Jean-Guy A. Gouletthat what I had just be been told, I was not to tell others, “edu keda-
dondi ile.” We would then resume the conversation and the record-
ing on paper of what I could write about. Had I failed to respect this
injunction about proper ways to conduct research, I would have had
nothing significant to write about. To be at home in the field meant
learning new ways of being, of knowing, and of writing.
In the following pages, I examine basic ethical issues that arise from
unanticipated and unintended dream experiences on the part of an-
thropologists living in different Native North American communities.
The productive outcome of such experiences shows the limitations in
the field of ethical guidelines defined in a foreign culture. The aware-
ness of these limitations lay the ground for an anthropological dis-
course that incorporates the fieldworker’s firsthand, experience-based
knowledge gained in interaction with others in their lifeworld.
“Ask the Elder!”Injunctions, however short and concise, implicit or explicit, rest upon
the bedrock of assumptions about reality and true or valid knowl-
edge without which social life could not proceed. The degree to which
these assumptions vary between Native North Americans and Euro–
North Americans becomes obvious in the following account of inter-
action between myself and a student in an introductory course in an-
thropology I was teaching in Ottawa.
The event took place in the early 1980 s, in the month of September.
For the fourth consecutive year, I had returned to teach in my home-
town after six months of immersion and work among the Dene Tha
of Chateh, in northwestern Alberta. A student who had spent a year
in an aboriginal community, in northern Ontario submitted a paper
in which he described how local elders had dealt with a relative who
had committed a serious violation of the community’s values. The el-
ders and community members could have reported the culprit to the
Canadian courts and/or the local priest. They chose not to do so. In a
process similar to the one described by Ryan ( 1995 ) for the Dogrib,
the guilty party had been confronted by a group of elders who, fol-
lowing their traditional judicial practices, passed and implemented a
sentence.