An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations by Jennifer S. H. Brown, and: Towards a New Ethnohistory: Community-Engaged Scholarship Among the People of the River ed. by Keith Thor Carlson et al. (review)

Jennifer S. H. Brown’s volume of essays looks back at a distinguished career built on rigorous research methodologies in the fields of archaeology, anthropology and history that gradually transformed her into an ethnohistorian. Keith Thor Carlson, John Sutton Lutz, David M Schaepe and Naxaxalhts’i (Albert “Sonny” McHalsie’s) edited volume of essays by students of the Stó:lō Ethnohistory Field School present new approaches to writing ethnohistory. Both volumes provide new insights into what ethnohistory was, is and can be.

Brown takes the reader back to her early career, which began as a student of archaeology in Peru in 1963 and follows her changing academic training and employment opportunities that took her to the University of Winnipeg in 1983. Brown writes unapologetically about her switching gears from the field of anthropology to teaching history—a discipline that she had never studied at the academy. I was privileged to be one of Brown’s first students in a course about fur trade history that was taught at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. During her tenure at the university from 1983 to 2011, Brown engaged in many research initiatives that drew on her background in cultural anthropology and her experience as a fur trade historian. Several projects involving the ethnological field notes of A. Irving Hallowell, who visited the Berens River region in Manitoba during the 1930s, produced Brown’s most innovative writing. She drew on a wide variety of archival material and oral history sources in a “sort of triangulation” that required different methodologies and skill sets. Brown observes that this process is “endlessly challenging and rewarding and lies at the heart of ethnohistory” (p. 11).

An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land includes an introductory essay and 18 articles, all but one of which have been previously published. Bringing them together in a single volume provides the reader with access to some of Brown’s most interesting and important essays. These are not simply reproductions; they are grouped thematically into six parts, each including introductory narratives that provide important and updated contexts. Readers should be aware that the “References” are really suggested readings because some post-date the original writing of the essays. Part 1 includes three chapters that explore the problems of assessing the meanings of names and terms in different languages. Brown shows us that linguistic analysis can be a helpful tool in navigating the difficult and multiple meanings of archival documents. In her essay “Rupert’s Land, Nituskeenan, Our Land,” Brown delves into the sometimes-murky waters of using historical texts in current conflicts between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state. The essay is one of several that illustrate contemporary benefits of the ethnohistorical approach.

In Part 2, the focus is on fur trade social history, especially women and children. This takes Brown back to themes that dominated her early research and writing that was showcased in her widely acclaimed 1980 book Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country. The earliest essay, “A Demographic Transition in the Fur Trade: Family Sizes of Company Officers and Country Wives, ca. 1750–1850,” employs statistical analysis and contains some superfluous social science jargon that was acceptable at the time. The most recent, “Partial Truths: A Closer Look at Fur Trade Marriage,” looks deeper into textual meanings, as she compares different accounts written by fur trader George Nelson in the early nineteenth century. Brown attempts to draw Indigenous voices out of several accounts written by Nelson over the course of his life. She refers to her methodology as akin to a...