Goulet.pdf

Bruce Granville Miller

to seek the individuality of interpretation, in Barth’s ( 1995 ) terms, the
individuation of culture, or “culture in many modalities.” This expe-
rience provides a way to do so. This fracturing places the story of the
wallet more clearly in line with Coast Salish understandings, which
themselves recognize diversity as suggested by the cultural adviser re-
garding Christian and atheist anthropologists.

Local concepts of power and sources of conflict

There is a related problem, however. Curiously, the literature of the
anthropology of extraordinary experience runs the risk of promot-
ing a kind of timelessness, of dehistoricizing experience, by an im-
plicit notion of “authenticity” of experience. And what is the sit-
uation if the indigenous people with whom we are working speak
within a pan-Indian idiom? Are we as prepared to take the spiritual
view as seriously as we might regard a practice known to have ex-
isted in situ for longer periods? One might wonder what the political
costs are of evaluating one experience positively and overlooking an
emergent spiritual–political movement. An example is the recent dif-
fusion of the Medicine Wheel into Coast Salish territory from prai-
rie communities. Some community members disparage this spiritual
development, holding it to be outside or even in contradiction to the
traditions of their own community, and therefore potentially danger-
ous (McIlwraith 1996 ), while others embrace it as an “authentic tra-
dition.” These differences in perspective are the sources of conflict,
particularly as they are manifested in problems of representing Salish
culture to the outside world.
Let me provide less trivial stories than that of the story of the wal-
let. The understanding of local concepts of power, and how it is em-
ployed and received, is a central concern to contemporary anthropol-
ogy. One story reveals the connections between the lived experience
of power and experience-near anthropology. A tribal politician de-
scribed to me his fears about a spirit power he had inherited and that
had manifested itself to him. He did not want to establish a relation-
ship with this spirit helper because this would require him to take the
winter off from his busy work schedule in order to enter into spiritual