Notes From the Field
By Dr. Sue Kenyon, April 27th 2001
Introduction
When Steve first asked me to give the "last lecture," I thought
this was an administrative euphemism saying I was about to be
"terminated". Then he pointed out that Paul Valliere and Steve
Perrill, my predecessors for this singular honor, are both still
alive and kicking, and I began to see that it could actually be a
way to enjoy myself and hopefully add something to this wonderful
event.
My mandate was a lecture on exactly what I wanted - a tall
order. As most of you know what I most like talking about is
anthropology, and that is certainly a topic you now all know
something about. However I have discovered that many people know
little about how we actually DO anthropology. You know that we
study other cultures and travel a lot, but HOW? In fact the core of
our discipline is a methodology subsumed by the term "fieldwork."
As students of culture, we go "to the field", which is often a
total misnomer. I have worked on an island, in a desert and in a
town, but never in anything that fits the notion of field. However
that be, once there we learn to live as "the natives" do -and this
is where the fun really starts. Much of what happens to us never
makes it into print, and indeed is often never discussed because -
to be quite blunt - anthropologists are frequently made to look
foolish or perhaps even more often spend the time making themselves
look foolish.
So tonight I thought I'd like to share with you all some Notes
from the Field, scientific accounts from my own fieldwork, about
which I have generally tried to keep quiet. Tonight I will come
clean and admit, for the first time publicly, to some of the
experiences I have had which reveal that the basis of anthropology
is never as clean-cut as our descriptions of it would suggest.
Fieldwork on the Northwest Coast
Some of the most important fieldwork I ever did - and which I
rarely get a chance to talk about nowadays - was when as a graduate
student I went off to do research in British Columbia. As a Brit, I
felt that what made American anthropology unique was the presence
of large population of "others", the native Americans, who had
helped shape the early body of the discipline. This was where I
wanted to learn about culture and alterity, and so, following a
famous anthropological tradition, in 1972 I went off to work on the
Northwest Coast, with a people known to outsiders as "Nootka." They
inhabit a number of still isolated villages along the west coast of
Vancouver Island, and although a substantial body of information
about them was available from the eighteenth century, when Captain
Cook and other explorers visited their shores, virtually nothing
was known about them since that time. I had written a master's
thesis about an Englishman who was captured by them in 1803 and was
enslaved for several years before he was able to escape. In the
peculiar way in which things work, someone at the Canadian Museums
heard about this thesis and called me up to ask me if I would like
to go and "do some summer fieldwork" with them. Of course I jumped
at the opportunity, submitted a highly academic grant proposal to
the Museum - and was surprised when she called again and said they
would be happy to fund my research, but warned me not to be too
ambitious. In fact she suggested that I look on this more as a
reconnaissance trip. She also provided me with a list of
band-chiefs among the Nootka, but said that otherwise there was
virtually no basic information about the Nootka, on how many of the
villages were still occupied and what they were doing nowadays. A
report on this type of demographic information was what the Museum
would like me to write. This all seemed very straightforward to me.
I wrote to the chief of the most northerly Nootka band, reasoning
that this was likely to be the most isolated and therefore the most
interesting place to work, and asking for permission to visit to do
some historical research. Then I waited for a reply.
Of course, none came. At the advice of my professor, who did not
seem in the slightest surprised, I left as planned. I flew to
Victoria, and there found that I could contact the band, known as
the Kyuquots, by short wave radio and telephone combined. Amazingly
I was put right through to the chief, Jackie, who turned out to be
a woman, and learned that she had received my letter and discussed
it with the people. They were less than enthusiastic about my
visit, but she suggested I come anyway and talk to them myself. She
gave me directions to Kyuquot, a fishing community two days away,
by bus up the east coast of Vancouver Island, and by sea planes
across the spine of the island, and up the extremely rugged west
coast. As an aside, when I was last in BC I was a little hurt to
see that one of the planes we used, a Russian Tupolev bi-plane, is
now in a museum!
After a day of breathtaking flying up the extremely unspoilt
West Coast, we landed in Kyuquot in the sea and glided towards a
dock on one of what I saw from the air was a group of small
occupied islands. Jackie met me and told me that the Indians were
really anxious about my arrival and a meeting was planned almost
immediately in the schoolroom on another island, known as Actis, or
popularly the Other Side, which was on reserve land. Her husband
took us over in his fishing trawler and my nervousness increased as
I heard ME being discussed on the shortwave radio. "The white woman
is here.... she is going over to the other side.... what is she
doing here? What does she want?" It took a while for everyone to
assemble, but almost before I could catch my breath, I found myself
addressing a large room full of men, women and children. Feeling
totally unprepared, I tried to present a coherent statement of my
interest in Northwest Coast history, my concern that the Kyuquot
peoples voices were left out of this, and my desire to write a
fuller historiography of the area which incorporated these. Then I
was asked to wait outside.
Once I left the room, bedlam broke out. For the next half hour,
it sounded as if everybody in the room was talking at once. My
anxiety level soared by the minute - until finally everybody
started leaving. Without looking at me or addressing me, they
streamed out of the room and headed for their boats. Jackie and her
family came last, looking grim-faced. "Sorry," she said, "they have
voted they don't want to work with you. You'll have to leave."
I was crushed. First day on the job as an anthropologist had
ended in total failure. I had never heard of anyone being voted out
of "their" field, let alone within hours of arriving. All the
ethnographies I had ever read suggested that fieldwork was a
seamless experience in which the anthropologist was happily
accepted as one of the natives. How could I be so hopeless, such a
failure, before my career as a fieldworker had even started?
Whatever could I do next? How could I face my fellow graduate
students next semester, or my professor who had successfully worked
with native peoples in British Columbia for more than 30 years?
Jackie and her family took me back to their house, urging me to
stay a day or two till I could get a plane out. They fed me tea and
tried to cheer me up but I was overwhelmingly depressed by what had
happened. However nothing is ever as it seems. Suddenly the door
burst open and in marched an angry looking young woman, who I
learned was named Sophie. "Who do they think they are?" she
demanded. "Nobody will tell ME what to do." Turning to me, she
added "My mother was a rain shaman. Come and have breakfast
tomorrow and I'll tell you about her." Over the next hour, several
other people arrived, like Sophie indignant at what they saw as the
band's high-handedness, and told me THEY were prepared to work with
me, arranging for me to go over to their places and trying, in
small ways, to make me feel welcome.
And so my career as a fieldworker did get started. It was much
much later that I was able to appreciate my first lesson in village
politics, but over the next few weeks I learned that attempts to
introduce non-Indian democratic procedures like voting sat very
uneasily over older, well-tried patterns of reaching decisions or
resolving conflict. At first I was alarmed, but later amused by the
tendency to resolve many issues over the short-wave radio.
Everybody kept their radios on, at home, on their boats, when
working outside, and listened to the conversations being carried
out by their neighbors. When something sounded a bit more dramatic
or potentially exciting, they stopped what they were doing and
turned up the volume. In this way quarrels between brothers,
arguments between neighbors, accusations and countercharges, were
followed by the whole community even as they behaved indifferently
to what was going on around them. People rarely came to blows,
other than verbal blows. The time Sophie slept with someone's
husband, for example, was literally broadcast throughout the
village, as the wronged wife yelled abuse and various friends
chimed in to add their support and understanding of the affair.
Sophie no doubt was widely criticized in person too, and perhaps
even felt some remorse for her actions. It is highly unlikely that
the relationship developed in view of all the public scrutiny.
That summer I stayed for almost three months in Kyuquot and I
also visited all the other Nootka villages down the coast. Despite
my inauspicious start, I was able to learn a lot about Kyuquot,
past and present. I came to understand that local history was
regarded as sacred knowledge, and as such could not be shared with
outsiders, but not everything related to the past was included as
sacred knowledge. For example I learnt a lot about the growth of
Kyuquot, and also about its role in the Last War. When people first
started offering me stories about this, I racked my brains to
remember what action there had been in British Columbia in World
War 2, not least because people spoke of the events of this time in
the present tense. Finally I came to realize that they were talking
about the last Indian War on this coast, which occurred around
1853; and that the stories I was being given involved not the
narrators but their forebears, several generations removed.
At the end of the summer, a delegation of those who had most
opposed my presence initially, came and apologized. Justifying
their earlier attitudes as grounded in Red Power, but acknowledging
that they no longer thought I was a great political threat, they
promised that when I returned they would help me however they
could.
And so I returned to Kyuquot two years later, this time with a
baby in tow. Alistair was less than a year when we arrived and he
learnt to walk and talk in the village. This time we were given a
house known as "the house in the Middle of the Village" on the
oldest occupied island of "the Other Side," from where I had been
banned two years earlier. The owner of the house, Joe Johny, had
been killed in a logging accident a year before and his wife had
gone back to her village for the mourning period. No Indian would
live in the house for a couple of years, but thought that I might
not be so troubled by Joe's restless spirit. Joe had been a good
friend to me on my earlier visit and I suspected he would not
bother me. I also knew the rent would help his family. The house
provided me with a central spot for participating in village life
and observing all its comings and goings from my front window,
which overlooked the bay, and was flanked by all the other 25
houses in the village.
This time I stayed for about eight months, during which I was
able to get the material needed for my dissertation. However, this
stay, like the first, was never the seamlessly smooth research
experience I had anticipated. From the outset, things tended, well,
to happen. We had not been settled in to our home for long when we
woke one night to a sharp bang. I sat up with a start and
recognized it was gun shots ricocheting against my walls. A few
minutes later another shot whistled by, seemingly just above my
head. Someone was shooting at my house. I crawled to the window but
it was very dark and I could see nothing. I waited there for a long
time but there were no more shots and finally I fell asleep again.
The next morning I wandered over to the neighbors and asked John
Vincent, who lived next door, if he had heard anything. Well, yes,
he replied, he had been out shooting sea gulls in front of his
house but out to sea, not at my house. Later I asked the new
band-chief if I was quite safe. "Oh of course," he answered. The
only problem with John Vincent was that his was the War Chief's
house; he was a war chief with nothing to do. Every so often he
went off the rails a bit, but it was nothing to get alarmed
about.
I realized there was nothing I could do if John decided to take
to the warpath by suddenly attacking from next door. In Canada,
Indian villages on reserve land were outside federal jurisdiction
so I, like the rest of the community, depended on community
conscience to inhibit any violence. This usually worked. However,
there was a delicate balance between non-interference in other
people's lives and a general looking out for community well
being.
The fragility of this was very apparent to me when one evening I
had an unexpected guest; a white fisherman tied up his boat at the
dock and marched over to my house, carrying a large whisky bottle.
He had heard about me over on the other side, he said, and come to
visit. After a few drinks he told me he knew I was a prostitute
servicing the Indians (his expression) and had come to take a turn.
By this point things were turning ugly, though Alistair had not yet
woken up. The man was refusing to leave, and started chasing me
with the bottle; once I realized he was the worse for whisky, I
picked up a piece of wood and started chasing him, at the same time
yelling loudly for help. Alistair, woken by the noise, also started
to yell. The village was a very small place but nobody responded. I
was finally able to get the man out of the house, and pushed a
chest against the door (it had no lock). The man's boat remained
tied up at the dock all night but finally left the following day.
Again I wandered over to John Vincent's place. Did you hear the
noise at our house last night? I wondered. "Yes," he replied, "that
was quite a ruckus. Sounded like you were having a real party." I
tried to explain that I had been yelling for help but I don't think
he ever believed me. And I also know it would have been very
difficult for any one in the village to interfere in what would
have been seen as a domestic quarrel in which they had no
business.
Not long after this, I saw John Vincent's boat leaving Kyuquot.
His seven children were all over at my house that afternoon,
playing with Alistair, and running in and out of the house. "Where
are your parents fishing today?" I asked their older daughter,
Janet. "Ah, not fishing," she answered, "they've gone to my
grandparents in the next village, a day's journey by boat."
" When are they coming back?"
"I dunno... maybe two or three weeks."
"And where are you all staying?"
"Well, here, of course."
This was when I first properly understood the concept of
communal parenting. My first reaction was indignation - "Well, they
could have told me they were going or asked me to babysit" - but I
soon realized it was no big deal in Kyuquot. I fed everyone tea
that day and a couple of them did sleep over on the couch and the
spare room. The rest wandered off to play with other children and
stayed in various houses in the village. When their parents
returned a couple of weeks later, everyone was glad to see them and
this was clearly a perfectly usual event.
One day, I decided we had to have time out. Actis, the island
where we lived, could be walked around in an hour and a half. I
felt that it was Alistair and I who lived under a microscope rather
than the other way round; everything we did was common knowledge in
the community. So I went and borrowed Adolphe Leo's motor boat,
packed a picnic and we headed up the inlet to a beach I had visited
some time earlier looking for clams with a group of Indians. I
found it without too much trouble, and pulled up the boat, letting
Alistair paddle and run along the sands. It was wonderfully
relaxing to lie quietly in the sun, make sandcastles, sing and
shout..... Suddenly there was a crashing sound behind us. I somehow
knew immediately we were in danger. I scooped Alistair up and
virtually threw him into the boat, grabbing what else I could as I
pushed the boat off the beach into the water. As I jumped in myself
and started rowing furiously away from land, I saw the size of the
black bear that had come charging through the woods onto the beach.
And then I also noticed, stumbling behind her, a little black cub.
Two mothers and their cubs, both trying to avoid trouble.
Time did not necessarily fly by in Kyuquot, but all too soon we
were coming towards the end of our stay. In September, several of
the families left the village to move down the coast for their
children to attend school. I had finished working with the families
remaining in Actis and was traveling "to the other side" by boat
each day, to work with some of the older people there. Adolphe Leo
kindly continued to rent me his motor dinghy each day and Janet,
the 12 year old from next door, would come with me to keep an eye
on Alistair and take him to play with other children. One morning,
we set off as usual across the bay on a journey that usually took
us 20 minutes. It was cool and the air was damp but we were all
wearing life-jackets-cum anoraks and did not feel the cold. As we
rounded the headland, Janet pointed to a strange boat, anchored off
another of the islands. "Look, Chusan, Mounties." We waved at the
strangers, who were still a ways off but not lying in the direction
we were heading. Then Janet spoke again. "They're waving us over."
In a panic I realized we were being summoned. I turned the boat in
their direction and headed over to them, trying to slow down as I
approached but instead speeding up so that we nearly rammed them.
They grabbed the boat, looked at each of us in turn, and then asked
"Who are you?" I gave them my name and, when they asked what I was
doing leaving an Indian village so early in the morning, I
explained a little about my research. They cut me off. Did I not
know it was illegal for a white to live in an Indian village? Now
this was not true. The police were unable to enter the village
unless asked, which was why they were hiding just out of sight,
waiting for the first person to leave the village. On the other
hand, one could be invited, as I was, to stay in a village. I
decided to let that pass. They tried a new tack. Was this my boat?
When they learned it was not, they wanted to know how many life
jackets we had. I told them we were all wearing life jackets - but
this was the wrong answer. The boat would hold twelve people and
therefore needed twelve life jackets. One of the officers was busy
scribbling on a pad, and leaning over, handed me a note. When I
read it, I suddenly realized I was being given a REAL summons. I
was being charged with operating a boat inadequately equipped. The
officer told me brusquely I had to appear in court in Tashis (two
days away by boat) within the week, or I would be held in contempt.
Furthermore I should return immediately from where I had come and
not go wandering round the ocean in such an inadequate state.
I couldn't believe what had happened. I restarted the boat's
engine and we returned the way we had come. I felt close to tears;
I barely had enough money to last me for the rest of my research
but this trip to court would clean me out and there was no way I
would be able to return to finish my work. I still did not have
enough to write a dissertation, and moreover I felt it was letting
down all my Indian friends. By now, virtually everybody had allowed
me to interview them, they had shared their fish with me and taught
me how to smoke and dry it. They had included me in all the
community events and even rewarded me with gifts of food at the
potlatch ceremonies held that summer. I OWED them a reasonable
report or book after all their help.
As we slowly returned to the village, I became aware of what was
happening on shore. I had never seen anything quite like it during
my stays in Kyuquot - and indeed much later I realized that this
was what I had read about in accounts of important ceremonial
visitors arriving from outside villages. People were coming out of
all the houses and walking slowly down towards the dock. Everyone
had witnessed, with their binoculars, my meeting with the mounties
and had realized what had happened. They had told me before that
the Mounties make a sudden visit to the area every couple of years
and arrest an Indian on some bogus charge, just to teach the people
a lesson. This year they had got me. The mounties cover was blown,
all thanks to me. Suddenly I was the hero of the hour. Everyone was
waiting for me on the dock, to hug me and sympathize - and quite a
few to laugh! Janet shared all the details and word was quickly
relayed by radio to people on the other side so they too would stay
home to avoid any sort of interaction with the mounties.
The police stayed around for several days but were not able to
find any other victims. Before they left, I found the officer who
had issued my charge and persuaded him to give me a month to appear
in court; in that way I would be able to finish my work. He told me
that I was clearly guilty and that I risked imprisonment but would
definitely be fined, probably $500-$1000, something the Indians
agreed with from bitter experience. They all thought this
experience was hilarious and teased me unmercifully for the rest of
my stay. But it was clear that I had prevented any of them being
caught this time, and their joking was now tinged with
affection.
Finally I was ready to leave Kyuquot and flew to Tashis for my
day in court. Alistair and I were seated on the bench with the
other criminals: two young Indian boys who were variously accused
of throwing stones at salmon, and fishing in an illegal spot.
Nobody spoke in their defense, though I knew full well that poor
Indians, without western fishing tackle, continue to catch salmon
by stunning them, a traditional skill that takes a great deal of
expertise. I also knew of the claims made by Indian bands to be
able to use their traditional fishing sites. None of this was
raised in court, however, and each of the accused was fined $500.
Then it was my turn. With Alistair happily charging round the
court-room, I listened to my offense being read out by the judge
(the accusing officer did not appear): operating a boat with
inadequate life jackets. The judge asked if I had anything to say
in my own defense. I explained that we were all wearing life
jackets should any disaster have overtaken us, and that there would
have been nowhere to stow any extra life jackets. The judge ignored
this, but leaning forward asked:
"Young lady, if your boat had gone down, do you know how long
you would have survived in that water? Fifteen seconds, that is
all!" So much for the value of a regulation life preserver. Then he
banged his gavel, said "Guilty as charged. Fined $5." The good news
was that I was not to be imprisoned and could afford to pay my
fine. The bad news was that I have a police record in Canada (which
I presume I still have); and the double standard of justice, of
which the Indians had talked so bitterly, was clearly alive and
well.
The people of Kyuquot were anxious to hear news of the trial,
which we relayed via radio; and Indian politicians in the area were
later to use it as a pretext for forcing reform of the local legal
and jurisdictional administration. All that happened after I left.
but I like to think that my involvement, my fieldwork, not only
yielded a dissertation and later a book about Kyuquot, but also
contributed in some small way to improving local Indian-White
relations. However, that is probably wishful thinking, pure
ethnocentrism. Indians of this area are still struggling to get
recognition of their land and community rights. In all likelihood,
the best that can be said for me is that I saved one Indian, one
year, from being sent to jail on trumped-up fishing charges.
Conclusions:
Maybe you are beginning to see certain parallels emerging in all
this. It took me a while - but I am now very aware of how fieldwork
is in fact just like teaching. We all obsess about our methods and
our failures and only in retrospect gain some perspective on our
accomplishments. We DO, I hope, get better at it, though this also
took me a while, in both enterprises. Altogether, I suppose I have
more than ten years of field experience, though not all of that is
on the Northwest Coast. Perhaps I have fewer mishaps now than when
I started, but it certainly never proceeds smoothly.
Few of us as professors get voted out of the classroom after the
first day - but I bet none of us here have forgotten our first
batch of student evaluations when we felt that this was basically
what the students were saying to us. Each harsh comment was a
veritable "knife to the heart," which left us wondering how we
could ever have the nerve to go before a class again.
Very few of us get chased by black bears into the ocean - or if
so, it is only figuratively. And though we are frequently
misunderstood I hope that none of us are accused of prostitution in
the discharge of our duties. I also hope that very few of get
arrested in the pursuit of pedagogical excellence. But we can
probably all agree that for the most part the similarities are
really there. We enter the classroom knowing pretty much what we
want to do, and after the semester is over, we usually make sense
of it in our own minds, as we reflect on what went on, what worked
well and occasionally, what did not work so well.
But during the actual semester? the process of teaching the
course? In teaching, as in fieldwork, we use ourselves as the main
instrument for accomplishing our objectives and this is something
we cannot be taught beforehand. It can only be learnt through hard
earned personal, often bitter experience. Like in the field, real
life in the classroom is messy, unpredictable and highly stressful.
Even if we have taught the class many times before, and especially
if we rely on old, well-worn notes, we can never anticipate how
this new group of students will fail to grasp what we are trying to
do and may succeed in disrupting our brilliant agendas. And that
perhaps is where the real parallels lie. If we are prepared to
engage ourselves as intensively as we expect of others, it is in
the messiness of everyday life, whether it be in the field or in
the classroom, that the real creativity of our endeavors truly
lies. Out of what appear to be unmitigated disasters, CAN emerge
some of the most fruitful, stimulating and challenging insights,
that we as scholars and teachers are privileged to experience.
So, next time things don't go too well in C&T, let's all
remind ourselves of just that!