Bruce Granville MillerBut we are not actually children, after all, and don’t really look like
children. Fogelson tells us that “wardship suggests immaturity and
vulnerability. On the other hand, the relationship suggests definite ob-
ligations on the part of the more powerful protector to assist and de-
fend the interests of the ward” ( 1999 , 78 ). This construction might
enshrine us in what might appear to be our preposterously slow learn-
ing. Wards might grow in knowledge, but at some unanticipated and
far-off time. There is danger in remaining a ward, however.
My own illustration of this concerns an occasion when I was called
as a “witness” at important “work,” or ritual, in a Coast Salish com-
munity. This event was held in an earth-floored longhouse and attended
by several hundred people from all over the Salish world. While of-
ten many more witnesses are called, on this occasion only four were
asked to speak and carry from the occasion a memory of what was
said and done so that this could be substantiated later, if necessary. In
effect, witnesses act as legal repositories of the spoken documents of
the occasion. One witness was called from an outside community, an-
other from a nearby group, and a third from the local group; I served
as the “elder” of the academic and non-indigenous world. This posed
a considerable challenge to my limited abilities as a speaker within the
Coast Salish idiom, and it was not appropriate (although there would
be no sanctions other than, perhaps, disappointment) to speak in an
academic voice. I attempted to emulate local practice in establishing
connection, in tone, in composition, and in drawing attention to rel-
evant people and issues. Local forms of discourse, in brief, entail an
awareness of local epistemology. Afterward, an elder who had first
taken me some years earlier to a winter ceremonial said, “I was so
worried about you. You never knew how to speak in public. I’m sur-
prised by you! You sounded like a real speaker!” This elder clearly ex-
pected I might never end my period as a ward, but nevertheless thought
I should eventually learn something and sound like a speaker or en-
danger myself by my own presence in her world.
The proposal for “radical participation” or experience-near an-
thropology is attractive for many reasons, including because we wish
to understand how indigenous epistemology works. We find experi-
ences beyond our own understanding to be compelling, and we want