Bruce Granville Millerthe man who found the wallet, and me. My observation is that, in
recent years, there is an increased expectation by indigenous people
that their understandings be foregrounded. Perhaps all the examples
I have given indicate this. The whole debate about experience-near
approaches to anthropology could be seen in this light. It is no longer
necessarily a choice made by anthropologists sifting through struc-
tural, functional, symbolic, or semiotic models and methods. This de-
velopment is analogous to political change elsewhere, to indigenous
movements to control the landscape, education, justice, and so on. We
ought not be surprised that there would be a push to extend indige-
nous thought into this domain as well. Indeed, when I began the plan-
ning for a ceremony to honor a Stó:lo ̄ chief, Frank Malloway (whose
“Indian” name is Siyemchis), the host of the ubc ethnographic field
school for several years, members of his community assumed that al-
though the event was to be in a university museum at ubc, it would
be in Coast Salish idiom. No one seemed to question whether I might
be able to pull off hosting a complex Coast Salish ceremonial occa-
sion, although when I requested help, it was provided.
Subsequently, I engaged the services of two “speaking chiefs,” who
advised on protocol and spoke at the ceremony. I purchased blankets
to drape over the speakers and the guest of honor, arranged for the
calling of witnesses, and hosted a feast with appropriate foods and a
surplus sufficient to allow guests to take food home with them. The
day before the event, an important chief requested that the protocol
for the event, and even the concept (originally analogous to a nam-
ing ceremony but now being treated as an honor ceremony), be re-
vised (Miller 1998 ). Among the things I learned was a level of detail
about ceremonials that exceeded what I had recorded in my notes
from many other occasions, the considerable extent to which ritual-
ists differ in their interpretation of how “work” should proceed, and
the sheer difficulty and expense of putting on such an event. Of great-
est importance was the connection between the epistemology and the
politics of the community. All this was part of my education about
the Coast Salish world.
This example reveals that the text of interpenetration between in-
digenous and mainstream worlds is not solely ours in anthropology