We Are Born with the Songs Inside Us: Lives and Stories of First Nations People in British Columbia by Katherine Palmer Gordon (review)

Evidence from censuses and surveys suggests that a growing proportion of Canada’s Aboriginal people live in urban areas and that there is an increasingly large ‘middle class’ sector in the Aboriginal population. This collection brings together 16 biographical accounts, based on interviews with First Nations’ individuals from British Columbia, which are consistent with these broad trends and which record diverse patterns of experience behind the general trends. The life-stories come from nine men and seven women with an average age of just over forty years. Eight of the contributions are about the lives of people of mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parentage. Some of the individuals are based in urban areas while others live in rural areas. Brief commentaries from hereditary chiefs and others who have made significant contributions to the governance of Aboriginal communities complete the book.

The educational achievements profiled here include undergraduate and postgraduate degrees while the diverse professional backgrounds include acting, educational administration, environmental policy, hockey, law, marketing and medicine. Individual and family photographic portraits are among the many illustrations. Shawn A-in-chut Atleo, National Chief, Assembly of First Nations, comments in the foreword, ‘The people whose stories are told in this book represent a rich spectrum of individuals whose lives and work are worthy of not only understanding, but celebration’ (p. 8). Accounts of family background include parents and grandparents with residential school experience, parents with high educational expectations of their children, and determination across the generations to achieve educational qualifications. The recent political background of treaty settlements in British Columbia has a role in some of the accounts, including those of Kim Baird, former chief of the Tsawwassen First Nation, and Trudy Lynn Warner, a former member of the Maa-nulth treaty team. Complexities of aspects of contemporary Aboriginal identity are revealed. Lisa Webster-Gordon ‘doesn’t think of herself as being “half ” Mohawk and “half ” Scottish … She finds it odd to try to characterize people of mixed heritage as being split up into two different things, or into fractions’ (p. 23). There are also illustrations of differing approaches to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal knowledge. Lyana Patrick (chapter 3) accentuates conflict between evidence-based medicine and medical orientations based on Aboriginal origin stories, although the life of Evan Adams (chapter 16) suggests that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal medical practices can be synthesised. In recent years Aboriginal people in British Columbia have participated in treaty negotiations, taken political action to protect the environment, initiated court cases and created a cultural renaissance in their arts and music. The generation represented in this collection has participated in and shaped these developments. As a consequence, as one of them notes, ‘it’s much more common for Aboriginal people to look for lots of different ways to be proud of our heritage, through our language and our traditions and our cultural knowledge’ (Merle Alexander, Aboriginal Resource Lawyer, p. 158).