Out of the Woods: Tsimshian Women and Forestry Work

Abstract

T story of work on the west coast of Canada has traditionally been one of rugged (white) men in fish-boats, mines and forests. The experiences of Aboriginal peoples as laborers and producers in resource industries have rarely been the focus of mainstream historical accounts (Knight 1996: 5). While such gaps in historical and ethographic records are being tackled by contemporary scholars, many of the less conspicuous stories of resource work in British Columbia remain untold. Recent research has tended to focus on Native men's experiences as fishers (Menzies 1992, Stevens 1992) and on Native women's wage labor in salmon canneries (Newell 1993, Muszynski 1992). Aboriginal women's long and complex history of involvement with the forest industry in British Columbia remains largely unexplored. In this article we will discuss some of the key social and economic processes at work during the colonization and industrialization of western Canada that have affected Aboriginal women's involvement in the forestry industry. The experiences of women of the Tsimshian Nation on the north coast of British Columbia offer a case study that spans over a century and a half of involvement in forestry work. In this case study we describe an alternative, gendered history of forestry and also highlight the forces working to dispossess Aboriginal peoples and, specifically, to disadvantage Aboriginal women. Tsimshian women's early involvement as laborers and producers, and their subsequent exclusion from both wage work and independent harvesting, illuminates the way that colonialism and capitalism have cooperated in the economic marginalization of Aboriginal women. Drawing from archival sources and life history interviews, Tsimshian women's involvement with commercial forestry is traced from the establishment of a Hudson Bay trading post in Tsimshian territory in 1834 until the present time. The exclusion of women from forestry, coincident with the shift from an Aboriginal economy to industrial resource extraction, will be related to the social and economic changes encouraged by church and state and dictated by the needs of capital. The shifting position of Aboriginal women in the resource