In a wide-ranging critique of ethnohistory and historical anthropology, Michael E. Harkin develops an innovative approach to understanding the profound cultural changes experienced by the Heiltsuks (Bella Bella), a Northwest Coast Indian group. Between 1880 and 1920, the Heiltsuks changed from one of the most traditional and aggressive groups on the Northwest Coast to paragons of Victorian virtues. Why and how did this dramatic transformation occur? Harkin answers these questions by tracing the changing views the Heiltsuks had of themselves and of their past as they encountered colonial...

Native Americans and the Environment brings together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars whose works continue and complicate the conversations that Shepard Krech started in The Ecological Indian. Hailed as a masterful synthesis and yet assailed as a problematic political tract, Shepard Krech s work prompted significant discussions in scholarly communities and among Native Americans.Rather than provide an explicit assessment of Krech s thesis, the contributors to this volume explore related historical and contemporary themes and subjects involving Native Americans...