Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of Sovereignty and Identity in Native California

Narrating Native Histories

by Les W. Field

For Native peoples of California, the abalone found along the state’s coast have remarkably complex significance as food, spirit, narrative symbol, tradable commodity, and material with which to make adornment and sacred regalia. The large mollusks also represent contemporary struggles surrounding cultural identity and political sovereignty. Abalone Tales , a collaborative ethnography, presents different perspectives on the multifaceted material and symbolic relationships between abalone and the Ohlone, Pomo, Karuk, Hupa, and Wiyot peoples of California. The research agenda, analyses, and writing strategies were determined through collaborative relationships between the anthropologist Les W. Field and Native individuals and communities. Several of these individuals contributed written texts or oral stories for inclusion in the book. Tales about abalone and their historical and contemporary meanings are related by Field and his coauthors, who include the chair and other members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe; a Point Arena Pomo elder; the chair of the Wiyot tribe and her sister; several Hupa Indians; and a Karuk scholar, artist, and performer. Reflecting the divergent perspectives of various Native groups and people, the stories and analyses belie any presumption of a single, unified indigenous understanding of abalone. At the same time, they shed light on abalone’s role in cultural revitalization, struggles over territory, tribal appeals for federal recognition, and connections among California’s Native groups. While California’s abalone are in danger of extinction, their symbolic power appears to surpass even the environmental crises affecting the state’s vulnerable coastline.

Genres: Anthropology

208 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2008

Reviews

[LANCE W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating book but maybe not for the reasons the authors collaborators intended.

You can't get more colonized than the versions of the Abalone Woman story presented in this book.
Here is a rundown of a typical aboriginal Northern California coast version for comparison.

Coyote gains all the knowledge of the creator god. One consequence of this is his ability to change forms. He is a womanizer so he uses this to his advantage. He has several sons with several women. The sons are neglected by their mothers. At this point in the story Coyote is Goose. He is always in the form of a bird when he transforms the menstruating woman, in the Kiliwa story he is an owl, in the Pomo story he is a little bird. So his sons get together, transform themselves into geese (an ability inherited from their father), and fly back to him. Now Coyote is stuck with these children and he doesn't know what to do with them. He purchases a woman from her family to take care of them. He has no interest in sleeping with her. This makes her angry. When she starts menstruating as a result of his inattention, she breaks menstruation taboos and flees. Coyote sets out after her. When she reaches the ocean, a major menstruation taboo itself, he kills her and transforms her into Abalone Woman.

The man (Coyote) is actually the protagonist in every pre-colonial indigenous version of the story from Baja California to the Oregon border. In every version he transforms a woman for breaking menstruation taboos. The modern colonized retellings of the story in this book are part of a larger attempt to frame the high levels of domestic violence among aboriginal people as somehow being due to outside influence when it's really an in house problem. Nobody's hunter gatherer ancestors were modern progressives.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

My neighbor gave me this book to read. Turns out she roomed with this guy in college. So, in terms of an author's character, I have first-hand knowledge ;-) He's a great guy!

When I first started reading this book, I started to *wrinkle* inside. This guy is able to navigate the left and the right brain tremendously well! The book starts with left-brain talk. My head literally starts hurting when I read to much academic jargon. It reminds me of graduate school which I left half-way through because it made me feel sick. I'm not dissing all graduate programs, it was just obviously the wrong program for me.

Alas, I started reading through his words (pandering to academia) to realize that he was deconstructing a lot of academic anthropological bullshit that has surrounded the Native American situation for decades and decades. Sigh -- too late? -- dunno... At least he is doing the nitty-gritty work.

My favorite part of the book are the narratives given straight from the mouths of those who are part of the surviving mid to Northern Native tribes in California. The Wiyok, Hupa, Ohlone, Esselen, and Karuk to name a few... Many times their words brought me to tears. Les (the author) ties together these stories to provide basis for need in the academic world to recognize ecological phenomena and native sovereignty. For example, in his book he provides narratives from the tribes on the myth of the Abalone woman, the importance of abalone regalia...and the importance of rites around these things.

Les is self-critical and aware...he learns from the tribal members and acknowledges their importance in the widening circles of ecological resilience and sustainability. He tackles a lot of other issues around the academic, anthropological view-point as well -- critiquing the assumption that native peoples killed of the mega-fauna, the illusion that native peoples lived in pristine, untouched wilderness, and such and such.

He is definitely carving out some new territory for university folk. He is also carving out precedent literature for the support of Native peoples and whole ecosystems. His work is inspiring as well as realistic.

I gave this 4 stars because some parts were just to mind-numbing. However, I know he had to write that way for the academics that enjoy such tangled words ;-)