Raibmon, Paige Sylvia 1971–

PERSONAL:

Born 1971, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Education: Duke University, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of British Columbia, Buchanan Tower, Rm. 1220, 1873 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada. E-mail—paige.raibmon@ubc.ca.

CAREER:

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, associate professor of history. Formerly worked at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Stone-Suderman Prize for Outstanding Article Published in American Studies, Mid-America American Studies Association, 2007, for "‘Handicapped by Distance and Transportation’: Indigenous Relocation, Modernity, and Time-Space Expansion."

WRITINGS:

Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2005.

Also contributor to Seeing Nature through Gender, edited by Virginia Scharff, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2003; and New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada's Native Pasts, edited by Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan, UBC Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2007. Contributor to journals, including Labor, American Studies, BC Studies, and Canadian Historical Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

University of British Columbia professor of history Paige Sylvia Raibmon breaks new ground in her studies of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. Her monograph Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast "revolves around the idea of ‘authenticity’ as it applies to late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Northwest Coast Aboriginal cultures in Canada and the United States," explained H-Net reviewer Susan Neylan. "Raibmon does not conceptualize the term ‘authentic’ as the measure of the real or genuine historical experience of Native peoples. Rather, she examines how notions of authenticity were historically bounded, based in colonialism, and both the discourse and category of analysis by which Aboriginal people came to be measured. ‘Authenticity was a structure of power that enabled even as it constrained, their interaction with the colonial world.’"

Raibmon showcases this idea of authenticity through an example drawn from the late twentieth century. In 1999 members of the Makah nation launched a widely publicized whale hunt. Their treaty with the United States government, negotiated in 1855, specifically mentions their right to hunt whales and seals. However, instead of using traditional hunting gear, the Makah used motorboats and rifles—a decision that attracted widespread protest. Raibmon's thesis, explained Michael E. Harkin in the Journal of American History, is that Native Americans "have always, since the first appearance of Europeans, sought to navigate between the Scylla of frozen authenticity and the Charybdis of deracination. Thus, the Makah were condemned for their departure from the traditional technology of canoe and harpoon, in favor of rifle and motor boat. By doing so, they presumably relinquished all claim to indigenous authenticity." "Raibmon contends that ‘imperialist nostalgia’ celebrated an unchanging ideal of the pure Indian—the noble savage, presumably, since the ignoble savage never spawned nostalgia, imperialist or otherwise," as BC Studies contributor Brian W. Dippie pointed out. "Those who chose to lament the disappearance of the noble savage also deplored the deviations from that ideal caused by the impact of civilization." The result is that the natives were caught in a trap of imperial expectations; but they also found ways in which those expectations could be exploited for their own good.

In Authentic Indians, Raibmon investigates the ways in which Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest reinvented their identities in order to conform to—and break with—the expectations of outsiders. The author uses three case studies: the exhibition of the Kwakwaka'wakw people of Vancouver Island at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, hop harvesting in the state of Washington, and a case of school segregation in the Alaskan town of Sitka. Bruce Granville Miller in the American Historical Review praised "Raibmon's fascinating account of the use of authenticity in the colonial domination of Aboriginal peoples in the American Pacific Northwest." In his review Miller concluded that "with Raibmon's work authenticity joins tradition, the imaginary, academic models, and the practice of selective visibility, among others, as recognized devices deployed in the imposition of the mainstream's views on Aboriginal peoples."

Several reviewers analyzed the description in Authentic Indians of Native Americans working in the Washington hop fields, a spectacle that attracted tourists anxious to see colorful aboriginals at work. These tourists in turn attracted vendors, who wanted to exploit the large gatherings of Natives by selling goods and services, ranging from hotel accommodations to organized excursions. But the exploitation was not all one-sided. "Attracted by good wages, the hop pickers, in turn, attracted white tourists eager to see quaint remnants of the past," noted Dippie in BC Studies.

"They purchased Indian curios, adding yet another dimension to the ‘migrant wage economy.’" Elizabeth Vibert in Labour/Le Travail explained: "It was precisely the impulse of authenticity—the notion among non-Natives that Natives were a romantic, vanishing culture to be glimpsed before it disappeared—that opened these spaces for Native innovation." But "hop field migrations served important and shifting purposes for Aboriginal groups as well," Lissa Wadewitz explained in the Canadian Journal of History. "Canadian and American officials pressured Aboriginal communities to cease potlatching and frowned upon large gatherings of Natives at the turn of the last century. The seasonal hop field migrations thus offered indigenous people new venues for large-scale social encounters, and their wages enabled them to participate in important community affirming ceremonies and social events." "Many men came to the area not to work in the fields but as hunting and fishing guides," Vibert explained. "Many women found a captive market for baskets and other favorite tourist curios. A handsome basket could fetch as much cash as three days' work in the fields. Posing for photographs was another important source of income: Edward S. Curtis took some of his earliest shots in the hop fields."

At the same time, however, Natives could be caught by the shifting definition of "authentic." "The price to be paid by the Tlingit for earning tourist dollars," Dippie explained, "became evident in court hearings held in 1906." Until 1905, schools in Alaska were forbidden from discriminating against Native peoples, but in that year the Nelson Act allowed the creation of segregated schools in the territory. A Tlingit man named Rudolf Walton protested this discrimination when his two stepchildren were denied access to the Alaskan public schools. The children were of mixed-race ancestry and, under the Act, should have been allowed to attend public school as long as their families lived "civilized" lives. Walton had attended missionary schools himself. He had worked as a jeweler in Sitka, and was a member of the local Presbyterian church. "He also, however, participated in potlatches, fished for salmon, and hunted seals," stated Daniel L. Boxberger in his Oregon Historical Quarterly review. "Those latter activities were sufficient for a court of law to rule that Walton lacked progress in ‘domestic and social relations’ and, therefore, his children were refused admittance to school." "The very binary that provided them with opportunity in the tourist trade—authentic/inauthentic—served to exclude those of Indian ancestry from Sitka's public schools," Dippie stated. "In our own times, authenticity continues to act as ‘gatekeeper of Aboriginal people's rights to things like commercial fisheries, land, and casinos,’" Vibert concluded. "We remain trapped on authenticity's confining terrain."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, October, 2006, Bruce Granville Miller, review of Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast, p. 1161.

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, September 22, 2006, Brian Thom, review of Authentic Indians, p. 135.

BC Studies, June 22, 2006, Brian W. Dippie, review of Authentic Indians, p. 113.

Canadian Journal of History, September 22, 2006, Lissa Wadewitz, review of Authentic Indians, p. 401.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, July 1, 2006, L. De Danaan, review of Authentic Indians.

Journal of American History, June 1, 2006, Michael E. Harkin, review of Authentic Indians, p. 236.

Journal of the West, January 1, 2006, Forrest D. Pass, review of Authentic Indians, p. 100.

Labour/Le Travail, September 22, 2007, Elizabeth Vibert, review of Authentic Indians, p. 279.

Oregon Historical Quarterly, March 22, 2007, Daniel L. Boxberger, review of Authentic Indians, p. 141.

Pacific Historical Review, August 1, 2007, Daniel Clayton, review of Authentic Indians, p. 486.

Western Historical Quarterly, September 22, 2007, Andrew H. Fisher, review of Authentic Indians, p. 383.

ONLINE

American Studies Association,http://www.theasa.net/ (May 29, 2008), D. Anthony Tyeeme Clark, "Paige Raibmon Wins 2007 Stone-Suderman Prize for Outstanding Article Published in American Studies."

Duke University Press,http://www.dukeupress.edu/ (May 29, 2008), author profile.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (March 1, 2006), Susan Neylan, review of Authentic Indians.

University of British Columbia, Department of History,http://www.history.ubc.ca/ (May 29, 2008), "Paige Raibmon."