Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Labour in British Columbia, 1858-1930

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

After this book was first published in 1978, it achieved the status of a
minor classic and inspired a new approach to aboriginal history, one
that portrayed Native peoples as active agents rather than passive
victims in their encounters with the challenges of European settlement.
This new edition incorporates responses to recent historical literature
but loses none of the iconoclasm and “irreverence” (the author’s
word) that made the original either a delight or an irritant, depending
on your perspective.

The core of the book is a careful detailing of the significant
contribution of B.C. Natives to the wage labor of the main sectors of
the B.C. economy and a description of their role as independent
producers in that economy. Also included are chapters on general contact
and settlement history, as well as observations on Native labor in
Eastern Canada, the Prairies, and the North. The author considers the
relative importance of class and race in history, concluding that
material needs and the economy are better explanations of human
motivations and behavior than are either ethnicity or culture.

The book provides a wonderful antidote to anthropological perspectives
that assume that aboriginal societies at the end of the 19th century
were somehow “traditional.” And it is entirely convincing in its
demonstration that, contrary to popular wisdom, Native peoples did not
retreat to the reserves. Indians at Work is less successful when
addressing broader interpretive issues, such as the role of culture
versus that of the economy as a historical determinant. Nevertheless,
this is a book that should be read and that should spark a lively
debate.