About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
Keeping It Living brings together some of the world’s most prominent specialists on Northwest Coast cultures to examine traditional cultivation practices from Oregon to Southeast Alaska. It explores tobacco gardens among the Haida and Tlingit, managed camas plots among the Coast Salish of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia, estuarine root gardens along the central coast of British Columbia, wapato maintenance on the Columbia and Fraser Rivers, and tended berry plots up and down the entire coast. With contributions from a host of experts, Native American scholars and elders, Keeping It Living documents practices of manipulating plants and their environments in ways that enhanced culturally preferred plants and plant communities. It describes how indigenous peoples of this region used and cared for over 300 species of plants, from the lofty red cedar to diminutive plants of backwater bogs.
Contributor Notes
Douglas Deur is research coordinator with the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit at the University of Washington and adjunct professor of geography at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nancy J. Turner is distinguished professor in environmental studies and geography at the University of Victoria. The other contributors include Kenneth M. Ames, E. Richard Atleo (Umeek), Melissa Darby, Douglas Hallett, James T. Jones, Dana Lepofsky, Ken Lertzman, Rolf Mathewes, James McDonald, Albert (Sonny) McHalsie, Madonna L. Moss, Sandra Peacock, Bruce D. Smith, Robin Smith, Wayne Suttles, and Kevin Washbrook.
Editorial Reviews
Of all the ways that B.C.’s aboriginal people have been imagined, represented, described, and understood, the one characterization that has persisted is the idea that they just weren’t the sort of people who transformed landscapes the way Europeans did. They didn’t cultivate plants or tend crops ... That last and most persistent misapprehension was already entrenched as a tenet of academic faith in the earliest days of Northwest Coast anthropology but is only now being thoroughly reconsidered, thanks largely to Nancy J. Turner, a U.Vic ethnobotanist of boundless energy and curiosity. For her efforts, Turner is beloved among dozens of British Columbia’s aboriginal communities. With Keeping It Living, Turner and co-editor Douglas Deur of the University of Washington have mustered a broad body of evidence that is a full-on assault upon the hunter-gatherer orthodoxy. Joined by a dozen other academics whose contributions enliven this book, Turner and Deur present a picture of aboriginal life that is utterly different from the sort found in the conventional literature.
— Georgia Straight, April 2006
This treatment of historically neglected yet compelling topics provides a welcome contribution to the literature on the subject…[the book] is written in a manner that should appeal to a wide range of readers, including many who will appreciate its regional approach. Those with interests in ethnobotany, indigenous American studies, general history, and most importantly with a desire to more fully comprehend the pre-contact realities of human landscape interactions and what they mean today for the future, will surely find this book of much value.
— Northwest Indian College, Discovery, v. 35, n.1, Spring 2006
This book is the first comprehensive examination of how the first people to inhabit what is now the Pacific Northwest managed the land on which they lived.
— Salem Statesman Journal
The significance of plants to the aboriginal cultures of the Northwest Coast of North America often takes a back seat to the iconic salmon. Keeping it Living ... brings these essential resources to the forefront.
— The Midden: Publication of the Archaeological Society of British Columbia
Douglas Deur and Nancy Turner marshal a strong collection of essays to attack the argument that indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast were purely hunter-gatherer cultures, devoid of agricultural practices because of their good fortune to occupy a resource-laden landscape. Keeping It Living is an important book that will appeal to scholars interested in Northwest Coast peoples and Native American ethnobotany in general.
— Pacific Northwest Quarterly
Rarely does a collection of essays provide a cohesive and convincing argument, but Keeping it Living accomplishes this admirably ... Undoubtedly, this fine collection can be used by other scholars to consider later developments.
— Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Spring 2006
To extol the merits of all the essays and case studies in this valuable work is beyond the limits of a brief review, but the volume is a necessary read for anyone interested in food research, ethnobotany, anthropology of food and folk foodways, and cultural representation. The excellent bibliography is a valuable resource for the intellectual history of First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
— Western Folklore
In beginning to correct a profound historical error in Northwest Coast anthropology and sister disciplines, many doors have been opened for future scholarship that re-examines the cultivation practices of coastal First Nations. As the editors acknowledge, this work will keep the knowledge of Northwest Coast Elders and their forebears alive for present and coming generations. Keeping it Living should be essential reading for all people interested in the history of the Northwest Coast.
— Canadian Journal of Archaeology
