Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions, and Visions

Rereading the Ethnographic Record: The Problem of Justice in the Coast Salish World

rereading the ethnographic record The Problem of Justice in the Coast Salish World Bruce G. Miller The ethnographic record of the Northwest Coast lives on in many forms at present. Publications and field notes of our anthropological predecessors who worked with indigenous communities are now both part of the patrimony of the community members and the legacy of anthropology. And lest we think otherwise, these materials are regularly read and used by Northwest Coast people and are perhaps less likely to be pilloried in specific terms than our currently produced texts. This patrimony is employed in the (re)construction of indigenous ways of life and in internal debates about where communities should head. It is for these reasons that we might reexamine several issues and address questions that did not receive much anthropological attention in earlier generations. Valuable earlier materials can be reread in light of new problems and new understandings to make them more useful in addressing the contemporary world. My work specifically addresses one corner of the Northwest Coast, the Coast Salish world, and one particular problem, namely, how people envisioned the establishment and maintenance of peaceful social relations in a hostile world. My argument is that these questions were addressed conservatively , if at all, by anthropologists of the early and middle 20th century, and this conservatism is now read into the record by indigenous community members themselves intent on making conservative representations of their own prior, historical justice practices for their own reasons. Discussions of law and justice in the ethnographic literature are ordinarily brief, descriptive, and normative accounts of communities that by then were long removed from the period of self-regulation, and many of whose practices of adjudicating differences between individuals and families had either gone underground or had disappeared. In some Coast Salish communities, particularly those in British Columbia, there is a kind of salvage ethnography underway for the purposes of treaty negotiation and for the establishment of new community institutions, such as diversionary justice practice, just as anthropologists vacate the topics of tradition and culture and focus on colonial processes and accommodation and resistance within aboriginal communities .1 I am not proposing that a reinvigorated, redirected ethnography or a careful search of field notes will produce the truth of justice practices of a prior period and thereby provide clear models for communities to emulate in their efforts to restore self-governance. This would be a mistake on many grounds. However, I do suggest that ethnographic efforts can point to themes that can be explored in the debates within communities about where they should head.2 Perhaps the most thoughtful and interesting effort at using ethnographic materials to address contemporary justice was carried out in 1989– 90 by the Northwest Intertribal Court System, a service provider for a consortium of tribal courts. Academics, lawyers, and elders worked together, and I provide this as an example of the contemporary discussion about justice within Coast Salish communities and the interplay with ethnographic materials. The nics project ‘‘aimed to provide a background to the tribes and their tribal court systems and problematize how disputes were handled traditionally and how these processes and behaviors changed over time’’ (nics 1991a:2). The nics study is unable to reconcile its picture of conformity to cultural norms with the failure to conform or to resolve disputes, as indicated by the presence of ongoing blood feuding. The approach underplays the persistent theme of competition and struggle over resources and status within and between Coast Salish communities and individuals. Despite the conservatism of the ethnographic materials for the area, struggles do show up in descriptions of intercommunity gambling, in thinlydisguised mock violence between antagonistic guests at potlatches, in episodic seizure of slaves and marriage partners, in village fissions, in the spiritual murder of those not yet strong with their spirit powers, in ‘‘evil doctoring’’ (the use of spiritual gifts for malevolent purposes), and in accusations of the slave status of someone’s ancestors. The authors of the nics report are not unaware of conflict, but they acknowledge and address the undercurrents of violence and competition with a functionalist twist, observing that ‘‘Gambling and other challenge contests and games may also have served to alleviate tensions between families and 306 miller communities’’ (nics 1991b:45). But this, too, reflects the intellectual predispositions of the period in which much of the ethnographicwriting occurred. For instance...