Chinook Resilience: Heritage and Cultural Revitalization on the Lower Columbia River by Jon D. DaehnkeTony A. Johnson

Abstract

93 Reviews REVIEWS CHINOOK RESILIENCE: HERITAGE AND CULTURAL REVITALIZATION ON THE LOWER COLUMBIA RIVER by Jon D. Daehnke foreword by Tony A. Johnson University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2017. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 256 pages. $30.00 paper. Too often, writings about contemporary Indigenous peoples still trade on tragedy. The Chinook in particular offer a ready temptation in this regard as a non-recognized people physically located at the end point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, one of European America’s most treasured national narratives. Once situated as key regional brokers of trade, culture, and power, the Chinook lost much of this position with European arrival and United States colonization and occupation of the continent. Chinook Resilience, as the title suggests, does not rest in those moments of loss and pain. Jon Daehnke tells the story of the Chinook, their efforts at continuing as a people, and their ongoing battle for official and legal recognition by the United States government. At the same time, this book mostly centers on the role of heritage in Indigenous cultural survival and the complexities of that survival under the stresses and forces of settlercolonialism.Thus,Daehnkereliesonthree themes: the ongoing impacts of colonialism in regards of heritage-based projects and practices; Indigenous forms of and purposes for sustaining heritage; and the need to pay attention to tensions over different notions of place and space. The Chinook offer a uniquely compelling case becausetheirnon-recognitionstatusoftenmakes heritage efforts complicated and constrained. While resting on a solid base of archaeology, the text Daehnke presents is rooted in handson experience and full engagement with the Chinook people. He appropriately identifies his approach as both “heritage ethnography” and “collaborative ethnography,” both of which signal the broad realms of culture he must navigate as well as the need to work intensively with and for the Chinook. The author’s compelling recounting of meetings and disagreements over policy and practice, and tensions over cultural legacies in multi-tribal areas, cuts to the heart of what many Indigenous communities navigate on a daily basis. Daehnke offers skilled accounts that are clearly based on experience with these proceedings but also provides important illustrations of the larger context of settler colonialism that generates so many of those tensions. As he shows, today’s tribal leaders often prove the most deft of contortionists in working with local, regional, organizational, and federal agencies in order to push forward even the most modest projects. By necessity, the Chinook (like many) have become experts at working to build effective relationships with key non-Native partners, which facilitate rather than obstruct cultural practices and protocols. Daehnke shows how the Chinook’s mundane but crucial work to create a viable present and future when working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, still continues to combat Eurocentric maps, anthropological methods, and ongoing land claims of settler colonialism. My favorite are the final two chapters, which highlight the efforts toward the construction of the plankhouse at Cathlapotle, and the emergence and growth of tribal canoe journeys. These sections prove to be the heart of the book, as they represent multifaceted and relatively successful heritage or cultural revitalization endeavors. Those examples, both outlined in wonderful detail and care, are precise illustrations of forward-looking acts of sovereignty negotiated within the constraints of a settler colonial nation-state. The canoe journeys, in particular, are inter-tribally determined modes of asserting Indigenous geographies and sovereignties . And, as the author points out, they also serve as a springboard for other forms of cultural revitalization in the Pacific Northwest, from plankhouse construction to language to wood carving to weaving. If there is room for mild criticism, I would say that Daehnke’s academic fluency with the concepts of space and place remains under- 94 OHQ vol. 121, no. 1 developed. Cultural and human geographers (including Indigenous geographers) would have much to add to the conversation, as a great deal of literature and debate exists over topics as seemingly simple as the meanings of space and place. Yet, the overall project is still clearly well-informed by Indigenous spatial practices. Despite the potential for this book to fall into a fully academic...