Description
Chief Ronald E. Ignace is a Secwépemc historian, storyteller, and politician, and adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. In 2021 he was appointed Canada’s first-ever Indigenous Languages Commissioner. Marianne Ignace is professor of linguistics and First Nations studies at Simon Fraser University.
Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws is a journey through the 10,000-year history of the Interior Plateau nation in British Columbia. Told through the lens of past and present Indigenous storytellers, this volume details how a homeland has shaped Secwépemc existence while the Secwépemc have in turn shaped their homeland.
Marianne Ignace and Ronald Ignace, with contributions from ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, archaeologist Mike Rousseau, and geographer Ken Favrholdt, compellingly weave together Secwépemc narratives about ancestors’ deeds. They demonstrate how these stories are the manifestation of Indigenous laws (stsq'ey') for social and moral conduct among humans and all sentient beings on the land, and for social and political relations within the nation and with outsiders. Breathing new life into stories about past transformations, the authors place these narratives in dialogue with written historical sources and knowledge from archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, earth science, and ethnobiology. In addition to a wealth of detail about Secwépemc land stewardship, the social and political order, and spiritual concepts and relations embedded in the Indigenous language, the book shows how between the mid-1800s and 1920s the Secwépemc people resisted devastating oppression and the theft of their land, and fought to retain political autonomy while tenaciously maintaining a connection with their homeland, ancestors, and laws.
An exemplary work in collaboration, Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws points to the ways in which Indigenous laws and traditions can guide present and future social and political process among the Secwépemc and with settler society. This book contains 110 images, 7 maps, 15 tables, colour section.
"Note on Copyright and intellectual Property Rights: The copyright of this book rests with the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council (SNTC), save for portions that were previously published, which the authors gave SNTC permission to use. Likewise, for all photographs, the photographers gave SNTC permission to reproduce them in this volume. The authors and SNTC declare that the Secwépemc people, as represented by the seventeen Secwépemc commumities of the Secwépemc nation, have inherent cultural rights and ownership of all oral histories and cultural information on the Secwépemc contained in this volume, as well as further claiming first rights to any intellectual property arising from the cultural knowledge derived from Secwépemc elders and other Secwépemc cultural specialists. We also respectfully acknowledge that the oral histories and cultural information of other Indigenous nations that we cite in this book represent, in the same manner, the intellectual property of these respective nations."