Daly’s text combines documentation, analysis, critique, reflection and poetry without succumbing to false objectivity, unnecessarily abstract theorizing, self indulgence, or romanticism. Readers are left with respectful and complicated understandings of Gitksan and Witsuwit’en peoples as historical and contemporary agents that defy simplistic and demonized or idealized portraits.

- Dara Culhane, Simon Fraser University, Canadian Historical Review, Fall 2005

Ultimately, Daly provides a deeply compelling description of the courage and enduring strength of Gitksan and Witsuwit’en peoples. Our Box Was Full is an important resource for the Gitksan and Witsuwit’en and other aboriginal peoples, and non-aboriginal peoples as well.

- Val Napoleon, University of Alberta, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Fall 2005

A means of communicating much-needed information that is quite controverial and that we may not wish to hear is to draw a brief of evidence that is both factually precise and yet entertaining and, at times, fascinating if not riveting. This is the task that Dr. Richard Daly has undertaken and achieved with extraordinary success ... Dr. Daly excels at the fundamental skill of the writer: to excite the reader’s interest in the subject matter to the extent that one is gripped by the account ... Indeed, this book succeeds to a remarkable extent in reducing complex and challenging questions of anthropology into understandable concepts and explanations.

- Justice Giles Renaud, Ontario Court of Justice, The American Review of Canadian Studies, Spring 2006