Six Decades of Dane-zaa Songs and Oral Histories, Recorded With Elders
CBC reports that six decades of Treaty 8 history have been repatriated to the Dane-zaa people in northern British Columbia. The record begins with fieldwork: anthropologists from the Ridington family started working alongside Dane-zaa elders in the 1960s, taping traditional songs, oral histories and everyday life, and kept at it across six decades. That span is the striking part. The collection holds songs and stories, and it also holds evidence of a working partnership that lasted long enough to outlast most research careers.
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What stands out isn't the songs alone but the method: the recording began in the 1960s alongside Dane-zaa elders, rather than decades later by researchers reconstructing what they could.
Which means the archive documents two things at once — the oral histories, and the long relationship that produced the tapes.