To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

narratives—origin stories, family histories,
stories of relationships between animals
and humans—were being presented to him
as explanations for virtually all topics he
raised with Nuxalk people, their way of
establishing the importance of connections
between secular and superhuman dimensions
of existence.
Mcllwraith conversed directly with the
Nuxalk, but he began a second, indirect
conversation with Boas in his notes, sometimes
confirming, sometimes challenging
the latter's observations. He questioned
Boas's contention that versions of particular
narratives could be evaluated in terms
of their accuracy, that they could somehow
be codified as a definitive mythology.
Instead, he noted, different families have
different—though not necessarily competing—accounts
of how things came to be.
"Each man, convinced of the authenticity
of his own family account is quite willing to
believe that the one belonging to someone
else is equally correct." Like Boas, though,
he remained convinced that he was recording
was a kind of'memory culture' rather
than a viable, living tradition. Like Boas, he
sometimes complained about the difficulty
of finding people to work with during periods
of ceremonial activity. But unlike Boas,
Mcllwraith participated fully in the winter
ceremonial in 1923-24 and describes the
songs, the dances, the narratives in minute
detail. While he remained committed to the
salvage paradigm of the day, his actual presentation
moved away from the notion of
myth as collectible object and toward myth
as philosophical explanation.
Back from the field, Mcllwraith began
fulfilling his obligation to the Museum,
constructing his ethnography by 1926 for
publication. Here, we learn from Barker's
introduction, began a third conversation,
very different from ones he had with
Nuxalk or with Boas—this time a conversation
with guardians of public morality.
Barker's careful discussion of the twenty
year process involved in the original publication
of The Bella Coola Indians exposes
an important chapter in the history of
Canadian anthropology and raises questions
about the role that bureaucratic censorship
has historically played in the arts
and social sciences in Canada. In the decade
prior to Mcllwraith's fieldwork, Canadian
parliamentarians seem to have taken an
unusual interest in ethnographic publications,
apparently sparked by references to
the irrepressible 'talking vagina' in one earlier
collection of aboriginal narratives which
they ordered burned. Diamond Jenness,
then Chief of the Anthropology Division,
was warned in 1929 that "the Canadian
government could publish nothing which
might offend a 12-year-old school-girl," and
that contravening this might lead to the
banning of all anthropological publications
and even to "the elimination of the Anthropological
Division itself."
Jenness went to work on Mcllwraith's
report to ensure that all passages containing
sexual references were Latinized. In
1931, Jenness sent it to Boas who returned
lukewarm comments after two and a half
years. Systematically edited, fragmented,
and altered, the manuscript was finally
returned to Mcllwraith at his request in the
1940s. Determined to publish it, Mcllwraith
began the laborious process of reconstituting
it "as it was written in 1924-26." It first
appeared in 1948, twenty-two years after it
was submitted for publication.
Manuscripts have a life of their own,
quite independent of authors. With its republication
in 1992, The Bella Coola Indians
has become part of a new conversation.
While Mcllwraith noted a general disinterest
of younger people in the narratives in
1922-23, contemporary Nuxalk have shown
tremendous interest seventy years later. A
few copies of the 1948 ethnography survived
in the community and have been in
regular use in Nuxalk school programs.
The 46 photographs, the diagrams,
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