Harry Robinson (1900-1990) was a respected Salish (Canadian First Nations) storyteller from the Similkameen Valley in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. A rancher by occupation, he also had an extensive repertoire of traditional stories learned from early childhood on from family and the local Salish community, and later from more widely ranging sources. A thoughtful and reflective man as well as a powerful storyteller, in 1977 he began to collaborate with Wendy Wickwire, then a graduate student at Wesleyan University, to record and preserve these stories in English (although he told them in both Okanagan and in English). The first collection that was published from this work was a general sample from his range of stories and won a national award, coming out shortly before Robinson’s death. Subsequent to this, Wickwire has published two further books based on their ten years of collaboration, and these have been more specifically focused. The second volume published stories to do with “nature helpers,” beings from the natural world that assist humans at moments of crisis. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory is the third volume of his stories to be published and is unique for its emphasis on stories and legends centred on specific places which involve historical narratives or bridge the gap between older myths and legends and contemporary experience.

Wickwire has prepared a careful introduction which sets the context for the stories and gives some background on Robinson which is useful to readers new to his work. She also discusses the collaborative project in the light of the work of other ethnographers such as Boas, Teit, Spier, Cole, Lévi-Strauss and the many others who had worked in the area or written on it earlier in the twentieth century. Wickwire’s introduction reminds us that British Columbia, like the American Southwest, has served over many years as a “laboratory for anthropology” because of the strength and diversity of First Nations cultures found there, and her involvement in this project was also the beginning of a substantial enquiry into this intellectual history. She began a substantive critique of Boasian anthropology through close attention to how Boasians handled cultural materials and narratives in ways that removed them from local contexts, thereby diminishing the potential for full understanding of the range of meanings and the subtle historical points and social critiques which can be embedded in traditional storytelling. Her work now appears to have moved through the initial disciplinary critique to place early anthropologists and later fieldworkers together with local tradition bearers and audiences as people who have valued and attempted to preserve a record of continuity, creativity, conservatorship and change in living narrative traditions. One of the most interesting aspects of Wickwire’s discussion is her thinking about authenticity. She points out that early collectors seem to have rejected stories that they considered “inauthentic,” but this emphasis on the authentic was part of an attempt to bypass contemporary outside influence. The incorporation and assimilation of such influences is, after all, part of the reality of a living cultural tradition, and in this volume Wickwire set out examples of stories from a Coyote tale cycle and historical stories which Harry told over many visits. These embed the evidence of critical reaction to external pressures in a changing world by indigenous storytellers within a traditional narrative genre. Coyote and the King of England, technological change, ethnic conflict, prediction, and foreknowledge are all subjects here.

Wickwire has worked over the years to develop oral history and narrative scholarship regionally in collaboration with local communities and scholars in ways that help recover these aspects of storytelling in everyday life. The continuing influence on her thinking of Harry Robinson and other local people from the region is clear in this very fine introduction and the careful notes she prepared with it. After having read it the reader is well prepared to plunge straight into a lightly mediated encounter with Harry as a storyteller both in the individual tales and in the combination of stories included in this volume.

Wickwire’s editing of Robinson’s narratives uses a deceptively simple method for capturing their rhythms and style on the written page, presenting them in a loose poetic form with no further notes. His voice is a strong one and this device works well here, though it would be interesting to have some access to his storytelling more directly through the inclusion of some recordings on an accompanying CD. I also felt a need for some photography and maps in this volume given the emphasis on specific places in this volume.

This collaborative work between Robinson and Wickwire deserves a wide readership- beyond British Columbia, or Canada, or North America. If further editions are made available, the inclusion of some maps and photography would help make still further sense of the stories and Wickwire’s introduction for people who are not familiar with the specific Okanagan area. Talon Books has produced this volume handsomely in the same style as the previous two books. The handling of historic photographs on the covers makes such a striking visual statement that it would be very good to extend this element into the body of the book. Wickwire’s fine writing style in the introduction engages attention immediately, and Robinson’s striking voice as a storyteller ensures that his wish to see these tales live on will succeed.

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[Review length: 891 words • Review posted on February 20, 2008]