Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, edited by Graeme Morton and David A. Wilson

Abstract

Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, edited by Graeme Morton and David A. Wilson. Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. ix, 389 pp. $34.95 US (paper). Among many enduring myths that figure in both Aboriginal history and studies of Irish and Scottish peoples is a notion that Irish and Scots who ventured abroad enjoyed more positive relations with Indigenous peoples they encountered than did adventurers from other lands. Or, as co-editor David A. Wilson of University of Toronto poses what he terms the general question at heart of this volume: to what extent did Irishness or Scottishness affect attitudes toward Indigenous peoples? (p. 17). It turns out, as both Wilson and author of lead article on European migration and Indigenous populations, Donald Hannon Akenson of Queen's University, put it--not much. Akenson contends that all agents of European expansion were horrible colonizers, apparently without exception. And editor Wilson agrees, even going so far as to cavil that one of his authors' evidence hardly amount to 'striking Gaelic statements of solidarity' with Indigenous people as author contended (p. 13). Nonetheless, does contain a wealth of fascinating information about Indigenous people and Scots and Irish, even if it does not provide a satisfying explanation of any pattern in relations that occurred along frontiers of contact. Irish and Scottish Encounters brings together research results from fourteen scholars in history, literature, folklore, ethnomusicology, anthropology, and Celtic, Irish, and New Zealand Studies. Their approaches are similarly eclectic, resulting in a that includes a number of case studies of individuals and broadly comparative analyses in literature, music, and fiddling. The bulk of studies look at Indigenous-European interactions in North America, principally Canada, but there are also treatments that focus on New Zealand, Australia, Orkney, and Hebrides. A striking absence, both in in general and in Akenson's overview essay, is any attention to interactions with Indigenous peoples in Asia and Africa, where, presumably, Scots and Irish also ventured. Only one author claims that ethnicity had much influence on relations with Indigenous peoples, with rest concluding it had none or studiously avoiding the general question at heart of this volume (p. 17). The collection also reveals a broad range of interactions between Celtic newcomers and Indigenous peoples. Some contributions, such as otherwise excellent study of nineteenth-century Toronto Bishop Michael Power, do not have much to do with Irish. Historian Mark McGowan's chapter reveals a Canadian-born Catholic prelate energetically contending with an unsympathetic colonial Indian Department dominated by Anglicans and being forced to rely on French Jesuits for frontline missionary work in western reaches of his diocese. …