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Hilary Stewart of Quadra Island was an important authority on Northwest Indian art and culture with more than ten titles directly concerned with Aboriginal cultures starting with Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (1973) and Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast (1977).
Her Cedar (1984), an examination of the various ways Aboriginal cultures utilized cedar, received one of the first four B.C. Book Prizes that were presented in 1985. Stewart's reiusse of the journal kept by English sailor at Nootka Sound in 1803, John R. Jewitt, Captive of Maquinna (1987), also received a B.C. Book Prize. Other titles included Robert Davidson: Haida Printmaker (1979) and Totem Poles (1990).
Hilary Stewart was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, on November 3, 1924. After attending boarding school in England, she spent six years in the armed forces, during and after the war. Upon completing studies at St. Martin's School of Art, she followed her brother, Peter, to Canada in 1951. She worked as an artist for CHEK TV and became increasing fascinated in the art, artifacts and cultures of the First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Long associated with the Archaeological Society of BC, she produced twelve books.
Stewart lived for many years on Quadra Island but was forced to move to Campbell River after a stroke. She spent the last five years of her life in a nursing home in increasingly frail health. She died on June 5, 2014. Hilary Stewart was pre-deceased by her brother Peter and her sister Heather. She is survived by her sister in-law Anna Stewart, her niece Robyn Stewart and her nephew Ian Stewart.
"Hilary Stewart was one of those unique talents who was equally distinguished as a writer and a graphic artist," said her final publisher, Howard White. "Her keen study of aboriginal cultures of the BC coast led her to make a major contribution to popular understanding."
In lieu of flowers for a a celebration of Stewart's life on June 21st, at 1:30 pm, at the Quadra Island Community Centre, friends and admirers were urged to make a contribution to the "UBC Museum of Anthropology" for the Hilary Stewart Endowment Fund for First Nations Education Programs.
**
In 1977, Hilary Stewart (1924 - 2014) wrote her most renowned book on Northwest Coast cultures before the term First Nations had been coined, Indian Fishing: Early Methods of the Northwest Coast (D&M $28.95). Now re-printed, it's still clear the care that Stewart took with her illustrations of hand-made fishing tools devised by First Nation peoples for catching a variety of fish. In over 450 drawings and 75 photographs, Stewart shows what these tools looked like and how they were used.
[photo: Hilary Stewart as an award winner at the first B.C. Book Prizes gala in 1985]
Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians
Cedar
The Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt
Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast
Totem Poles
AWARDS
?? Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for excellence in writing (1980)
?? Certificate of Merit for INDIAN FISHING and LOOKING AT INDIAN ART
?? Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize (1985)
?? Bill Duthie Booksellers Award twice (1985 and 1988)
?? James F. and Margaret Pendergast Award for contributions in Archaeology
?? Governor General's Commemorative medal for setting up the "Hilary Stewart Endowment Fund for First Native Educational Programs at UBC's Museum of Anthropology
BOOKS:
Indian Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (Hancock House, 1973)
Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast (Douglas & McIntyre, 1977, 1982; University of Washington Press, 2003; Reprinted D&M, 2018). 978-1-77162-185-4
Robert Davidson: Haida Printmaker (Douglas & McIntyre, 1979)
Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast (Douglas & McIntyre, 1979)
Wild Teas, Coffees & Cordials (Douglas & McIntyre, 1981)
Cedar: Tree of Life ot the NorthWest Coast Indians (Douglas & McIntyre, 1984)
John R. Jewitt: Captive of Maquinna (Douglas & McIntyre, 1987)
Totem Poles (Douglas & McIntyre, 1990)
Looking at Totem Poles (Douglas & McIntyre, 1990)
Stone, Bone, Antler & Shell (Douglas & McIntyre, 1996)
On Island Time (Douglas & McIntyre, 1998)
ILLUSTRATIONS:
Images: Stone: BC, by Wilson Duff (Hancock House, 1975)
Gathering What The Great Nature Provided, by the 'people of Ksan' (Douglas & McIntyre, 1980)
Assu of Cape Mudge, by Joy Inglis (UBC Press, 1989)
Spirit in the Stone, by Joy Inglis (Horsdal & Schubart, 1989)
[LITHIS / BCBW 2014] "First Nations" "Anthropology"
*
REVIEW 2018
Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast
by Hilary Stewart, foreword by Michael Kew
Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2018 (first published by J.J. Douglas, 1977)
$28.95 / 9781771621854
Reviewed by Dana Lepofsky
*
[caption id="attachment_35930" align="alignleft" width="250"]
Hilary Stewart in 1996. Photo by Dale Croes[/caption]
Editor's Note: Born in Saint Lucia in the West Indies in 1924, Hilary Majendie Stewart was educated at a boarding school in England, spent six years in the armed forces in the Second World War and four years at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, and emigrated to Canada in 1951.
She worked as Art Director for CHEK TV in Victoria and CHAN TV in Vancouver (now BCTV) while working on archaeology excavations, including the Old Musqueam site in Vancouver (1968) and the Katz site near Hope (1971) where, first-hand, she gathered material and context for her first book, Indian Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (Hancock House, 1973).
She went on to write another ten books, including the much-reprinted Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast (J.J. Douglas, 1977), the 40th anniversary edition of which is reviewed here by Dana Lepofsky of Simon Fraser University.
Lepofsky introduces Indian Fishing to a new generation, noting that, “In 1977, Stewart was way ahead of her time in recognizing that the spiritual and the practical could not be separated in traditional Northwest Coast fisheries.”
Harvests from the sea, Lepofsky continues, involved “prayers, not making noise, not harvesting more than you need, controlling net size and harvest location, returning bones to the ocean, and always treating fish with respect. This represents the antithesis of big-business industrial fisheries.”
Hilary Stewart died in Campbell River in 2004, aged 80. -- Ed.
*
[caption id="attachment_35927" align="alignleft" width="250"]
40th anniversary edition, 2018[/caption]
I opened the email that contained the request to write this review of the re-issue of Hilary Stewart’s (1977) Indian Fishing on a sunny day in early March 2018. At the time, I was in a car driving with friends to French Creek from Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. Our conversation was about other friends who last fall transported a special boat, called a “packer,” from Vancouver to Mexico to support a large, Korean-owned pelagic tuna farm.
In this operation, baby blue fin tuna are caught and put in ocean pens where they are fed live sardines. The sardines were caught by local fishers and then stored in the packer (~135 tons of sardines per packer) to feed the penned tuna until they are large enough to sell (~70-80 kg after processing). The large tunas, gutted and deheaded many hundreds at a time, are then flown within 48 hours to Tokyo, where there are sold, by the gram, as sushi-grade.
[caption id="attachment_35932" align="alignleft" width="400"]
Gulls and seine boats compete for herring near Qualicum Beach, March 2013. Photo by Dave Ingram[/caption]
We marvelled at the many costs of such an operation, including removing the sardines -- an important forage fish -- from the ocean’s food web, precluding the sardines from being eaten by local people, and the huge amounts of fossil fuel required to support this intensive, trans-Pacific, elite fishery.
Minutes later, once in French Creek, we were treated to the burst of life that means Pacific herring were spawning. The ocean was a turquoise blue from the milky milt, and eagles, gulls, and sea lions abounded. There was another tell-tail sign of the herring’s arrival: over 65 seine boats just off-shore, vying for their catch of adult female herring. Once caught, their roe sacs are extracted and sent to Japan as a supposed delicacy (“kazunoko”).
These seine boats represent yet another bizarre twist in today’s fishery methods. Despite the fact that herring populations have declined and are threatened throughout Canada’s west coast, that First Nations and some other local fishers are calling for region-wide moratoria to protect the remaining stocks, and that kazunoko is no longer considered a delicacy by many of the younger Japanese population (Shingo Hamada, personal communication, 2018), Canada continues to harvest herring at as high a rate as it can.
[caption id="attachment_35940" align="alignleft" width="400"]
River fence weir[/caption]
There is a stark and unsettling difference between the fishery knowledge and practice represented in Hilary’s Stewart’s book and the deep-sea tuna pens, the commercial herring roe fishery, or so many other examples of modern industrial fishing around the world. We now widely understand that careful resource management protocols and a deep commitment to conservation of resources were cornerstones of Indigenous knowledge systems (e.g., Anderson 2014; Turner 2005; 2014). This is reflected in the ethnographic and archaeological records from many parts of the world that indicate sustained harvests of marine foods over hundreds or thousands of years (Harris and Weisler 2017; McKechnie et al. 2014).
Hilary Stewart’s book gives insights into not just the intricacies of fishing technology, but the breadth and depth of traditional marine ecological knowledge held by Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast. Although she doesn’t name it as such, she also documents the larger management systems in which this knowledge is contextualized and enacted.
[caption id="attachment_35936" align="alignleft" width="400"]
Harpooning sturgeon, Fraser River[/caption]
Indian Fishing most obviously details the huge diversity of techniques and tools (portable and stationary) used by coastal First Nations to capture and process finfish. However, it also hints at the extensive ecological knowledge required to harvest and process these fish, the complex systems of ownership of marine resources and marine spaces, and the ethic and indeed worldview that underlies how people interact with their non-human kin (e.g., Gauvreau et al. Johnsen 2009; Langdon 2006; Lepofsky and Caldwell 2013; Mathews and Turner 2017; Thornton et al. 2015).
This ethic tells people about the right way to behave to ensure future harvests. These right ways include prayers, not making noise, not harvesting more than you need, controlling net size and harvest location, returning bones to the ocean, and always treating fish with respect. This represents the antithesis of big-business industrial fisheries.
In short, Northwest Coast marine management systems represent the results of thousands of years of accumulated local knowledge -- including both mistakes and innovations, wrapped up in management systems that are grounded in local needs and experience.
[caption id="attachment_35939" align="alignleft" width="400"]
A reef net fishery[/caption]
In 1977, Stewart was way ahead of her time in recognizing that the spiritual and the practical could not be separated in traditional Northwest Coast fisheries. As Michael Kew points out in his Foreword to the original edition of the book, it is significant that Stewart chose to both start and end her book with a discussion of the spiritual beliefs embedded in Northwest Coast fishing.
The “First Salmon Ceremony” is among the better known of these rituals and is summarized in detail by Stewart in her last chapter. However, Stewart also recounts smaller, daily actions and prayers that were equally important, as were the fish images displayed on baskets, carvings, and rock art. These prayers, as well as songs, provide clues about ecological knowledge, such as the sequence of fish migrations, as well as a means to communicate with the fish spirits. Such communication, coupled with respectful actions, ensured that fish would return every year. Collectively, these spiritual acts reflect the complex and age-old relationships Northwest Coast peoples had with their marine ecosystems.
[caption id="attachment_35929" align="alignleft" width="250"]
Stewart shows button blanket at her home on Quadra Island, 2009. Photo by Barbara Gordon[/caption]
In Stewart’s book, she draws on diverse kinds of knowledge and evidence to recount traditional fishing systems. As Stewart herself explains, she compiled the details presented in this book through various means. While she was often unable to observe the use of these technologies first hand, she assembled information from discussions with local Indigenous knowledge holders, ethnographic texts, and archaeological and museum specimens.
From early on in her career (which started with being part of archaeology excavations in the Salish region), Stewart understood the power and potential of blending knowledge and data from these diverse sources. This has always been one of the hallmarks of her game-changing career. As a result of her broad perspective -- coupled with her informative and beautiful sketches -- this compendium on fishing goes beyond the culture lists of early ethnographers and instead breathes the lives of people into her descriptions.
Indian Fishing, though originally published over forty years ago, has more than withstood the test of time. One area noticeably missing from her presentation is the choice not to include shellfish in her compendium on “fishing.” Almost certainly this was in part an editorial decision to contain the book’s scope. But I suspect it may have also been due to the then widely held belief that shellfish was not as important as finfish to First Nations.
[caption id="attachment_35934" align="alignleft" width="800"]
Barbs, tines, and points[/caption]
Of course, the thousands of meters-high shell middens along the coast counter this notion, as does the coast-wide documentation of “clam gardens” -- constructed intertidal terraces created to increase the productivity of clams and other valued marine resources (Deur et al. 2015; Lepofsky et al. 2015; https://clamgarden.com/ ).
[caption id="attachment_35928" align="alignleft" width="205"]
Stewart receives the Pendergast Award of the Canadian Archaeological Association, 2005. Photo by Morgan Tamplin[/caption]
There is so much that is important in this volume. I find it to be a bit like the ethnographies that Stewart relied on for sources. That is, every time I open the book, I discover another rich detail that I missed in my previous read. At perhaps a deeper level, this book is about the inexorable linkages between cultural and biological diversity and about Indigenous rights to manage their fisheries in their traditional lands (Harris 2008)– applying their local and hard-won knowledge of marine ecosystems and governance.
Stewart writes in her preface to the 1994 edition that in 1978 the government of British Columbia gave a copy of this book to every school in the province. I wonder how much of the knowledge embedded in this book is integrated into public classroom teaching -- knowledge about how to respect all the beings in world around us. We would do well to listen to voices that are represented in this important -- and still relevant -- book.
*
Post-script: I would like to dedicate this review to Clan Chief Kwaxsistalla Adam Dick, whose passing in July 30, 2018 left a big hole in our collective knowledge of Northwest Coast culture. Adam taught me much about traditional fishing practices and more importantly, the cultural context in which these practices are embedded -- Dana Lepofsky.
*
Dana Lepofsky of Simon Fraser University’s Department of Archaeology received her BA at the University of Michigan, her MA at UBC, and her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Since 2013 she has been co-editor of the Journal of Ethnobiology.
*
References Cited:
Anderson, E.N. ?2014. Caring for Place: Ecology, Ideology, and Emotion in Traditional Landscape Management. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.
Deur, D.E., A. Dick (Kwaxsistalla), K. Recalma-Clutesi (Ogwi’low’qwa), and N.J. Turner 2015. Kwakwaka’ wakw “Clam Gardens”: Motive and Agency in Traditional Northwest Coast Mariculture. Human Ecology 43: pp. 201–212.
Gauvreau, A.M., D. Lepofsky, M. Rutherford, and M. Reid. 2017. “Everything revolves around the herring”: The Heiltsuk-herring relationship through time. Ecology and Society 22(2): p. 10. [online] URL: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss2/art10/.
[caption id="attachment_35941" align="alignright" width="250"]
First edition, J.J. Douglas 1977[/caption]
Hamada, Shingo. Personal communication, 2018.
Harris, D. C. 2008. Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1845-1925. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver.
Harris, M., and M. Weisler 2017. Intertidal Foraging on Atolls: Prehistoric Forager Decision-Making at Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 12(2): pp. 200-223.
Johnsen, D. B. 2009. Salmon, science, and reciprocity on the Northwest Coast. Ecology and Society 14(2): 43. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art43/
Langdon, S.J. 2006. Tidal pulse fishing: selective traditional Tlingit salmon fishing techniques on the west coast of the Prince of Wales archipelago. In Menzies, C. R. (ed.), Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management. University of Nebraska Press, pp. 21-46.
[caption id="attachment_35942" align="alignright" width="250"]
University of Washington Press first edition, 1977[/caption]
Lepofsky, D. and M. Caldwell. 2013. Indigenous Marine Resource Management on the Northwest Coast of North America. Ecological Processes 2: pp. 1-12.
Lepofsky, D. N.F. Smith, N. Cardinal, J. Harper, M. Morris, E. White, R. Bouchard, D. Kennedy, A.K. Salomon, M. Puckett, K. Rowell, and E. McLay 2015. Ancient Mariculture on the Northwest Coast of North America. American Antiquity 80: pp. 236-259.
Mathews, D.L. and N.J. Turner. 2017. Ocean Cultures: Northwest Coast Ecosystems and Indigenous Management Systems, In. Conservation for the Anthropocene Ocean: Interdisciplinary Science in Support of Nature and People, edited by P. Levin and M. Poe, pp. 169-206. Academic Press, London.
McKechnie, I., D. Lepofsky, M.L. Moss, V.L. Butler, T.J. Orchard, G. Coupland, F. Foster, M. Caldwell, and K. Lertzman. 2014. Archaeological Data Provide Alternative Hypotheses on Pacific Herring (Clupea pallasii) Distribution, Abundance, and Variability. PNAS 111(9).
[caption id="attachment_35943" align="alignright" width="250"]
Douglas & McIntyre second edition (1982), reprinted 1994[/caption]
Thornton, T., D. Deur, and H. Kitka Sr. 2015. Cultivation of Salmon and other Marine Resources on the Northwest Coast of North America. Human Ecology 43: pp. 189–199
Turner, N.J. 2005. The Earth’s Blanket. Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.
Turner, N.J. 2014. Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal & Kingston.
*
Her Cedar (1984), an examination of the various ways Aboriginal cultures utilized cedar, received one of the first four B.C. Book Prizes that were presented in 1985. Stewart's reiusse of the journal kept by English sailor at Nootka Sound in 1803, John R. Jewitt, Captive of Maquinna (1987), also received a B.C. Book Prize. Other titles included Robert Davidson: Haida Printmaker (1979) and Totem Poles (1990).
Hilary Stewart was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, on November 3, 1924. After attending boarding school in England, she spent six years in the armed forces, during and after the war. Upon completing studies at St. Martin's School of Art, she followed her brother, Peter, to Canada in 1951. She worked as an artist for CHEK TV and became increasing fascinated in the art, artifacts and cultures of the First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Long associated with the Archaeological Society of BC, she produced twelve books.
Stewart lived for many years on Quadra Island but was forced to move to Campbell River after a stroke. She spent the last five years of her life in a nursing home in increasingly frail health. She died on June 5, 2014. Hilary Stewart was pre-deceased by her brother Peter and her sister Heather. She is survived by her sister in-law Anna Stewart, her niece Robyn Stewart and her nephew Ian Stewart.
"Hilary Stewart was one of those unique talents who was equally distinguished as a writer and a graphic artist," said her final publisher, Howard White. "Her keen study of aboriginal cultures of the BC coast led her to make a major contribution to popular understanding."
In lieu of flowers for a a celebration of Stewart's life on June 21st, at 1:30 pm, at the Quadra Island Community Centre, friends and admirers were urged to make a contribution to the "UBC Museum of Anthropology" for the Hilary Stewart Endowment Fund for First Nations Education Programs.
**
In 1977, Hilary Stewart (1924 - 2014) wrote her most renowned book on Northwest Coast cultures before the term First Nations had been coined, Indian Fishing: Early Methods of the Northwest Coast (D&M $28.95). Now re-printed, it's still clear the care that Stewart took with her illustrations of hand-made fishing tools devised by First Nation peoples for catching a variety of fish. In over 450 drawings and 75 photographs, Stewart shows what these tools looked like and how they were used.
[photo: Hilary Stewart as an award winner at the first B.C. Book Prizes gala in 1985]
Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians
Cedar
The Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt
Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast
Totem Poles
AWARDS
?? Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for excellence in writing (1980)
?? Certificate of Merit for INDIAN FISHING and LOOKING AT INDIAN ART
?? Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize (1985)
?? Bill Duthie Booksellers Award twice (1985 and 1988)
?? James F. and Margaret Pendergast Award for contributions in Archaeology
?? Governor General's Commemorative medal for setting up the "Hilary Stewart Endowment Fund for First Native Educational Programs at UBC's Museum of Anthropology
BOOKS:
Indian Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (Hancock House, 1973)
Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast (Douglas & McIntyre, 1977, 1982; University of Washington Press, 2003; Reprinted D&M, 2018). 978-1-77162-185-4
Robert Davidson: Haida Printmaker (Douglas & McIntyre, 1979)
Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast (Douglas & McIntyre, 1979)
Wild Teas, Coffees & Cordials (Douglas & McIntyre, 1981)
Cedar: Tree of Life ot the NorthWest Coast Indians (Douglas & McIntyre, 1984)
John R. Jewitt: Captive of Maquinna (Douglas & McIntyre, 1987)
Totem Poles (Douglas & McIntyre, 1990)
Looking at Totem Poles (Douglas & McIntyre, 1990)
Stone, Bone, Antler & Shell (Douglas & McIntyre, 1996)
On Island Time (Douglas & McIntyre, 1998)
ILLUSTRATIONS:
Images: Stone: BC, by Wilson Duff (Hancock House, 1975)
Gathering What The Great Nature Provided, by the 'people of Ksan' (Douglas & McIntyre, 1980)
Assu of Cape Mudge, by Joy Inglis (UBC Press, 1989)
Spirit in the Stone, by Joy Inglis (Horsdal & Schubart, 1989)
[LITHIS / BCBW 2014] "First Nations" "Anthropology"
*
REVIEW 2018
Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast
by Hilary Stewart, foreword by Michael Kew
Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2018 (first published by J.J. Douglas, 1977)
$28.95 / 9781771621854
Reviewed by Dana Lepofsky
*
[caption id="attachment_35930" align="alignleft" width="250"]
Hilary Stewart in 1996. Photo by Dale Croes[/caption]Editor's Note: Born in Saint Lucia in the West Indies in 1924, Hilary Majendie Stewart was educated at a boarding school in England, spent six years in the armed forces in the Second World War and four years at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, and emigrated to Canada in 1951.
She worked as Art Director for CHEK TV in Victoria and CHAN TV in Vancouver (now BCTV) while working on archaeology excavations, including the Old Musqueam site in Vancouver (1968) and the Katz site near Hope (1971) where, first-hand, she gathered material and context for her first book, Indian Artifacts of the Northwest Coast (Hancock House, 1973).
She went on to write another ten books, including the much-reprinted Indian Fishing: Early Methods on the Northwest Coast (J.J. Douglas, 1977), the 40th anniversary edition of which is reviewed here by Dana Lepofsky of Simon Fraser University.
Lepofsky introduces Indian Fishing to a new generation, noting that, “In 1977, Stewart was way ahead of her time in recognizing that the spiritual and the practical could not be separated in traditional Northwest Coast fisheries.”
Harvests from the sea, Lepofsky continues, involved “prayers, not making noise, not harvesting more than you need, controlling net size and harvest location, returning bones to the ocean, and always treating fish with respect. This represents the antithesis of big-business industrial fisheries.”
Hilary Stewart died in Campbell River in 2004, aged 80. -- Ed.
*
[caption id="attachment_35927" align="alignleft" width="250"]
40th anniversary edition, 2018[/caption]I opened the email that contained the request to write this review of the re-issue of Hilary Stewart’s (1977) Indian Fishing on a sunny day in early March 2018. At the time, I was in a car driving with friends to French Creek from Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. Our conversation was about other friends who last fall transported a special boat, called a “packer,” from Vancouver to Mexico to support a large, Korean-owned pelagic tuna farm.
In this operation, baby blue fin tuna are caught and put in ocean pens where they are fed live sardines. The sardines were caught by local fishers and then stored in the packer (~135 tons of sardines per packer) to feed the penned tuna until they are large enough to sell (~70-80 kg after processing). The large tunas, gutted and deheaded many hundreds at a time, are then flown within 48 hours to Tokyo, where there are sold, by the gram, as sushi-grade.
[caption id="attachment_35932" align="alignleft" width="400"]
Gulls and seine boats compete for herring near Qualicum Beach, March 2013. Photo by Dave Ingram[/caption]We marvelled at the many costs of such an operation, including removing the sardines -- an important forage fish -- from the ocean’s food web, precluding the sardines from being eaten by local people, and the huge amounts of fossil fuel required to support this intensive, trans-Pacific, elite fishery.
Minutes later, once in French Creek, we were treated to the burst of life that means Pacific herring were spawning. The ocean was a turquoise blue from the milky milt, and eagles, gulls, and sea lions abounded. There was another tell-tail sign of the herring’s arrival: over 65 seine boats just off-shore, vying for their catch of adult female herring. Once caught, their roe sacs are extracted and sent to Japan as a supposed delicacy (“kazunoko”).
These seine boats represent yet another bizarre twist in today’s fishery methods. Despite the fact that herring populations have declined and are threatened throughout Canada’s west coast, that First Nations and some other local fishers are calling for region-wide moratoria to protect the remaining stocks, and that kazunoko is no longer considered a delicacy by many of the younger Japanese population (Shingo Hamada, personal communication, 2018), Canada continues to harvest herring at as high a rate as it can.
[caption id="attachment_35940" align="alignleft" width="400"]
River fence weir[/caption]There is a stark and unsettling difference between the fishery knowledge and practice represented in Hilary’s Stewart’s book and the deep-sea tuna pens, the commercial herring roe fishery, or so many other examples of modern industrial fishing around the world. We now widely understand that careful resource management protocols and a deep commitment to conservation of resources were cornerstones of Indigenous knowledge systems (e.g., Anderson 2014; Turner 2005; 2014). This is reflected in the ethnographic and archaeological records from many parts of the world that indicate sustained harvests of marine foods over hundreds or thousands of years (Harris and Weisler 2017; McKechnie et al. 2014).
Hilary Stewart’s book gives insights into not just the intricacies of fishing technology, but the breadth and depth of traditional marine ecological knowledge held by Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast. Although she doesn’t name it as such, she also documents the larger management systems in which this knowledge is contextualized and enacted.
[caption id="attachment_35936" align="alignleft" width="400"]
Harpooning sturgeon, Fraser River[/caption]Indian Fishing most obviously details the huge diversity of techniques and tools (portable and stationary) used by coastal First Nations to capture and process finfish. However, it also hints at the extensive ecological knowledge required to harvest and process these fish, the complex systems of ownership of marine resources and marine spaces, and the ethic and indeed worldview that underlies how people interact with their non-human kin (e.g., Gauvreau et al. Johnsen 2009; Langdon 2006; Lepofsky and Caldwell 2013; Mathews and Turner 2017; Thornton et al. 2015).
This ethic tells people about the right way to behave to ensure future harvests. These right ways include prayers, not making noise, not harvesting more than you need, controlling net size and harvest location, returning bones to the ocean, and always treating fish with respect. This represents the antithesis of big-business industrial fisheries.
In short, Northwest Coast marine management systems represent the results of thousands of years of accumulated local knowledge -- including both mistakes and innovations, wrapped up in management systems that are grounded in local needs and experience.
[caption id="attachment_35939" align="alignleft" width="400"]
A reef net fishery[/caption]In 1977, Stewart was way ahead of her time in recognizing that the spiritual and the practical could not be separated in traditional Northwest Coast fisheries. As Michael Kew points out in his Foreword to the original edition of the book, it is significant that Stewart chose to both start and end her book with a discussion of the spiritual beliefs embedded in Northwest Coast fishing.
The “First Salmon Ceremony” is among the better known of these rituals and is summarized in detail by Stewart in her last chapter. However, Stewart also recounts smaller, daily actions and prayers that were equally important, as were the fish images displayed on baskets, carvings, and rock art. These prayers, as well as songs, provide clues about ecological knowledge, such as the sequence of fish migrations, as well as a means to communicate with the fish spirits. Such communication, coupled with respectful actions, ensured that fish would return every year. Collectively, these spiritual acts reflect the complex and age-old relationships Northwest Coast peoples had with their marine ecosystems.
[caption id="attachment_35929" align="alignleft" width="250"]
Stewart shows button blanket at her home on Quadra Island, 2009. Photo by Barbara Gordon[/caption]In Stewart’s book, she draws on diverse kinds of knowledge and evidence to recount traditional fishing systems. As Stewart herself explains, she compiled the details presented in this book through various means. While she was often unable to observe the use of these technologies first hand, she assembled information from discussions with local Indigenous knowledge holders, ethnographic texts, and archaeological and museum specimens.
From early on in her career (which started with being part of archaeology excavations in the Salish region), Stewart understood the power and potential of blending knowledge and data from these diverse sources. This has always been one of the hallmarks of her game-changing career. As a result of her broad perspective -- coupled with her informative and beautiful sketches -- this compendium on fishing goes beyond the culture lists of early ethnographers and instead breathes the lives of people into her descriptions.
Indian Fishing, though originally published over forty years ago, has more than withstood the test of time. One area noticeably missing from her presentation is the choice not to include shellfish in her compendium on “fishing.” Almost certainly this was in part an editorial decision to contain the book’s scope. But I suspect it may have also been due to the then widely held belief that shellfish was not as important as finfish to First Nations.
[caption id="attachment_35934" align="alignleft" width="800"]
Barbs, tines, and points[/caption]Of course, the thousands of meters-high shell middens along the coast counter this notion, as does the coast-wide documentation of “clam gardens” -- constructed intertidal terraces created to increase the productivity of clams and other valued marine resources (Deur et al. 2015; Lepofsky et al. 2015; https://clamgarden.com/ ).
[caption id="attachment_35928" align="alignleft" width="205"]
Stewart receives the Pendergast Award of the Canadian Archaeological Association, 2005. Photo by Morgan Tamplin[/caption]There is so much that is important in this volume. I find it to be a bit like the ethnographies that Stewart relied on for sources. That is, every time I open the book, I discover another rich detail that I missed in my previous read. At perhaps a deeper level, this book is about the inexorable linkages between cultural and biological diversity and about Indigenous rights to manage their fisheries in their traditional lands (Harris 2008)– applying their local and hard-won knowledge of marine ecosystems and governance.
Stewart writes in her preface to the 1994 edition that in 1978 the government of British Columbia gave a copy of this book to every school in the province. I wonder how much of the knowledge embedded in this book is integrated into public classroom teaching -- knowledge about how to respect all the beings in world around us. We would do well to listen to voices that are represented in this important -- and still relevant -- book.
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Post-script: I would like to dedicate this review to Clan Chief Kwaxsistalla Adam Dick, whose passing in July 30, 2018 left a big hole in our collective knowledge of Northwest Coast culture. Adam taught me much about traditional fishing practices and more importantly, the cultural context in which these practices are embedded -- Dana Lepofsky.
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Dana Lepofsky of Simon Fraser University’s Department of Archaeology received her BA at the University of Michigan, her MA at UBC, and her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Since 2013 she has been co-editor of the Journal of Ethnobiology.
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References Cited:
Anderson, E.N. ?2014. Caring for Place: Ecology, Ideology, and Emotion in Traditional Landscape Management. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.
Deur, D.E., A. Dick (Kwaxsistalla), K. Recalma-Clutesi (Ogwi’low’qwa), and N.J. Turner 2015. Kwakwaka’ wakw “Clam Gardens”: Motive and Agency in Traditional Northwest Coast Mariculture. Human Ecology 43: pp. 201–212.
Gauvreau, A.M., D. Lepofsky, M. Rutherford, and M. Reid. 2017. “Everything revolves around the herring”: The Heiltsuk-herring relationship through time. Ecology and Society 22(2): p. 10. [online] URL: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss2/art10/.
[caption id="attachment_35941" align="alignright" width="250"]
First edition, J.J. Douglas 1977[/caption]Hamada, Shingo. Personal communication, 2018.
Harris, D. C. 2008. Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1845-1925. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver.
Harris, M., and M. Weisler 2017. Intertidal Foraging on Atolls: Prehistoric Forager Decision-Making at Ebon Atoll, Marshall Islands. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 12(2): pp. 200-223.
Johnsen, D. B. 2009. Salmon, science, and reciprocity on the Northwest Coast. Ecology and Society 14(2): 43. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art43/
Langdon, S.J. 2006. Tidal pulse fishing: selective traditional Tlingit salmon fishing techniques on the west coast of the Prince of Wales archipelago. In Menzies, C. R. (ed.), Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Natural Resource Management. University of Nebraska Press, pp. 21-46.
[caption id="attachment_35942" align="alignright" width="250"]
University of Washington Press first edition, 1977[/caption]Lepofsky, D. and M. Caldwell. 2013. Indigenous Marine Resource Management on the Northwest Coast of North America. Ecological Processes 2: pp. 1-12.
Lepofsky, D. N.F. Smith, N. Cardinal, J. Harper, M. Morris, E. White, R. Bouchard, D. Kennedy, A.K. Salomon, M. Puckett, K. Rowell, and E. McLay 2015. Ancient Mariculture on the Northwest Coast of North America. American Antiquity 80: pp. 236-259.
Mathews, D.L. and N.J. Turner. 2017. Ocean Cultures: Northwest Coast Ecosystems and Indigenous Management Systems, In. Conservation for the Anthropocene Ocean: Interdisciplinary Science in Support of Nature and People, edited by P. Levin and M. Poe, pp. 169-206. Academic Press, London.
McKechnie, I., D. Lepofsky, M.L. Moss, V.L. Butler, T.J. Orchard, G. Coupland, F. Foster, M. Caldwell, and K. Lertzman. 2014. Archaeological Data Provide Alternative Hypotheses on Pacific Herring (Clupea pallasii) Distribution, Abundance, and Variability. PNAS 111(9).
[caption id="attachment_35943" align="alignright" width="250"]
Douglas & McIntyre second edition (1982), reprinted 1994[/caption]Thornton, T., D. Deur, and H. Kitka Sr. 2015. Cultivation of Salmon and other Marine Resources on the Northwest Coast of North America. Human Ecology 43: pp. 189–199
Turner, N.J. 2005. The Earth’s Blanket. Traditional Teachings for Sustainable Living. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.
Turner, N.J. 2014. Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal & Kingston.
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Articles: 2 Articles for this author
The Adventures and Suffering of John R. Jewitt (D&M 1995)
Article
The most notorious account of the early relations between Europeans and Indians on the West Coast is John Jewitt's memoir of his two years as Nuu-chah-nulth Chief Maquinna's slave at Nootka Sound on the east coast of Vancouver Island. The Adventures and Suffering of John Jewitt has never been out of print.
Chief Maquinna was the most powerful chief known to the Europeans in the late 18th century. He met Captain Cook in 1778 and later hosted the negotiations between Captains Vancouver and Quadra who represented the interests of England and Spain in 1792.
Born on May 21, 1783, John Jewitt was the son of a Lincolnshire blacksmith who wanted his son to become a surgeon. In the seaport of Hull, John Jewitt heard tales of the sea and signed on as the armourer, or blacksmith, on the Boston, a sailing ship that arrived at Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound on March 12, 1803.
Trading was undertaken amicably until Captain Salter of the Boston insulted Chief Maquinna on March 21. Salter had given Maquinna a gift of a double-barrelled rifle. When its lock jammed, Maquinna announced it was bad and needed repair. Salter, not realizing the extent to which Maquinna understood English, cursed Maquinna and gave the rifle to Jewitt for repairs.
Jewitt later recorded the incident. "I observed him, while the captain was speaking, repeatedly put his hand to his throat and rub it upon his bosom, which he afterwards told me was to keep down his heart, which was rising into his throat and choking him.";
The following day the local Nuu-chah-nulth Indians took revenge. After coming aboard the Boston for a feast, they suddenly attacked and killed 25 crewmembers. John Thompson, a sailmaker, hid during the attack and was found the following day. Jewitt was struck unconscious early in the struggle and was accidentally spared.
Maquinna had observed Jewitt at his forge and recognized his value. When Jewitt revived, he had to promise to be a good slave and to make Maquinna weapons and tools. Jewitt negotiated for the life of the other survivor, Thompson, who was 20 years his senior, by telling Maquinna that Thompson was his father.
Jewitt was asked to identify the severed heads of his 25 former shipmates. The two captives were not treated harshly. Thompson, from Philadelphia, remained bitter and violent, but Jewitt set about to endear himself and learn the language.
Jewitt forged the first axes and ironworks made on the North Pacific coast. He also kept a daily journal that provided mainly favourable impressions of his captor, Maquinna. "He was dressed in a large mantle or cloak of the black sea-otter skin, which reached to his knees, and was fastened around his middle by a broad belt of the cloth of the country, wrought or painted with figures of several colours; this dress was by no means unbecoming, but, on the contrary, had an air of savage magnificence.";
On July 19, 1805, another trading brig, Lydia, approached Friendly Cove, also known as Yuquot. Jewitt hastily wrote a note to its captain detailing the murders and his slavery, begging the captain to invite Maquinna aboard, capture him and demand the release of Thompson and himself. The Nootkas were advising Maquinna against going aboard the ship. Maquinna asked Jewitt for advice. Jewitt said it would be safe.
After the captain supplied Maquinna with an alcoholic drink, Maquinna was held at gunpoint. After much agitation ashore, Jewitt and Thompson were swapped for Maquinna. The captain also persuaded the Indians to return all items that had been taken from the Boston two years earlier.
Jewitt sailed on the Lydia to New England. The release of his journal temporarily gained him celebrity status. He died in obscurity in Hartford, Connecticut in 1821.
In 2003, John R. Jewitt, a sixth-generation descendant of John Jewitt, traveled to Yuquot on the east side of Vancouver Island to meet with Mike Maquinna, a descendant of Maquinna, to mark the 200th anniversary of their forefathers' meeting. The two men had already met on October 29, 1987 at the Vancouver Maritime Museum, 184 years after the capture, at which time the museum made available a dagger that was made by Jewitt for Chief Maquinna during his captivity. The Adventures and Suffering of John R. Jewitt (D&M 1995) by Hilary Stewart 155054408X
[BCBW Winter 2003]
Remembering Hilary
Essay 2014
by Vickie Jensen
Hilary was both a close friend and a mentor to me. We pulled cedar bark from great trees in the spring, learned how to twine or weave headdresses, cooked in steam-bent boxes, gathered, sniffed, tasted and tried, all the while gaining a respect for the complex culture of coastal native peoples.
Over decades of drawing, photographing and writing, she produced a shelf-full of resources on Northwest Coast native culture that were read, collected and utilized by First Nations peoples, academics and ordinary folks intrigued by the unique aboriginal culture of this coast.
Hilary believed in learning by looking and doing. Indeed, her book research spilled over into workshops, demonstrations and one-on-one sessions that taught so many, from First Nations artists and docents-in-training, to elementary students and amazed tourists.
Despite having no academic credentials in archaeology or anthropology, Hilary became an expert about everything she wrote. A founding member of the Archaeological Society of British Columbia (ASBC), she volunteered on an archaeological dig on the banks of the Fraser south of Hope, producing meticulous drawings of the artifacts being unearthed.
Her work caught the attention of Dr. Charles Borden, UBC's first archaeologist, who encouraged her to publish them in book format. The result was Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians (Hancock House 1973), later revised and reissued as Stone, Bone, Antler and Shell (D&M 1996), a resounding success that was also the first comprehensive record of such information.
When working on Indian Fishing (D&M 1977), she interviewed native fishermen and searched out historic collections of fishing equipment, then proceeded to create all the lures herself. Not content with that, she took her halibut hook to the Vancouver Aquarium and got permission to test it out. In the process she discovered that halibut hooks floated up rather than down from their anchor line. But what pleased her most what the tooth marks left by a halibut that couldn't resist the temptation of her lure.
In the early 1980s Hilary was thick into the research for her epic resource Cedar (D&M 1984). One frosty morning, she called and asked if I was busy. I immediately cleared my schedule as she explained that she'd asked the Vancouver Parks Board to be on the lookout for a sizeable cedar drift log so she could attempt splitting cedar planks from it, just like in the old days. They'd just found such a log. So armed with stone hammers and an array of fire-hardened yew-wood wedges she'd made, we set off for Jericho Beach.
It was a morning forever etched into my memory, stepping back in time as we drove those wedges into the straight-grained wood and then re-set them further along as the long house planks began to split off the log. "I knew we could do it!"; she beamed.
Hilary treasured the relationships she made with First Nations peoples while researching her books. Many are referenced in her books. But the impact of those teachings continued long after publication. Karen Duffek of UBC 's Museum of Anthropology recalls Skidegate cedar-bark weaver Vicky Moody telling her that Cedar had in fact changed her life. Initially, she knew nothing about weaving, but the book's precise illustrations and text encouraged her to try. She then went on to incorporate those techniques in her own innovative works, many of which are now in museum collections.
Hilary's main publisher Scott McIntyre noted, "One happy outcome of Hilary's deep love of this place, her First Nation friends, and the remarkable culture which flourished here is that the nine books of hers we were privileged to publish have sold over 600,000 copies in some ten countries and several languages. Imagine, as but one example, a book which teaches the Japanese how to fish!";
Certainly Hilary Stewart was pleased with the honours her books and endeavours earned, but she was also especially proud that she was able to make her living as a writer. Always frugal, she bought land and built a house nestled among the ferns, trees and creatures of her beloved Quadra Island. There she produced her final book, On Island Time (D&M 1988).
[first printed in BCBookLook]
