Jean-Guy A. GouletIn this instance, the strengthening of the legal basis of the aboriginal
claim went hand in hand with a deepening of the anthropologist’s on-
going relationship with tribal members in their world.
Miller’s account of his experiences in a Native North American
world raises a larger issue. How are anthropologists to conduct them-
selves with Native North Americans in their world? Will they stand as
outsiders who prefer unintrusive observation to radical participation?
As illustrated in the events described above, to speak of the ethnogra-
pher’s radical participation in the lifeworld of his or her host is to ac-
knowledge “the fact that the interaction promoted through long-term
participation produces not only ‘observations’ but also conceptualiza-
tions and insights that are clearly a joint creation of the anthropolo-
gist and his/her local partners in interaction” (Barth 1992 , 65 ). Stories
offered by anthropologists or their hosts authorize, found, and set in
place “ways of experiencing the world” (Cruikshank 1998 , 1 ). This is
more crucial than the mere documentation of the range of ideas found
in any culture, for it is in the context of interaction with our hosts that
“new materials for internal reflection” become available (Barth 2002 ,
35 ). These materials are relevant also for conversation with our hosts
in their home environment, and with our fellow anthropologists, who
may or may not have lived similar experiences.
In this light consider the following conversation I had with Alexis
Seniantha in the early 1990 s. Alexis Seniantha, the head prophet of
the Dene Tha, was living in Peace River approximately six hundred ki-
lometers south of his home community in Chateh, northern Alberta.^9
With a few other Dene Tha elders, he spent the last years of his life in
a retirement home and palliative care center in Peace River. There he
was looked after by local staff and visited by Dene Tha relatives and
friends. When I entered his room, we greeted each other as we cus-
tomarily did and I handed him a pouch of pipe tobacco. As I sat next
to him on his bed, he held the tobacco in his right hand with much
delight and in a strong voice said: “This is very important!” He then
spoke at length, in a reflective mood, about his life and the many ex-
periences he had lived as a hunter, trapper, healer, and dreamer.
He began with a question: “Why is it that once in a while we have