When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations
346
When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representations
346eBook
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Overview
The essays in part 1 feature the Ridingtons’ audio work as well as Jillian’s reflections on her relationships with Dane-zaa women. The authors use a narrative style to lead the reader to an understanding of First Nations' oral and written traditions. The essays in parts 2 and 3 are more scholarly and comparative and draw on ethnographic experience. They speak to one or more theoretical issues and discuss First Nations traditions beyond the Dane-zaa, but always from within the context of shared ethnographic authority. Students of anthropology, folklore, and Native studies can hear samples of audio compositions from the Dane-zaa archive by downloading audio files from the University of Nebraska Press Web site.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496208521 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 12/10/2021 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 346 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Jillian Ridington is a producer and writer of radio documentaries, many focused on the culture of the Dane-zaa First Nation. She is the coauthor (with Robin Ridington) of People of the Trail: How the Northern Forest Indians Lived.
Read an Excerpt
When You Sing It Now, Just Like New
First Nations Poetics, Voices, and RepresentationsBy Robin Ridington Jillian Ridington
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright © 2006 University of Nebraska PressAll right reserved.
Chapter One
Memories and ReflectionsLearning from Dane-zaa Women
Jillian Ridington
In this chapter I have tried to give a sense of my experience as an ethnographer among the Dane-zaa. My perspective in both "Making Bannock" and "Seventy Years" is that of a participant-observer; I write not from a theoretical perspective but as a person deeply interested and deeply immersed in the culture and in the people.
My first experiences at the Doig River First Nation Reserve were those of a woman coming into a community I had heard of and dreamed about since Robin and I had become partners some five years before. My history with the Dane-zaa now spans more than a quarter century; the babies I saw during my first summer there are young adults with children of their own, and the young adults of 1979 are now grandparents, as are Robin and I. I remember the old government-issued plywood shacks that have been replaced by suburban-style homes; the many phone calls we received on the day that BC Tel finally put the line through to Doig; the tension of the court case Apsassin v. The Queen; the relief when the Danezaa were granted a partial victory. The Doig reserve had one or two rusty cars when I first arrived there; now everyone has a four-by-four king cab and an all-terrainvehicle. Through the years I noticed that more and more Dane-zaa were marrying white people, or members of other First Nations, and the genealogical work I did a few years ago showed that what I had surmised from observation was true in fact. But the essential nature of the people has changed surprisingly little. The love of stories, the hunger for photos of their ancestors and tapes of the old people, the bonds of blood, language, and culture that they share with one another persist despite intermarriage, cell phones and faxes, television, and more and more integration into the surrounding white culture. The Dane-zaa remain a tribal people, in the true and best sense of the word. In these two short memoirs, I hope to give you some sense of what that means, and what it means to be a white woman who is sometimes among them but never part of that tribe. (An earlier version of "Making Bannock" appeared in Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly in 1981.)
Making Bannock: Remembering Two Dane-Zaa Matriarchs
In 1979 Robin Ridington, Howard Broomfield, Eric and Amber Ridington, and I spent a month at the Doig River First Nation Reserve of the Dane-zaa. It was the first of my many visits to Doig. As we planned the trip I realized that I would need to find women to be my friends and teachers. I had seen the slides and photographs that Robin had taken during his earlier fieldwork; I knew there were several women of my generation at Doig. Among them were Molly Acko Apsassin, Margaret (Maggie) Dominic Davis, Madeline (Mama) Succona Davis, and Mary Davis Dominic, whose Dane-zaa name was Daeda. These women were all mothers of many children, and their households were focal points of the community. Of these women, only Margaret Davis and Madeline Davis are still alive. Daeda died in 1989. By that time her children were grown and she was spending a lot of time in the nearby town of Fort St. John. Her death was mourned, but it had little impact on the community outside her own family. Molly Apsassin's death occurred in February of 1994; it shattered the Doig community. In coping with the loss of these two women who taught me so much, I have thought a great deal about their lives, and their deaths.
Daeda was a beautiful young mother in 1966 and 1968, when Robin first photographed her and her babies. By 1979 Daeda's babies were children nearing adolescence, as were Robin's son Eric and his daughter Amber, who were coming to Doig with us. I hoped that the children would provide a common bond.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from When You Sing It Now, Just Like New by Robin Ridington Jillian Ridington Copyright © 2006 by University of Nebraska Press. Excerpted by permission.
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