Competencias básicas

[W]here natural lines are so imprecise and the ranges of so many species of wildlife so extensively overlapped...

[i]t is not surprising, then, that human occupation of this region is similarly complex.192

The above quotation, by author and anthropologist Hugh Brody, appears in Brody’s positively received book Maps and Dreams. As reviewers have noted, Brody’s effort to compare natural conditions to human actions had (and has) immense appeal to those interested in environmentalism and multiculturalism.193 _{As already}

mentioned, the very idea that a landscape influenced human activities has not received enough scholarly attention, so Brody definitely hit an important nerve. Too often, scholarship has focused on how people achieved their goals of overcoming adversity over the land’s supposedly harsh – even unjust ‒ elements. In Maps and Dreams, Brody issued a loud and important call to remember the correlation between landscape and human activities. Moreover, he called on all of us to stop putting our own aspirations above the land’s capacity to provide what we need to survive.

192 _{Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier (Vancouver:} Douglas and McIntyre, 1981), 20. Italics are mine.

193 _{For some examples of responses to Brody’s work, see Joan Ryan, “Aboriginal Peoples in}

Canada - a review of Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda 1968-1970 by Sally M. Weaver Home and Native Land: Aboriginal Rights and the Canadian Constitution by Michael Asch, Pathways to Self-Determination: Canadian Indians and the Canadian State edited by Leroy Little Bear, Menno Boldt and J. Anthony Long, The Quest for Justice: Aboriginal Peoples and Aboriginal Rights, edited by Menno Boldt and J. Anthony Long, Without Surrender without Consent: A History of the Nishga Land Claims by Daniel Raunet, Maps and Dreams by Hugh Brody, Village Journey by Thomas R. Berger and “Civilizing the West: The Galts and the Development of Western Canada” by A. A. den Otter, American Indian Quarterly 11, no. 4 (Autumn, 1987): 315-323; T. R. Berger, “Review of Maps and Dreams by Hugh Brody,” B.C. Studies, no. 54 (Summer 1982): 115-17.

The theory in Brody’s book deserves attention. Yet it is important to wonder whether a study about British Columbia, and the location he used to illustrate the overlapping conditions of people and place, should be the most significant example we have to remember the progressive equation Brody wants us to recall. As a jurisdiction, and as a topic of both scholarly and anecdotal conversations, British Columbia is not unknown to residents of Canada and people beyond Canada’s borders. West of the Canadian Rockies should not be ignored, yet whether Brody’s effort should be considered an example of what overlaps can mean everywhere is a question worth asking. If Brody wished to contribute to knowledge about British Columbia, Maps and Dreams did so. But as the years described in this Part illustrate, the situations in Île-à-la-Crosse have the ability to reveal relationships in a form so complex that they are a remarkable example of what the phrase “extensively overlapped” can mean.

In this Part, the human study of Île-à-la-Crosse’s space is presented. This Part illustrates the nature and scope of overlapping circumstances in ways that act as both a response and a challenge to Brody’s proposition. This Part is chronological, and it was constructed after an examination of all documents that mentioned Île-à- la-Crosse dated to approximately 1906. During these years, certain individuals regularly recorded events or were apparently more prone to retain a memory about community evolution and are mentioned more frequently than others. As a result, some individuals’ names are cited more times than other people. When introducing

the circumstances these documents mention, historic guideposts important to the village help categorize those details. Sometimes, these years correlate with dates already worked into previous understandings about Canada’s past. But just as frequently, these dates help illustrate Île-à-la-Crosse’s own inner components that complement or challenge trends originating elsewhere.

Section 2 of this Part is devoted to the years between the community’s earliest known times to the point when many parties began to label Île-à-la-Crosse as an actual “village.” Just as pre-human times illustrated examples of co-existence, peoples’ attitudes and efforts during this era reveal a concern with encouraging and then protecting complicated but productive interaction. From its earliest days, the human community illustrated how the pursuits of group cooperation and individual aspirations acted in tandem. Europeans learned about this balance and its effects, and it is those effects that inspired the original white traders to arrive in Île-à-la- Crosse in the first place.

Sections 3 through 5 of this Part introduce the years where community insiders and visiting outsiders met, each determining various means to survive on their own, but also improving those circumstances by encouraging a high rate of interaction. Sometimes labeled as the “post-contact” years, Île-à-la-Crosse’s times after Europeans arrived illustrate how a cut-and-dried understanding of events erases continuity. The place was famous for its fluid socializing. That quality brought more people who happened to be what we would call “newcomers” today using typical

historical concepts, and these newcomers participated in the community’s strong historic mechanisms for trade and peaceful times. As does any place, Île-à-la-Crosse demonstrates shifts in form and function over time. But while those shifts become apparent, so too do the consistent traits and the overall stability that helps the village’s residents survive both helpful and less positive changes.

Tawnshi wiwawow? Miyoiyawuk.194