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125 Reviews REVIEWS MY LIFE, BY LOUIS KENOYER: REMINISCENCES OF A GRAND RONDE RESERVATION CHILDHOOD by Louis Kenoyer, Henry Zenk, and Jedd Schrock foreword by Stephen Dow Beckham Oregon State University Press, Covallis, 2017. Photographs, maps. 320 pages. $35.00, paper. My Life, by Louis Kenoyer is a rare and beautifully contextualized told-to narrative that presents the life and times of Louis Kenoyer and, in doing so, provides invaluable insight into Native-newcomer relations in nineteenth century Oregon. Kenoyer was a member of the first Northwest Oregon tribal group born at Grand Ronde Reservation, of which the vast majority of surviving population was removed in 1856. It is “an extended autobiographical narrative,” originally dictated in the Tualatin dialect of Northern Kalapuya to three linguistic transcribers and as a result is a complete bilingual-Tualatin text (p. 1). This work presents numerous evocative vignettes of daily life told by Kenoyer in his own words and language. There are stories of his experiences in on-reservation schooling, particularly the boarding school known as “the Sisters’ school,” his agricultural work, interactions with newcomers, church and religious teachings, hunting stories, and tales of recreational activities of the era, including horse races. Kenoyer presents his life experiences in a storytelling style inclusive of a number of unique features that the authors astutely contextualize as common among other examples of lower Columbia narrative art. Such unique features of Kenoyer’s narrative style include a focus “on overt action, details of external set and setting being acknowledged only as they help move the action along” (p. 3). My Life is a remarkable work of scholarship for its presentation and analysis of both the content of Kenoyer’s oral history as well as its form. The authors paid great mindfulness to structure the work to best reflect the cultural and personal nuances and subtleties with which Kenoyer spoke. As the authors state: “Our approach to translation is relatively simple. Our goal is to make the English reader’s experience of reading this narrative similar to the Tualatin listener’s experience of hearing it in Tualatin” (p. 54). One way in which the authors set out to accomplish this, and succeed at doing so, is the presentation of the text on the page. The narrative itself is presented in a series of “clusters” that “attempt to present his narrative in a form more reflective of his oral style, as opposed to the artificial confines of English-style paragraphs .” For, “Louis Kenoyer did not speak in paragraphs, so why display his narrative in paragraphs ?” (p. 53). The result is a presentation of the oral history using Kenoyer’s “most common narrative device,” which is “to make a statement and then clarify the idea further in supporting sentences; hence a cluster of sentences takes shape” (p. 53). Of great value is the structural analysis of Kenoyer’s narrative as a work of oral literature and the historical context provided by the authors. In terms of audience, this book will be of keen interest to oral historians, ethnohistorians , anthropologists, linguists, and historians. It will also be of great interest to tribal knowledge holders and Indigenous scholars. This work extends its reach and impact to include the general public interested in Western history , particularly Oregon history and Nativenewcomer histories. Meagan Evelyn Gough Ontario, Canada ...

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