Diamond Jenness

Diamond Jenness (1886–1969) was a pioneer of Canadian anthropology. Best known for his seminal contributions to Inuit ethnology and archaeology, Jenness’ tenure with the anthropological branch of the National Museum of Canada before World War II also resulted in ground-breaking studies of first peoples elsewhere in the country, including his three northern Athapaskan ethnographies. Succeeding Edward Sapir as chief of the branch in 1925, a position he retained into the late 1930s, Jenness sought to expand the National Museum's anthropological researches, collections, and reputation, and in the public sphere, championed recognition, understanding, and improved living conditions for Canada's indigenous populations.

"Faced with lots to do, relatively little time to get it done, and in Athapaskan, a language Sapir colourfully characterized “the son-of-a-bitchiest” to learn, Jenness cut to the chase and engaged John Whitney, his forty-something landlord and a fluent Sarcee speaker, to interpret and assist with the painstaking business of transcribing the elders’ stories. Spread over six weeks, their collaboration yielded a body of narratives replete with ethnographic and historical detail and personal rumination illuminating a world as it existed before Treaty Seven ushered in the reserve era. Sacred knowledge and its ritual expression figure prominently in the resulting monograph, a work regarded to this day as the standard treatment of Tsuu T’ina society, culture, and history. Missing from its pages, however, are musical transcriptions of 75 songs recorded with a borrowed phonograph, a fair selection of same performed by Whitney; apparently, they were omitted for want of a specialist to do the requisite musicological transcription. Absent, too, is any mention of language, a topic the author wisely entrusted to his more linguistically adroit colleague."

From Barnett Richling's Preface to Three Athapaskan Ethnographies: Diamond Jenness on the Sekani, the Tsuu T'ina and the Wet'suet'en