First Nations, First Dogs

Frits Pannekoek is an associate professor of heritage studies, director
of information resources at the University of Calgary, and the author of
A Snug Little Flock: The Social Origins of the Riel Resistance of
1869–70.

Every so often a book comes along that will be deservedly admired for
its exhaustive compilation of all material on a particular subject.
Generations of Canadians and dog lovers will be grateful to Cummins for
providing such an encyclopedia in First Nations, First Dogs. It is
soundly based on scholarship, referencing the classics but also working
with the new archeological information that traces the association of
dog and human to people’s first arrival in North America. The book
notes that there were 17 unique precontact dog breeds; seven of these
survived to modern-day Canada, but all are now extinct except for one,
the Kimmiq, which was saved by the efforts of William J. Carpenter.

Cummins organizes the book into divisions representing groups of
Aboriginal cultures: the Arctic, the Eastern Subarctic, the Western
Subarctic, the Eastern Woodlands, the Plains, the Plateau, and the
Northwest Coast. This approach reinforces his argument that dogs are
cultural rather than natural creations.

The chapters are, however, uneven. Those on the Far North, which are
based on current memory and information, are the most detailed and
illustrated, while the rest are much shorter. The collection of Native
stories and religious practices that involve the dog are well documented
and will be of great interest. However, readers should be careful in
using the book to understand Aboriginal culture more generally. The most
recent literature is not cited, and the insights that might have come
from looking at the dog from an Aboriginal worldview or way of knowing
do not exist.

There is an underlying lament in the book—that of the disappearance
of all but one of the resident Canadian species. Since the dog is a
cultural partner of humankind and all societies have a relationship with
it, Cummins equally laments the future of the Aboriginal people. His
conclusion that the stronger European dog breeds replaced the Native dog
should not be extended to the human situation. Recent literature points
out quite clearly that Aboriginal cultures have not only survived but
flourished in the new Euro-American context. Indeed, the new North
America—including its democratic forms—owes much to Aboriginal
wisdoms and ways.