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Moving Beyond Culturally Bound Ethical Guidelines
becomes productive through communication” (Fabian 2001 , 25 , em-
phasis in original).
Everywhere, home is a social environment in which people gov-
ern themselves according to a wide body of assumptions and injunc-
tions, however implicit. Among Northern Athapaskans, for instance,
when it comes to learning, the general expectation is that one learns
“first from personal experience, second by observation of people who
know how to do things, and third informally by hearing mythical,
historical, or personal narratives”(Rushforth 1992 , 488 ). To appre-
ciate the significance of such an injunction, we must see the intimate
connections established here between epistemology and ethics. As I
was to learn among the Dene Tha, their “way of knowing and liv-
ing is an expression of great confidence in the human ability to learn
to live responsibly and competently without diminishing other peo-
ple’s opportunity to live in the same way” (Goulet 1998 , 58 ). The
Dene Tha view is similar to the one reported for the Yurok of north-
ern California, where “people in training tend to view explanation as
a mode of interference with another’s purpose in life, comparable to
theft, ‘stealing a person’s opportunity to learn’” (Buckley 2002 , 104 -
105 , my emphasis).
According to this ethically grounded view of learning, to hear a nar-
rative and to follow with probing questions to ascertain the mean-
ing of what one has heard is offensive. Initially, when with the Dene
Tha I sometimes failed to meet the expectation that I was to learn as
the Dene themselves learn.^6 On one such occasion, when I did ques-
tion what I was being told, I was immediately reminded of my posi-
tion: “If you do not say the right words, and we don’t like it, you are
in trouble. Like you write what we tell you, we could walk away, we
go away, what do you do? Nothing, you can’t write anymore” (Gou-
let 1998 , xxiii–xxxiv).
The speaker refers to my practice of writing down verbatim the con-
tent of parts of conversations with Dene Tha in their homes. Dene Tha
who accepted the practice would often slow their narrative down so
that I could record it accurately. The same individuals would, however,
tell me at times to put my pen down and to listen carefully to what
was for my ears only. I would listen and they would often remind me
