Brushed by Cedar, Living by the River

Coast Salish Figures of Power

Crisca Bierwert (Author)
Ebook ($30.00) Buy
A brilliant, experimental ethnography, Brushed by Cedar is destined to change the way anthropologists write about the people they befriend.

Crisca Bierwert has created a fresh poststructural ethnography that offers new insights into Coast Salish cultures. Arguing against the existence of a master narrative, she presents her understanding of these Native American peoples of Washington state and British Columbia, Canada, through poetic bricolage, offering the reader a pastiche of rich cultural images. Bierwert employs postmodern literary and social analyses to examine many aspects of Salish culture: legends and their storytellers; domestic violence; longhouse ceremonies; the importance and power of place; and disputes over fishing rights. Her reflections overlap as a dialogue would, weaving throughout the book significant threads of Salish knowledge and creating a nonauthoritative text that nonetheless speaks knowingly.

This book represents the future of contemporary anthropology. Unlike traditional ethnography, it makes no attempt to portray a complete picture of the Coast Salish. Instead, Bierwert utilizes a critical and diffuse approach that defies colonial, syncretic, and hegemonic structures and applies advanced literary theory to the creation of ethnography.

Brushed by Cedar is an important guideline for anyone who writes about other cultures and will be expecially useful to classes in the methodology and history of ethnography, as well as to scholars specializing in Native American studies or oral literatures.
"An absolutely brilliant engagement with current life and intellectuals among the Coast Salish of Washington and British Columbia. This is, without any question, the oustanding work of ethnography concerning the Coast Salish."
--Bruce Miller, University of British Columbia
Brushed by Cedar, Living by the River
314 Pages 6 x 9 x 1
Published: November 2019Ebook ISBN: 9780816540907

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