summary:
This week, we’ve considered the representations of aboriginal people on the BC coast by anthropologists. The focus has been ‘early ethnology’ or the images of native people generated before the middle of the twentieth century.
To do this, we reviewed the physical characteristics which distinguish the Northwest Coast culture area. We wondered about the connections between large and predictable salmon runs, the restrictions of an inundated coast, and the cultural and linguistic diversity seen on the coast. We then looked at the work of Boas and McIlwraith, two anthropologists associated with the salvage paradigm in anthropology.
We then moved to classic topics in the study of coast anthropology. We discussed the different patterns of social organization – including matrilineal, patrilineal and bilateral organization. We discussed the differences between names and crests. One’s identity lies in a name. Names are enduring and are associated with rights and responsibilities. Crests are representations of identities and histories. Both crests and names are ranked with some being more important than others. And we considered a model of social inequality that anthropologists refer to as ‘ranking’. This is the idea that everyone in the group has a different status but that access to economic and political power is essentially the same.
In small groups, the class discussed three articles on the potlatch. These are the articles by Boas, Barnett and Codere. Boas and Barnett used participant observation to generate somewhat different pictures of the potlatch. Boas emphasized the economic aspects of the potlatch, particularly the potlatch as a system of credit and investment. Barnett emphasized the way in which potlatches permitted the validation and acknowledgement of other people. Codere, using the methods of an ethnohistorian, argued that potlatches became bigger during the fur trade and as the populations of native groups shrank.
Finally, we watched a new film called ‘In Search of the Hamat’sa’. This film traces the history of anthropology and anthropologists appropriating the image of the Hamat’sa dancer. The film showed how a once private dance and ritual event became public and the centre of our images of Northwest Coast cultures.