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  • Singing the Songs of My Ancestors: The Life and Music of Helma Swan, Makah Elder
  • Nathan E. Bender
Singing the Songs of My Ancestors: The Life and Music of Helma Swan, Makah Elder. By Linda J. Goodman and Helma Swan. Fwd. by Bill Holm. The Civilization of the American Indian Series, v. 244. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 339, notes, glossary, bibliography, index, maps, illustrations.)

This collaboration between ethnomusicologist Linda Goodman and Makah elder Helma Swan (1918–2002) has resulted in an extraordinary book on Makah traditions. The voices of both women are clearly evident in the text, with Swan's life stories adapted from more than twenty years of taped oral history interviews with Goodman. The perspectives and contributions of Goodman as a researcher are given in separate chapters, appendices, and notes. The project started as a way of showing the symbolic power and place of music in the life of a Makah woman, but the end result shows a much fuller social context of Makah lifeways through Swan's wide-ranging stories. These include Swan's early years at Neah Bay on the Makah reservation at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, her boarding school experience, marriage to and divorce from a Makah evangelical preacher, the rearing of her children as a single mother, her happier second marriage, her attempts to educate herself as an adult and to support her family by basket weaving and cooking, and her own assumption of the responsibilities of a tribal elder and involvement in Makah language retention [End Page 506] projects. Stories of the Makah traditions include fishing from wooden canoes, smoking fish, hunting seals and whales, beachcombing, storytelling, burials, the dangers of acquiring spiritual power, and much on babysitting and child rearing. To provide additional historical context, observations about nineteenth-century Makah life are included from the diaries of ethnographer James G. Swan, a highly respected friend of Helma Swan's family, from whom the Swan name was adopted, and author of The Indians of Cape Flattery [Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 16(8):1–106. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1870].

All of this information provides the considerable personal and social context necessary to understand the Makah people and their Northwest Coast musical traditions. When information about specific Makah music is presented, it is within the cultural context of continuing family traditions by publicly using songs and dances at parties/potlatches as well as among the duties of song leaders and dance organizers. Tensions raised by improper song owner etiquette and by multiple claims to ownership and rights to particular songs are discussed, with many references to how these customs have changed since Swan was a child. The concern with song stealing is elaborated to explain why chapter 10, "Ten Swan Family Songs," does not include actual sound recordings. Ethnomusicologists, however, should find very useful the printed musical scores, Makah lyrics, and historical/contextual analysis with English translations for each song. These include a love song, a dinner song, a whaling song, three grizzly bear songs, two wolf dance songs, and a changing mask dance song with accompanying chant.

This combined biography and musical study recounts real people in particular life events and situations, information that will be invaluable for future researchers in the Makah community. Because so much of the book is about Swan's family, the inclusion of her genealogical charts to show how people mentioned in her stories are related to one another is entirely appropriate. Many of the black-and-white photographs included show dancers and singers at recent Makah parties to good effect. Older historic photographs provide broader perspectives on Makah traditions. This work is highly recommended as an ethnomusical study and as a wonderfully successful biography/autobiography of a Makah tribal elder and her personal view of Northwest Coast Indian culture.

Nathan E. Bender
Buffalo Bill Historical Center
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