John Sutton Lutz, Makuk: a New History of Aboriginal-White Relations.(Book review)

John Sutton Lutz, Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations (Vancouver: UBC Press 2008)

JOHN SUTTON LUTZ'S Makuk: A New History of Aboriginal-White Relations offers a much needed analysis of the intimate relationship between colonialism and capitalism in Canada. More specifically, Makuk provides a fresh perspective on the history of indigenous labour and its role in the making of the modern province of British Columbia. Lutz is both powerful and poetic in his reframing of this important history, and his book is a strong contribution that significantly moves the British Columbia historiography forward in new and exciting ways.

The concept of "makuk," an indigenous expression with several meanings, including "to exchange" and "let's trade," is employed skillfully as the text's guiding structure. Lutz explains that as the history of "makuk" in British Columbia is steeped in cultural misunderstanding, Makuk is "another attempt at crosscultural communication." (13) In short, Lutz's goal is to broaden the conversation about colonialism, cultural exchange, and work so as to end the traditional marginalization of indigenous peoples' working experiences in history. In doing so, Lutz not only shows how indigenous peoples were important to the spread of capitalism in British Columbia, but also how they were able to work with and against non-indigenous immigrants to create spaces for themselves, their cultures, and their own economies within the new colonial order of things.

The first two chapters of Makuk introduce readers to the early history of indigenous-newcomer relations on the Pacific Coast and to Lutz's loosely postmodern analytical framework. In the third chapter, Makuk clearly establishes itself as a strong critique of the role of the historiography of British Columbia in perpetuating the myth of the "Lazy Indian" through a misunderstanding of the extent and importance of indigenous labour. Lutz points out that scholars have traditionally argued that with the advent of newcomers, indigenous peoples were either pushed aside to make room for settler capitalist expansion or that they benefited temporarily before declining in wealth and importance. Lutz refutes these arguments and critiques the historiography for a "largely uncritical reliance on sources" that continue to ignore the widespread involvement of indigenous peoples in wage labour and the making of British Columbia. (21) He goes so far as to argue that the stereotype of the "Lazy Indian" is as much a construction of lazy historians as it was of racist colonialists.

To decentre the traditional historiography, Lutz uses a variety of new sources to locate previously unheard indigenous voices in relation to the history of work, including oral histories, autobiographies, biographies, and ethnographies. His overall finding is that as capitalist social relations spread throughout the territories of the Pacific Northwest Coast, "these extraordinary [indigenous] people did a very ordinary thing; they went to work for white employers and many prospered." (276) However, there is more to Lutz's project than simply highlighting indigenous peoples' engagement in wage labour. Lutz argues that capitalism did not simply replace traditional indigenous economies, but rather that a "moditional" economy was forged: a hybrid economy, neither fully European nor indigenous, both traditional and modern. For Lutz, the term "moditional" captures the fluidity of a new economy that combined wage labour, prestige, subsistence, and welfare economies that many indigenous peoples struggled to make work for them. Lutz organizes the rest of his work around an explanation of how such "moditional" economies came about in British Columbia.

Chapters 4 and 5 function as micro-histories of two indigenous groups for point of comparison: the Lekwungen of southern Vancouver Island (who welcomed newcomers) and the Tsilhqot'in of the southern interior of the mainland (who drove newcomers away). The strength of these chapters lies in the juxtaposition of the very different responses of these two indigenous groups to newcomers and capitalist social relations. And yet, Lutz's overall argument is that no matter what strategy indigenous peoples adopted to deal with the newcomers--accommodation, resistance, or a combination of both--two hundred years after the arrival of Europeans, the Lekwungen, Tsilhqot'in, and the vast majority of indigenous peoples in British Columbia were "impoverished and dependent." (281)

In chapters 6-8, Lutz situates the micro-histories of the Lekwungen and Tsilhqot'in within the macro-context of the socio-economic dynamics of colonial state-building. Chapter 6 traces the history of indigenous labour in two time periods. The first period, 1849-1885, shows indigenous involvement in the trading of food and furs, while the second period, 1885-1970, illustrates how indigenous involvement expanded as did capitalist relations throughout the new province. For example, Lutz explains how in the post-1885 period, it was indigenous peoples who cleared the first farm fields, acted as the original labour force in coal mines, were the first to mine gold, and worked in sawmills, canneries, and on docks and steamships. Modern British Columbia was built on the backs of indigenous labourers. Indeed, Lutz argues that by the early 20th century, "British Columbia had become one of the most industrialized provinces in the country, and it did so on a workforce dominated by Aboriginal people." (192) According to Lutz, it is clear that the response of many indigenous peoples living in British Columbia to newcomers was closer to that of the Lekwungen than that of the Tsilhqot'in.

In chapter 7 Lutz focuses on how the state, perhaps unknowingly, played a primary role in the creation of a moditional economy by shaping indigenous access to the capitalist, subsistence, prestige, and welfare economies. Although a strong chapter, unfortunately Lutz silences political protests by indigenous and non-indigenous peoples to the colonial project and misses the opportunity to highlight more clearly the close relationship between capitalism and colonial state-building. He does, however, do a fine job of explaining the complexities of the state's increasing involvement in welfare politics in Chapter 8. Lutz concludes his discussion by commenting on the modern version of the "Indian Problem" (not his words): the continuation of the legacy of poverty, illness, and general destitution of many living in indigenous communities throughout the province. But Lutz makes it clear, as he does throughout Makuk, that "the high rates of unemployment and welfare dependency among contemporary communities are recent historical phenomena, with observable roots and causes." (4) As the state increasingly restricted indigenous access to subsistence resources and limited educational opportunities necessary for access to the wage labour market, many indigenous peoples turned to the government for help. According to Lutz, the dire situation facing many indigenous communities is the consequence of the ruthless preserve-and-destroy dialectics of capitalism and the haunting legacies of colonial practices.

While the concept of a moditional economy provides a new lens through which to view the history of indigenous labour in British Columbia, Lutz's concept of "peaceable subordination" demands critical attention. For Lutz, the latter concept refers to the "strategies used by certain European colonists and colonial states to dominate occupied lands, while publicly deploring the violence of conquest." (8) While colonialism arguably played out in different ways in the Pacific Northwest than it did on the American frontier, there are examples like the Chilcotin War, which is discussed at length in Chapter 5 - that suggest that colonial conflict and the dispossession of indigenous peoples' lands were not always cloaked in a language of benevolence. Similarly, readers should challenge Lutz's linking of the concept of peaceable subordination to Ranjajit Guha's idea of dominance without hegemony. Here, I believe Lutz is working with a misunderstanding of hegemony, viewing it as deliberate and conscious consent rather than a fluid and active process of struggle for peoples' hearts, minds, and bodies. Writing the history of capitalism and colonialism in British Columbia as the struggle for hegemony allows for stories of accommodation and resistance as well as of the important ways in which these survival strategies intersect in the contact zone. In addition, Lutz's framework would have benefited from a more thorough analysis of class and the realities of capitalist exploitation that both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples experienced--and continue to experience--in the making of British Columbia. These limitations, however, only provide new spaces and opportunities for scholars to further our historical understanding of the relationship between colonialism and capitalism in British Columbia. Overall, Makuk renews a pertinent discussion in the British Columbia historiography that I hope will reverberate throughout the fields of Canadian labour and colonial history.

SEAN CARLETON

Simon Fraser University

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