At The Bridge

Spences Bridge is the bridge which makes up the title of Wendy Wickwire’s fabulous book about James Teit, and his life-long advocacy and study of British Columbia indigenous peoples.

Wickwire describes Teit as, “A prolific ethnographer and tireless Indian rights activist. Teit spent four decades helping British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples in their challenge of the settler-colonial assault on their lives and territories.” Five pages in I know I was going to love this book.

Teit was a polyglot. Born in the Shetlands, which are between Norway and the Faroe Islands,  Teit came to Canada as a young man and changed his surname from Tait to Teit. Also, I found it interesting that all his children were given Norse names; Erik, Magnus, Inga, Sigurd, and Thor.

I suspect this was a political statement by a young man immersed in his native culture and the revised spelling was a reflection the vowel pronunciation of the ancient language of Norn, which some people were still speaking in the late nineteenth century. I couldn’t find a Norn word for Teit, although the old Icelandic word teitr means “glad, cheerful, merry” which seems to describe Teit’s personality and gregarious demeanor, especially with First Nations peoples.

Wickwire reasons that Teit saw in the First Nations peoples he lived amongst their challenge of preserving their culture and maintaining their rights to the land was analogous to the plight of Shetlanders with their colonial masters. Eventually, Teit became fluent in four native languages, Nlakakpamux, St’at’imc, Syilx and Secwepemc.  As well he knew Chinook Wawa, the lingua franca of the Pacific Northwest. He possibly had a working knowledge of German.

Interestingly, the motto of the Shetlands crest is “Með lögum skal land byggja”. It’s the same motto of the Lögreglan, Iceland’s police.