[Review of] Margaret B. Blackman. During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, A Haida Woman

• Main Author: Bataille, Gretchen M.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 1986
• Subjects: book review; Race and Ethnicity; Davidson; haida
• Online Access: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/ess/vol6/iss1/4; https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1213&context=ess

This book is a recorded autobiography, but it is also much more. In the preface Blackman traces her connections with the Haida people of the Northwest Coast since 1970 and explains her special relationship with Florence Edenshaw Davidson whom she promised in 1973 that she would someday publish the record of her life. Davidson had accepted Margaret Blackman as a grandchild and the special kinship relationship enabled the two of them in 1977 to record the life story of the eighty-one year old Haida woman. Nani, the Haida equivalent for "grandmother," traces through six chapters the significant events of her life, remembering the stories told about the times before her birth and elaborating on the changes she has experienced within her own lifetime. In her recollections she fulfills the mandate of the name Story Maid which her father had given her at birth.