Robert and Florence Davidson, 1961
Greeting Queen Elizabeth at Sandspit, 1971
Florence Davidson, 1989
Florence Davidson and Margaret Blackman, 1989
Robert Davidson dancing, 1989
Florence and daughters, 1989
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
Squeezed between hardcover is the text of a life, its beginnings, its turning points, its closure at the time of the telling. It represents in some ways a final statement, an authoritative text on a life lived and recalled, but in reality a life story is never finished with publication. The book presents but one version of the life as told, and the story and the text are further subject to alterations over time as the narrator ages, rethinks, revises, and retells, and as the editor reconsiders the representation of life history material. Such re-examination, in both its affirmation and revision of the original, enriches our understanding of the life history process. At a time when reflexivity, the questioning of textual authority, and close examination of narrative structures direct many anthropological endeavors, new readings of old texts is a critical enterprise. But few anthropological life histories have undergone re-examination to the extent of being issued in second editions.1
Within this context, I was motivated to re-examine During My Time. In the summer of 1990, ten years following completion of the manuscript, I sat first with Florence Davidson to record her reflections on her published life story and then with several members of her family to record theirs. My narrative of that research and of the magnificent 95th birthday party fête held for Florence the preceding year comprises the epilogue, “One More Time.”
An issue central to the writing of that epilogue is the nature of Native American biography and life history today and our unique role as authors/editors of those works. Questions of audience, the politics of cultural representation, and the changing narrative of Native American history are all raised in the re-examination of Florence’s story and my attempt to update it.
The collaborative nature of life histories from inception to print, especially those from Native North America, is emblematic of the times in which we write and of the larger relationships between the scholarly community and the communities of people we research. Much has been written recently in anthropology of the dispersal of ethnographic authority, the democratization of anthropological research, the blurring of lines between the researcher and the researched.2 Canadian native people have asserted their current status as “First Nations People” at the same time that the anthropological community has elevated its native “informants” to “native teachers,” “research consultants,” and “native experts.” Edward Bruner (1986) and, following him, James Clifton (1989) document the changing anthropological and historical view of Native American cultures, from a narrative of forced acculturation and social disorganization leading to assimilation, to one of self-determination, resistance, and nationhood. The change in the narrative of Native American history follows sweeping political and economic changes in the years following World War II, during which time Native Americans gained greater control over their own destinies. Under today’s conditions, anthropologists have difficulty doing research without formal tribal approval and “deliver their manuscripts to tribal governments for commentary, criticism, and correction before publication” (Clifton 1989:4). Obviously such circumstances make portrayal of conflict and other sensitive issues both more difficult and more challenging in life histories. At the same time they also make the life history a welcome genre in native communities. The anthropologist is led to exemplary lives, not just because the published life stories are to be offered to the larger world, but because the narratives return home to become community history as well as models for the fashioning of lives and life stories. Florence is a good model. She did what was expected of a woman of her time and did it well: she is community-spirited and has tirelessly served her community through her various leadership roles within the Anglican church. She was and continues to be a devout Christian. She raised her children to be prominent and active citizens; she shows, in the Haida way, “respect for herself.” Florence and her family fulfill their social-ceremonial obligations. And they manage their money well, with the result that very few of their large extended family are on welfare. Florence’s is the exemplary life, its value enhanced because of her age and the period of history to which her experience reaches.
In a community such as Masset, a life history is never simply the product of two individuals’ collaboration. Florence’s account was subject to a number of cultural constraints. Issues of cultural representation and presentation of self are crucial in Northwest Coast societies, with no exception in Masset. One’s prominence and social standing should be apparent, but not through public self-proclamation. It is acceptable to describe the hard work you’ve always done, but you shouldn’t “brag” about being from a chief’s family, extol your own or your children’s good behavior or accomplishments, or publicly berate someone else, even though in certain circles you may do all these things. Gossip, accusations, commentary on other people’s social misbehavior and stinginess in comparison with one’s own exemplariness fill the spaces about the kitchen tables in Masset, but are not fare for public speechmaking, nor for life histories, particularly if the author wishes to maintain good ties in a village where inevitably one’s book is “read.”
Florence’s own editorial hand in her life history was apparent from the very beginning. “I don’t tell everything—what’s no good” she cautioned, as I noted in the first edition. On more than one occasion, she would instruct me to “shut that thing off” while she relayed something important that was not to be included in the book. Interviews with her and her family in the summer of 1990 included similar instructions and/or material proffered on tape but “off the record.” Some reviewers of the first edition of the life history complained about these omissions: “The untold stories lie beneath the facts. The main element missing in this life story is conflict” (Jackson 1983:56). If we are interested in how people construct their identities and how they tell their stories, we must read the omissions, with the understanding that they, in their own way, also tell the story. On a more operational level, the very kinds of things that lead to lawsuits when biographers transgress agreements with their subjects make the anthropologist at the least an unwelcome guest in the native community and increasingly lead to formal resolutions banning anthropologists, as happened with one ethnographer in Masset in 1983.3
Every life history interviewee obviously edits the telling of his or her story, and consequently every life history is a partial story. But some life stories contain more conflict or seem more candid, less guarded, than others. In some cases the explanations may lie in culturally specific traditions of self-revelation and public discourse, but the reasons may be more blatantly political. In Marjorie Shostak’s (1981) popular life history of a !Kung San woman, Nisa, the interviewee speaks freely about her sexuality, her husbands, her extramarital affairs. Had members of the interviewee’s own community had access to the book’s contents, her story might have been less freely told, the author concludes.4 But Nisa’s people are not literate and do not speak English, and she knows little of the world that her story has reached. By contrast, Florence’s book is not only marketed in her own community but nonlocal purchasers come to meet her, locals read the book, and she and members of her family have given the book as presents. Her narrative conveys her public self; “the world’s Nani,” as she sometimes jokingly refers to herself, offers the world her story.
The individuality of the life history endeavor can be misleading. Florence worked with me always on an individual basis and, very much her own person, decided what to include in her story. Nonetheless, that she is also the senior member of a large, prominent, and very protective family was not lost on the final document. Family members offered retrospective views on the book in 1990, and even though they were not interviewed when I did my initial research between 1977–79, a copy of the manuscript was circulated among Florence’s children in Masset. Both directly and obliquely their comments reached me. They expressed more concern about my parts of the manuscript than about