for Canadian Indian art, she was sewing a button blanket at her dining room table. Her charm infects even those who do not know her as I do. The two work-study students at the college where I teach became fascinated with the personality on the tapes they were laboriously transcribing. “Such a neat lady. What a sense of humor,” they exclaimed. And, at their request, I brought out slides and photographs so they might better visualize the woman whose voice they had come to know.
Florence Davidson has served as a willing informant for several researchers besides myself, on projects ranging from ethnobotany to linguistics to native education. Though a meticulous chronicler of her own culture, it is neither the intellectual challenge nor the documentary significance of her role that motivates her; rather, she dwells on the people behind the projects. “I think of them just like my own,” she says of most of them. Virtually all younger people who pass through her large home as boarders and / or researchers are soon instructed to call her “Nani” (Haida for “grandmother”). She once laughingly remarked, “Everybody calls me Nani. I must be the world’s nani.” The universal grandmother: indulgent but teasing, somewhat aghast at the strange doings of the modern generation yet still eager to try new things, knowledgeable in the old ways, retrospective. That is how I have come to know her as Nani; that is how I hope readers of this work will see her.
Many people have contributed in various ways to this manuscript, and to them I extend my heartfelt thanks.
Marjorie Mitchell gave me a summer home in Victoria where most of the writing of this manuscript took place. She and Anna Franklin offered invaluable support and advice during the writing, provided photographs, and shared in Nani’s world with me. Barbara Efrat of Victoria provided housing during my archival research in the summer of 1978 and supplied me with cassette tapes through the Linguistics Division of the British Columbia Provincial Museum.
Susan Kenyon critically read the manuscript and offered extensive commentary. I have also benefited from the comments and suggestions of Betty Berlin, Barbara Hall, Edwin S. Hall, Jr., Robert Davidson, Dorothy Grant, Miles Richardson, and Ulli Steltzer, who read the manuscript or portions of it. Julie Kokis, Tina Howe, and Elizabeth Quinlan transcribed the forty-five hours of life-history tapes. Mary Beth Johnson and Debora Lang typed the manuscript. Norm Frisch prepared the map and genealogy. Robert Levine and Barbara Efrat offered assistance with the orthography.
Research was funded by an Urgent Ethnology contract from the National Museums of Canada, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Research Fellowship, and a grant from the Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society.
Many people from the Queen Charlottes have contributed to my research. Lola Dixon first introduced me to Florence Davidson in 1970; Howard Phillips lent photographs for inclusion in the manuscript; Dixie and Howard Post provided hospitality and friendship during the seasons of my field research. Nani’s nine children and their spouses (Alfred and Rose Davidson, Virginia and Dave Hunter, Claude and Vivian Davidson, Sarah Davidson, Primrose and Victor Adams, Emily and Dave Goertzen, Myrtle and Sid Kerrigan, Aggie and Sam Davis, Merle and Knud Andersen, Clara and Brian Hugo) have provided many kindnesses during the years of my comings and goings to the Queen Charlottes. Others from Haida Masset, some now deceased, have shaped my image of the islands, and I acknowledge in particular the assistance of William and Flora Russ, June and Reno Russ, Percy Brown, Amanda Edgars, William and Emma Matthews, and Peter Hill. I am grateful to Nani’s grandson Robert for the use of his dogfish design in chapters 4–9.
More than anyone else, Florence Davidson has given substance to my image of the Queen Charlotte Islands and their people. As teacher, friend, and grandmother she has enriched my life, and I thank her for sharing her life history with me and with readers of this book.
Royalties accruing to the author from publication of this book will go to Florence Davidson.
MARGARET B. BLACKMAN
July 1981
ORTHOGRAPHY
Haida words are spelled phonetically throughout the text. Although there are several works on the Haida language (see Levine 1973 and Lawrence 1977 for works written for a general audience), there is no standard orthography for Haida. Vowels and consonants not listed are pronounced the same as their English equivalents. Haida place names are Anglicized to conform to current map usage.
| a | as in father |
| ae | as in at |
| E | as in let |
| e | as in late |
| i | as in beet |
| ɨ | as in it |
| ə | as in accompany |
| ay | as in light |
| u | as in tune |
| U | as in put |
| o | as in oat |
| ł | unvoiced 1, made by placing the tongue in the 1 position and blowing air out laterally |
| z | as in dogs |
| c | as in church |
| x | as in the German ich (“I”) |
| q | made like k only farther back in the throat |
| ? | glottal stop; the sound or “pause” that occurs in “oh oh” |
| ′ | all sounds followed by an apostrophe are made with a constricted glottis |
| ؟ | a sound produced by constriction of the pharyngeal cavity; similar to the sound one makes when blowing on eyeglasses prior to cleaning them |
DURING MY TIME
Florence Edenshaw Davidson
A HAIDA WOMAN
CHAPTER 1
The Life-History Project
… the life history is still the most cognitively rich and humanly understandable way of getting at an inner view of culture. [No other type of study] can equal the life history in demonstrating what the native himself considers to be important in his own experience and how he thinks and feels about that experience. [Phillips 1973:201]
THE LIFE HISTORY IN ANTHROPOLOGY
The writing of native life histories has long been regarded by anthropologists as a legitimate as well as popular approach to understanding and describing other cultures.1 In 1922, for example, anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons wrote in the preface to her biography of a Zuni woman: “In our own complex culture biography may be a clarifying form of description. Might it not avail at Zuni?” (Parsons 1922:158). Alfred Kroeber, who wrote the introduction to American Indian Life, in which Parsons’ article appears, believed that the unique contribution of this collection of biographical sketches was their insight into the social psychology of the American Indian. Unfortunately, most of the contributors to this volume found it necessary to fictionalize the life histories, inventing characters for the ethnographic data on the individual life cycle.
While it is fortunate that fictionalized life histories have been the exception in anthropological research, their very existence points to the significance of the medium for presenting the cultural record. The utility and success of the life-history approach in anthropology can be attributed to a number of factors. In the first place, the basic fabric of ethnology is woven from the scraps of individuals’ lives, from the experiences and knowledge of individual informants. Many ethnographic accounts of subsistence activities, marriage, and ritual observances, for example, are derived directly from the personal experiences of members of a culture, and as anthropologists work closely with selected informants, the presentation of ethnographic data from the longitudinal perspective of the individual life is not surprising. “Culture” as lived by the individual represents the ultimate inside view, and the life history thus serves as a
