Jean-Guy A. Gouletand “when one returns to one’s own culture.” Contrasting epistemo-
logical and ontological assumptions as they compete with each other
within the same person serves to highlight the fact that they are, in a
sense, irreducible to one another. Contrary to Burridge’s suggestion,
it follows that we cannot simply comprehend one set of ontological
assumptions (a worldview) in terms of the other.
Native North American understanding of many practices and ex-
periences challenges the canons of Western reality and of modern eth-
nography. If we do not totally devalue the experiences lived in dreams
and/or visions, what may we do with them, ours or that of others,
within the profession? Shall we argue then with Gregory and Mary
Catherine Bateson ( 1987 ) that one can act “as if” the elder had ac-
tually talked to us, leaving to others the worry about the ontological
status of the Elder’s appearance in a dream. Shall we take a more rad-
ical stance and maintain with Goodman ( 1990 , 55 ) that “ritual is the
rainbow bridge over which we can call on the Spirits and the Spirits
cross over from their world into ours.” Elders and spirits, however,
are not always benign. This led Stoller and Olkes ( 1987 , 22 ) to state
that “ethnographers can go too far. They can pursue the other’s real-
ity too hotly, crossing a line that brings them face to face with a vio-
lent reality that is no mere epistemological exercise.” We risk ignor-
ing that we are living in sorcery’s shadow at our own risk. Similarly, it
took Toelken more than thirty years to learn that his research among
the Navajo between 1954 and 1984 had actually been “more endan-
gering than entertaining” (Toelken 1996 , 14 ).
Multivocality, the hallmark of postmodern accounts of human ac-
tivity and history, characterizes the anthropological domain also. Au-
thors speak and write and agree to disagree. In this context, we ought
at least to take note of the beliefs espoused by our colleagues, beliefs
understood here in Spiro’s sense of propositions held to be true. In
the end, whatever position one espouses on the issues raised in this
paper, that advocated by Trigger, by Spagna and Lanoue, by Bate-
son and Bateson, by Goodman, by Stoller and Olkes, or by Toelken,
the “will to believe,” the decision to posit this as opposed to that as
a meaningful gestalt in terms of which to make sense of one’s experi-
ence has to intervene.