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Nebraska
Press Series 1
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The Heiltsuks Dialogues
of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast
Michael E. Harkin, Cloth: 1997,xiv,195,CIP.LC
95-46842,0-8032-2379-X
Studies in the Anthropology
of North American Indians Series
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University
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"Outstanding . . . What Marshall
Sahlins has done for the Hawaiians, Michael Harkin has
done for the Heiltsuks." -Sergei Kan, Dartmouth
College. In an incisive and wide-ranging critique of
ethnohistory and historical anthropology, Michael Harkin
develops an innovative approach to understanding the
profound cultural changes experienced during the past
century by the Heiltsuks (Bella Bella), a Northwest
Coast Indian group. Between 1880 and 1920, the Heiltsuks
changed from one of the most traditional and aggressive
groups on the Northwest Coast to paragons of Victorian
virtues. Why and how did this dramatic transformation
occur? These questions, Harkin contends, can best be
answered by tracing the changing views the Heiltsuks
had of themselves and of their past as they encountered
colonial powers. Rejecting many of the common methods
and assumptions of ethnohistorians as unwittingly Eurocentric
or simplistic, Harkin argues that the multiple perspectives,
motives, and events constituting the Heiltsuks' world
and history can be productively conceived of as dialogues,
ongoing series of culturally embedded communicative
acts that presuppose previous acts and constrain future
ones. Historical transformations in three of these dialogues,
centering on the body, material goods, and concepts
of the soul, are examined in detail. A valuable history
of a little-known Indian group and a highly original
investigation into the dynamics of colonial encounters,
the nature of cultural memory, and the processes of
cultural stability and change, this provocative study
sets the agenda for a new type of ethnohistory. Michael
E. Harkin is an assistant professor of anthropology
at the University of Wyoming. This is his first book.
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