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Social Science Native American Studies

Written as I Remember It

Teachings (Ɂəms tɑɁɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder

by (author) Elsie Paul

with Paige Raibmon & Harmony Johnson

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2014
Category
Native American Studies, Post-Confederation (1867-), Native American, British Columbia (BC)
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774827133
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $150.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774827102
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $125.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774827119
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $39.95

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Description

Long before vacationers discovered BC’s Sunshine Coast, the Sliammon, a Coast Salish people, called the region home. In this remarkable book, Sliammon elder Elsie Paul collaborates with a scholar, Paige Raibmon, and her granddaughter, Harmony Johnson, to tell her life story and the history of her people, in her own words and storytelling style. Raised by her grandparents who took her on their seasonal travels, Paul spent most of her childhood learning Sliammon ways, teachings, and stories and is one of the last surviving mother-tongue speakers of the Sliammon language. She shares this traditional knowledge with future generations in Written as I Remember It.

About the authors

Awards

  • Commended, BCHF Historical Writing Awards, British Columbia Historical Federation
  • Winner, Aboriginal History Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association
  • Winner, Armitage-Jameson Book Prize, Coalition for Western Women’s History

Contributor Notes

Elsie Paul, a Sliammon elder, has spent her life and career in service to others. In recognition of a lifetime of effort dedicated to supporting First Nations well-being, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Vancouver Island University in 2010. Paige Raibmon is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. Harmony Johnson is Elsie Paul’s granddaughter. She holds a BA from Simon Fraser University and has served in a number of policy and executive roles in BC First Nations organizations.

Editorial Reviews

Written As I Remember It is warm and honest, partly a memoir; part ethnography; part Farmer’s Almanac. It draws on a Sliammon Elder’s oral history of a skilled and prosperous people who lived and died here long before they built a company town and named it for an English surgeon…[it] captures a vanished world that survived for 10,000 years, and was just as worthy as mill towns with telephones.

Blacklock's Reporter

Paul moves fluidly between these different affects in her narration, as any gifted storyteller and scholar might.

Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal

A strong, independently minded woman, the first to sit on the Sliammon First Nation’s Council, Elsie Paul has had an inspirational presence in her family and in her community. This charming book should be warmly embraced by all those who seek to comprehend the teachings that guided this Sliammon woman’s life in the twentieth century.

BC Studies