Jean-Guy A. Gouletgame had hidden a piece of wood. Following several rounds of this,
someone in a back corner of the tent suddenly called out, “You are
cheating. You closed your eyes, so you can see.”
In the end, one realizes that if it is true that “so-called natives do
not ‘inhabit’ a world fully separate from the one ethnographers ‘live
in,’” (Rosaldo 1989 , 45 ), it is equally true that the ethnographer and
his or her hosts are both human beings. The experiences described ear-
lier in this paper, my own and those of Miller, occur in a world that
comprises our contemporaries and our predecessors, those who have
passed away but who live in our memory. In such a world, praying
with tobacco and then dreaming with the tobacco under one’s pillow
enabled a student to experience the visit of a Cree elder who had died.
Clearly, anthropologists enculturated in Euro–North American sci-
entific and rational traditions who nevertheless immerse themselves
deeply in a Native North American world cannot spontaneously re-
port, as Native North Americans might do, their own experiences of
meeting Native North Americans ancestors in their dreams. This ret-
icence to do so is understandable. The following comment by Jung,
in this respect, is revealing: “I am convinced that if a European had
to go through the same exercises and ceremonies which the medicine-
man performs in order to make the spirits visible, he would have the
same experiences. He would interpret them differently, of course, and
devalue them, but this would not alter the facts” (Jung 1920 [ 1960 ],
303 , in Young 1994 , 169 ).
It is perhaps appropriate then to share the following dream. It is one
with which Alexis Seniantha would have had no difficulty. A number
of years ago, a close friend of ours was dying from cancer. My wife,
Christine, was away for a few days in Vancouver when our friend died.
A few hours before receiving the long-distance phone call announcing
her death, I had a dream in which I saw our friend dressed in a hospi-
tal gown step out of her bed and begin walking in my direction. She
kept her balance with the help of a cane held in her right hand. As she
passed to my right she waived and smiled at me, saying: “I’m on my
way to see Christine.” I had a clear sense that our friend had passed
away and that somehow Christine would soon know. Half awake,
half asleep, I remained in bed with our two-year-old son.