Distributed for University of British Columbia Press
Where Happiness Dwells
A History of the Dane-zaa First Nations
The Dane-zaa people have lived in BC’s Peace River area for thousands of years. Elders documented their peoples’ history and worldview, passing them on through storytelling. Language loss, however, threatens to break the bonds of knowledge transmission. At the request of the Doig River First Nations, anthropologists Robin and Jillian Ridington present a history of the Dane-zaa people based on oral histories collected over a half century of fieldwork. These powerful stories not only preserve traditional knowledge for future generations, they also tell the inspiring story of how the Dane-zaa learned to succeed and flourish in the modern world.
Table of Contents
Preface, with Linguistic Note and Pronunciation Guide
Introduction: Trails of Time
1 The Dane-zaa Creation Story
2 Tsááyaa, the Culture Hero
3 Shin kaa, the Vision Quest
4 Archaeology, Prehistory, and Oral History
5 The Early Fur Trade
6 The Later Fur Trade and the Hudson’s Bay Company Killings
7 Priests and Dreamers
8 The First and Last Dreamers
9 Kinship and Community
10 The 1899 North West Mounted Police Census and Treaty 8
11 Seasonal Rounds in British Columbia and Alberta
12 The 1918 Flu Epidemic
13 Losing Suu Na chii k’chige, the Great Fire, and Petersen’s Crossing
14 The Place Where Happiness Dwells, Indian Reserve 172
15 Today and Tomorrow
16 Dane-zaa Stories and the Anthropological Literature
Appendices
Works Cited
Acknowledgments
Index