Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology

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Synopsis
It has been well known since Marius Barbeau's review of the first edition of Franz Boas's Tsimshian Mythology in 1917, that something was seriously amiss with Boas's alleged "translations" of the stories gathered by his chief Tsimshian informant, Henry Tate. But what, exactly, was it that Boas was doing with Tate's stories? It is this question that Ralph Maud sets out to address in Transmission Difficulties. * Boas's original misrepresentations of the over 2,000 pages of material he received from Henry Tate have been denied by the ethnographic establishment for over eighty years. His distortion of Tate's stories has been rationalized, to date, as "cultural relativism"--any loss of Tate's original material in this ethnographic "collaboration" between Native informant and European scientist was "unavoidable," due to the presumably equal "cultural differences" between them. This, Maud argues convincingly, is not the case at all. The fact that Boas paid Tate for his stories by the page, and furthermore instructed Tate specifically on what stories, and even on what kinds of stories he was to gather and submit, created a profoundly unequal relationship between these two men, which resulted in an inevitable and pre-determined "authentication" of the Native material by the European ethnographer. * Transmission Difficulties unfolds like a gripping, real-life mystery story. It leaves the reader with a whole new vision of what the relation between European colonials and Aboriginal inhabitants in the Americas might have been, and still might be.
Copyright:
2000

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780889228719
Publisher:
Talonbooks, Limited
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Ralph Maud
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts, Communication
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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