Working Communities

FNAT 102 – Arts One

Lecture

Spring/2008

‘Indians at Work’

• Knight (1978), an informal labour historian, paints a picture of the breadth of our peoples’ work lives and contributions in B.C.’s early history– Farming, mining, on the

railways, freight transporting, as seamen & riverboat crew, long shoring, as entrepreneurs, logging, in sawmills, fishing, canning, as entertainers and artisans for the ethnographic trade.

• Particularly interested in labour/union activity

Countering Merivale and other mythmakers

• Often our people portrayed as needing ‘protection’ and ‘unable to compete’

• The settlers are often portrayed as self-reliant ‘pioneers’, who carved the province out of a backward wilderness

• The success of our enterprise and the need to discriminate against our full participation counters the former

• The breadth and depth of our labours and their significance to the early economy counters the latter

First Nations and the Foundation of the B.C. Fishery

• In the late 19th century most of the suppliers and cannery workers were First Nations people

• Early identification or potential and success due to traditional knowledge of where and when to fish

• Huge growth with our participation but that success lives little room for work for settlers and immigrants

• Dominion government started to regulate the fishery, confine FN to a ‘food fishery’, & discriminate in licensing

• Barricade Act (1905) attacks traditional technologies

(King, 2004)

Life in the Canneries

• ‘I know, many [Stó:lo] families that stayed there years and years, until finally the canneries were phased out or stopped canning the fish here in the lower mainland” (Woods,1998)

• Often seasonal wage employment, with men on the boats and women & children living at the canneries

Activity in the Commercial Fishery

• 1900 on the Fraser alone 555 gillnet licenses plus additional cannery licenses (p. 185)

• Decline in numbers through mid-century regulations and discrimination

• In 2003 owned 564 vessels out of a total fleet of 2885

• 26.9% of all commercial licenses• Varies from fishery to fishery

– Spawn-on-kelp 80%– Salmon 30%

• Continued resistance to aboriginal participation e.g. B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition

Teakerne Resource Consultants (2004)

Freshwater follows the pattern• Manitoba example (Tough,1996)

– Late 1800’s a booming whitefish and sturgeon fishery on lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba

– Source of affluence for aboriginal people in a ‘common property’ fishery

– Increased conflict over the resource led to regulations (under terms of Treaty 5)

– Slowly decreased number of areas where aboriginal people could fish

– Declining role except as food fishery & local sales though closure of the fishery in the 1960’s

Forestry: Logging, Mills & Long shoring

• Primary source of income listed in 1876 Indian Affairs report for B.C.

• Formed significant membership of the industry unions by the 1920’s

• During and after the depression more marginalized and displaced in the workforce

Skxwúmish Longshoreman (Parnaby, 2006)

• Gravitated to Burrard Inlet in large numbers; figured heavily in B.C.’s industrialization

• Organized in ‘gangs’ specializing in loading/unloading logs & lumber

• ‘They were the greatest men that ever worked the lumber’ ( ILWU Pensioners, 1986)

• Effectively protested harsh working conditions (Bows & Arrows local of IWW)

• Many blacklisted after the 1923 strike…ILA membership goes from “mostly Indians” to “many who had not worked on the waterfront , within six weeks”

Farmers• Many prairie treaties included

provisions for agricultural implements and instruction in farming

• The book Lost Harvests details how as success increased government began to deny access to machinery and stock (Carter,1991)

• Denied right to sell their surplus

• Parallel to a food fishery & ban on commercial sale

• Assigned role as migrant workers for hops and other picked crops

Playing to the Primitive

• Communities create economy where they are ‘allowed’ to participate

• Anthropologists and others interest in pre-contact and primitive

• A rush to collect and ‘preserve’

• Museums, private collectors and tourists

• Began iconic association with Canadian wilderness travel and tours

Cashing in on the Curio factor

• Flood of collectors 1890-1920

• Later crash in demand (except for cheap, mass produced souvenirs) until art resurgence of the 1970’s

• Interested in the colourful and ‘exotic’

• Communities began to produce items solely for this market

Touring & Performing

• Followed the lead of eastern & plains people e.g. Bella Coola 1880’s tour of Germany

• World’s Fair appearances e.g. ‘Hamatsa’ performances at 1904

• ‘posing’ for ethnographic pictures e.g. Curtis’ pictures of traditional people (all working as loggers, seine boat captains, etc.)

Tourism and the Selling of Culture

• 4 broad areas of potential conflict described by Robinson (1999)

• As economy it has implications for community

• Resurgence in our communities now/ especially remote or resource declining

• Shift from performers to actual control

• Issues of authenticity and authority abound

A Different Picture

• One of opportunity denied rather than inability to compete

• The myth of a superior culture needed a little help/ dispossession of property wasn’t enough

• Current successes indicate what could have been

• Remarkable achievements (seine boat captains, logging crew leaders, businesses, etc.) in communities regardless