People of the Saltwater: An Ethnography of Git lax m'oon

by Charles R. Menzies

Overview

2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

In People of the Saltwater, Charles R. Menzies explores the history of an ancient Tsimshian community, focusing on the people and their enduring place in the modern world. The Gitxaała Nation has called the rugged north coast of British Columbia home for millennia, proudly maintaining its territory and traditional way of life.

People of the Saltwater first outlines the social and political relations that constitute Gitxaała society. Although these traditionalist relations have undergone change, they have endured through colonialism and the emergence of the industrial capitalist economy. It is of fundamental importance to this society to link its past to its present in all spheres of life, from its understanding of its hereditary leaders to the continuance of its ancient ceremonies.

Menzies then turns to a discussion of an economy based on natural-resource extraction by examining fisheries and their central importance to the Gitxaałas’ cultural roots. Not only do these fisheries support the Gitxaała Nation economically, but they also serve as a source of distinct cultural identity. Menzies’s firsthand account describes the group’s place within cultural anthropology and the importance of its lifeways, traditions, and histories in nontraditional society today.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496232625
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	12/01/2022
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Charles R. Menzies (Gitxaała) is a professor of anthropology and director of the Ethnographic Film Unit at the University of British Columbia. He is the editor of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management (Nebraska, 2006), the author of Red Flags and Lace Coiffes: Identity and Survival in a Breton Village, and editor of the journal Collaborative Anthropologies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Git lax m’oon: Gitxaała and the Names Anthropologists Have Given Us

2. Smgigyet: Real People and Governance

3. Laxyuup: The Land and Ocean Territories of Gitxaała

4. Adaawx: History and the Past

5. Sihoon: Catching Fish

6. Tskah, Xs’waanx: Herring, Herring Roe

7. Bilhaa: Abalone

8. Hoon: Salmon

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

"An important contribution to scholarship about First Nations of the Northwest Coast."—Eric Oakley, Pacific Northwest Quarterly Magazine


“Each of these chapters provides excellent case studies for teaching about Indigenous resource management and place-making and the continuity of these practices in spite of colonization and capitalism.”—Sara V. Komarnisky, Canadian Journal of Native Studies
 


“An engaging and important book. . . . Menzies effectively weaves archaeology and linguistics into People of the Saltwater, which also contains considerable history: oral history, written history, and Menzies’s own personal history. . . . [It] may be viewed as a hybrid, or crossover book that straddles the boundary between scholarly and popular. It is a significant addition to the scholarship of, and by, Indigenous peoples in British Columbia.”—Robert Muckle, BC Booklook
 
 

From the Publisher

“Menzies’s ethnography of the Gitxaala people is highly personal, enjoyably engaging, and a welcome contribution to community-based scholarship on the Northwest Coast. . . . Menzies’s analysis adds a clear voice to conversations about the impacts of global industrial processes on local peoples.”—Thomas McIlwraith, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Guelph and author of “We Are Still Didene”: Stories of Hunting and History from Northern British Columbia

Thomas McIlwraith

"An important contribution to scholarship about First Nations of the Northwest Coast."—Eric Oakley, Pacific Northwest Quarterly Magazine

Pacific Northwest Quarterly Magazine - Eric Oakley

"People of the Saltwater brings to the scholarship of the Native Northwest Coast the traditional ways the Git lax m'oon exist in relationship with the lands they inhabit and the resources they husband."—Melonie Ancheta, American Indian Quarterly

American Indian Quarterly - Melonie Ancheta

"People of the Saltwater may be viewed as a hybrid, or crossover book that straddles the boundary between scholarly and popular. It is a significant addition to the scholarship of, and by, Indigenous peoples in British Columbia."—Robert Muckle, Ormsby Review

BC Booklook - Robert Muckle