The Problem of Imported Culture: The Construction of Contemporary Stó:lo Identity

When I was going to high school I wasn't taught anything about my own [Stó:lo] history. But I was taught that there were Prairie Indians, and that to be lndian you lived in a tipi and had a long flowing head dress. . . . I wasn't taught about local native culture. And of course watching TV, and watching movies, and everything that was to be lndian was exactly what we were taught in school. Pan-lndianism . . . you take that one culture and one people and apply it to everyone. INTRODUCTION Children in the Stó:lo community of southwestern of British Columbia, Canada, face a confusing cultural paradox at school in the 1990s. In both B.C.'s public schools and in native-run classrooms, Stó:lo children learn more native history and heritage than ever before. Ironically, much of the native curriculum presents local native people as Plains Indians, and pan-Indian iconography dominates these classroom lessons. These mixed identity messages reflect a community distress caused by the increasing prevalence of Plains Indian cultural traits and activities in the Stó:lo's Fraser Valley territory. This influx of nontraditional cultural expression into Stó:lo society is one aspect of a more general debate concerning shifting claims on identity within the Stó:lo community. This paper describes local perspectives on the competing versions of Stó:lo identity. The most widely accepted identity is, however, neither that of a unique Stó:lo past nor fully pan-Indian. It is a blend