Annals of Ostracism (1)—Alone in the Arctic

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Annals of Ostracism."

[a] Cool  RF

Today, I want to examine a section in Jean Briggs’s superb ethnography on her life with the Utku in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Hers is one of the first (and best) truly reflexive ethnographies, and her work combined with that of one of my teachers, Paul Riesman, and several other anthropologists doing fieldwork in the 1960s to create a movement within the discipline that would bring the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the ethnographer back into the picture. Briggs is unflinching in her description of how difficult was her transition to life in and beyond the iglu.

Although today’s passage appears about three-quarters of the way through the book, it brings to a head the perceptions she ignored and the Utku suppressed during seventeen months of fieldwork. I have already stated on Round and Square how important I think it is for anthropologists to “tell stories on themselves”—to relate moments of real frustration and pain, when they often are not at their best. I call this a “rhetoric of humility,” and it is plays a more prominent role in ethnography than in just about any other discipline. I find it to be one of cultural anthropology’s very reasons for being, and will have more to say about it as we progress.

Jean L. Briggs
Persona Non Grata: Ostracism

That incident [of confusion and frustration with outside visitors] bringing to a head, as it did, months of uneasiness concerning my volatility, marked the beginning of a new phase in my relationship with the Utku. Some days passed, however, before I became aware that I was ostracized. My work seemed somehow more difficult than usual, I felt tired and depressed; “bushed,” perhaps, I thought, in need of a vacation. There was certainly reason enough why I should be tired; the strain of the summer, the long isolation without mail, and the frustrations engendered by the presence of the unlikeable kapluna men, my impossible role as mediator—all had taken their toll. Now that the men were gone, I spent a great deal of time alone in my tent, typing notes, writing letters, and trying to analyze my linguistic data. I felt little desire for company and was grateful when the smiling faces that appeared from time to time between the flaps of my tent entrance withdrew again without entering. I noticed nothing unusual in the behavior of anyone toward me.

Realization came suddenly and from an unexpected source. Autumn was upon us. The kaplunas, fearing to be weathered in for the winter, had departed precipitously in a sudden snow squall the day after my outburst—an unfortunate coincidence, I am afraid—and the able-bodied members of our camp, released from their fascinated vigil around the kapluna camp, had gone off to hunt caribou, leaving, as usual, the infirm, the immature, and the school children behind in camp. Pala, his daughter Amaaqtuq, and I were the only adults who remained. Knowing that the school plane was expected imminently, I wrote letter after letter to send out. There might be no opportunity to send out mail again until November.

Pala also wrote a letter to be sent—to Nakliguhuktuq—and, smiling warmly, he gave it to me to keep until the plane should come: “So I won’t forget to send it,” he said. The letter was in syllabics, of course, and, moved by I know not what amoral spirit, I decided to read it—to test my skill in reading Eskimo. It had been written ten days earlier, the day the kaplunas left. It began, more or less as I had expected, by describing the bounty of the kaplunas and how much they had helped the Eskimos. Then it continued in a vein I had not anticipated: “Yiini is a liar. She lied to the kaplunas. She gets angry (ningaq) very easily. She ought not to be here studying Eskimos. She is very annoying (urulu), because she scolds (huaq) and one is tempted to scold her. She gets angry easily. Because she is so annoying, we wish more and more that she would leave.”

I pored over the crudely formed syllables for some time, unwilling to believe that I was reading them correctly. Perhaps I was inserting the wrong consonants at the ends of the syllables; the script does not provide them. But I was not. There was only one way to read the characters. So there was a reason why my work was going poorly! And my depression was not due to the fatiguing summer. What shocked me most was that, in thinking over the ten days since I had spoken to the kapluna guide, I could recall no change in the habitually warm, friendly, considerate behavior of the Utku. Though I had had few visitors, I had attributed that fact to my obvious preoccupation with typing; I had assumed that it was I who was withdrawing from the Eskimos, not they from me…

…I did my utmost to appear unperturbed, to appear not to notice. And so covert were these small withdrawals that at times I succeeded in persuading myself that they existed only in my depressed imagination. The illusion that all was well, however, never lasted for long. I felt myself in limbo, and I fumbled for a way to break out. I wanted to confront my punishers with my knowledge of their feelings toward me, and to explain why I had acted as I had toward the kaplunas, but I feared that I would only shock them the more by my directness. I considered the advisability of leaving on the school plane when it came; it was expected any day. I had not intended to leave for several more months, but since my work had come to a standstill anyway, perhaps there was no use in staying on. There were other inner voices, however, which told me to stay. I feared I had not gathered adequate data for the dissertation that was supposed to result from this field trip; and I did not wish to admit defeat before those who had said at the outset that Chantrey Inlet was too difficult a place for a white woman to live…[1]

[1] Jean Briggs, Never in Anger (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 285-289.

Bibliography
Briggs, Jean L. Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

NEXT
The Crime of Cephu
Colin Turnbull relates the cooperative nature of hunting among the BaMbuti Pygmies, and the outrage of Cephu, who went on alone.