Hist 526 Index Page

“The object was to learn to what extent the effort to think one’s own history can free thought from what it silently thinks, and so enable it to think differently.”

Michel Foucault, Use of Pleasure, p. 9.

Introduction: Welcome to History 526. Given the short time frame and the vast scope of the questions under consideration this course is less of a history course and more of a look at the major issues facing ethnohistorians. The literature we will use is international with a preference for Canadian examples where available. We will consider ethnohistory generally but the bulk of the examples will focus on ethnohistory with respect to indigenous peoples. I am not trying to push a particular approach in this course so we will read across the spectrum of perspectives and I hope that spectrum will be represented in the class as well.

Format: We will meet once a week in seminars. There is one field seminar scheduled for the course in which we will tour some contested images in the Royal BC Museum and Legislature and discuss issues around representation.

Readings: Readings will be available in the history reading room for copying or for reading in the room and some will be available on line.

As this is a seminar course, class attendance and participation is necessary. Students who miss more than one class without a doctor’s note or equivalent, will be docked participation marks and those who miss four seminars will get an incomplete for the course.

Writing assignments: The first writing assignment is an expanded book review. From a list of books suggested by the instructor, students will write a critical review focussing on the approach or approaches to ethnohistory taken by the author or authors of a single book. You should describe the book briefly but spend more time looking at the analytical/theoretical approaches that inform this book, situating it in the readings we have done in the first weeks of class and other readings in the field. Make it clear where you agree with the approach in the volume and where and why you prefer other approaches to this topic. This assignment will be due at the department office by 4 pm on Thursday October 18th. The length can vary but 15 pages double spaced would be typical.

The second writing assignment will involve an analytical paper on an historical question. This paper will review some of the key works on the issue and make an argument for the superiority of one or more approaches over the others. The historical question you focus on will be selected by you in consultation with me. This assignment is due at the departmental office by 4 pm on Friday December 7^th. The late penalty is 1% of the assignment grade per day for both assignments. The length can vary but 20-25 pages double spaced would be typical.

Reading notes. For each of the seminars starting on week 2 of the class, you must hand in a reading note. These will be collected after each class. The minimum reading note will be one typed page and will answer a question posed by instructor. They may be longer. Evaluation will be based mostly on thoughtful reflection.

Numerical scores are converted into letter grades using the university standard: A+ 100-90; A 85-89; A- 80-84; B+ 75-79; B 70-74; B- 65-69; C+ 60-64; C 55-59; D 50-54; E 40-49.

PRELIMINARY COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1. September 10. Introduction. Can the Indigene Speak? Can the Historian?

Keeshig-Tobias, Lenore. “Stop Stealing Native Stories,” in Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, eds. Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao (New Jersey: Rutgers, 1997) 71-73.

Gyatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Bill Ashcroft et al. Post Colonial Studies Reader, 1995, 24-28. (First published, 1988).

Homi K. Bhabha, “Frontlines, Borderposts,” in Angelika Bammer, ed., Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question. A. Bammer. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1994) 269-72.

Week 2. September 17. Ethnohistory, Microhistory and Historical Anthropology

Reading Question: What is ethnohistory?

For Discussion: What is the relationship between microhistory, ethnohistory, and thick description?

Philip Deloria, “Historiography,” in Deloria and Neil Salisbury, “A Companion to American Indian History,” (London: Blackwell, 2002, 6-21.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books, 1999 pp. 1-18.

Frederick E. Hoxie, “Ethnohistory for a Tribal World,” Ethnohistory 44:4 (fall 1997) ONLINE

David Boje, “Microstoria” in Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research (London: Sage,) 45-61

Clifford Geertz, “Thick Descriptions: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in his Interpretation of Cultures, Selected Essays, (New York: Basic Books, 1973) ONLINE

R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, (Oxford University Press, 1946) “Epilegomena, parts 1-3, 204-282.

Week 3. September 24. Representing the Native

Meet at the Front Entrance of the Legislative Buildings, 2:45. Visit to the museum and to the legislature to see First Nations Exhibit and the Legislative Murals.

Michael Brown, “The Missionary’s Photographs” in Who Owns Native Culture? (Cambridge Mass.; Harvard University, 2003) 11-42.

Victoria Wyatt, “Interpreting the Balance of Power...” Exposures, Vol. 28 No. 3, Winter 1991/92, 21-31.

Gloria Jean Frank, “That’s My Dinner on Display”: A First Nations Reflection on Museum Culture,” BC Studies 125/6 (Spring/Summer 200) 163-178.

Alan Hoover, “A Response to Gloria Frank” and Wendy Wickwire “A Response to Allan Hoover,” BC Studies 128 (Winter 2000/2001) 65-74.

Newspaper Articles on the Legislative Murals.

Week 4. October 1. Post Modern Turn: Research through Imperial Eyes

Edward Said, “Knowing the Oriental”, from Orientalism, New York, 1978 pp. 31-49.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books, 1999 pp 19-77.

Renée Bergland, The National Uncanny: Indian ghosts and American Subjects, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000) 1-22; 159-69.

Greg Dening, “The Theatricality of History Making and the Paradoxes of Acting,” Performances, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997) 103-127.

Paul Nadasdy, Hunters and bureaucrats : power, knowledge, and aboriginal-state relations in the southwest Yukon. Vancouver: UBC, 2003. Introduction.

Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: travel writing and transculturation , (London: Routledge, 1992) Chapter 1 and 4.

Week 5 October 8. Class Cancelled for Thanksgiving

Week 6. October 15th. Methods and Roles of the Historian

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books, 1999 pp. 78-141.

Julie Cruikshank,”Oral Tradition and Oral History: Reviewing Some Issues, Canadian Historical Review, LXXV, 3, (1994), 403-418. PDF

Alexander Soucy, “The problem with Key Informants,” Anthropological Forum, Vol 10 No. 2, 2000. PDF

Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, Introduction.

Keith Thor Carlson, “ Rethinking Dialogue and History: The King’s Promise and the 1906 Aboriginal Delegation to the London,” Native Studies Review, June 2005. PDF

Indigenous Governance Program, University of Victoria, “Protocols & Principles for Conducting Research in an Indigenous context”. 2000.

October 18. 4 pm First Writing Assignment Due.

Week 7. October 22.

Week 8. October 29. Religion/Spirituality

Fisher, Robin, “The Missionaries,” Contact and Conflict (Vancouver: UBC, 1977, 1996).

Peggy Brock, “Two Indigenous Evangelists: Moses Tjalkabota and Arthur Wellington Clah, Journal of Religious History, Vol 27, No. 3, October 2003 (ONLINE)

Comaroff, Jan and John. “Through the Looking Glass : Colonial Encounters of the First Kind,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 1:1 (March 1988) 6-32.

Kan, Sergei. Clan Mothers and Godmothers: Tlingit Women and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 1840-1940, Ethnohistory   (Autumn, 1996), pp. 613-641 (ONLINE)

Douglas Sutton, “Maori and Missionaries, 1814-1845: Commonalities and Common Praxis,” Unpub paper presented to CHA, 1993.

Notes from a Portion of Arthur Wellington Clah’s Diary January 1864. (PDF)

Week 9. November 5. Dialogism, Hybridity, and Encounters with Difference

Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “Do Rocks Listen? The Cultural Politics of Apprehending Australian Aboriginal Labor,” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 505-518. ONLINE.

Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin : the dialogical principle. University of Minnesota, 1984. Selected Pages.

Michel De Certeau, “Making Do: Uses and Tactics,” The Practice of Everyday Life. Stephen Randall, trans. Berkeley: University of California, 1988 29-44

Michael E. Harkin, “The Heiltsuks : dialogues of culture and history on the Northwest Coast.” Lincoln, University of Nebraska, 1984. Selected Pages

Gillian Cowlishaw, Intro and conclusion. Rednecks, Eggheads and Blackfellas

Week 10. November 12. Class Cancelled for Reading Break

Week 11. November 19. Victims, Power and Agency

   Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: indigenous pathways of action and freedom (Toronto: Broadview, 2005) 19-38.

Ranajit Guha, “Colonialism in South Asia,” from Dominance without hegemony : history and power in colonial India, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) 1-23.

Elizabeth Furniss, “Indian, Whites and Common Sense Racism,” from The Burden of History, (UBC Press, 1999). pp. 105-137.

Mary Ellen Kelm, Colonizing Bodies, (Vancouver: UBC, 2000). Xv-xiii, 19-37

Vine Deloria, Readings from the Vine Deloria Reader

Exercises from the Caucasian Workbook.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges,” http://law.uvic.ca/demcon/victoria_colloquium/documents/desousasantos.pdf

Week 12. November 25. Understanding the Language of the Encounter/ Gendered Encounters

Ian MacLaren, "Exploration/Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Author," International Journal of Canadian Studies, 5 (Spring, 1992).

Mary Louise Pratt, “Fieldwork in Common Places,” in James Clifford and George Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.27-50

John Lutz, “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal--Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West,” in Myth Stakes: Critically Analyzing Aboriginal and European Contact Narratives,(UBC Press) pdf

    Gendered Encounters

Elizabeth Vibert, (1996). “Real Men Hunt Buffalo: Masculinity, Race and Class in British Fur Traders' Narratives” Gender History 8(1): 4-21.

Devon A Mihesuah, “Commonality of Difference: American Indian Women and History,” in Mihesuah, ed. Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about American Indians, 37-54.

Caroline Ralston, "Ordinary Women in Early Post-Contact Hawaii," in Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre, Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Week 13. December 3.   Second Thoughts on Ethnohistory

Kirin Narayan, “How Native is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist” American Anthropologist 95, (1993) 675-686.

Trinh T. Minh-Ha, “Outside In, Inside Out” and 2 pages from “A Minute too Long,” in When the Moon Waxes Red, (New Your: Routledge, 1991) 65-78; 107-8.

Harmon, A. “Lines in the Sand: Shifting Boundaries between Indians and Non Indians in the Puget Sound Region,” Western Historical Quarterly 26:429-454 (1995)

Angela Cavender Wilson, “Should American Indian History Remain a Field of Study“ in Indigenizing the Academy, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Marlene Brant Castellano, “Updating Aboriginal Traditions of Knowledge,” in George Sefa Dei, Budd Hall and Dorothy Goldin Rosenbert, Indigenous Knowledge in Global Contexts. UTP 2002

John Lutz, “Pomo Wawa” and Pomo Postscript” from from Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal White Relations (forthcoming UBC Press). PDF

December 7, 4 pm. Second Writing Assignment Due.