Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools

Abstract

Cook's European contemporaries did, in fact, report that the Hawaiians regarded Cook as their god Lono. In writing How Natives Think, rather than How Hawaiians Thought^ Sahlins broadens not only the appeal of his book, but the scope of his critique. Northwest Coast historians tend to regard their field as a subdiscipline of Canadian or American historiography — that is, we look east for our intellectual identity. Yet, the history of early contact here was as much, if not more, a part of a broader Pacific experience than it was an extension of historical processes stemming from the St. Lawrence Seaway or the Great Plains. If for no other reason than the temporal parallels linking contact on this coast with other parts of Pacific Oceania, we would be well advised to pay greater attention to the academic discussions emanating from our west. For while the particulars and even the subject matter of a controversy over Cook's Hawaiian apotheosis may have little in common with current Northwest Coast ethnohistorical debate, the issues addressed in the Sahl insObeyesekere exchange are central to ethnohistory. As ethnohistorians we must be cautious and reflective in our application of interpretive models, and we must be honest with regard to our archival and oral sources. We must not allow modern sensibilities and/or perceived contemporary polit ical objectives to taint our research. In light of this publication, and despite the fact that Sahlins's depiction of eighteenth-century Hawaiians might not coincide with modern Western understandings of practical rationali ty (and migh t , therefore, be politically unpopular in the short term), Sahlins's place in history as a leading twentieth-century thinker and scholar appears secure. So too, one hopes, are the exhaustive e thno historical research techniques, the cautious yet honest methodologies, and the critical processes of peer review Sahlins propounds.