Imaging the Metlakatlas: shifting representations of a northwest coast mission community ...

• Main Author: Pastor, Monica Leigh
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Tsimshian; Tsimshian*; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0088939; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0088939

Metlakatla, British Columbia, an 'isolated' missionary village, was established in 1862 by William Duncan, an Anglican missionary, and a group of Tsimshian on the Northern Northwest Coast. The village was widely praised for its success in 'civilizing' its group of Northwest Coast Native people, but, by 1880, was plagued by turmoil between Duncan and Church and government authorities. The turmoil in Metlakatla, B.C. led to an unprecedented move when, in 1887, Duncan and the majority of the villagers relocated to Annette Island in Southern Alaska. Along with this move to United States jurisdiction came shifts in the construction and representation of the colonial project at Metlakatla. Metlakatla, B.C., represented as a model village of equal and subordinate workers, was full of internal fractures which could be viewed through disjunctures among the various representations of the site. With the move to Alaska, the representations of Metlakatla, once constructed in the vein of homogeneous worker's housing ...