You don’t know us.
You will never know us.
This was said to me during a focus group about the
traditional language of the Piikani or Blackfeet tribe. I was conducting sociolinguistic research for
a dissertation and finding it increasingly difficult to justify to my
participants why I was doing the research.
Anthropology. The
study of culture. Years ago, as an innate observer
and perpetual newcomer, I felt drawn to this field. It all seemed so great from far away, with a
blurry lens. Travel. Exotic culture. Living among the natives. Field journals. Little known languages. Ancient traditions. I thought I would be a natural. That is, until I found myself actually living
among the natives. My discomfort at
being the outsider with the microscope only magnified the observer’s paradox I
was supposedly overcoming. I never
became adept at throwing the spotlight on others so well that they didn’t
notice me hovering beneath it, taking notes.
And the longer I stayed and stalled and actually lived and worked among
the Blackfeet (or at least drifted on and off their reservation) the more
apparent it became: what I was doing was
wrong.
Culture cannot be quantified. It cannot be objectively researched,
dissected, analyzed and wrapped up into a tidy package for all to digest. It should not be archived. It should not be mechanically probed. It cannot be discovered by science. Culture is itself intangible. Its tangible presence exists only in symbols
and symbolic rituals and in poor descriptive sketches. Culture can be given but not taken. It can be passed down and shared and
realized. It can be observed and honored
but should not be mimicked and appropriated.
Now, the strangest thing to me is that it took me so long to
come to this conclusion. A social scientist? Using the scientific method to understand
culture and tradition? Why didn’t these
phrases sound more ridiculous to me before?
Observations from a biased perspective: that is the best that I can offer to the
field. And really, from an ethnographic
stance, that is all any anthropologist can really offer or perhaps, if they are
superhuman, they can give observations from an unbiased perspective. But is that ever truly possible? Decades ago, the idea of native anthropology
was scoffed at. To be an anthropologist
you had to be an outsider. This was
agreed upon by everyone important. It
was the quality of being an outsider, being new to the traditions and culture
of a people that gave you insight as to what was really happening. The inner workings of a living system could
have new light thrown on them by a fresh perspective and everything sacred was
made mundane. An anthropologist had
arrived on the scene and everything
could be labeled and categorized. And
if you were good, it was neat and clean and fit into an accepted model or a
current theory. If you were really
good, you laid out a new model to fit the pieces perfectly into and penned a
new theory to match (or vice versa).
I knew all along that I wasn’t a scientist. I can hardly follow a cake recipe, let alone
the tedious instructions of an IRB board.
I can jump through hoops in the short term but I need to know that there
is a prize at the end or hope that it's something worthwhile that I am fighting for. I’m not good at painstaking experiments,
routine, schedule or consistency. All of
these facts should have been red flags years ago. Yes, I am curious by nature and yes, I am project oriented but I need to know
that there is higher purpose. A worthy
end goal. And here I am, halfway through my seemingly never ending project and daily more unconvinced. If my goal
is to scientifically analyze the daily usage of the Piikani traditional
language, to ask 3200 questions to 100 different people and then run stats on
the results in 30 different ways, what good will that ultimately do for anyone? Will I discover a new corelation? Will I illuminate a hitherto unknown secret
that will save the language from extinction? Will I help anyone but myself, as I progress towards a fancy title?
I am fairly convinced that I can tell you all I can about the language right now, only if I were
to finish this project the academic way it will take hundreds of pages
longer. The truth is – the language is
used in various ways in daily life. It’s
not used by many people and those that use it don’t speak it to everyone. It’s not vital to survival. There are few fluent speakers. It is following the predictable path of a
dying language, nearly exterminated by colonists. It is one of the many results of the genocide
of this tribe. If my goal is to tell
that sad story, I don’t want to do it anymore. Now that I know the story, even though I don’t
know all of it, I’m done. I don’t feel
the need to continue delving and poking and then writing that story up for
disinterested linguists and academics to read, so that they can criticize my
methodology or findings when they know the people I’m writing about even less
than I do.
So I quit. I don’t
want to shed light on the culture and traditions of the Blackfeet. It’s not my culture so I don’t have the right
to expose it. And I feel much better
saying that than trying to rationalize what I’m doing any longer.
There are a few loopholes to my self-argument. After all, I’m not supposed to be a cultural
anthropologist. Technically, I’m a
linguistic anthropologist doing a study on a moribund language. If I were a true linguist (which I’m not, I’m
a terrible linguist) there a many arguments for saving dying languages. To which I must say a) I’m a terrible
linguist, what good will I actually do? And b) it’s not my language. The only way a language will live is if the
people who speak it continue to speak it.
And for that to happen, the Piikani need to want to save the language
themselves. What can I, as an outsider, add to that argument?
I still don’t have a good answer to that man in the focus
group. I probably don’t know them, the
Blackfeet. The longer I stay, the more I
realize that I am only scratching the surface of their old, old culture in it’s
regurgitated modern form. And I’m
exhausted from trying to take in a whole foreign culture that is itself tired
of being scrutinized by the colonizers and therefore, slightly hostile.
I’d rather get to know them one by one.
Then I can take them or leave them, be let in or out as they please, be
welcomed, be teased or be left alone. In
the end, I’d rather just live my life and let them take or leave me and not daily
feel that my project depends on whether I’m inside or out.
