Logging camps supplied a theatre for Aboriginal guys to conquer the racial and social oppression that newcomers superimposed upon Aboriginal individuals in twentieth-century British Columbia. Aboriginal loggers could drop government paternalism and defy stereotypes including the ‘lazy Indian’ by earning money and supplying for households and communities. Doing so permitted all of them to meet both Coast Salish and settler notions of maleness; whilst every type of maleness was special, both highly valued hard work and supplying for one’s family. Because so many among these males started their careers as loggers at very young ages (often who are only 12), signing became an essential opportinity for Aboriginal men to enter manhood. In logging camps, these young men formed special masculine identities. They certainly were not only loggers; they were Aboriginal loggers. Numerous created reputations as the best in the industry.
Although signing camps supplied a way for Aboriginal males to affirm their particular masculine identities, these men remained restricted to the racism directed toward Aboriginal folks in a settler community. Being a respected logger might have earned Aboriginal men a tip of the hat or a friendly smile from a fellow non-Aboriginal logger in a settler town. But Aboriginal men remained constrained racially by federal and provincial laws and regulations that banned all of them from specific organizations and restricted their capability to have interaction with settler Canadians. Logging sports became an approach to bring the ability, talent, and respect these guys garnered in signing camps into settler communities.
Signing sports arose when you look at the mid-twentieth century from competitive nature of logging. Loggers developed reputations inside forests for their capability to perform jobs as quickly as possible. The activities in logging competitions tend to be directly associated with those carried out within the bush: log-rolling, choker setting, cable splicing, buckle and spur climbing, bucking, plus the springboard chop. Typically, the rivals within these games will be the exact same people just who employed these abilities occupationally. At these tournaments, facing crowds of people that were frequently predominantly non-Aboriginal, Aboriginal loggers hacked trees, tied cables, and rolled logs together with the most readily useful non-Aboriginal loggers.
Several of the Coast Salish loggers that I interviewed for my forthcoming Master’s thesis, “Giant Trees, Iron Men; Coast Salish Loggers and Masculinity, ” competed in logger’s sports in the 1960s and 1970s during their time away from the woods. They reflected on such occasions proudly. Ron John of Chawathil First Nation told stories of besting seven-foot-tall white guys in choker environment, boasting, “That really made myself happy! He wouldn’t also view me after.” Similarly, Paris ‘Perry’ Peters travelled around British Columbia and Alberta, winning trophies for ‘hot saw, ’ crosscutting, axe throwing, and spring board chopping. Even though wall space in Peters’ Seabird Island home are lined with trophies, he could be modest about their success. His wife, Birdie, is less reticent: “He’s not a bragger, I have to do that for him. But he was top.” For men like John and Peters, contending in signing recreations became ways to demonstrate their abilities facing big throngs of people, hence helping digest the racial and personal barriers that existed between Aboriginal men and women and settlers in belated twentieth century.
Aboriginal men’s success available logging industry plus in logging activities generated the introduction of “All-Native” logging competitions into the Fraser Valley. At locations like Hope and Chilliwack, various Stó:lō nations presented signing recreations as an element of summer festivals. These festivals hosted bannock cooking, hop-picking, and war canoe rushing alongside signing recreations. Most of the activities, but particularly the war canoes and also the logging sports, were attended by huge crowds of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal folks. However, the rivals were solely Aboriginal. One of these celebrations, hosted at Coqualeetza (Sardis, BC) in 1977, drew a crowd of five-hundred individuals view 2 days of logging activities. At Coqualeetza, Aboriginal males competed for wooden plaques that have been hand created and painted by Stó:lō musicians and artists. Ron John took house several of these, winning occasions such axe throwing and cable splicing. John had been famous for their power to splice cables with just their bare hands, while others had to utilize tools. He had been in addition named one of many “Top Loggers” on both times of your competitors. An “all-native” competitors went in Hope for five consecutive many years in 1970s. Patricia John, Ron John’s spouse, remembers these events “made a solid statement for very first countries loggers, plus we apply a good salmon BBQ!”
As previously mentioned by Stó:lō logger Hank Pennier, signing camps offered a space for Aboriginal guys in which “an Indian feels just like next man and from everything we see in a lot of whites nowadays, possibly even a lot better than the following guy.” Bringing the talent among these males out from the woods and into settler communities permitted Coast Salish guys the chance to do their particular masculinity in the same manner which they had within the forests: by spending so much time, going rapidly, and often standing toe-to-toe with non-Aboriginal guys.
Records:
For lots more on personal part of Aboriginal woodworking, see Homer G. Barnett, The Coast Salish of British Columbia (Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1955), 107.
In “After the Fur Trade” (Journal associated with the Canadian Historical Association Vol. 3, # 1 (1992), 87-88), John Lutz papers the centrality of Lekwungen labour in procuring the materials to build Fort Victoria. Menzies (“Working in the Woods, ” United states Indian Quarterly Vol. 25, No. 3 (2001), 412) features just how Tsimshian woodworkers offered not only the timber, but in addition most of the labour into the building of Fort Simpson. The Fort Langley Journals indicate that Stó:lō men and women supplied cedar for exterior treatments of Fort Langley in the summertime of 1827. See Wayne Suttles and Morag Maclachlan, eds., The Fort Langley Journals 1827-30 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), 32-35.