Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii: Life beyond Settler Colonialism

Synopsis:

Colonialism in settler societies such as Canada depends on a certain understanding of the relationship between time and Indigenous peoples. Too often, these peoples have been portrayed as being without a future, destined either to disappear or assimilate into settler society. This book asserts quite the opposite: Indigenous peoples are not in any sense “out of time” in our contemporary world.

Shaping the Future on Haida Gwaii shows how Indigenous peoples in Canada not only continue to have a future but are at work building many different futures – for themselves and for their non-Indigenous neighbours. Through the experiences of the residents of the Haida First Nation community of Old Massett on the islands of Haida Gwaii, Joseph Weiss explores these possible futures in detail, demonstrating how Haida ways of thinking about time, mobility, and political leadership are at the heart of contemporary strategies for addressing the dilemmas that come with life under settler colonialism.

From the threat of ecological crisis to the assertion of sovereign rights and authority, Weiss shows that the Haida people consistently turn towards their possible futures, desirable and undesirable, in order to work out how to live in and transform the present. His book breaks new ground in the exploration of the relationship between time and colonialism as experienced in the day-to-day lives of an Indigenous community.

Educator Information
This book will appeal to scholars and students of Indigenous studies, particularly in anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and history. Researchers planning to work with communities will learn from the author’s reflections on conducting ethnographic fieldwork with First Nations.

This book is the result of five years of fieldwork in Old Massett and Masset with the people of the Haida First Nation. 

Reviews
"Grounded in respectful experience, observation, and interviews with Haida citizens, this book provides scholars with a complex understanding and analysis of how one Indigenous community adapts to and maintains a commitment, however difficult, to imagining and enacting a futurity determined by themselves, not settler colonialism. It will be widely read in Indigenous studies circles." -  Kevin Bruyneel, author of The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations

"An engaging, contemporary ethnography … this lively book, with its rich theoretical bases, has the potential to further reconfigure and unsettle problematic ethnographic and popular texts on the Haida, and Indigenous peoples more generally." - Brian Thom, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria

"In his highly original, carefully written, and theoretically grounded ethnography, Joseph Weiss describes how the people of Haida Gwaii engage in envisioning future-making, an aspirational and contested process that unsettles their own temporal displacement and potential erasure within settler colonialism … Shaping the Future points in a new direction and calls for a rethinking of ethnography as a method and the future of Indigenous nations within the state."-  Bruce Miller, author of Oral History on Trial: Recognizing Aboriginal Narratives in the Courts

Additional Information
244 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"