Further Reading

Marjorie Halpin and Margaret Seguin (Anderson), “Tsimshian Peoples: Southern Tsimshian, Coast Tsimshian, Nishga and Gitksan,” in Wayne Suttles, ed. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 7 (Washingston, D.C., 1990), 267–85, is the most authoritative published source on the identification of the Tsimshian groups. Franz Boas published several volumes on native mythology, technology, and social organization, including Tsimshian Mythology (Washington, D.C., 1916), which was based on texts collected by Henry Tate. Viola Garfield was a student of Boas, who worked with the Tsimshian ethographer William Beynon, and her study of Port Simpson in the 1930s, Tsimshian Clan and Society (Seattle, 1939), is a major source for this period and one of the few full ethnographic treatments of coastal groups. Stephen McNeary has contributed the only other comprehensive description of the Nisga’a, “Where Fire Came Down from: Social and Economic Life of the Niska” (Ph.D. thesis, Bryn Mawr College, 1976).

Marius Barbeau’s long interest in the region yielded several volumes including Totem Poles, 2 vols. (Ottawa, 1950; repr. 1990), as well as an extensive collection of texts and documentation from people in the communities housed at the Centre for Folk Centre Studies, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Ottawa. Wilson Duff’s “Laws and Territories of the Kitwancool,” in Anthropology in British Columbia, no. 4 (Victoria, 1965), is a major contribution based entirely on the accounts of members of that community. Duff’s student, Marjorie Halpin, of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, has published extensively on art; especially worthy of mention is her “The Tsimshian Crest System: A Study Based on Museum Specimens and the Marius Barbeau and William Beynon Field Notes” (Ph.D. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1973). Jay Miller and Carol M. Eastman have edited a useful collection, The Tsimshian and Their Neighbours of the North Pacific Coast (Seattle, 1984).

The linguists who have published the greatest amount on languages in the Tsimshian language family include John Dunn (Coast and Southern Tsimshian), Bruce Rigsby (Gitksan), and MarieLucie Tarpent (Nisga’a). See especially Dunn’s A Practical Dictionary for the Coast Tsimshian Language (Ottawa, 1978); Lonnie Hindle and Bruce Rigsby’s “A Short Practical Dictionary of the Gitskam language,” Northwest Anthropological Research Notes, vol. 7, no. 1 (1973), 1–61; and Tarpent’s “A Grammar of the Nishga Language” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Victoria, 1989). On feasting, readers should consult Margaret (Seguin) Anderson’s Interpretive Contexts for Traditional and Current Coast Tsimshian Feasts (Ottawa, 1985) and The Tsimshian: Images of the Past, Views for the Present (Vancouver, 1984).

Jim McDonald’s “Trying to Make a Life: The Historical Political Economy of Kitsumkalum” (Ph.D. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1985) demonstrates that the economy of the region was built on the labour of the Tsimshian, Nisga’a, and Gitksan as well as on the resources found in their territories. The archaeology and prehistory of the region are topics of enduring interest, to which major contributions have been made by a number of long-term fieldworkers. See especially Richard Inglis and George MacDonald, Skeena River Prehistory (Ottawa, 1979); David Archer, “The North Coast Heritage Inventory Project: A Report on the 1990 Field Season,” prepared for the province of British Columbia (1991); and Roy L. Carlson and Luke Dalla Bona, Early Human Occupation in British Columbia (Vancouver, 1995).

The link between oral histories and archaeological and historic evidence is discussed by Susan Marsden in “Evidence of Early Halocene Environments in Northwest Coast Oral Histories,” Canadian Archaeology Association, Papers (1988), and “Defending the Mouth of the Skeena: Perspective on Tsimshian-Tlinglit Relations,” Canadian Archaeological Association, Proceedings (1996). See also Neil Sterrit, Susan Marsden, and Bob Galois et al., Tribal Boundaries in the Nass Watershed (Vancouver, 1998), and Marsden and Galois, “The Tsimshian, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Geopolitics of the Northwest Coast Fur Trade, 1787–1840,” Canadian Geographer, vol. 39, no. 2 (1995), 169–83.

As the Gitksan, Tsimshian, and Nisga’a people have shed their colonial legacies they have begun both to publish works and to sponsor publications by selected non-native authors. Gisday Wa and Delgam Uukw’s Spirit in the Land: Statements of the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chefs in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, 1987–90: Reflections (Gabriola, B.C., 1992) presents the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en perspective on their land rights; Daniel Raunet’s Without Surrender, Without Consent: A History of Nishga Land Claims (Vancouver, 1984) and the Nisga’a Tribal Council’s People of the Nass River (Vancouver, 1993) recount the history of that group’s struggle to claim their land.

There is not yet a parallel resource on the history of the Tsimshian people from their own perspective, but several valuable works exist. Teachings of Our Grandfathers, a series of beautiful volumes produced by School District 52 in 1992, includes clan histories, descriptions of social practices, and stories aimed at a school audience. Walter Wright’s account of the ancient origins and history of his house was written down and published by local historian Will Robinson as Men of Medeek (Kitimat, B.C., 1962). Finally, the voluminous material on the Tsimshian generated by the ethnographer William Beynon in a career spanning four decades are housed in the centre for Folk Culture Studies, Canadian Museum of Civilization, and other archives. Selected texts published by John Love and George MacDonald can be found in Tsimshian Narratives, vols. 1–2 (Ottawa, 1987).