Marius Barbeau: Man of Mana

Thomas S. Abler is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo and the author of A Canadian Indian Bibliography, 1960-1970.

Over his long life, Marius Barbeau made considerable contributions to
anthropology and folklore studies in Canada. One of the several
pioneering students of the cultures of the Native peoples of Canada
(working first with the remnant Huron populations in Quebec, Ontario,
and Oklahoma, and later with the peoples of British Columbia’s west
coast, particularly the Tsimshian), Barbeau was also an authority on
Quebec folk music. Much of the biography is based on the author’s
examination of Barbeau’s papers (preserved in the Canadian Museum of
Civilization and elsewhere) as well as on extensive interviews with
Barbeau’s friends and colleagues over several decades and with Barbeau
himself.

One can find fault with the odd passage and discover the odd error. It
seems a bit unfair to accuse Edward Sapir, as director of anthropology
at the Geological Survey of Canada, of hiring “American cronies” and
“providing interesting research projects during their summer
holidays.” Nowry seems more upset with Barbeau’s treatment of
Tsimshian researcher William Beynon than Beynon himself was, to judge
from the correspondence Nowry quotes. The pioneering cinematography of
E.S. Curtis among the Kwakiutl goes unrecognized, and T.F. McIlwraith
was not the director of the Royal Ontario Museum, as Nowry states.
Nowry’s use of “Onandaga” for “Onondaga” is a clear error, as
is his suggestion that “anthropology services of the National Museum
of Man” has made “a major transition into the Canadian Centre for
Folk Culture Studies.”

One must congratulate Nowry, however, for while he seems at times to
accord Barbeau a greater place relative to his peers than the
ethnographer merits, he also points out some of the inadequacies and
flaws in Barbeau’s academic production.