Gabriola: Petroglyph Island. 2nd ed.

John Steckley teaches in the Human Studies Program at Humber College in
Toronto.

Gabriola is the second edition of a book (first published in 1981) about
the 4000- to 5000-year-old petroglyphs found on Gabriola, an island just
off the east coast of Vancouver Island, near Nanaimo.

Even a brief look at the black-and-white photographs that make up the
bulk of this book reveals that the Gabriola petroglyphs are of
tremendous historical and cultural significance. The authors, however,
are not up to the complex challenge that discussing such significant
pieces of aboriginal history and culture presents. They confess to being
“amateur archaeologists and fascinated admirers of native culture.”
The authors are both college instructors in other disciplines: she
teaches weaving, and he teaches mathematics. They demonstrate fairly
clearly that they are outsiders in the two camps of knowledge,
archaeological and Native, from which rich insights could have been
developed. They present the material in a way that is more descriptive
and listlike than analytical, site by site, petroglyph by petroglyph.
While they offer a brief typology at the end, it exhibits little
academic rigor.

More significantly, this work contains no interpretation from the
viewpoint of the contemporary Sto:lo (or Salish) people who live in the
area. No Sto:lo elders, artists, or writers speak in these pages. The
local residents whose opinions are cited, and whose speculations are
shown unquestioned respect, have no Native or academic credentials. Not
recommended.