Secwepemc 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 Secwepemc existence while the Secwepemc 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 Secwepemc 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 Secwepemc 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 the 1920s the Secwepemc 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, Secwepemc 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 Secwepemc and with settler society.

An exploration of Secwepemc history told through Indigenous knowledge and oral traditions.

About the Author

Marianne Ignace is distinguished professor of Indigenous studies and director of the Indigenous Languages Centre at Simon Fraser University. Ronald E. Ignace is Canada's first Indigenous languages commissioner.

Reviews

"The Ignaces have created a sweeping and powerful book that provides us with an opportunity to understand Secwepemc people's relationship with the land." Susan Rowley, University of British Columbia "Our young people will passionately accept their responsibilities as stewards of both our territories and teachings sacred to our ancestors when they know our languages and traditions. The Ignaces have brilliantly woven the Secwepemc oral histories with research, and written a work from which young people and all can learn." - Perry Bellegarde, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations

"I couldn't put this book down! A masterpiece of multidisciplinary research on the Secwepemc Nation's history from the Ice Age to the present, science and archival records serve to back up the volume's primary source of knowledge, the oral narratives and shared memories of the Secwepemc people. These accounts go deeper than science, to the moral lessons of how the humans and the land we live on should relate to each other. Only the Ignaces could write a book of this magnitude, based on their lifetimes of research while living Secwepemc lives as well." - Leanne Hinton, University of California, Berkeley

"An impressive achievement that connects lessons preserved from a 10,000-year history to ongoing land rights struggles, this comprehensive work makes valuable contributions to cross-cultural understanding while providing an excellent model for other First "... a major and unique contribution. [This] book offers a deep history of the Secwepemc across millennia through the lens of an Indigenized methodology that draws together both Secwepemc knowledge - in the forms of lived experience, oral knowledge, ontolog

"A masterful and definitive story of an ancient culture that continues to thrive despite years of colonial oppression." - BC Studies

"Secwepemc People, Land, and Laws will not only become known as the Secwepemc encyclopedia, it also sets the new gold standard for Indigenous scholarship. I will treasure this book as a family heirloom, but I will also be using it to teach Indigenous studies research methods and Indigenous history and to provide an aspirational example of what Indigenous community-engaged, decolonized scholarship can look like. And for this I am deeply indebted to the Ignaces for their lifetime of work." - Sarah Nickel, McColl Magazine

"This text is not only impressive and powerful for the sheer depth in which it introduces and documents Secwepemc history, enduring laws, language, and relationships to land, but also in the ways in which Secwepemc voices, past and present, are represented and foregrounded throughout." Transmotion

Book Information
ISBN 9780228026358
Author Marianne Ignace
Format Paperback
Page Count 640
Imprint McGill-Queen's University Press
Publisher McGill-Queen's University Press