Becoming Tsimshian: The Social Life of Names

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi I am most indebted to the people of Kitsumkalum, especially the staff of the Kitsumkalum Tribal Claims Office (a.k.a. Treaty Office) over the years—Alex Bolton, Allan Bolton, Sheila Bolton, the late Linda Horner, Sherry-Vaughn Lewis, and others. Alex and Allan Bolton in particular have been constant sources of encouragement, insight, friendship, and cooperation. I also thank the staff and council, past and present, in the Kitsumkalum Band Office, including Wayne Bolton, Sandra Christiansen , Diane Collins, Charlotte Guno, and Steve Roberts. I have been taught in large ways and small by numerous house leaders, matriarchs, elders, and other Kitsumkalum community and tribal members. Chief among them have been Vera Dudoward, the late Charles and Vera Henry, the late Frank Miller, Richard Miller, Roy Nelson, Mildred Roberts, Addie Turner, Laura Talbot, Gerald Wesley, Winnie Wesley, and Melodie and Dustin Johnson and the Johnson family for their generosity in sharing their knowledge and insights with me, but I must also mention Ivan and Marge Adams, Ronald Bartlett, George Bird, Annette Bolton and the rest of the Bolton family, Benjamin Bolton, the late Ruby Brown, Pearl Campbell, Arthur Collins, Gus Collins, Irene Collins, Lena Corrigan, Larry Derrick, Dorothy Horner, Verna Inkster, Barb Krause, Sam Lockerby Jr., Wallace and Elaine Miller, Pamela Post, Diane Prest, Wayne Robinson Sr., Carol Sam, Susan Spalding, Victor Spalding, the late Marvin and Winnie Starr, and Peter and Bertha Woods. From the Kitselas tribe and community, I learned from Wilfred Ben- nett, Glenn Bennett, Andrew Bevan, Bossy Bolton, Chester Gray, Morris Mason, Alfred McDames, Isabelle McKee, Debbie Moore, John Scott, Nina Shaw, Sarah Shaw, the late Beatrice Vermiere, Winnie Wells, Leanne Woods, and the late Mildred Wilson. I built on invaluable earlier research conducted by Cliff Bolton, James McDonald, and the late Donald Roberts Sr., much of it with Kitsumkalum and Kitselas elders I arrived too late to know. Thanks also to Janice Tollefsen and Tom Weegar at the Kitsumkalum Treaty Office. Other Tsimshians and their relatives, from other communities, have taught me much. There are too many to name, but I will mention Maizie Adams, James Bird, Emsily Bolton, the late Patrick Bolton, Arnold Booth, David Boxley Sr., David Boxley Jr., Harvey Brooks, Allen and Frances Brown, Douglas Brown, James Bryant, Benita Chapdelaine, the late John Clifton, Helen Clifton, Samson Collinson and the late Lucy Collinson, Joan Dangeli, the late Bernard Guthrie, Tom and Judith Guthrie, Mary-Teri Haldane, Inez Helin, Helen Johnson, James B. Lawson , Kenneth Lea, the late Violet McKay, Melissa Meyer, Eli Fred Milton and Joyce Iverson, Corinna Morhart, Sharon Morven, Marion Musgrave , Les Neasloss, Violet Neasloss, Clarence and Velna Nelson, Sandra Ohman, Scott Reece, Teresa Ridley, Allen Robinson, Loa Ryan, the late Ted Ryan, Richard Spencer, Arthur and Pat Sterritt, Gerald Stewart, Isabelle Stewart, the late Fred Tait, Chris and Susan Walker, Cliff and Lynn White, William White, and Wayne, Cathy, and Jean Ryan and the rest of the Ryan family in Lax Kwalaams. My work with the Native communities of Metlakatla and Ketchikan, Alaska, has been especially enriched by the knowledge and friendship of Mary Jones, the late Willard Jones, Eleanor Hadden, Irene Dundas, and Wilma BainesChahim . In 2002 I learned much from my graduate students in the First Nations Studies program of the University of Northern British Columbia in Terrace. The great majority of the specific, identifying information in my research remains confidential and is in the possession of the Kitsumkalum Treaty Office and the Tsimshian Genealogy Project. What I know of the Tsimshian language is thanks to my teachers in a University of Northern British Columbia course, John Dunn and Douglas Brown. The aforementioned and much missed Mildred Wilson also shared her linguistic knowledge with me. Fieldwork was funded by a Fulbright Scholarship in 1996, in affiliaxii Acknowledgments tion with the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. Fieldwork expenses in 2001 were covered by the Melville and Elizabeth Jacobs Research Funds (Whatcom Museum Foundation). The expenses of some other phases of research were defrayed by the Kitsumkalum Treaty Office. I am also grateful to the Tsimshian Tribal Council and its Treaty Research Department for facilitating my first opportunity to work in Tsimshian territory (although the Tribal Council, which has since dissolved , had no formal role in the Kitsumkalum research on which this book is based). Susan Marsden in particular crucially framed my...