I believe Emily Carr chose Louisa as a vehicle to voice her social criticism of European hegemony on the First Nations peoples. As discussed in earlier journals, the interactions between Natives and missionaries were played down. "Skedans" and "Friends" provide evidence of the way the Europeans have influenced Louisa.

In a very concise statement, Carr is able to pinpoint Louisa in her acceptance of assimilation. Louisa is adamant in not allowing her mother, Mrs. Green, to order the smoking pipe from the catalogue with the profit made selling salmon roe. Although Carr sides with Mrs. Green, Louisa alleges "The missionary says ladies do not smoke." We as the audience can tell Carr is quietly frowning upon Louisa's strictness as she leaves space for the addition of the pipe on the catalogue's ordering list. It seems even Carr is not proper enough for Louisa.

More evident in "Friends" is Louisa's rejection of her culture for a more "civilized" life. Louisa contemplates the idea of sending Joe, her son, to a residential school rather than follow the traditional practice of schooling Native children in the village. European influences are apparent in Louisa's life-her home is decorated in European styles and she attends church weekly.

Carr is pulled aside by the Missionary and he affirms, "I tell you savages were easier to handle than these half-civilized people." This statement confuses me because in "Tanoo," the missionaries call natives "heathens," implying they are savages, or savage-like. What does this missionary mean? I interpret the statement as hi meaning that they are "half-civilized" because they are "willing" to assimilate. But why then, would savages be "easier to handle?" Perhaps Louisa can be seen as trying to break away from aboriginal tradition and attempting to become "civilized." However, she is conflicted because she cannot possibly reject the ideas she was raised with. It's like that common phrase, "You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy." Maybe this is what the Missionary might have meant.

As Zigmunt Bauman explains in Modernity and Ambivalence, the Europeans put new regimes of truth in place. And this hegemonic practice affected Louisa so profoundly she falls into the trap and contributes to the modernizing project. With Enlightenment the, since non-Europeans are seen as "developing states in the harmonization of human cultures," Louisa is the ideal European subject who willingly erases the Haida presence.