by Mel Watkins
Department of Economics, University College, University of Toronto
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Kerry Abel, Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993. Pp. xii, 339, maps, ill. ISBN 0-7735-0992-5.
As historians’ time goes—to say nothing of Dene time—it was only yesterday (in the mid-1970s) that the Dene burst upon the public stage with their spirited opposition to the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline, and with their claim, in the name of the Dene Nation, to one-ninth of Canada. It is a great tribute to the historical profession, and the capacity of the young to renew it, that less than twenty years later we have a book-length presentation of their history.
Abel modestly subtitles her study “Glimpses”; in fact, it is a long and steady look, stretching from “When the Earth was New” (the title of Chapter 1) to the early 1990s. The use of archival and secondary sources seems thorough and effective.
Dene woman from northern Manitoba, 1947.
Source: Hudson’s Bay Archives
The only puzzling aspect of her research methodology is her failure to talk to living Dene, both about their memories and about their perceptions of what is happening today. As Euro-Canadians we may have no choice but to write about the history of oral societies but it is hard to understand why one would deny oneself access to the richness and vitality of the essence of Dene being. That Abel did not so avail herself may explain the curious flatness of her prose; the Dene “story” is exciting but this book, not-withstanding its many virtues, is just another academic “history.”
For Abel, the basic theme is that the Dene have persevered and survived: “This book is intended ... to answer the question of how these northern people have been able to maintain a sense of cultural distinctiveness in the face of overwhelming economic, political and cultural pressures from the European newcomers to their homelands” (xi). She rightly makes the point that in the past—indeed, as recently as the Berger Inquiry—it was thought that aboriginal peoples like the Dene would wither away and assimilate as their economy and culture eroded. This has not happened, and it has not, as Abel shows, because the Dene have been willing both to adapt and to protest.
It is good to have the story of the Dene told this way so that readers can see how they, like other aboriginal peoples, have suffered much (Abel documents very well the epidemics that have episodically decimated the Dene) but stood their ground. It is my sense, however, that the Dene themselves have not in the past, and do not today, see their situation as precarious, and do not see their survival as itself surprising. Abel very properly makes the point that she is not writing “a history of the Dene according to the Dene definition of history”—”That task can be done only by the Dene themselves, and I hope that someone will attempt it soon” (x)—and that she is endeavouring to speak to Canadians in general, but I do not see why she could not have attempted to ascertain the Dene perspective on this matter and, if I am right about it, to nuance her history accordingly the better to inform that broader audience.
Abel’s chapters on the fur trade—”trapping furs fit well into the Dene economy and world view” (113)—and on the treaties, where she builds on Rene Fumoleau’s superb 1975 study As Long as This Land Shall Last: A History of Treaty 8 and Treaty 11 and adds her authority to the view that these treaties are properly seen by the Dene as illegitimate, strike me as particularly good; these topics are much tilled in the literature but she adds fresh information and insight. As she moves to more recent times, she is still mostly very good but there are some problems.
Chapter 9 on “Canada and the Dene Nation: Economics” begins with the assertion that there are “two independent economies” in the north, and that few benefits from the modern, mostly mineral, economy have accrued to the Dene. Abel is right on the latter point but wrong on the larger characterization, at least in the view of this economist. Abel is buying into a so-called dual economy argument (made by some economists of more orthodox persuasion) about a “modem” sector and a “traditional” sector that risks minimizing, if not missing, the point that the development of the first impacts the second but in ways that are mostly disruptive and costly.
Abel explicitly states that because there has been limited Dene participation in resource development projects there has been “minimal impact on their lives” (244), but it is hard to see how that squares with the Dene perception that their basic aboriginal and human rights are being negated. This is particularly puzzling because Abel does recognize (252) that the Dene Declaration of the mid-seventies asserted “aboriginal rights” as “fundamental human right” and it can be assumed that this only wrote down, the better to impress the rest of Canadian society, what the Dene had long believed.
I hasten to add, however, that there is much that is good in this chapter, as on how the Dene attempted in a modest way to engage in commercial fishing and were frustrated by government regulation, just as they were in general by game laws externally imposed.
I hesitate to say too much about Chapter 10 (“Canada and the Dene Nation: Society and Politics”) since I was myself a bit player as a consultant to the Dene in the mid-seventies but I must correct two small errors. With respect to proposed energy megaprojects, Abel writes that “Most Canadians assumed without question that Northern natives would embrace these projects ...”(242). She offers no citation in support of this assertion and, in fact, when the Berger Inquiry went south in the mid-‘70s the weight of the submissions to it were on the side of opposition. That surprised a lot of powerful people at the time and is the kind of hopeful happening that we should hold in our minds in these presently miserable times.
On matters of “differences of opinion over strategy” within the Dene organization, Abel first cites controversy over the role of white advisors, myself included, and writes that “Another concern” (254) was the decision of Dene President James Wah-Shee to run for the NWT council in defiance of the Dene chiefs. She is wrong as to both sequence and substance. Wah-Shee’s decision predated the concern within the Dene organization about outsiders and was the larger and precipitating event. The staff, Dene and non-Dene, led by Georges Erasmus, openly opposed Wah-Shee—in retrospect a serious error. The chiefs deposed him, Erasmus succeeded him and, the better to solidify his position and rule out any repeat, purged the white advisors. (I had left of my own volition by the time the latter happened, back to my tenured position at the University of Toronto, but I would otherwise have been sent back).
Wah-Shee’s decision turned out to be a watershed, and this to her credit Abel clearly understands better than most commentators have. The Dene claim was highly political in the sense of calling for Dene government itself. But there could not be both a viable Dene government and a NWT government with a significant Dene presence, particularly a NWT government whose powers were growing because of a wise devolution of power by Ottawa. Once Wah-Shee was elected from a Dogrib constituency, and other Dene followed suit, Erasmus was compelled to abandon the boycott of Territorial Council elections and with it the political guts of the Dene claim itself. With land and money now the essence of the claim, the Dene Nation fragmented back into separate regions willing, or unwilling, to negotiate a settlement.
This review has quibbled and complained enough. Abel deserves our very real thanks for researching and writing such a lengthy book about the Dene. I teach a senior undergraduate seminar on the Canadian north with particular reference to the Dene and I urge my students to read this book; in my profession we call that meeting the market test and are appropriately impressed.
Page revised: 26 September 2012
