Peter M. Gardnerteeth and denied having seen her. After a few minutes, she thanked us
and slipped back out with a smile to get the process of their mutual
opening restarted. Then he stopped by next day and told us sheep-
ishly, “Yesterday, [pause] you done right.”
My understanding of all this came slowly. What a wonderful drink-
ing bout we had after three of us worked for several days to make a
new (toboggan-style) sled of birch we had cut ourselves! Although we
did not accumulate much that needed to be resolved during this proj-
ect, there were a couple of minor peeves, and I did have a sense that
it would be good for us all to air them. When a grumble or two did
come at the height of the party, I experienced an epiphany: I at last
appreciated the fact that we were doing something far more serious
than taking a celebratory drink.
I learned to play the game. Later in the project, an elderly man
asked me to come over in the evening to share his home brew. I did,
but I was welcomed with more than a constantly refilled mug. As we
slowly fell into intoxication, he began to attack me bitterly for hav-
ing included only one member of his family in my sample, his daugh-
ter-in-law. What a sharp tongue he had! He knew nothing, of course,
about our rigorous stratified sampling techniques or about the set of
criteria by which we selected people to work with us. Realizing full
well this time what was happening, instead of subjecting him to a de-
fensive discourse on scientific method, I let him get all his resentment
off his chest. The next day, he sidled up to me hesitantly in the Hud-
son Bay store, wearing a tense, sheepish smile. “My wife tells me I
didn’t talk good to you last night,” he said. “I don’t remember,” I re-
plied, in the requisite, singsong voice. As it dawned on him that I was
offering a culturally appropriate response, his smile changed charac-
ter. It grew into a relaxed grin. And the two of us walked off as bud-
dies with other matters to talk about.
Communicating with DogsSome years ago, a priest’s sled arrived in midwinter at the isolated
trapline cabin of a family I worked with during my pilot project in
the north. The priest’s dogs were starved and scrappy, their harnesses
were tangled, and the priest, himself, was delirious with pneumonia.