I have some problems with this book (mostly impatience with anything anyone says that has the term “post-” in it; that always puts my teeth to grinding). But most of it is reasonable and useful. Of special interest to me:
The basic distinctions that traders [North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company traders living among the Columbia Plateau Indians– P.P] drew between “fishing” and “hunting” peoples illustrates well the power of contemporary discourse concerning the influence of environment on society. As is made clear in the chapters that follow, the identities these labels describe are in large part inventions of the traders. All Plateau peoples included a range of subsistence strategies — fishing, gathering, and hunting — in their seasonal round… The emphasis itself was seasonally and historically variable, however, and communities described as “hunters” at other times gathered and fished.… … As for the influence of environment on “hunters’ and “fisherme,” the groups that occupied the banks of the Columbia River were cast as hopelessly indolent, supposedly because the river “afford(s) an abundant provision at little trouble for a great part of the year.” Those who lived in areas that were richer in animal life, and particularly those who hunted on the buffalo plains, were judged far more industrious. Clearly, the traders’ material interests figure prominently in the imagery that casts fishing peoples as lazy and hunters as hard-working.
My impression is that many historians, archaeologists, and even anthropologists have hardly progressed at all from the world-view of these Company factors.
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