Standing Up with G_a'ax_sta'las

Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom

By Leslie A. Robertson & the Kwagu'l Gix_sa_m Clan
Categories: Gender & Sexuality Studies, Women’s Studies, History, Canadian History, Social Sciences, Anthropology, Literature & Language Studies, Auto/biography & Memoir, Indigenous History
Series: Women and Indigenous Studies
Publisher: UBC Press
Ebook (MobiPocket) : 9780774845342, 596 pages, August 2014
View Table of Contents

Table of contents

Foreword / Nella Nelson

 

Prologue

 

Introduction: “Having Oneness on Your Face”

 

Part I – The Living Text: Traces of Jane Cook

 

Part II – Du?wa_’esa_la (Looking Around On the Beach): Ancestors

 

Part III – Stranger Than Fiction: Surviving the Missionary

 

Part IV – “Children of the Potlatch System,” 1888-1912

 

Part V – “We As the Suppressed People,” 1913-18

 

Part VI – “We Are the Aboriginee, Which Is Not a Citizen,” 1918-27

 

Part VII – “With the Potlatch Custom in My Blood,” 1930-39

 

Part VIII – One Voice from Many: Citizenship, 1940-48

 

Part IX – A Tower of Strength: Word Memorials, 1951

 

Part X – Dlax_w’it’sine’ (For Your Standing), Feasting

 

Notes

 

Bibliography

 

Index

A scholar and Cook’s descendants come together to reclaim the reputation of an important Kwakwa_ka_’wakw leader.

Description

Standing Up with G_a’ax_sta’las tells the remarkable story of Jane Constance Cook (1870-1951), a controversial Kwakwa_ka_’wakw leader and activist who lived during a period of enormous colonial upheaval. Working collaboratively, Robertson and Cook’s descendants draw on oral histories and textual records to create a nuanced portrait of a high-ranked woman, a cultural mediator, devout Christian, and Aboriginal rights activist who criticized potlatch practices for surprising reasons. This powerful meditation on memory and cultural renewal documents how the Kwagu’l Gix_sa_m have revived their long-dormant clan in the hopes of forging a positive cultural identity for future generations through feasting and potlatching.

Awards

  • Joint winner, K.D. Srivastava Prize for Excellence in Scholarly Publishing 2013
  • Winner, Aboriginal History Prize, Canadian Historical Association 2013
  • Winner, CLIO Prize for BC, Canadian Historical Association 2013
  • Short-listed, Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, BC Book Prizes 2013
  • Winner, CCWH Book Award, Canadian Committee on Women’s History 2014
  • Short-listed, The François-Xavier Garneau Medal, Canadian Historical Association 2015
  • Winner, Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize, American Society for Ethnohistory 2013

Reviews

In this most innovative book, Robertson and the Gix_sa_m Clan collectively write a book that will quickly become a methodological model for ethnohistorians. The non-linear narrative, with the focus on an interaction between the anthropologist, the indigenous community (Cook’s descendants), and the memory of Cook, provides a way of dealing with memory and history through the presentation of multiple voices. As one committee member stated, “The book models a collaborative process that more and more of us will be challenged to undertake. I think the future of our profession is that we will be expected to write with, rather than about, Indigenous communities. That this book presented a cohesive narrative about a woman whose life was so complicated and whose memory has been so contested by weaving together the voices of so many contributors is stunning to me.”

- Award citation