Barnett Richling

Available together in a single volume for the first time are Canadian anthropologist Diamond Jenness' pioneering studies of three Athapaskan nations: the prairie-dwelling Tsuu T'ina of Alberta, and the Sekani and Wet'suwet'en in British Columbia's mountainous northern interior. Based on his wide-ranging interviews with elders in the 1920s, these richly detailed and sympathetic ethnographies comprise a valuable record of the histories and cultures of indigenous communities, like myriad others across the country and around the world, struggling to preserve their autonomy and traditions in the face of relentless assimilative forces.This edition contains original black and white photography, Jenness' own drawings, and a wealth of stories collected firsthand from his informants. And in a new preface, Barnett Richling sketches the disciplinary and institutional background to early northern Athapaskan researches, and describes the local conditions Jenness met, and the methods he employed, while in the field. The work of one of Canada's most distinguished anthropologists, this trio of keenly observed and meticulously drawn accounts remains fascinating reading to this day.

First published in 1922, The Life of the Copper Eskimos has long been regarded as a classic of Arctic ethnography. In this groundbreaking work, pioneer anthropologist Diamond Jenness describes in vivid detail the everyday interactions, practices, customs, and beliefs of the Copper Inuit (Inuinnait) with whom he lived from 1914 to 1916 - people who were, at the time, barely touched by contacts with the Western world. Featuring a new introduction that expertly sets the stage for Jenness's observations, this exceptional volume offers modern readers a rare glimpse into a vibrant and dynamic peoples' past ways of life. The preface is written by Barnett Richling, who recently retired as Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Winnipeg.

When New Zealand-born and Oxford-educated anthropologist Diamond Jenness set aside hopes of building a career in the South Pacific to join Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic Expedition, he had little idea of what lay ahead. But Jenness thrived under the duress of that transformational experience: the groundbreaking ethnographic work he accomplished, recounted in People of the Twilight and in Dawn in Arctic Alaska, proved to be a lasting contribution to twentieth-century anthropology, and the foundation of a career he would devote to researching Canada's first peoples. Barnett Richling draws upon a wealth of documentary sources to shed light on Jenness's tenure with the Anthropological Division of the National Museum of Canada - a forerunner of the Canadian Museum of Civilization - during which his investigations took him beyond the Arctic to seven First Nations communities from Georgian Bay to British Columbia's interior. Jenness was renowned as a pre-eminent scholar of Inuit culture, but he also stood out for the contributions his field work made to linguistics, ethnology, material culture, and Northern archaeology. His story is also an institutional one: Jenness worked as a public servant at a time when the federal government spearheaded anthropological research, although his abiding commitment to the first peoples of his adopted homeland placed him at odds with Ottawa's approach to aboriginal affairs. In Twilight and in Dawn is an exploration of one man's life in anthropology, and of the conditions - at the museum, on the reserves, in society's mainstream, and in the world at large - that inspired and shaped Jenness's contributions to science, to his profession, and to public life. An informative study of the evolution of a discipline focused through the life of one of its leading practitioners, In Twilight and in Dawn is an illuminating look at anthropological thought and practice in Canada during the first half of the twentieth century.