The Kwakwakawakw people and their culture have been the subject of more anthropological writings than any other ethnic group on the Northwest Coast. Until now, however, no biography had been written by or about a Kwakwakawakw woman. Paddling to Where I Stand presents the memoirs of Agnes Alfred (c.1890-1992), a non-literate noble Qwiqwasutinuxw woman of the Kwakwakawakw Nation and one of the last great storytellers among her peers in the classic oral tradition.

Agnes Alfred documents through myths, historical accounts, and personal reminiscences the foundations and the enduring pulse of her living culture. She shows how a First Nations woman managed to quietly fulfill her role as a noble matriarch in her ever-changing society, thus providing a role model for those who came after her. She also contributes significant light and understanding to several traditional practices including prearranged marriages and traditional potlatches.

Paddling to Where I Stand is more than another anthropological interpretation of Kwakwaka’wakw culture. It is the first-hand account, by a woman, of the greatest period of change she and her people experienced since first contact with Europeans, and her memoirs flow from her urgently felt desire to pass on her knowledge to younger generations.

Martine J. Reid, PhD, is an independent curator and scholar in Indigenous Northwest Coast art. She is Honourary Chair of the Bill Reid Foundation, which created the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art (BRG) in Vancouver, BC, in 2008. She was Director of Content and Research, and Curator at the BRG from 2008 until 2012. Dr. Reid is currently working on Bill Reid: Catalogue Raisonné and is a member of the CRSA (Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association). She was married to Bill Reid for nearly half of his creative life, during which most of his monumental works were created.

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• Commended, BC Historical Federation Book Prize, BC Historical Federation

The pleasure of reading Paddling to Where I Stand ... will be found, first, in Reid’s interrogation of autobiography and her strategies for ensuring that this story is Agnes Alfred’s story, and second, in the successful outcome of these strategies. Agnes Alfred emerges, in her own words, the “extraordinary woman with an extraordinary life” that her granddaughter describes in her funeral elegy.

University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 1, winter 2006

Reid carefully conveys gestures, moods, and inflections evident in storytelling, enhancing authenticity. Paddling to Where I Stand deserves a spot in every Canadian library’s shelf.

Canadian Ethnic Studies, vol. XXXVII, no.2, 2005