Guy Lanouenearly two and half inches long. I told Marie I could do nothing, since
the only way I knew to get it out would be to cut the thing with a pair
of pliers. My Swiss army knife was not so equipped. She simply re-
peated, calmly, that I do something. The dog looked at me patiently.
The eye of the hook was too large to push it through the bone. I de-
cided to start cutting the gums below the hook. The dog’s black lips
and gums seemed to magnify the size of its white teeth. The dog was
immobile as I sawed away. At any moment, I expected a nasty bite
and mentally calculated how many stitches I would need (which I
would have to do myself since there were no medical people around;
strangely, as I had already found out, normal thread works fine in
an emergency). I got more nervous as I hit bone. The dog’s right eye
looked at me, but it stayed quiet. Finally, I got the thing out. The dog
shut its bloody mouth, got up, took a few steps toward Marie and sat
down next to her. Marie picked up the leash and walked away with
the dog in tow.
I never forgot the patience of the beast when I was mutilating it,
nor its large eye looking directly at me (obviously, I was only inches
away since I was working with both hands in its mouth). Afterward,
I wondered why Marie had come to me. I had no particular talents
with animals. I was a mediocre hunter, as far as the Sekani knew. In
fact, I never killed because I thought what was a necessity for the
Sekani would be for me merely a vainglorious confirmation of be-
ing in an exotic field locale. My old Lee Enfield was a backup gun, in
case the first hunter missed. No one ever did, so no one knew that in
fact I was a very good shot. For the Sekani, I was “their” anthropol-
ogist, a white man whose questions and presence they tolerated with
grace and humor. I could occasionally solve a few bureaucratic prob-
lems for them, but no one would have ever asked me to solve one of
“their” problems. It remained a mystery, even after I had asked Ma-
rie why she had come to me. She had merely shrugged.
I often wondered about my alleged power (I had other strange ex-
periences with dogs), especially since dogs normally do not confer
power (only animals that hunt are thought to have power). But, as
some people told me, who knows, for white men? One day, in 1997 ,