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Maps and Dreams

Indians and the British Columbia Frontier

Hugh Brody

The Canadian subarctic is a world of forest, prairie, and muskeg; of rainbow trout, moose, and caribou; of Indian hunters and trappers. It is also a world of boomtowns and bars, oil rigs and seismic soundings; of white energy speculators, ranchers, and sports hunters. Brody came to this dual world with the job of “mapping” the lands of northwest British Columbia as well as the way of life of a small group of Beaver Indians with a viable hunting economy living in the path of a projected oil pipeline. The result is Maps and Dreams, Brody’s account of his extraordinary eighteen-month journey through the world of a people who have no intention of vanishing into the past. In this beautifully written book, readers go on a moose hunt; trap beaver; mourn at a funeral; drink in white bars; visit camps, cabins, and traplines by pickup truck, on horseback, and on foot. Brody’s powerful commentary also retraces the history of the ever-expanding white frontier from the first eighteenth-century explorer to the wildest corporate energy dreams of the present day. In the process, students see how Indian dreams and white dreams, Indians maps and white maps, collide.
 

$22.95 list, 294 pages

10-digit ISBN: 0-88133-965-2

13-digit ISBN: 978-0-88133-965-9

© 1981

“Privileged as few whites have been, Brody took part in several hunts during his stay. His accounts of these expeditions are stirring and dramatic . . . when he writes of Indian life, his prose sparkles.” —Washington Post

“Eloquent.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This is a wonderful book, as unique and quietly successful as the way of life it describes.” —Maclean’s

Table of Contents

Introduction 1988

1. Joseph Patsah’s Agenda

2. Northeast British Columbia

3. Maps of Dreams

4. Hunters and Treaties

5. A Funeral

6. Traplines and Traps

7. Return from Bluestone

8. This New West

9. Round-Trip to Fort St. John

10. The Indians’ Maps

11. To Quarry in Winter

12. The Indian Economy

13. Beaver and Spring

14. Causes and Effects

15. A Hearing

16. A Possible Future