The Friends of the BC Archives lecture for January 21, 2007 is titled "The Eyes in the Trees: the North Coast World of Margaret Butcher".
Margaret Butcher traveled north to the Haisla Village of Kitamaat in 1916. For the next three years, she taught at the residential school in the village, the Elizabeth Long Memorial Home. In hundreds of letters written over the next three years, Butcher crafted a unique portrait of the complex world on the north coast. This talk, by historian Mary-Ellen Kelm will explore what we see of the north coast communities of the Kitamaat Valley at the end of the second decade of the twentieth century. Butcher?s letters provide us with fascinating glimpses of the Haisla people, the settlers in the Valley, the mission community of the north Pacific coast and, of course, life in a residential school.
Mary-Ellen Kelm is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples of North America in the History Department of Simon Fraser University. Her new book The Letters of Margaret Butcher: Missionary-Imperialism on the North Pacific Coast, began when she discovered Butcher?s letters at the BC Archives. This book builds on Kelm?s interest in medicine, colonialism and First Nations that was at the centre of her first book, Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia.
The lecture is being held in the Newcombe Conference Hall, Royal BC Museum, Victoria on January 21, 2007, between 2 and 4 pm. For more information about this event contact Ann ten Cate, Outreach Coordinator, BC Archives, (250) 387-2970 or Ron Greene, Secretary of the Friends of the BC Archives at (250) 598-1835. This event is free for Friends of the Archives, $5.00 for non-members, payable at the door. Call in advance for information about handicap access.
