Reviewed by: The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915 Jennifer S. H. Brown Carter, Sarah — The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press; Athabasca: Athabasca University Press, 2008. Pp. 383. This innovative book brings together a wide range of subjects and sources to pursue a theme not previously articulated in a single work. Sarah Carter's focus is actually sharper than the title conveys. Canadian authorities and church leaders in this period did not simply promote marrying one spouse of opposite gender. They insisted on a particular form of marriage: exclusive, lifelong, and intolerant of divorce or separation for any reason except death. Carter highlights the startling fact that, up to less than a century ago, the only legal path to divorce in Canada was through an act of parliament. Although the pressures increasingly placed on First Nations people, from the 1800s onward, to marry in conventional church ceremonies and to eschew polygamy have often been discussed, the extent to which other groups — notably Mormons, Doukhobors, and Quakers —were pressed to conform to mainstream practices is little known. The relative powerlessness of these newcomers to the West afforded them little chance to articulate or defend their practices in the face of Canadian courts and authorities. Carter effectively maps this "diverse marital landscape of western Canada" (subtitle, chapter 2) and the campaigns aimed at "making newcomers to western Canada monogamous" (title, chapter 3). In placing their stories first, she demonstrates that monogamy was not just an "Indian" issue; Canadian authorities also challenged non-conforming minorities of European background. These groups, often small and dispersed, were less successful than established Aboriginal communities in subverting and resisting the pressures imposed on their modes of marriage and divorce. [End Page 475] The next four chapters focus largely on Aboriginal marriage practices and on governmental and church efforts to achieve control over marriage through regulations and pressures towards conversion, "civilization," and assimilation. Carter draws useful comparisons with regulations in British colonies in Africa and Asia and those in the United States to amplify perspectives and provide context. Chapter 4, subtitled "Plains Aboriginal Marriage," effectively explicates the social and marital structures that Canadian officials were bent on dismantling. One point needs comment. Carter writes, "Marriage was central to the kinship systems of Aboriginal societies, as relatives were divided into two basic categories: those related by marriage and those related by birth" (p. 105). However, Ojibwe and Cree kinship systems, for example, sharply distinguished parallel cousins (children and grandchildren of same-sex siblings, who were classed as siblings to one another and could not marry), from cross cousins (offspring of opposite-sex siblings), who were by definition candidates for marriage. As the terms for cross cousin included siblings-in-law of the opposite sex and could also be applied to outsiders, Ojibwe terms for relatives did not change when people married (A. Irving Hallowell, "Cross-Cousin Marriage in the Lake Winnipeg Area" [1937] in Hallowell, Contributions to Ojibwe Studies: Essays, 1934-1972, Jennifer S. H. Brown and Susan Elaine Gray, eds. [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010]). Furthermore, as Hallowell learned, cross cousins of the opposite sex (whether young or old, married or not) engaged in conventionalized joking that played liberally (within bounds) on the "sweetheart" theme of being potential mates. Such conventions, unintelligible to most outsiders, may have reinforced officials' critiques of the Indians' "lax notions . . . with regard to the relations between the sexes" (Frank Oliver, quoted on p. 274). As Aboriginal kinship systems were displaced by English-language kin terms and values, old roles and norms that governed marriage and other relationships lost ground, and new distinctions among first, second, and third cousins and narrow definitions of brothers and sisters (no parallel cousins allowed) took hold. On the question of Aboriginal polygamy, Carter notes the challenges of tracing its persistence (pp. 200-201). Here too, Hallowell is helpful. His detailed case study, "The Incidence, Character, and Decline of Polygyny among the Lake Winnipeg Cree and Saulteaux" (1938, reprinted in Brown and Gray, eds., Contributions to Ojibwe Studies), documents numerous instances from both treaty paylists and fieldwork in...
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Sep 1, 2011
Margarida Martins Barroso 
Open Access