They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever: Rock Writings in the Stein River Valley of British Columbia

Richard W. Parker is an assistant professor of classics at Brock
University in St. Catharines.

As part of the coming-of-age process, Native adolescents were sent out
by their elders on a “vision quest.” It consisted of solitary
prayer, singing, fasting, and vigil of several days’ duration in a
secluded location felt to be especially rich in supernatural powers, and
usually culminated in visions. The initiates expected to acquire
guardian spirits, experience, and knowledge that would serve them
throughout adulthood. To record and reinforce the acquisition of said
powers, they often painted their most important experiences on rocks.
One such haunt of supernatural powers, the valley of the Stein River (a
tributary of the Fraser in south-central British Columbia), is
particularly rich in these “rock writings,” or pictographs, which
are documented in this book.

Critical to the study of the rock writings is an authoritative method
of interpretation. In this study interpretation is provided by Annie
Zetco York, a woman steeped in the ways and lore of her own
’Nlaka’pamux as well as neighboring peoples, and a person obviously
eager to share some of that knowledge. Her authentic “voice” is
featured in transcriptions of her verbal commentaries on the several
rock writings. A chapter is devoted to a biography of York and her
influence on a gamut of researchers. It is crucial that she be
established as an authoritative interpreter of this rock art, for the
authors record different interpretations by other informants.

This question of authority is partially addressed in a survey of
scholarship on proto-literacy, altered states of consciousness, the
relationship between entopic phenomena (neuropsychological components of
visual perception) and “primitive” art, and ’Nlaka’pamux
iconography. Although confirmation awaits comparative studies of
well-documented and -analyzed corpora of rock writings from other sites
and other peoples, this book nevertheless takes the reader on an
intimate journey into a fascinating cultural experience. The text is
lavishly supported by photographs, drawings, figures, footnotes, a
bibliography, and an index.