​Diamond Jenness and Athapaskan Ethnography

“… the description [Jenness] gives us of the Indian worlds he visited are rich in the kind of detail that only a trusted and sympathetic friend would be told.”

--Robin Riddington, “Beaver Dreaming and Singing” (1971)

 

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 first-hand 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 finely observed and meticulously drawn accounts remains fascinating reading to this day.

 

Author BARNETT RICHLING is a senior scholar in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Winnipeg, and author of In Twilight and in Dawn: A Biography of Diamond Jenness (McGill Queens, 2012).