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Experiences of Power among the Sekani
it came to me. There is no climax to my story, no sudden flash pre-
cipitated by a particular event. I was not out of mind because of a
transcendental epiphany in the field. I had begun working on a book
about Sekani mythology (Desgent and Lanoue 2005 ). I also had long
been exploring various aspects of my model of political culture in
various domains and culture areas, so I obviously had the benefit of
thinking about the problem of what constituted power from differ-
ent points of view.
I think the major factor in understanding what had been before
my eyes all this time was the fact that I had been a nomad for twenty
years, even after I had begun working full time in Montreal in 1994.
For reasons too complex to explore here, I had been moving around
all my life, from city to city, language to language, country to coun-
try, continent to continent. Initially, most of these moves were for
the usual reasons, for middle-class white men of my generation: jobs
and career. Later, in my thirties, it became a habit and an emotional
necessity. I remember when I got tenure at my university, normally
a huge step in one’s career. My boss told me the news and then, she
added: “I know you are disappointed because it means you cannot
move around anymore.”
In fact, I got tired of it all. Moving no longer made sense on an emo-
tional level. For years, moves had not been related to career, which,
in terms of North American middle-class upbringing, had, at least
in the past, furnished a ready-made and somewhat satisfying justifi-
cation. I no longer felt the emotional and psychological engagement
arising from displacement. In simple terms, I felt European while liv-
ing in Canada and Canadian while living in Europe. The usual meta-
phors of place no longer made sense.
Space is a major metaphor for identity everywhere in the West. It
is, however, so polysemic that it is not a simple sign of social or per-
sonal identity (see Geertz 1996 ). Space as a metaphor also refers to
psychic conditions, depending on how it is politicized according to
larger ideological frames of space and time. The apparent importance
of space or time varies only according to whether people engage an
explicit discourse or tacit but nonetheless shared meanings. People in
Native North American band societies, for example, profess values
