{"id":563,"date":"2021-09-20T11:47:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T19:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/?p=563"},"modified":"2021-09-20T14:01:35","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T22:01:35","slug":"review-of-shaping-the-future-on-haida-gwaii-life-beyond-settler-colonialism-by-joseph-weiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/2021\/09\/review-of-shaping-the-future-on-haida-gwaii-life-beyond-settler-colonialism-by-joseph-weiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of ‘Shaping the Future on\u00a0Haida Gwaii: Life beyond Settler Colonialism,’\u00a0by\u00a0Joseph Weiss.\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Weiss arrived in Haida Gwai with the weight of dead generations of settler anthropologists before him. These sojourners were drawn to the deep sea Haida homeland. Their fascination was rooted in a settler sense of deracination and dislocation \u2013 it is as though the settlers\u2019 own sense of loss is salved through emersion within another peoples\u2019 place-based society isolated and alone off the coast of Canada. After visiting the anthropologists returned home with chests and minds filled with the memorabilia of their visits.\u00a0 \u00a0They proceed to write books that speak to audiences in metropolitan centers of colonialism, not Haida Gwaii. Weiss is part of the sojourners\u2019 tradition, though he also speaks from within an emerging new anthropological voice that is as much concerned with Indigenous subjects as it is with the settlers\u2019 own implication within colonialism. It\u2019s not our father\u2019s anthropology; it\u2019s new kind of permission seeking sensitive anthropology that at least tries to be less controlling.<\/p>\n

Weis is at pains to show (implicitly and explicitly) that he is not imposing himself upon Haida people to do his study.\u00a0 We learn clues, for example, about how Weiss navigated permission in his acknowledgements (Pp. xi-x) where he thanks, using the Haida word, the communities of Old Masset and Masset: \u201cAnd first among firsts, I am grateful to Agnes Davis and her family. I learned the Haida word for thank you, how.aa<\/em>, sitting at Noonie Aggie\u2019s kitchen table, and she [and family] \u2026 were my first hosts in Old Massett\u201d (Pp. xi).\u00a0 Later Weiss thanks the formal governance structures of the Haida Nation (Pp x). There is no clear foregrounding of how permission was obtained \u2013 but we know from the acknowledgements, and textual inclusions throughout the book, that it was indeed granted. This is a common thread in current ethnographies that no longer include those painfully self-reflexive chapters of an earlier generation of experimental ethnographies. Instead authors paint their authenticity and sincerity through measured inclusions \u2013 such as the challenge from \u2018Lauren\u2019 Weiss faced discussed in chapter one\u00a0 (see, pages 21-25): \u2018what makes you different from all the others who have come and gone\u2019 Lauren asks. Weiss doesn\u2019t really tell us directly, but he clearly leaves the impression that he is different and, I would have to agree \u2013 he is trying hard to apply the lessons Indigenous peoples have been trying to teach settlers \u2013 respect us as we are, don\u2019t tell us what we should be, pay attention to who we are as real present people in our own worlds.<\/p>\n

I share a space with Weiss as an anthropologist. I share a space with Haida as an Indigenous person from a neighbouring coastal nation (Gitxaa\u0142a). My own family links me to Haida people, I share an understanding of \u2019home\u2019 in the same manner that Weiss describes for the Haida (pp. 63-90). As a Gitxaa\u0142a person I have witnessed settler sojourners passing through our laxyuup (territory\/home).\u00a0 As an Indigenous person paid to be an anthropologist I am of mixed minds when I read works like Weiss\u2019. \u00a0Shaping the Future<\/em>, and other recent similar books are not Evans Pritchard ethnographies in which The Nuer<\/em> are marched into the ethnographer\u2019s tent from their refugee camp to answer his questions.\u00a0 Yet, the agenda remains driven by concerns and forces and theories that arise from the settler\u2019s world and responds to questions the settler is asking. Where is attention paid to the authority and jurisdiction of the sm\u2019gygyet (hereditary leadership)? The anthropologist asks for permission, but what are the conditions under which this permission is granted? This is not a critique of how individual anthropologists build respect and rapport, but an interrogation of the wider context within which individuals manoeuvre as they seek permission.\u00a0 Weiss does a good job navigating this dilemma.<\/p>\n

The strength of the book is its focus on Indigenous futures. Futures here used to examine what people, specifically Haida, are doing to actively engage and shape their world. Set against a disciplinary history of chronicling the \u2018disappearing Indian\u2019 and a settler state actions to ensure \u2018Indians\u2019 did disappear Weiss listens to the different Haida voices that speak to actually existing Haida conceptions of where they are going. Weiss listens carefully to his Haida interlocuters and allows there is more than one Haida act of future making. This is important, especially in a discipline\u00a0 (anthropology) so strongly influenced by the euro-centrism of Durkheimian thinking. What might, perhaps link the rich diversity of future making is how it is \u201ca way of thinking [and, I would suggest, acting] out from within the temporal brackets of settler colonialism\u2019s\u201d acts of disappearing \u2018the Indian\u2019 (Pp. 183).<\/p>\n

Shaping the Future<\/em> is erudite, sensitive, informed, and relevant. It is everything that one might ask for in a new-times anthropology book. Weiss is aware of his subjective location. He is cautious in making overclaims. He does not simplify Haida people into The Haida<\/em>. It is a book I would commend us all to read. At the same time I realize I would rather be reading a book by a Haida author even if this settler author has given us one so sensitively and carefully done as Shaping the Future<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weiss arrived in Haida Gwai with the weight of dead generations of settler anthropologists before him. These sojourners were drawn to the deep sea Haida homeland. Their fascination was rooted in a settler sense of deracination and dislocation \u2013 it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":369,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2356,1000511],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aboriginal-title-and-rights","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/369"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ecoknow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}