Towards a New Ethnohistory
Community-Engaged Scholarship among the People of the River
Description
"Towards a New Ethnohistory" engages respectfully in cross-cultural dialogue and interdisciplinary methods to co-create with Indigenous people a new, decolonized ethnohistory. This new ethnohistory reflects Indigenous ways of knowing and is a direct response to critiques of scholars who have for too long foisted their own research agendas onto Indigenous communities. Community-engaged scholarship invites members of the Indigenous community themselves to identify the research questions, host the researchers while they conduct the research, and participate meaningfully in the analysis of the researchers’ findings.
The historical research topics chosen by the Stó:lō community leaders and knowledge keepers for the contributors to this collection range from the intimate and personal, to the broad and collective. But what principally distinguishes the analyses is the way settler colonialism is positioned as something that unfolds in sometimes unexpected ways within Stó:lō history,
as opposed to the other way around.
This collection presents the best work to come out of the world’s only graduate-level humanities-based ethnohistory field school. The blending of methodologies and approaches from the humanities and social sciences is a model of twenty-first century interdisciplinarity.
Reviews
“Settler scholars concerned with disciplinary crises need look no further than this excellent anthology for models of respectful intercommunity engagement, radical methodology and pedagogy, and a paradigm for solidarity work that chooses to develop respectful relationships over moribund agonizing.”
- Madeleine Reddon
“Blending archival research with critical theory, oral history, and personal observation, the individual pieces explore the interplay of continuity and change in Stó:lō culture with a high degree of nuance and sophistication.”
- Andrew H. Fisher
“Exemplifies a new, transdisciplinary approach to ethnohistory, in which the researcher recognizes not only the legacy of settler colonialism in Canada, but also the subjectivity and relativity of their own views and western knowledge as a whole. This new ethnohistory aims to work with the community at all levels of research and form and sustain relationships that last long after fieldwork is conducted. Its hope is to produce scholarship that is cutting edge, complex, accessible and relevant to members of the community.”
- Daniel Sims
“In a time when many scholars are looking to decolonize their approaches to research—especially when working with Indigenous communities—this book stands as a clear exemplar of community-engaged research and demonstrates how it can be done well.”
- Jennifer Megan Markides
“The strength of the collection is its appreciation for and attention to interpreting history with reference to Stó:lō interpretative frames.”
- Tyler McCreary
"Navigating the roiling waters of contemporary identity politics, Indigenous issues, and scholarly debates are challenges in and of themselves, but, in this collection of essays, the contributors attempt to manage all three at once and calm the waters in the process."
- Kerry Abel