Where Happiness Dwells: A History of the Dane-Zaa First Nations

Description

The Dane-zaa people have lived in the Peace River area of northern
British Columbia for thousands of years. Elders documented the
people’s history and worldview in oral narratives and passed on
their knowledge through storytelling. Language loss in the youngest
generation, however, threatens to break the bonds of knowledge
transmission.
At the request of the Doig River First Nations anthropologists Robin
and Jillian Ridington present a history of the Dane-zaa people based on
oral histories collected over a half century of fieldwork. Taking a
poetic form that does justice to the rhythm of Dane-zaa storytelling,
these powerful stories span the full length of history, from the story
of creation to the fur trade, from the arrival of missionaries to cases
heard in the Supreme Court of Canada. Elders document key events as
they explain the very nature of the universe and how people and animals
learned to live together on the land.
These oral histories, told by one of the last First Nations to
experience the effects of colonialism, not only preserve traditional
knowledge for future generations, they also tell the inspiring story of
how the Dane-zaa learned to succeed in the modern world.
Robin Ridington is a professor emeritus of
anthropology at the University of British Columbia and has worked with
the Dane-zaa First Nations since the 1960s. Jillian
Ridington is an ethnographer and researcher who has worked
with the Dane-zaa First Nations since 1978. Their books about the
Dane-zaa include Robin’s “Trail To Heaven: Knowledge and
Narrative in a Northern Native Community,” and a co-authored book,
“When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices
and Representations.”