Lushootseed
Culture and the Shamanic Odyssey: An Anchored Radiance. Jay Miller.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. 185 pp.
Brian
Thom
McGill
University
In this book, Miller argues that Lushootseed culture --
one of the Coast Salish cultures on the Northwest Coast -- is rooted in place. People draw spiritual power from the places
they are anchored to and have built their cosmology around the drainages of Puget
Sound. This is a useful way to think
about Coast Salish cultures, for which the land and particular places in the
landscape are central figures. However,
in this book, the idea is better than the execution. The book does not place itself within the
discourse of contemporary relationships to land. Miller centres his discussion on “traditional
concerns of the early 1800s, when the culture was more consistently integrated
among its members and environments” (p. 6).
Miller articulates his notion of the ‘anchored radiance’ of Lushootseed
culture through reviewing published and archival sources, drawing in
comparative material from other Coast Salish communities for comparison. To a degree, his approach is useful in
highlighting the connectedness of Lushootseed people to place. But the book is fraught with methodological
and logical weaknesses which spoil the attempt.
The first chapter provides an overview of the people of
Puget Sound, their spiritual and shamanic practices, and their “sharing strategies”
for food and wealth. The ethnohistory of
the area is reviewed in the second chapter, drawing on the Alexandra Harmon’s
PhD dissertation (a fine work which has recently been published as Indians
in the Making, U. California Press, 1998).
In the third chapter Miller gives a summary of many of the published
accounts of oral traditions from Lushootseed and neighbouring Coast Salish
peoples to provide some context for Lushootseed cosmology. His fourth and fifth chapters discuss how
‘houses’ and ‘canoes’ might be seen as useful metaphors for Lushootseed
worldviews, and provides ethnographic reconstructions of such topics as class,
gender, poltaching and winter dances.
The sixth and perhaps most original chapter discusses the importance of
decedence in reckoning kinship, the typical social roles of people at various
stages in their lives, and concepts of bodily sickness. Miller concludes the book with a short
chapter revisiting the historical descriptions of the shamanic odyssey to the
land of the dead and makes an argument for the relevance of the metaphors of
house and body for contemporary Lushootseed concepts of health, personhood and
cultural continuity.
Miller does not engage the contemporary political economy
literature, or the more philosophical strains of social science which view
power as essential and embedded in all cultural and social relations. Thus, when Miller discusses urbanization, he
centres on the increased utility in automotive transport, rather than the
alienation of land and resources that has come with it. To cleanse the potent power relations
embedded in the past 200 years of colonization and acculturation, Miller
conceptually separates cultural traits concerned with ‘survival’ (those things which
are “drudgery, mechanical and uninformative” (p.31) and which amount to “what
people have to do to keep themselves and their families in food, clothing, and
other necessities” (p. 30)) from ‘culture’ (which he sees as being a “dynamic,
interactive and receptive process of insightful learning” (p. 31)). For Miller, the underlying utility of the
division is to provide a way to explain how even though contemporary
Lushootseed have acculturated to a degree into mainstream American society,
they retain a distinctive culture.
Miller similarly ignores the important contribution of
scholars like Dell Hymes and Julie Cruikshank who have discussed the relevance
of the social context and narrative form of oral traditions for interpreting
their meanings. In his review of
Lushootseed legends, Miller summarizes many of the prominent traditions in his
own words, boiling down native narrative form to highlight their ethnographic
and historical content, and providing little to help the reader understand when
and how the stories are used, or by whom.
This static presentation of culture is at its worst in Miller’s frequent
use of native terminology to help illustrate his interpretation of
culture. In discussing the potlatch, for
example, Miller claims that ‘to exclude’ is not a word in Salishan languages, and
therefore the idea of ‘exclusion’ is not thinkable. However, Miller is not fluent in the
language, nor has he conducted the necessary linguistic studies to test his
strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
A simple comparison to Upriver Halkomelem, a Salishan language very
closely related to Lushootseed, reveals that ‘exclusion’ is indeed thinkable
and is part of the lexicon: awe sq’eq’ó glosses as ‘not be included’ and
áyeles glosses as ‘to abandon someone’.
Miller’s most insightful discussion centres on the
practice of decedence in Coast Salish communities. Decedence is the recognition of affinal and
collateral kin after a parent’s death.
Many Salishan language mark decedence with special kin terms for
surviving aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews.
Miller suggests that responsibility for children is passed from the
deceased to the surviving kin group through the use of decedence terms to
ensure the continued recognition of both affinal and collateral kin (p.
123). This practice was a recognition of
the importance of having close kin to maintain family honour, traditions and
“corporate rights to traditions and resources” (p. 124). Miller makes the comparison of these
decedence reckoning, corporate kin groups as being the equivalent to the famous
matrilineal groups of the northern Northwest Coast.
Though the quibbles I have with the facts and
interpretations presented in the book are too many to innumerate here, I would
like to discuss one as an example. In
his discussion of spirit quests, Miller states that “the longer one quested and
the farther one went away from civilization, the more powerful was the spirit
acquired” (p. 59). Later, Miller argues that “because males were courageous [my
emphasis] enough to travel to the remote places inhabited by the most powerful
spritis, men usually had stronger spirits than women” (p. 118). From
discussions I have had with several Coast Salish, I would conclude that no such
simple formula can be applied. Powerful
individuals have received their gifts close to home, while others who have
searched for years have come out with little.
‘Courage’ has never been a term my Coast Salish consultants have used to
talk about their relations with their spirits, nor have they described a
division of ‘strength’ along gender lines.
My final note is to point out the context in which ethnographies are now written in many indigenous communities. Writing ethnographies is in itself a highly political act, embedded with issues of representation and authority made even more important by the strong possibility that the ethnographic writing will come up in places like courtrooms or environmental protests. Though Miller does not touch these issues, he is clearly aware of the importance attached to expressing the ‘right’ view of Lushootseed culture. However, he has neither informed nor aided anyone by making superlative statements such as: “the Lushootseed potlatch was more subtle, requiring greater cultural understanding [than other potlatches] by all those involved” (p.8), or that shamans “engaged in one of the most impressive and meaningful ceremonies in Native North American and the world” (p. 36). Classic-style ethnographies should be left to the generation who has come before, where at least they can be situated in a historical context.