Landscapes and Social Transformations on the Northwest Coast Colonial Encounters in the Fraser Valley

"This book is well grounded theoretically and provides a nuanced view of social constructions of the landscape, from everyday traversing and working of the land to mythic and diagrammatic constructions and legal and verbal discourses." -Crisca Bierwert, author of Brushed by Cedar, Living by the River: Coast Salish Figures of Power

"Landscapes and Social Transformations is a highly intelligent and important monograph deserving of much praise. Oliver possesses the rare gifts of eloquence and economy of words, which enable him to produce, for all its conceptual complexity and temporal coverage, a book of just over 200 pages of text. More impressive, however, is the thoughtful and deft manner with which he takes the familiar tropes and more recent revisionist nuances of colonial history and complicates them with his ground level engagement with the Fraser Valley."-BC Studies

"Oliver's approach to historical scholarship -- one that highlights the ambiguity of colonial relationships - is valuable in advancing how scholars understand and produce colonial discourse. His ability to integrate disciplinary and temporally diverse publications on natural resources and cultural knowledge about the Fraser Valley results in solid scholarship and provides compelling data to advance his theoretical positions."-Arizona Anthropologist

"Since the days of Franz Boas, the Northwest Coast has been on the cutting edge of colonial knowledge of Indigenous peoples and places-for better and for worse. Written in a very different time, Oliver's book nonetheless continues that trend while demonstrating respect for StÓ:lo presence in territory, a good awareness of the legacies of colonialism, and an incisive grasp of diverse scholarly practices. As such, it is a model for scholarly environmental history that takes Indigenous history seriously."-Environmental History

"Oliver's text provides a refreshing and well-grounded perspective on the complex nature of First Nations and European settler relations in the late 18th through the early 20th centuries. This book will be of considerable interest and use to archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and others interested in the history of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, the greater Northwest region, or contexts of colonialism and encounter more generally."-Canadian Journal of Archaeology

"Landscapes and Social Transformations on the Northwest Coast, [is] a generously textured account of indigenous and colonial relationships, intercultural exchange, and settlement in coastal British Columbia."-Ethnohistory

"This clever book defies disciplinary classification, engaging history, archaeology, geography, Native, and environmental studies. It is a thoughtful and useful contribution to the wider post-colonial literature and our understanding of an important region."-Pacific Historical Review

"His deceptively simple arguments neither praise nor vilify the historical participants he identifies. Ultimately he succeeds in providing an ambiguous and messy picture."-Pacific Northwest Quarterly

"In what is the text's most elegant content, Oliver works at multiple scales, draws upon diverse archives and materials, and navigates different historical periods to expand understandings about the Fraser Valley."-Journal of Historical Geography