Eco-criticism meets the First Nations: the possible transposition of West Coast environmental concerns into a translated Haida narrative

Abstract

In the recent Haida texts of Bringhurst a great deal of attention is paid to ethnobotany (the meanings, functions, and relationship of plants to a specific culture). Bringhurst also takes pains to delineate with maps and explanations the precise local geography of Haida Gwaii, inserting the original Haida-language place names into the English translation. Although the Haida narratives he translates make reference to these places, they can and have been translated without such meticulous attention to the local and natural world (Swanton; Yahgulanaas). My feeling is that Bringhurst’s choice to emphasize these is influenced by eco-criticism, a critical perspective emphasizing the relationship between human beings and the natural world. As translator and therefore applied critic, Bringhurst’s translation constitutes a statement not only about nineteenth-century Haida social institutions in their relationships to the natural world, but also an imaginative (re)construction of these relationships. The purpose of this construction is to be investigated, but it can provisionally be seen as an imagined alternative to dominant European economic practices and their impact on the West Coast environment. Meanwhile, present-day Haida have objected to the publication of these texts as both an appropriation and a misrepresentation of their history and culture (Weder). The complicated role of present-day Haida in this affair includes their project(s) of cultural recuperation through visual and verbal traditions such as the narratives translated by Bringhurst; their possible objectivization by Bringhurst (as an exponent of European cultural traditions) as guardians of the natural world; and their successful environmental activism in defence of the rain forest in Haida Gwaii.

In this presentation I will reconstruct the genealogy of Bringhurst’s scholarly investigations into nineteenth-century Haida cultural institutions and the textual and discursive paths he took to have these inform the translated narratives. Then I will juxtapose this path and its results with First Nations, preferably West Coast, and ideally Haida statements on record about similar relationships between land and people.

References

Bringhurst, Robert. A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999.

Swanton, John Reed. Skidegate Haida Myths and Histories. Skidegate Dialect. Bulletin / Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology; 29 Washington Govt. Print. Off. 1905

Weder, Adele. “The myths and the white man: Experts on the stories of the Haida First Nation are infuriated by Vancouver poet Robert Bringhurst's new book”. Globe and Mail. November 15, 1999. C3.

Yahgulanaas, Michael. A Tale of Two Shamans. Penticton, B.C.: Theytus Books and Qay'llnagaay: Haida Gwaii Museum, 2001.

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