Jean-Guy A. Goulettion” (Buckley 2002 , 106 ). Conversely, Yurok saw Kroeber’s questions
“as both impolite and unproductive of real understanding” (Buckley
2002 , 105 ). “White people explain too much,” said Robert Spott, a
respected Yurok. Spott maintained that he “had tried to teach Kroe-
ber,... [who in the end] just couldn’t learn” (Buckley 2002 , 106 ).
Conversations with colleagues about ecstatic experiences and their
content, as suggested above, depend on how anthropologists decide
to conduct themselves when they return home and sit down to write
the results of their anthropological work for fellow professionals to
read. One option, perhaps the one preferred by the majority of an-
thropologists, is to do as Robert Lowie and many others since have
done, to produce classical scholarly work that leaves aside all expe-
riences of dreams and visions that flow from radical participation in
the Native American world. Much of the anthropologist’s findings
and experiences in the Native North American lifeworld are then writ-
ten out of one’s ethnography. These decisions reflect epistemological
and ethical concerns. How much do we bring forth in the public re-
cord as anthropologists? On what basis do we decide to exclude or
include certain kinds of data or accounts of experiences? Every an-
thropological paper, journal article, or book published expresses a
decision on these matters and determines whether within anthropol-
ogy, foregrounded or not, the aboriginal perspective will be visible
and visibly respected.
Living According to “True” KnowledgeIn the course of this paper, I have referred to propositions that are
widely held to be true by Native North Americans. First, when learn-
ing, do so from personal experience, personal witnessing of people
and events, and careful listening of other people’s accounts of their ex-
periences and observations. Second, when in doubt about publishing
an account obtained from an elder, ask for his authorization to pub-
lish, even if he has passed from this world to the next. Third, ances-
tors maintain an active interest in the well-being of their descendants.
And so on. At face value, depending on the identity of the reader, these
statements will stand either as assertions of facts or as assertions made