UBC Press At the Bridge book Paperback 400 pages

Every once in a while, an important historical figure makes an appearance, makes a difference, and then disappears from the public record. James Teit (1864–1922) was such a figure. A prolific ethnographer and tireless Indian rights activist, Teit spent four decades helping British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples in their challenge of the settler-colonial assault on their lives and territories. Yet his story is little known.At the Bridge chronicles Teit’s fascinating story. From his base at Spences Bridge, British Columbia, Teit practised a participant- and place-based anthropology – an anthropology of belonging – that covered much of BC and northern Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Montana. Whereas his contemporaries, including famed anthropologist Franz Boas, studied Indigenous peoples as the last survivors of “dying cultures” in need of preservation in metropolitan museums, Teit worked with them as members of living cultures actively asserting jurisdiction over their lives and lands. Whether recording stories and songs, mapping place-names, or participating in the chiefs’ fight for fair treatment, he made their objectives his own. With his allies, he produced copious, meticulous records; an army of anthropologists could not have achieved a fraction of what Teit achieved in his short life. Wendy Wickwire’s beautifully crafted narrative accords Teit the status he deserves. At the Bridge serves as a long-overdue corrective, consolidating Teit’s place as a leading and innovative anthropologist in his own right.

Wendy Wickwire is professor emerita in the Department of History at the University of Victoria. Her publications include Stein: The Way of the River (with Michael M’Gonigle), which won the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award at the BC Book Awards; Nature Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller (with Harry Robinson), which won the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize for best regional book at the BC Book Awards; Write It On Your Heart: The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller (with Harry Robinson), which was shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Prize; and Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory (with Harry Robinson). For more information, visit www.wendywickwire.com.