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Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom
Jane Cook, the crusading matriarch of Alert Bay, gave birth to 16 children and assumed the role of caregiver for the surrounding area, delivering babies, nursing the sick and tending the dying.
Jane Cook was a singular female presence in the struggle to retain, or regain, First Nations civil and property rights in B.C.
Leslie A. Robertson with the Kwagu'l Gixsam Clan's new biography of Jane Cook, aka Ga'axsta'las is a testament to the legacy of this remarkable First Nations woman as well as a history of her descendants.
It's called Standing Up with Ga'axsta'las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom by Leslie A. Robertson with the Kwagu'l Gixsam Clan (UBC Press $125 hc, $39.95 pb)
Jane Constance Cook was born in 1870 to Gwayulalas (Emily), a Kwakwaka'wakw woman from Fort Rupert and Captain William Gilbert, an English trader.
As the first-born child of a first-born mother, Cook's high rank derived from primogeniture. She was educated by Alfred Hall, an English missionary, and became a devout Christian, serving for many years as president of the Anglican Women's Auxiliary.
Descendants remember her as Granny Cook, the strong-willed matriarch who presided over the Cook big house, an imposing structure completed by her husband in 1907.
This house had two storeys, nine bedrooms, a veranda, and a large garden that yielded food for the multigenerational occupants who sometimes numbered thirty-five, with two sittings for every meal.
Straddling both the reserve and land bought from the church, the house coincidentally symbolized its owner's duality.
Domestic life and community service was only a part of Jane Cook's activities.
In the political arena, she advocated strongly for women's rights, urging support for destitute women and children. She represented her people in their demand for land claims, fishing rights and health services, and acted as interpreter for the anthropologists and ethnologists, such as Franz Boas and the photographer Edward Curtis.
It was the political activity that distorted her legacy, and in particular her involvement in the infamous potlatch trials of 1921. The potlatch custom, a complex economic system of property exchange (she described it as a form of government or constitution) was banned because the colonial authorities considered it "the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming Christians.";
The ban not only pitted First Nations against the authorities, but caused divisions within native villages and clans. As a result of the trials, ceremonial property was confiscated, forty-five people were arrested, twenty-two were given suspended sentences, and twenty held in Oakalla Prison near Vancouver.
In the late thirties, Jane Cook described herself and her family as non-potlatching Christians who felt like "outcasts.";
A rumour circulated that her opposition to the potlatch surpassed "even that of the Indian agent."; Another had it that she deliberately mistranslated, that when a magistrate asked the accused, "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"; she mistranslated the question to "He wants to know were you there?"; An affirmative response was translated as, "He's guilty. Yeah.";
Her expertise in both the Kwakwala language and English was called into question. Boas wrote to a correspondent that people said she talked like a child. This unlikely claim could have several explanations, among them the fact that the language had changed by the time she was sixty. What was construed as childish may well have been earlier usages.
At a 1936 church meeting, Jane Cook said "we were children of the potlatch system,"; and her husband said the custom was "in my blood."; Nevertheless, when they entered into a Christian marriage, they stepped out of the system.
Jane Cook opposed the potlatch because of the financial burden it placed on families, and especially on women and children. Yet she later worked to obtain compensation for property confiscated during the potlatch arrests.
In a 1932 interview with a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, she struggled to make the custom understandable to an outsider by comparing it to a Christmas gift-giving exchange.
"It keeps the property in circulation,"; she said, "for suppose a man gives a phonograph set away, in the course of a few years, he is likely to receive it back.";
She goes on to describe the crucial importance of the shield-shaped piece of copper to the potlatch giver.
"The more 'copper' a chief owns, the more powerful he is among other tribes... A man will marry his daughter to anyone who will give him a 'copper.' A stranger coming into the tribe cannot buy a 'copper,' no matter how rich he is, until he has given feasts and one potlatch after another and even then he may still be regarded as an outsider.";
One of the criticisms directed against Jane Cook in the aboriginal community was that she married only once. As the eldest daughter of a noble line she would have been expected to have a series of marriages, and earn money by marrying so that her family could be glorified by holding potlatch.
Her marriage was considered illegal because she chose not to have a First Nations ceremony, and no bride price was given. As a consequence, her children were considered illegitimate and stigmatized. At the same time, she was a strong advocate for recognition of the Indian/First Nations marriage tradition.
This is an academic book with the research documented in detailed footnotes and an extensive bibliography. As such, it constitutes a valuable resource for other scholars working to uncover the traces of any culture suppressed by racism, conversion, and assimilation.
Standing Up with Ga'axsta'las also has a strong popular appeal as the rich collection of personal anecdotes, and the fifty-six photographs provide graphic evidence of Jane Cook and her times.
UBC Professor of Anthropology, Leslie A. Robertson, has worked cooperatively with the Kwagu'l Gixsam Clan to do justice to Jane Cook's complicated character and to the diverse opinions of her. Robertson draws on oral history, memory and archival material-letters, recorded interviews, newspaper articles-and enters into a dialogue with various members of the Kwagu'l Gixsam, allowing their voices to interrogate the source material.
Thus a valuable portrait of Jane Cook emerges cumulatively throughout the book. 9780774823845
by Joan Givner
Jane Cook was a singular female presence in the struggle to retain, or regain, First Nations civil and property rights in B.C.
Leslie A. Robertson with the Kwagu'l Gixsam Clan's new biography of Jane Cook, aka Ga'axsta'las is a testament to the legacy of this remarkable First Nations woman as well as a history of her descendants.
It's called Standing Up with Ga'axsta'las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom by Leslie A. Robertson with the Kwagu'l Gixsam Clan (UBC Press $125 hc, $39.95 pb)
Jane Constance Cook was born in 1870 to Gwayulalas (Emily), a Kwakwaka'wakw woman from Fort Rupert and Captain William Gilbert, an English trader.
As the first-born child of a first-born mother, Cook's high rank derived from primogeniture. She was educated by Alfred Hall, an English missionary, and became a devout Christian, serving for many years as president of the Anglican Women's Auxiliary.
Descendants remember her as Granny Cook, the strong-willed matriarch who presided over the Cook big house, an imposing structure completed by her husband in 1907.
This house had two storeys, nine bedrooms, a veranda, and a large garden that yielded food for the multigenerational occupants who sometimes numbered thirty-five, with two sittings for every meal.
Straddling both the reserve and land bought from the church, the house coincidentally symbolized its owner's duality.
Domestic life and community service was only a part of Jane Cook's activities.
In the political arena, she advocated strongly for women's rights, urging support for destitute women and children. She represented her people in their demand for land claims, fishing rights and health services, and acted as interpreter for the anthropologists and ethnologists, such as Franz Boas and the photographer Edward Curtis.
It was the political activity that distorted her legacy, and in particular her involvement in the infamous potlatch trials of 1921. The potlatch custom, a complex economic system of property exchange (she described it as a form of government or constitution) was banned because the colonial authorities considered it "the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming Christians.";
The ban not only pitted First Nations against the authorities, but caused divisions within native villages and clans. As a result of the trials, ceremonial property was confiscated, forty-five people were arrested, twenty-two were given suspended sentences, and twenty held in Oakalla Prison near Vancouver.
In the late thirties, Jane Cook described herself and her family as non-potlatching Christians who felt like "outcasts.";
A rumour circulated that her opposition to the potlatch surpassed "even that of the Indian agent."; Another had it that she deliberately mistranslated, that when a magistrate asked the accused, "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"; she mistranslated the question to "He wants to know were you there?"; An affirmative response was translated as, "He's guilty. Yeah.";
Her expertise in both the Kwakwala language and English was called into question. Boas wrote to a correspondent that people said she talked like a child. This unlikely claim could have several explanations, among them the fact that the language had changed by the time she was sixty. What was construed as childish may well have been earlier usages.
At a 1936 church meeting, Jane Cook said "we were children of the potlatch system,"; and her husband said the custom was "in my blood."; Nevertheless, when they entered into a Christian marriage, they stepped out of the system.
Jane Cook opposed the potlatch because of the financial burden it placed on families, and especially on women and children. Yet she later worked to obtain compensation for property confiscated during the potlatch arrests.
In a 1932 interview with a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, she struggled to make the custom understandable to an outsider by comparing it to a Christmas gift-giving exchange.
"It keeps the property in circulation,"; she said, "for suppose a man gives a phonograph set away, in the course of a few years, he is likely to receive it back.";
She goes on to describe the crucial importance of the shield-shaped piece of copper to the potlatch giver.
"The more 'copper' a chief owns, the more powerful he is among other tribes... A man will marry his daughter to anyone who will give him a 'copper.' A stranger coming into the tribe cannot buy a 'copper,' no matter how rich he is, until he has given feasts and one potlatch after another and even then he may still be regarded as an outsider.";
One of the criticisms directed against Jane Cook in the aboriginal community was that she married only once. As the eldest daughter of a noble line she would have been expected to have a series of marriages, and earn money by marrying so that her family could be glorified by holding potlatch.
Her marriage was considered illegal because she chose not to have a First Nations ceremony, and no bride price was given. As a consequence, her children were considered illegitimate and stigmatized. At the same time, she was a strong advocate for recognition of the Indian/First Nations marriage tradition.
This is an academic book with the research documented in detailed footnotes and an extensive bibliography. As such, it constitutes a valuable resource for other scholars working to uncover the traces of any culture suppressed by racism, conversion, and assimilation.
Standing Up with Ga'axsta'las also has a strong popular appeal as the rich collection of personal anecdotes, and the fifty-six photographs provide graphic evidence of Jane Cook and her times.
UBC Professor of Anthropology, Leslie A. Robertson, has worked cooperatively with the Kwagu'l Gixsam Clan to do justice to Jane Cook's complicated character and to the diverse opinions of her. Robertson draws on oral history, memory and archival material-letters, recorded interviews, newspaper articles-and enters into a dialogue with various members of the Kwagu'l Gixsam, allowing their voices to interrogate the source material.
Thus a valuable portrait of Jane Cook emerges cumulatively throughout the book. 9780774823845
by Joan Givner
Submitted on March 8, 2013 in By David.
