Even seasoned anthropologists run headlong into things they find par-
adoxical, extraordinary, shocking, or baffling when they are engaged
in fieldwork.^1 I had several experiences like this in the course of a study
during the 1970 s, and they all had to do with communication. They
entailed surprising interaction between humans; almost unbelievable
understandings between dogs and their masters; people dealing with
forces they called power, with extraordinary consequences; and, fi-
nally, my perception of things that I knew were impossible for me to
see. All these experiences beg to be shared. I was living and working
at the time in a Northern Dene settlement, in a richly forested part of
Canada’s Northwest Territories, about an hour’s flight from the near-
est road. But, before I broach what it was the Dene had in store for me,
you surely need a bit of background on what the community was like,
what sort of a person is reporting all this, and what it was that took a
colleague and me into the Subarctic to undertake the research.^2
Background
The Dene SettlementLike many communities in the north, the settlement we worked in
had grown up around an early nineteenth-century trading post on the
bank of a large river; the Catholic Church had also been there almost
from the start. Because our project proved to be quite intense for ev-
eryone, and because the people were wonderful about it, I think they
have earned a bit of privacy; it seems appropriate to leave the place
- On Puzzling Wavelengths
peter m. gardner