The Nature of Knowledge: Calibrating Discourses across Cultures and Finding Common Disciplinary Ground

This essay approaches the relationship that J. Edward Chamberlin posits between stories and land from the standpoint of First Nations narrative and reflects on the process by which outsiders may come to understand how Native storytellers construct meaning and reflect on their present-day social and political circumstances. Such storytellers often employ traditional stories to establish cultural continuity and provide templates for contemporary reflexivity. Examples are drawn from more than four decades of fieldwork as a linguistic anthropologist, primarily among Plains Cree and Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) peoples. Some proposals are made for establishing respectful relationships and transcending cross-cultural mis-communication. The essay both articulates and employs First Nations pedagogical principles drawn from oral tradition. It attempts to establish effective conversations across traditional academic disciplines of the humanities and social sciences as well as between Native and non-Native discourses. Because cross-cultural differences in meaning-making are deeply grounded in social practice as well as language in the narrow sense, careful attention to the underlying relational quality of philosophical thought in specific Native traditions is required to calibrate narrative practices and the appropriate forms of interaction entailed by them. The stories themselves are the tip of a complex iceberg and effective storytellers invite hearers or readers to interpret their words in terms of rich social and aesthetic conventions that differ greatly from those of mainstream Canadian society. “Common ground” is about traditional land in a literal sense but it is also about the potential for discursive common ground. Abstract: Le present article discute des liens qui sont percus par J. Edward Chamberlin entre les histoires et leur provenance dans les recits des Premieres Nations. Il examine le processus qui pourrait aider les etrangers a mieux comprendre comment les raconteurs autochtones donnent un sens et reflechissent a leurs circonstances sociales et politiques actuelles. De tels raconteurs se servent souvent d’histoires traditionnelles pour etablir une continuite culturelle et fournir des modeles pour la reflexivite contemporaine. Des exemples sont tires de plus de quatre decennies de recherches pratiques en anthropologie linguistique, specialement avec les Crisdes-Plaines et les Anishinaabeg (Ojibwas). Certaines propositions sont faites pour etablir des relations respectueuses et passer outre aux malentendus culturels. Cet article exprime clairement et utilise des principes pedagogiques des Premieres Nations tires de la tradition orale. Il essaie d’etablir une conversation efficace au sein de plusieurs disciplines universitaires traditionnelles des sciences humaines et des sciences sociales, ainsi qu’entre les discours autochtones et non autochtones. Etant donne que les differences entre les cultures concernant la reflexion sur le sens de la vie sont ancrees profondement dans la pratique sociale ainsi que dans la langue dans son sens etroit, il faut faire tres attention a la qualite relationnelle sous-jacente de la pensee philosophique dans des traditions autochtones particulieres pour calibrer les pratiques narratives et les formes appropriees d’interaction qu’elles provoquent. Les histoires memes sont la partie emergee d’un iceberg tres complexe et les bons raconteurs invitent ceux qui ecoutent ou lisent leurs histoires a interpreter leurs mots en termes de riches conventions sociales et esthetiques qui different enormement de celles du reste de la societe canadienne. Le terrain commun porte sur les terres traditionnelles dans son sens litteral, mais il vise aussi la possibilite d’un terrain commun discursif.

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